The following letter is in response to John Dear's June 9 column
Dear Fr. John Dear:
Jesus says absolutely nothing about abortion, so for the life of me (no pun intended), I can't understand why Christians could ever take it more seriously than outright murder, war, poverty, or even adultery. Jesus spoke out against these things, but he didn't speak out against abortion.
I would rather not speak to why he did not. I do not know the cultural practices regarding abortion in that particular region in the first century and whether they were frowned upon or accepted.
But regardless of what abortion was or was not at the time, the question I would like to pose is why it is considered a grave sin in the current moral/political context. I am sure you could cite me various references to the Catechism, but I am not a Catholic and am not beholden to any Catholic teachings or practices. However, I consider myself a moral person as well as a firm believer in nonviolence and progressive social change. I am not against any religion that carries this agenda, and I am certainly in agreement with you personally on most, if not all, other issues.
In short, I would like to approach abortion primarily from a rational, political perspective. I will admit right now that I do not think abortion is desirable or necessarily moral or righteous, but I feel that it can be equally or more undesirable or immoral to raise a child you cannot adequately love and support. Furthermore, I do not consider giving your child up for adoption an acceptable alternative to abortion in all circumstances. We can discuss this further, if you would like.
I would like to begin the political/radical discussion on abortion by referring to your recent column on the Dr. Tiller murder. I found it to be quite lacking in balance and clarity. Dr. Tiller is put in the same category as a person who would wage war or commit murder (defined by the laws as something quite far from abortion). You may believe that Dr. Tiller was misguided at best or a “murderer” at worst, but it is clear that George Tiller had a wide global following from progressives for his willingness to perform late-term abortions at great personal risk and despite heavy criticisms. He has been credited with saving women’s lives, and he is known as a mild-mannered man who never lashed out at his opponents. Yet he was threatened, spied on and had to be escorted to work by federal marshals. He survived an assassination attempt years ago and still continued his practice.
The news program Democracy Now! featured him prominently as a hero and a martyr. While I do not agree with the clear pro-abortion angle taken by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! aired speeches given by Dr. Tiller that warmed my heart. He was a firm advocate for women’s equality. He trusted that women knew what’s best for their bodies. This is something that few men are capable of doing. Your column did not once address reproductive rights or the oppression of women in this country. Dr. Tiller addressed these points in words and in actions, and I believe that this is why he was really killed — not because Mr. Roeder thought he was a “baby killer.”
I know you are coming from a far more progressive and logical standpoint than the people behind Tiller’s murder, but by putting abortion in the same category as murder or war, I believe you are treading in dangerous waters. How is aborting a potential life the same as killing someone who lives outside her mother's womb? I'm not saying abortion is a good thing, but how can anyone in all seriousness confuse abortion with outright murder? They are not the same thing.
It is quite unfortunate that the real message I glean from many so-called “pro-life” males to women is simple: We (and/or the government) are in charge of your bodies. We can impregnate you, forcibly even, but it is “immoral” for you to abort the fetus. And if any man dares to help you abort, he is just as guilty of “murder.”
I, for one, expect much better from a secular society that ostensibly favors equality among sexes.
Respectfully,
Matthew Johnson
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
The US War on Yugoslavia: Ten Years Later
By Stephen Zunes
Professor of Politics and Chair of Mid-Eastern Studies program at the University of San Francisco
Posted: June 5, 2009 11:05 AM
It has been 10 years since the U.S.-led war on Yugoslavia. For many leading Democrats, including some in top positions in the Obama administration, it was a "good" war, in contrast to the Bush administration's "bad" war on Iraq.
And though the suffering and instability unleashed by the 1999 NATO military campaign wasn't as horrific as the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years later, the war was nevertheless unnecessary and illegal, and its political consequences are far from settled. Unless there's a willingness to critically re-examine the war, the threat of another war in the name of liberal internationalism looms large.
Crisis Could Have Been Prevented
Throughout most of the 1990s, the oppressed ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo waged their struggle almost exclusively nonviolently, using strikes, boycotts, peaceful demonstrations, and alternative institutions. The Kosovar Albanians even set up a democratically elected parallel government to provide schooling and social services, and to press their cause to the outside world.
Indeed, it was one of the most widespread, comprehensive, and sustained nonviolent campaigns since Gandhi's struggle for Indian independence. This was the time for Western powers to have engaged in preventative diplomacy. However, the world chose to ignore the Kosovars' nonviolent movement and resisted consistent pleas by the moderate Kosovar Albanian leadership to take action. It was only after a shadowy armed group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged in 1998 that the international media, the Clinton administration and other Western governments finally took notice.
By waiting for the emergence of guerrilla warfare before seeking a solution, the West gave Serbia's autocratic president Slobodan Milosevic the opportunity to crack down with an even greater level of savagery than before. The delay allowed the Kosovar movement to be taken over by armed ultra‑nationalists, who have since proven to be far less willing to compromise or guarantee the rights of the Serbian minority.
Indeed, the KLA murdered Serb officials and ethnic Albanian moderates, destroyed Serbian villages, and attacked other minority communities, while some among its leadership called for ethnic cleansing in the other direction to create a pure Albanian state. Despite such practices, as well as ties to the international heroin trade, it was KLA's leadership which came to dominate the subsequent autonomous and now independent Republic of Kosovo.
It's a tragedy that the West squandered a full eight years when preventative diplomacy could have worked. The United States rejected calls for expanding missions set up by the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo, or to bring Kosovo constituencies together for negotiations. Waiting for a full-scale armed insurrection to break out before acting has also given oppressed people around the world a very bad message: Nonviolent methods will fail and, in order to get the West to pay attention to your plight, you need to take up arms.
When Western powers finally began to take decisive action on the long-simmering crisis in the fall of 1998, a ceasefire was arranged where the OSCE sent in unarmed monitors. While the ceasefire didn't hold, violence did decrease dramatically in areas where they were stationed. Indeed, the OSCE monitors could have done a lot more, but they were given little support. They were largely untrained, they were too few in number and NATO refused to supply them with helicopters, night-vision binoculars or other basic equipment that could have made them more effective.
Ceasefire violations by the Yugoslav army, Serbian militias, and KLA guerrillas increased in the early months of 1999, including a number of atrocities against ethnic Albanians by Serbian units, with apparent acquiescence of government forces. Western diplomatic efforts accelerated, producing the proposal put forward at the Chateau Rambouillet in France, which called for the withdrawal of Serbian forces and the restoration of Kosovo's autonomous status within a greater Serbia.
Such a political settlement was quite reasonable, and the Serbs appeared willing to seriously consider such an agreement. But it was sabotaged by NATO's insistence that they be allowed to send in a large armed occupation force into Kosovo, along with rights to move freely without permission throughout the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and other measures that infringed upon the country's sovereignty.
Another problem was that it was presented essentially as a final document, without much room for negotiations. One of the fundamental principles of international conflict resolution is that all interested parties are part of the peace process. Some outside pressure may be necessary -- particularly against the stronger party -- to secure an agreement, but it can't be presented as a fait accompli. This "sign this or we'll bomb you" attitude also doomed the diplomatic initiative to failure. Few national leaders, particularly a nationalist demagogue like Milosevic, would sign an agreement under such terms, which amount to a treaty of surrender: Allowing foreign forces free reign of your territory and issuing such a proposal as an ultimatum.
Smarter and earlier diplomacy could have prevented the war.
The Bombing Campaign
Many liberals who had opposed U.S. military intervention elsewhere recognized the severity of the ongoing oppression of the Kosovar Albanians and the need to challenge Serbian ethno-fascism, and therefore initially supported the war. Had such military intervention led to an immediate withdrawal of Yugoslav forces and Serbian militias, one could perhaps make a case that, despite the war's illegality, there was a moral imperative for military action in order to prevent far greater violence. But, as many experts of the region predicted, this wasn't the case.
The bombing campaign, which began March 24, 1999, clearly made things worse for the Kosovar Albanians. Not only were scores of ethnic Albanians accidentally killed by NATO bombing raids, but the Serbs -- unable to respond to NATO air attacks -- turned their wrath against the most vulnerable segments of the population: the very Kosovar Albanians NATO claimed it would be defending.
While the Serbs may have indeed been planning some sort of large-scale forced removal of the population in areas of KLA infiltration, both the scale and savagery of the Serbian repression that resulted was undoubtedly a direct consequence of NATO actions. Subsequent U.S. claims that the bombing was in response to ethnic cleansing turns the reality on its head.
By forcing the evacuation of the OSCE monitors, which -- despite their limitations -- were playing something of a deterrent role against the worst Serbian atrocities, NATO gave the Serbs the opportunity to increase their repression. By bombing Yugoslavia, they gave the Serbs nothing to lose. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were forced from their homes into makeshift refugee camps in neighboring Macedonia.
As the bombing continued, the numbers of Serbian troops in Kosovo increased and the repression of Kosovar Albanians dramatically escalated. Those doing the killing in Kosovo were primarily small paramilitary groups, death squads, and police units that couldn't have effectively been challenged by high-altitude bombing, and weren't affected by the destruction of bridges or factories hundreds of miles to the north. If protecting the lives of Kosovar Albanians was really the motivation for the U.S.-led war, President Bill Clinton would have sent in Marine and Special Forces units to battle the Serbian militias directly instead of relying exclusively on air power.
The war against Yugoslavia was illegal. Any such use of force is a violation of the UN Charter unless in self-defense against an armed attack or authorized by the United Nations as an act of collective security. Kosovo was internationally recognized as part of Serbia; it was, legally speaking, an internal conflict. In addition, the democratically elected president of the self-proclaimed, if unrecognized, Kosovar Albanian Republic, Ibrahim Rugova, didn't request such intervention. Indeed, he opposed it.
The war was also illegal under U.S. law. The Constitution places war-making authority under the responsibility of Congress. While it's widely recognized that the president, as commander-in-chief, has latitude in short-term emergencies, the 1973 War Powers Act prevents the executive branch from waging war without the express consent of Congress beyond a 60-day period.
Only rarely has Congress formally declared war, but it has passed resolutions supporting the use of force, as with the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution concerning Vietnam, the January 1991 approval of the use of force to remove Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait, and the October 2002 authorization for the invasion of Iraq. Clinton, however, received no such congressional approval. That he got away with such a blatant abuse of executive authority marked a dangerous precedent in war-making authority in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The 11-week bombing campaign resulted in the widespread destruction of Yugoslavia's civilian infrastructure, the killing of many hundreds of civilians, and -- as a result of bombing chemical factories, the use of depleted uranium ammunition and more -- caused serious environmental damage. Almost as many Yugoslav civilians died from NATO bombing than did Kosovar Albanian civilians from Serb forces prior to the onset of the bombing. A number of human rights groups that condemned Serbian actions in Kosovo also criticized NATO attacks that, in addition to the more immediate civilian casualties, endangered the health and safety of millions of people by disrupting water supplies, sewage treatment, and medical services.
U.S. Motivations
There are serious questions regarding what actually prompted the United States and NATO to make war on Yugoslavia. While the Serbian nationalism espoused by Milosevic had fascistic elements, and his government and allied militias certainly engaged in serious war crimes throughout the Balkans that decade, comparisons to Hitler were hyperbolic, certainly in terms of the ability to threaten any nation beyond the borders of the old Yugoslavia.
As today, there was civil strife in a number of African countries during this period, resulting in far more deaths and refugees than Serbia's repression in Kosovo. As a result, some have questioned U.S. double standards towards intervention such as why the United States didn't intervene in far more serious humanitarian crises, particularly in Rwanda in 1994, where there clearly was an actual genocide in progress.
But a more salient question is why the United States has never been held accountable for when it has intervened -- in support of the oppressors. In recent decades, the U.S. government provided military, economic, and diplomatic support of Indonesia's slaughter of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese, and of Guatemala's slaughter of many tens of thousands of its indigenous people.
While Clinton tried to justify the war by declaring that repression and ethnic cleansing must not be allowed to happen "on NATO's doorstep," he was not only quite willing to allow for comparable repression to take place within NATO itself, but actively supported it: During the 1990s, Turkey's denial of the Kurds' linguistic and cultural rights, rejection of their demands of autonomy, destruction of thousands of villages, killing of thousands of civilians and forced removal of hundreds of thousands bore striking resemblance to Serbia's repression in Kosovo. Yet the Clinton administration, with bipartisan congressional support, continued to arm the Turkish military and defended its repression.
Such questions necessarily raise uncharitable speculation about what might have actually motivated the United States to lead such a military action. For some advocates of U.S. military intervention, there was no doubt some genuine humanitarian concern, which -- unlike many other cases around the world -- support for those being oppressed didn't conflict with overriding U.S. strategic or economic prerogatives. There may have been other forces at work, however, which saw the use of force as advantageous for other reasons than a sincere, if misplaced, hope of assuaging a humanitarian crisis.
For example, the war created a raison d'être for the continued existence of NATO in a post-Cold War world, as it desperately tried to justify its continued existence and desire for expansion (This resulted in a kind of circular logic however: NATO was still needed to fight in wars like Yugoslavia, yet the war needed to be continued in order to preserve NATO's credibility.).
The war also benefited influential weapons manufacturers, leading to an increase in U.S. military spending by more than $13 billion, largely for weapons systems that most strategic analysts and even the Pentagon said weren't needed. This came on top of an increase in military spending passed before the onset of the war (By contrast, aid from the United States to help with the refugee crisis was very limited, and efforts by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees were severely hampered by lack of funds, in large part a result of the refusal by the United States to pay more than $1 billion in dues it then owed to the UN, equivalent to approximately one week of bombing.).
Whatever its actual motivations, why would the United States lead NATO into a long, drawn-out war with no guarantee of fulfilling its objectives, given the real political risks involved? Much of the problem may have been that of arrogance. There's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that the Clinton administration falsely assumed the threat of bombing would lead to a last-minute capitulation by Milosevic, but, having made the threat, felt obligated to follow through.
Even after the bombing began and Finnish and Russian mediators began working on a ceasefire agreement, greater U.S. flexibility regarding Serbian concerns could have brought the war to an end much sooner. What a number of NATO members suggested, but the Clinton administration refused to consider, was to agree that the postwar peacekeeping force in Kosovo be placed under the control of the UN or the OSCE. Instead, the United States insisted that peacekeeping should be a NATO operation.
This effectively would have forced the nationalistic Serbs into accepting demands that a part of their country effectively be placed under occupation by the same military alliance that attacked them. As a result, despite suffering ongoing death and destruction, the Serbs continued fighting. The Clinton administration, meanwhile, seemed more intent on dominating the postwar order politically and militarily than agreeing to a ceasefire which could have prevented further bloodshed and allowed refugees to return sooner.
Eventually, a compromise was reached whereby the peacekeeping troops sent into Kosovo following a Serb withdrawal would primarily consist of NATO forces, but under UN command.
Perhaps the greatest myth of the war was that the Serbs surrendered and NATO won. In reality, not only was there a compromise on the makeup of postwar peacekeeping forces, but the final peace agreement also omitted the most objectionable sections of the Rambouillet proposal and more closely resembled the counter-proposal put forward by the Serbian parliament prior to the bombing. In other words, rather than being a NATO victory as it has been repeatedly portrayed by Washington and much of the American media, it was at best a draw.
Ramifications of the War
The war had serious consequences besides death and destruction in Serbia and Kosovo. One of the original justifications was to prevent a broader war, yet it was the bombing campaign that destabilized the region to a greater degree than Milosevic's campaign of repression. It emboldened ethnic Albanian chauvinists, not just in Kosovo where they have come to dominate, but in the neighboring country of Macedonia and its restive ethnic Albanian minority, which has twice taken up arms in the past 10 years against the Slavic majority.
At the NATO summit in April 1999, the member states approved a structure for "non-Article 5 crisis response," essentially a euphemism for war (Article 5 of the NATO charter provides for collective self-defense; non-Article 5 refers to an offensive military action like Yugoslavia.). According to the document, such an action could take place anywhere on the broad periphery of NATO's realm, such as North Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, essentially paving the way for NATO's ongoing war in Afghanistan. This expanded role for NATO wasn't approved by any of the respective countries' legislatures, raising serious questions about democratic civilian control over military alliances.
Furthermore, the U.S.-led NATO war on Yugoslavia helped undermine the United Nations Charter and thereby paved the way for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant violation of the international legal order by a major power since World War II.
The occupation by NATO troops of Serbia's autonomous Kosovo region, and the subsequent recognition of Kosovar independence by the United States and a number of Western European powers, helped provide Russia with an excuse to maintain its large military presence in Georgia's autonomous South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, and to recognize their unilateral declarations of independence. This, in turn, led to last summer's war between Russia and Georgia.
Indeed, much of the tense relations between the United States and Russia over the past decade can be traced to the 1999 war on Yugoslavia. Russia was quite critical of Serbian actions in Kosovo and supported the non-military aspects of the Rambouillet proposals, yet was deeply disturbed by this first military action waged by NATO. Indeed, the war resulted in unprecedented Russian anger towards the United States, less out of some vague sense of pan-Slavic solidarity, but more because it was seen as an act of aggression against a sovereign nation.
The Russians had assumed NATO would dissolve at the end of the Cold War. Instead, not only has NATO expanded, it went to war over an internal dispute in a Slavic Eastern European country. This stoked the paranoid fear of many Russian nationalists that NATO may find an excuse to intervene in Russia itself. While in reality this is extremely unlikely, the history of invasions from the West no doubt strengthened the hold of Vladimir Putin and other semi-autocratic nationalists, setting back reform efforts, political liberalization, and disarmament.
The war also had political repercussions here in the United States. On Capitol Hill, it created what became known as an "aviary conundrum," where traditional hawks became doves and doves became hawks. It provided a precedent of Democratic lawmakers supporting an illegal war and allowing for extraordinary executive power to wage war, with which the Bush administration was able to fully take advantage in leading the country into its debacle in Iraq.
The presence of large-scale human rights abuses, as was occurring in Kosovo under Serb rule, shouldn't force concerned citizens in the United States and other countries into the false choice of supporting war and doing nothing. This tragic conflict should further prove that, moral and legal arguments aside, military force is a very blunt and not very effective instrument to promote human rights, and that bloated military budgets and archaic military alliances aren't the way to bring peace and security.
As long as such "conflict resolution" efforts are placed exclusively in the hands of governments, there will be a propensity towards war. Only when global civil society seizes the initiative and recognizes the power of strategic nonviolent action, and the necessity of preventative diplomacy, can there be hope that such conflicts can be resolved peacefully.
Professor of Politics and Chair of Mid-Eastern Studies program at the University of San Francisco
Posted: June 5, 2009 11:05 AM
It has been 10 years since the U.S.-led war on Yugoslavia. For many leading Democrats, including some in top positions in the Obama administration, it was a "good" war, in contrast to the Bush administration's "bad" war on Iraq.
And though the suffering and instability unleashed by the 1999 NATO military campaign wasn't as horrific as the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years later, the war was nevertheless unnecessary and illegal, and its political consequences are far from settled. Unless there's a willingness to critically re-examine the war, the threat of another war in the name of liberal internationalism looms large.
Crisis Could Have Been Prevented
Throughout most of the 1990s, the oppressed ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo waged their struggle almost exclusively nonviolently, using strikes, boycotts, peaceful demonstrations, and alternative institutions. The Kosovar Albanians even set up a democratically elected parallel government to provide schooling and social services, and to press their cause to the outside world.
Indeed, it was one of the most widespread, comprehensive, and sustained nonviolent campaigns since Gandhi's struggle for Indian independence. This was the time for Western powers to have engaged in preventative diplomacy. However, the world chose to ignore the Kosovars' nonviolent movement and resisted consistent pleas by the moderate Kosovar Albanian leadership to take action. It was only after a shadowy armed group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged in 1998 that the international media, the Clinton administration and other Western governments finally took notice.
By waiting for the emergence of guerrilla warfare before seeking a solution, the West gave Serbia's autocratic president Slobodan Milosevic the opportunity to crack down with an even greater level of savagery than before. The delay allowed the Kosovar movement to be taken over by armed ultra‑nationalists, who have since proven to be far less willing to compromise or guarantee the rights of the Serbian minority.
Indeed, the KLA murdered Serb officials and ethnic Albanian moderates, destroyed Serbian villages, and attacked other minority communities, while some among its leadership called for ethnic cleansing in the other direction to create a pure Albanian state. Despite such practices, as well as ties to the international heroin trade, it was KLA's leadership which came to dominate the subsequent autonomous and now independent Republic of Kosovo.
It's a tragedy that the West squandered a full eight years when preventative diplomacy could have worked. The United States rejected calls for expanding missions set up by the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo, or to bring Kosovo constituencies together for negotiations. Waiting for a full-scale armed insurrection to break out before acting has also given oppressed people around the world a very bad message: Nonviolent methods will fail and, in order to get the West to pay attention to your plight, you need to take up arms.
When Western powers finally began to take decisive action on the long-simmering crisis in the fall of 1998, a ceasefire was arranged where the OSCE sent in unarmed monitors. While the ceasefire didn't hold, violence did decrease dramatically in areas where they were stationed. Indeed, the OSCE monitors could have done a lot more, but they were given little support. They were largely untrained, they were too few in number and NATO refused to supply them with helicopters, night-vision binoculars or other basic equipment that could have made them more effective.
Ceasefire violations by the Yugoslav army, Serbian militias, and KLA guerrillas increased in the early months of 1999, including a number of atrocities against ethnic Albanians by Serbian units, with apparent acquiescence of government forces. Western diplomatic efforts accelerated, producing the proposal put forward at the Chateau Rambouillet in France, which called for the withdrawal of Serbian forces and the restoration of Kosovo's autonomous status within a greater Serbia.
Such a political settlement was quite reasonable, and the Serbs appeared willing to seriously consider such an agreement. But it was sabotaged by NATO's insistence that they be allowed to send in a large armed occupation force into Kosovo, along with rights to move freely without permission throughout the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and other measures that infringed upon the country's sovereignty.
Another problem was that it was presented essentially as a final document, without much room for negotiations. One of the fundamental principles of international conflict resolution is that all interested parties are part of the peace process. Some outside pressure may be necessary -- particularly against the stronger party -- to secure an agreement, but it can't be presented as a fait accompli. This "sign this or we'll bomb you" attitude also doomed the diplomatic initiative to failure. Few national leaders, particularly a nationalist demagogue like Milosevic, would sign an agreement under such terms, which amount to a treaty of surrender: Allowing foreign forces free reign of your territory and issuing such a proposal as an ultimatum.
Smarter and earlier diplomacy could have prevented the war.
The Bombing Campaign
Many liberals who had opposed U.S. military intervention elsewhere recognized the severity of the ongoing oppression of the Kosovar Albanians and the need to challenge Serbian ethno-fascism, and therefore initially supported the war. Had such military intervention led to an immediate withdrawal of Yugoslav forces and Serbian militias, one could perhaps make a case that, despite the war's illegality, there was a moral imperative for military action in order to prevent far greater violence. But, as many experts of the region predicted, this wasn't the case.
The bombing campaign, which began March 24, 1999, clearly made things worse for the Kosovar Albanians. Not only were scores of ethnic Albanians accidentally killed by NATO bombing raids, but the Serbs -- unable to respond to NATO air attacks -- turned their wrath against the most vulnerable segments of the population: the very Kosovar Albanians NATO claimed it would be defending.
While the Serbs may have indeed been planning some sort of large-scale forced removal of the population in areas of KLA infiltration, both the scale and savagery of the Serbian repression that resulted was undoubtedly a direct consequence of NATO actions. Subsequent U.S. claims that the bombing was in response to ethnic cleansing turns the reality on its head.
By forcing the evacuation of the OSCE monitors, which -- despite their limitations -- were playing something of a deterrent role against the worst Serbian atrocities, NATO gave the Serbs the opportunity to increase their repression. By bombing Yugoslavia, they gave the Serbs nothing to lose. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were forced from their homes into makeshift refugee camps in neighboring Macedonia.
As the bombing continued, the numbers of Serbian troops in Kosovo increased and the repression of Kosovar Albanians dramatically escalated. Those doing the killing in Kosovo were primarily small paramilitary groups, death squads, and police units that couldn't have effectively been challenged by high-altitude bombing, and weren't affected by the destruction of bridges or factories hundreds of miles to the north. If protecting the lives of Kosovar Albanians was really the motivation for the U.S.-led war, President Bill Clinton would have sent in Marine and Special Forces units to battle the Serbian militias directly instead of relying exclusively on air power.
The war against Yugoslavia was illegal. Any such use of force is a violation of the UN Charter unless in self-defense against an armed attack or authorized by the United Nations as an act of collective security. Kosovo was internationally recognized as part of Serbia; it was, legally speaking, an internal conflict. In addition, the democratically elected president of the self-proclaimed, if unrecognized, Kosovar Albanian Republic, Ibrahim Rugova, didn't request such intervention. Indeed, he opposed it.
The war was also illegal under U.S. law. The Constitution places war-making authority under the responsibility of Congress. While it's widely recognized that the president, as commander-in-chief, has latitude in short-term emergencies, the 1973 War Powers Act prevents the executive branch from waging war without the express consent of Congress beyond a 60-day period.
Only rarely has Congress formally declared war, but it has passed resolutions supporting the use of force, as with the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution concerning Vietnam, the January 1991 approval of the use of force to remove Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait, and the October 2002 authorization for the invasion of Iraq. Clinton, however, received no such congressional approval. That he got away with such a blatant abuse of executive authority marked a dangerous precedent in war-making authority in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The 11-week bombing campaign resulted in the widespread destruction of Yugoslavia's civilian infrastructure, the killing of many hundreds of civilians, and -- as a result of bombing chemical factories, the use of depleted uranium ammunition and more -- caused serious environmental damage. Almost as many Yugoslav civilians died from NATO bombing than did Kosovar Albanian civilians from Serb forces prior to the onset of the bombing. A number of human rights groups that condemned Serbian actions in Kosovo also criticized NATO attacks that, in addition to the more immediate civilian casualties, endangered the health and safety of millions of people by disrupting water supplies, sewage treatment, and medical services.
U.S. Motivations
There are serious questions regarding what actually prompted the United States and NATO to make war on Yugoslavia. While the Serbian nationalism espoused by Milosevic had fascistic elements, and his government and allied militias certainly engaged in serious war crimes throughout the Balkans that decade, comparisons to Hitler were hyperbolic, certainly in terms of the ability to threaten any nation beyond the borders of the old Yugoslavia.
As today, there was civil strife in a number of African countries during this period, resulting in far more deaths and refugees than Serbia's repression in Kosovo. As a result, some have questioned U.S. double standards towards intervention such as why the United States didn't intervene in far more serious humanitarian crises, particularly in Rwanda in 1994, where there clearly was an actual genocide in progress.
But a more salient question is why the United States has never been held accountable for when it has intervened -- in support of the oppressors. In recent decades, the U.S. government provided military, economic, and diplomatic support of Indonesia's slaughter of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese, and of Guatemala's slaughter of many tens of thousands of its indigenous people.
While Clinton tried to justify the war by declaring that repression and ethnic cleansing must not be allowed to happen "on NATO's doorstep," he was not only quite willing to allow for comparable repression to take place within NATO itself, but actively supported it: During the 1990s, Turkey's denial of the Kurds' linguistic and cultural rights, rejection of their demands of autonomy, destruction of thousands of villages, killing of thousands of civilians and forced removal of hundreds of thousands bore striking resemblance to Serbia's repression in Kosovo. Yet the Clinton administration, with bipartisan congressional support, continued to arm the Turkish military and defended its repression.
Such questions necessarily raise uncharitable speculation about what might have actually motivated the United States to lead such a military action. For some advocates of U.S. military intervention, there was no doubt some genuine humanitarian concern, which -- unlike many other cases around the world -- support for those being oppressed didn't conflict with overriding U.S. strategic or economic prerogatives. There may have been other forces at work, however, which saw the use of force as advantageous for other reasons than a sincere, if misplaced, hope of assuaging a humanitarian crisis.
For example, the war created a raison d'être for the continued existence of NATO in a post-Cold War world, as it desperately tried to justify its continued existence and desire for expansion (This resulted in a kind of circular logic however: NATO was still needed to fight in wars like Yugoslavia, yet the war needed to be continued in order to preserve NATO's credibility.).
The war also benefited influential weapons manufacturers, leading to an increase in U.S. military spending by more than $13 billion, largely for weapons systems that most strategic analysts and even the Pentagon said weren't needed. This came on top of an increase in military spending passed before the onset of the war (By contrast, aid from the United States to help with the refugee crisis was very limited, and efforts by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees were severely hampered by lack of funds, in large part a result of the refusal by the United States to pay more than $1 billion in dues it then owed to the UN, equivalent to approximately one week of bombing.).
Whatever its actual motivations, why would the United States lead NATO into a long, drawn-out war with no guarantee of fulfilling its objectives, given the real political risks involved? Much of the problem may have been that of arrogance. There's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that the Clinton administration falsely assumed the threat of bombing would lead to a last-minute capitulation by Milosevic, but, having made the threat, felt obligated to follow through.
Even after the bombing began and Finnish and Russian mediators began working on a ceasefire agreement, greater U.S. flexibility regarding Serbian concerns could have brought the war to an end much sooner. What a number of NATO members suggested, but the Clinton administration refused to consider, was to agree that the postwar peacekeeping force in Kosovo be placed under the control of the UN or the OSCE. Instead, the United States insisted that peacekeeping should be a NATO operation.
This effectively would have forced the nationalistic Serbs into accepting demands that a part of their country effectively be placed under occupation by the same military alliance that attacked them. As a result, despite suffering ongoing death and destruction, the Serbs continued fighting. The Clinton administration, meanwhile, seemed more intent on dominating the postwar order politically and militarily than agreeing to a ceasefire which could have prevented further bloodshed and allowed refugees to return sooner.
Eventually, a compromise was reached whereby the peacekeeping troops sent into Kosovo following a Serb withdrawal would primarily consist of NATO forces, but under UN command.
Perhaps the greatest myth of the war was that the Serbs surrendered and NATO won. In reality, not only was there a compromise on the makeup of postwar peacekeeping forces, but the final peace agreement also omitted the most objectionable sections of the Rambouillet proposal and more closely resembled the counter-proposal put forward by the Serbian parliament prior to the bombing. In other words, rather than being a NATO victory as it has been repeatedly portrayed by Washington and much of the American media, it was at best a draw.
Ramifications of the War
The war had serious consequences besides death and destruction in Serbia and Kosovo. One of the original justifications was to prevent a broader war, yet it was the bombing campaign that destabilized the region to a greater degree than Milosevic's campaign of repression. It emboldened ethnic Albanian chauvinists, not just in Kosovo where they have come to dominate, but in the neighboring country of Macedonia and its restive ethnic Albanian minority, which has twice taken up arms in the past 10 years against the Slavic majority.
At the NATO summit in April 1999, the member states approved a structure for "non-Article 5 crisis response," essentially a euphemism for war (Article 5 of the NATO charter provides for collective self-defense; non-Article 5 refers to an offensive military action like Yugoslavia.). According to the document, such an action could take place anywhere on the broad periphery of NATO's realm, such as North Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, essentially paving the way for NATO's ongoing war in Afghanistan. This expanded role for NATO wasn't approved by any of the respective countries' legislatures, raising serious questions about democratic civilian control over military alliances.
Furthermore, the U.S.-led NATO war on Yugoslavia helped undermine the United Nations Charter and thereby paved the way for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant violation of the international legal order by a major power since World War II.
The occupation by NATO troops of Serbia's autonomous Kosovo region, and the subsequent recognition of Kosovar independence by the United States and a number of Western European powers, helped provide Russia with an excuse to maintain its large military presence in Georgia's autonomous South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, and to recognize their unilateral declarations of independence. This, in turn, led to last summer's war between Russia and Georgia.
Indeed, much of the tense relations between the United States and Russia over the past decade can be traced to the 1999 war on Yugoslavia. Russia was quite critical of Serbian actions in Kosovo and supported the non-military aspects of the Rambouillet proposals, yet was deeply disturbed by this first military action waged by NATO. Indeed, the war resulted in unprecedented Russian anger towards the United States, less out of some vague sense of pan-Slavic solidarity, but more because it was seen as an act of aggression against a sovereign nation.
The Russians had assumed NATO would dissolve at the end of the Cold War. Instead, not only has NATO expanded, it went to war over an internal dispute in a Slavic Eastern European country. This stoked the paranoid fear of many Russian nationalists that NATO may find an excuse to intervene in Russia itself. While in reality this is extremely unlikely, the history of invasions from the West no doubt strengthened the hold of Vladimir Putin and other semi-autocratic nationalists, setting back reform efforts, political liberalization, and disarmament.
The war also had political repercussions here in the United States. On Capitol Hill, it created what became known as an "aviary conundrum," where traditional hawks became doves and doves became hawks. It provided a precedent of Democratic lawmakers supporting an illegal war and allowing for extraordinary executive power to wage war, with which the Bush administration was able to fully take advantage in leading the country into its debacle in Iraq.
The presence of large-scale human rights abuses, as was occurring in Kosovo under Serb rule, shouldn't force concerned citizens in the United States and other countries into the false choice of supporting war and doing nothing. This tragic conflict should further prove that, moral and legal arguments aside, military force is a very blunt and not very effective instrument to promote human rights, and that bloated military budgets and archaic military alliances aren't the way to bring peace and security.
As long as such "conflict resolution" efforts are placed exclusively in the hands of governments, there will be a propensity towards war. Only when global civil society seizes the initiative and recognizes the power of strategic nonviolent action, and the necessity of preventative diplomacy, can there be hope that such conflicts can be resolved peacefully.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Alive in the World: Conversation with Audrey Lin
Alive in the World
Conversation with Audrey Lin
April 2009, Oakland, California
I first met Audrey Lin at the Mehta home in Santa Clara where each Wednesday evening the Mehtas host a meditation followed by a circle of sharing and then a vegetarian dinner eaten in silence. No two Wednesdays are the same since the mix of guests is always changing along with the thoughts and stories that come to life there.
Whenever I attend one of these evenings, I help with the car-pooling. There are always five or six people, often students at UC like Audrey, who need rides. I'd gotten to know her from conversations among us all on the drives down and back from Santa Clara. And it wasn't long before I noticed that Lin exhibited a particular something my old college philosophy professor called "the disease"-really more of a dis-ease. Perhaps it's not always apparent who is afflicted in this special way, that is, having the persistent need to find out what is Real. It can be described with other words, but I think the effect is the same. For the individual in the grip of this need, following the certified pathways in life will never be enough. One will have to find the answers for oneself.
And so it was not entirely surprising when one day I got an email from Lin, sent to a group of us, announcing her intention to walk to Santa Clara for the next meeting at the Mehta's home. It wasn't entirely a surprise, but I admit to feeling a little alarmed. Was this really a good idea? My first reaction was followed by a feeling of guilt as I realized I wasn't about to join her.
In fact, Lin's invitation-given on short notice-netted no walking companions, and so she walked the fifty-some miles alone. Her walk created something of a stir among us. The buzz came and then faded as the weeks went by, but Audrey's act-not such a big thing compared with famous adventures we've read about-stayed with me. There is something compelling about any act of genuine courage, perhaps especially on behalf of the voice of conscience. No such act is really a small act. Quite the contrary. It's impossible to measure such things, but they exist in a special category. They are what Gandhi was talking about when he said, "Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it." And thinking about it all one day, it occurred to me to ask Lin to talk about her walk.
Richard Whittaker: I think it's courageous that you took this walk. Tell me what happened that made you decide to do it. Is it clear to you?
Audrey Lin: I was just talking about this at the Metta Center at our "hope tank." We call it a "hope tank" instead of a "think tank." Nipun [Mehta] came and we all went around in a circle and told our favorite non-violent moment. I couldn't think of anything and Nipun said, "Can I request that you tell us why you walked to Santa Clara?" [laughs]
It was a mix of a lot of things. To give you some context, I think it was the second Wednesday I'd gone to the meditation at the Mehta's home. Guri mentioned the book Planet Walker about John Francis who in the '70s, after an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay, decided to take direct action. He stopped driving and started walking everywhere, and he walked for 22 years. He walked up the coast to Oregon where he got his undergraduate degree. He walked up through Washington and started walking East. He stopped and got his masters and then his PhD in Madison, Wisconsin. Then he walked to the east coast, hopped a sailboat and went to South America, which he walked from tip to tip.
I was so intrigued by that. His story just is at odds with our whole sense of time and accomplishment.
RW: Right. He just started taking action in his own way.
AL: Yes. And I also thought it was really ironic that we drive two hours to meditate for one hour. What do we gain, and at what cost? One of those times I was just riding along in the car and thinking, and I said, "You know, one of these days, we should just walk down or bike down." People just laughed, but it stuck with me.
Another thing is I just spent a summer studying inspiring, great, incredible people and how they brought about change and transformed society and people and hearts. So being immersed in that kind of consciousness, on the one hand, and then living my life not completely on the same page with those ideals-still driving, still consuming, still feeding into our destructive habits-there's this cognitive dissonance. It just weighed my shoulders down.
Each semester, I've started out with the question, do I really want to be here? Because I believe in experiential education, and not just sitting in the classroom and being talked at and writing papers. I believe in the intrinsic value of things rather than doing things for a grade, or for some material gain.
RW: Could you say a little bit more about your interest in experiential learning?
AL: I believe we learn more naturally, and retain more, when we learn through experience. I'm grateful for all the lectures I've sat through and the books I've read, but I don't remember a third of it. The things I do remember are the things where I'm doing something, where I'm relating to people, where I'm connecting with my environment, with someone else, with an idea. Those are the things that stick with me and fuel me.
RW: Yes. I wonder if there aren't a lot of people who feel that something is missing, this other part of learning that you're talking about, real experience. Of course, some people drop out of school for that reason. It's not necessarily the best thing to do.
But you were feeling a gap between the incredible things you've read about Gandhi and the Salt March and, my God, huge things! And then driving down 880 back and forth to an evening of meditation. So tell me more about that decision. How did that happen?
AL: It actually happened in mid-August when our mentorship program was ending. It was Chris's birthday. We all went to downtown Berkeley to write in chalk on the street-all positive messages. And all of a sudden these random people everywhere started asking us, what's happening? What are you doing? We said you want to join us and draw something nice?
People would write things like "Non-violence is love in action" or "Hope. There's nothing stopping us!"-and we'd draw pictures, too. All these kids were coming up to us. "We want to draw!" This was by the BART station and people were coming home from work. We wrote, "Welcome home!" So people were curious and they wanted to draw things, too.
It was incredible how it broke down all these barriers between strangers. So there was this guy, Ken. You know the Street Spirit newspaper? [yes] He was trying to sell those. "Want to buy a paper? One dollar." I was watching all these people pass by him. It's not unusual. There are so many homeless people.
So I went up to him and asked if I could buy him dinner. But when I went to my bag, "Oh, no!" I didn't have my wallet, and I felt so bad. But I had some chocolate banana muffins that I'd baked for Chris's birthday for all of us to have afterwards. So I said, "Can I give you a muffin?" He said, "Sure. I'll take anything."
What struck me about this guy was that he didn't have any sense of entitlement. He didn't have any anger. For someone on the street, that's a powerful script to have. And I ended up talking with him.
He told me a story about how one morning (this was when he had an apartment) how he woke up and really wanted to do drugs. But, no. He said, I'm going to ask God. So he closed his eyes and asked, "What should I do?" When he opened his eyes he had this urge to do the dishes. So he just went over and started washing them. He ended up cleaning the kitchen, and then the whole apartment. When he was done, there was a knock at his door. It was his sister who he hadn't seen in years and years! They spent the night together catching up. When she left, he thought, "Wow, those answers are out there! You just have to listen."
So after my mentorship program ended, I had a week before classes started again. And suddenly I was at a loss for what to do. I was totally not feeling like going back to school. There was no place I needed to be. I was just in a place of reflection or searching for that truth, and wondering. See, I really want to see people living much more compassionately. I want to see a lot of change happening and I want to help bring about that change if that's something you can even do.
So I went for a run and I thought about Ken. I thought, "Okay, I'm just going to ask." And as I was running back down the hills, this thought popped into my head: walking to Santa Clara. It was just such a perfect click! And I was so happy! I would walk from Berkeley and see everything I was missing on the drive. This was on a Saturday, and I left on Monday.
RW: I got your email and I wondered if you were really going to do that. It was kind of shocking, the idea of actually walking from Berkeley to Santa Clara to attend a Wednesday evening meditation. Then, of course, I wondered if anyone else would join you. But no one did, right?
AL: No. Well, Pancho [Ramos-Stierle] called and said, "This is a great idea!" But when I told him I was leaving Monday, it turned out he already had other plans. And Nipun sent me an email. "Oh, this is a great idea!" He told me about Reverend Heng Sure's pilgrimage all the way up the coast doing prostrations all the way. He said, "Why don't you start your walk at the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery? You can meet Reverend Heng Sure." So I got there and Nipun was there. He said, "Are you really going to do this?" I told him I was. "Are you okay with that?" he asked.
"Yes, definitely."
"Are you sure?"
I could sense him feeling a little bit responsible for me.
RW: He was worried, I imagine.
AL: Yes. For this young, childish-looking, college student. She seems pretty innocent. Later, after the walk, Nipun said, "Actually we were trying to convince you not to go!" [laughs]. So we met with Rev. Heng Sure and he told me about Peace Pilgrim, this woman who walked across the U.S. multiple times. And he gifted me with his book of letters he wrote to his teacher on his own pilgrimage. Then I left.
RW: You left and walked...
AL: I walked up Channing, took a right on Shattuck and walked down into Oakland. Then, in downtown Oakland, I turned left and walked past Lake Merritt and down E. 14th, a nine-mile stretch.
RW: Which gets into kind of a rough part of town. Tell me about some of your experiences.
AL: I remember, as I got into Oakland, that I became very aware of my race and my clothes and my privilege. Taking ethnic studies classes, these sociological positions really were fresh in my mind. These are things I grapple with all the time-especially the privilege part. So as I walked, I was getting into more and more black neighborhoods and I wondered, what would this be like if I was a black person? How would people look at me? How would this be different if I was a white person? It must be kind of funny to see this Asian American woman who looks like she's fourteen with a big backpack walking through these areas.
What's interesting is that when I was walking through the Fruitvale area and further down East 14th Street, which is a pretty bad area, I noticed that people really didn't notice me. I wondered if this is what homeless people feel in a nice area.
RW: So how did you know that people didn't see you?
AL: There was no eye contact. People were just doing their own thing. One woman was walking with three kids and she looked at me and asked, "Are you okay? Are you lost?" I was like, "Yes, I'm fine." She asked, "Are you trying to get to BART? I can help you." She just looked at me like, why are you here?
I said, "No, I just want to walk. Thank you."
She's like, "Okay. Well, where are you going?"
I said, "I'm going to Santa Clara." [laughs]
She says, "You're walking to Santa Clara!? No, honey, you've got to take BART for that! Take this bus, and then hop on that bus, and then you got to get on BART." [laughs] And I said, "Okay. Thanks. But I'm just going to walk."
She just looked at me. "Well, alright."
I almost had a feeling of guilt for walking through there like how some research student might feel going into some community as an outsider and studying them. I was just walking and wanted to meet whoever I happened to meet up with. My aim wasn't to do research, but I felt like that outsider intruding.
Then as I kept walking, I noticed in one neighborhood I got this sense that there were drug deals going on all around me. I could just feel it. There were all these cars parked with doors half-open with these guys looking out kind of shifty-eyed with music coming out of the cars. They weren't making eye contact. I think I was just so much out of their context, that they just weren't seeing me.
RW: They're not looking for connection, but it was more than that?
AL: It's something you just feel in the air. Even with North Berkeley versus South Berkeley you get two different feelings. Walking through Oakland, when the sign came up "Welcome to San Leandro," I remember feeling the sense of relief and lightness. It was cleaner and there were sidewalks and grassy lawns. I thought, so this is why my parents wanted a stable secure life for me.
I wouldn't want to raise my kids out in East Oakland, either. It's pretty intense. I remember sitting at a bus stop and watching two kids, three or four years old. There was a young man, probably younger than me, watching them. I was sitting there, taking a break. I remember watching the young man. He was talking into his phone, and all of the sudden he got real angry and started swearing. Meanwhile, this little girl is cozying up to me. I was talking with her, "What's your name? Is that your brother?" Meanwhile he was wandering off. No one was watching him. He was climbing a chain link fence, really, really high. And this young man starts shouting into the phone and swearing. This little girl starts clinging tighter to me, and puts her hood up. She's scared.
I'm watching and "Oh, my gosh"-the state of life for these kids, being raised in this environment. I could see their need for some sort of validation and comfort and security, guidance, some sort of structure. Then the bus came. As the little boy was getting on the bus, I said, "You're a good climber." I wanted him to know that he'd been seen. And I wondered, where are these kids going to be in ten years?
So along the way, just watching, seeing little kids being neglected and watching adults in these states-I just don't know what to do sometimes. I want to connect with them and, really, [emotion comes up] I want to have some sense that it's going to be ok. That's it's not going to go who knows where...?
RW: One evening as we were driving back from the Wednesday night meditation I could hear that you really want to know what's real. And that has stayed in my mind about you, Audrey. You can follow a person like that for years. It's a life-long investigation. So how do you feel about me characterizing you this way?
AL: I think it's pretty accurate. I don't know when I became more into philosophy. I guess you could call it that. The love of knowledge, right? I remember in high school when I was a junior and senior, I'd always be asking that question: What is real? Is this real? It's interesting to revisit that-because my world has expanded so much from there. I've encountered so much this last year. But, at the heart of it, I'm still asking this same question.
RW: Yes. So you got into San Leandro. Are there other things you'd like to tell? You still had something like 25 or 30 miles to go.
AL: Two things stuck out for me. Right after the walk when people would be talking with me about it, it helped to show me where my own prejudices are. As I was walking, I'd notice what kind of people I was more receptive to. How do I see this person right in front of me?
In San Leandro there aren't as many benches as there are in Oakland, and I felt like sitting down. At the first bench there were a couple of kids, and I wanted to sit by myself. So I kept walking. I told myself, I'll sit at the next bench. When I got there, someone was sitting there, too. But I still wanted to sit by myself. Then I thought, "Do I really want to sit by myself? Or is it that I'm just not comfortable sitting next to a black man?"
So I decided to sit down next to him. I said, "Hi, How are you?" He said, "I'm good. How are you?" I think his name was Robert. I found out he was from Oakland and I asked, "Do you like San Leandro better than Oakland?" He said, "Yes, definitely!" He said it was so much better for his kids. He was telling me there are good and bad parts of Oakland and I asked which were the bad parts. "East 14th St." he said. "Oh, I was just there yesterday."
We had a great conversation. Then the bus came and he left.
RW: You challenged your own anxiety and it turned out being rewarding.
AL: Yes. There's a problem of projecting one's fears on people. People can sense fear or ill will. And we can also sense love. And we respond to what we sense.
RW: Yes. And some of us may be aware enough, at times, to know that I'm afraid and I'm projecting my fears on someone and still be in the grip of it. It's not like I'm asking you to solve my problem, but it is an issue.
AL: Yes. That's something I grapple with. But just name it in your head. "I'm afraid of this." In theory, I don't agree with this fear, but it's there nonetheless.
Then, for me, if I'm not living according to my values, if I'm not fully, to the best of my ability embracing something out of fear, then when I die-and we're all going to die-what's the point? What's the point of living if you're not really alive? What's the point of living half-heartedly? You have nothing to lose. That's how I look at it.
That's why I took this walk. I didn't really second-guess it that much. If I end up always asking, what if? What if? Then I won't have really lived. I want to be able to die and to say, I'm happy. I did what I could.
I still have fears. They pop up. And a lot of times, those fears aren't about anything real. It reminds me of my new year's resolution last year, not to be embarrassed about anything. Embarrassment comes from a rejection of oneself for some sort of social norm, right? None of that is rooted in anything real. Knowing yourself is something real.
When I first got to Berkeley, I'd never seen homeless people. I had lived in the suburbs. I was terrified, and it really bothered me. But after living in Berkeley for a few years, my feeling about homeless people began to change.
Here's a story. I met this guy named Eddie Zang. He came to speak in my Asian American Studies class. He had been in prison for twenty years for a robbery he committed when he was sixteen. His family moved here from China and they were really, really poor. He got into drugs and into a bad crowd. He was in San Quentin. He got his GED there. He started the first poetry slam in San Quentin. He started writing. He did lots of stuff.
He'd actually just gotten out of prison when he talked to our class. I ended up talking with him afterwards and we went out to lunch together. You've heard how in prison it's very segregated racially? So in class someone asked him, "How do you talk to black people? How do you talk to white people? How do you talk to latino people?" His answer was, "I just go up to people and I say, Hi. My name's Eddie. What's your name?" [laughs]
It's so simple!
RW: Great story. Now I know on the walk you stayed the night with a friend. What other moments stand out that you haven't talked about?
AL: There are so many. And I'm still thinking about it all. But I do want to talk about Deepak. The first night, I'm in San Leandro and I'm thinking "maybe I could sleep here. Or maybe there." I had my sleeping bag. It was getting dark. I didn't want to sleep on someone's lawn. There were no trespassing signs. I didn't want to break the law. And so I just sat down. I thought, well, maybe I'll just eat a snack and turn on my cell phone to see if anything comes up. I had all these messages! And about a minute after I turned it on, Deepak called. Hello Audrey! Where are you? I'll come and pick you up.
I debated, but decided maybe it was ok to take this. He came and picked me up and he had all these ideas. You stay at my house tomorrow and I'll take you to Freemont and you can walk from there. "No. You're taking me back here tomorrow and I'm going to keep walking!" He took me out and got me ice cream. It was interesting to suddenly be on track with someone, because I'd just been on my own.
RW: You insisted that he drove you back to the same spot?
AL: Yes. So we went to his home. His wife, Mandi, had to work the night shift at the hospital, but she told Deepak, you call her every hour until she picks up the phone! Their generosity was another thing in itself.
RW: The next day you continued, and how did that go?
AL: I walked through the rest of San Leandro and Hayward and down into Fremont where Deepak and Mandi live. I stayed there again. The next morning I got up really early because I knew I had a long ways to go. But Deepak got up and fixed me breakfast: No, no! You have to eat this. And he packed all this food for me. So much kindness! At the same time, to what extent do I accept all this and to what extent is it too much?
But they told me life is a marathon, not a sprint. You don't have to do everything the first time around! I said, "Okay" [singsong voice] And I thought, "It doesn't matter. I'm going to walk." [laughs] But it was nice to hear those words and they've stuck with me.
It was really awesome because later that day I was walking along the Great American Parkway. You know, before Chromite? It was about 7:15. And I saw Deepak walking towards me and we walked the last few blocks.
RW: Not only did you have all those experiences out in the world, but you had these experiences with your friends and their caring. Is there anything you'd like to add?
AL: There are so many stories, but now sometimes it seems like a dream. It's like doing a Vipassana retreat. It's a complete experience. This walk was only three days, but I experienced things first hand.
A couple of times people offered me rides and I really got scared. This guy pulled over. "Where are you going? Can I give you a ride?"
"No, I'm going to walk."
"Come on. I'll give you a ride."
"NO!" -I don't know what hit me.
RW: You would have to admit, wouldn't you, that there are things to be afraid of?
AL: Yes. But I've heard so many stories of how dangers have been transformed. I know that's possible, too. That was the main time I got scared. I noticed how my body reacted. But you have to put yourself out there to get some street smarts. You can't live in a bubble all your life. And having encountered all these things on an experiential level, I take my experiences with me wherever I go.
I love this quote from Kurt Hahn who founded Outward Bound. He said, "There is more in us than we know. Perhaps if we can be made to see it, for the rest of our lives, we'll never settle for less."
Conversation with Audrey Lin
April 2009, Oakland, California
I first met Audrey Lin at the Mehta home in Santa Clara where each Wednesday evening the Mehtas host a meditation followed by a circle of sharing and then a vegetarian dinner eaten in silence. No two Wednesdays are the same since the mix of guests is always changing along with the thoughts and stories that come to life there.
Whenever I attend one of these evenings, I help with the car-pooling. There are always five or six people, often students at UC like Audrey, who need rides. I'd gotten to know her from conversations among us all on the drives down and back from Santa Clara. And it wasn't long before I noticed that Lin exhibited a particular something my old college philosophy professor called "the disease"-really more of a dis-ease. Perhaps it's not always apparent who is afflicted in this special way, that is, having the persistent need to find out what is Real. It can be described with other words, but I think the effect is the same. For the individual in the grip of this need, following the certified pathways in life will never be enough. One will have to find the answers for oneself.
And so it was not entirely surprising when one day I got an email from Lin, sent to a group of us, announcing her intention to walk to Santa Clara for the next meeting at the Mehta's home. It wasn't entirely a surprise, but I admit to feeling a little alarmed. Was this really a good idea? My first reaction was followed by a feeling of guilt as I realized I wasn't about to join her.
In fact, Lin's invitation-given on short notice-netted no walking companions, and so she walked the fifty-some miles alone. Her walk created something of a stir among us. The buzz came and then faded as the weeks went by, but Audrey's act-not such a big thing compared with famous adventures we've read about-stayed with me. There is something compelling about any act of genuine courage, perhaps especially on behalf of the voice of conscience. No such act is really a small act. Quite the contrary. It's impossible to measure such things, but they exist in a special category. They are what Gandhi was talking about when he said, "Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it." And thinking about it all one day, it occurred to me to ask Lin to talk about her walk.
Richard Whittaker: I think it's courageous that you took this walk. Tell me what happened that made you decide to do it. Is it clear to you?
Audrey Lin: I was just talking about this at the Metta Center at our "hope tank." We call it a "hope tank" instead of a "think tank." Nipun [Mehta] came and we all went around in a circle and told our favorite non-violent moment. I couldn't think of anything and Nipun said, "Can I request that you tell us why you walked to Santa Clara?" [laughs]
It was a mix of a lot of things. To give you some context, I think it was the second Wednesday I'd gone to the meditation at the Mehta's home. Guri mentioned the book Planet Walker about John Francis who in the '70s, after an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay, decided to take direct action. He stopped driving and started walking everywhere, and he walked for 22 years. He walked up the coast to Oregon where he got his undergraduate degree. He walked up through Washington and started walking East. He stopped and got his masters and then his PhD in Madison, Wisconsin. Then he walked to the east coast, hopped a sailboat and went to South America, which he walked from tip to tip.
I was so intrigued by that. His story just is at odds with our whole sense of time and accomplishment.
RW: Right. He just started taking action in his own way.
AL: Yes. And I also thought it was really ironic that we drive two hours to meditate for one hour. What do we gain, and at what cost? One of those times I was just riding along in the car and thinking, and I said, "You know, one of these days, we should just walk down or bike down." People just laughed, but it stuck with me.
Another thing is I just spent a summer studying inspiring, great, incredible people and how they brought about change and transformed society and people and hearts. So being immersed in that kind of consciousness, on the one hand, and then living my life not completely on the same page with those ideals-still driving, still consuming, still feeding into our destructive habits-there's this cognitive dissonance. It just weighed my shoulders down.
Each semester, I've started out with the question, do I really want to be here? Because I believe in experiential education, and not just sitting in the classroom and being talked at and writing papers. I believe in the intrinsic value of things rather than doing things for a grade, or for some material gain.
RW: Could you say a little bit more about your interest in experiential learning?
AL: I believe we learn more naturally, and retain more, when we learn through experience. I'm grateful for all the lectures I've sat through and the books I've read, but I don't remember a third of it. The things I do remember are the things where I'm doing something, where I'm relating to people, where I'm connecting with my environment, with someone else, with an idea. Those are the things that stick with me and fuel me.
RW: Yes. I wonder if there aren't a lot of people who feel that something is missing, this other part of learning that you're talking about, real experience. Of course, some people drop out of school for that reason. It's not necessarily the best thing to do.
But you were feeling a gap between the incredible things you've read about Gandhi and the Salt March and, my God, huge things! And then driving down 880 back and forth to an evening of meditation. So tell me more about that decision. How did that happen?
AL: It actually happened in mid-August when our mentorship program was ending. It was Chris's birthday. We all went to downtown Berkeley to write in chalk on the street-all positive messages. And all of a sudden these random people everywhere started asking us, what's happening? What are you doing? We said you want to join us and draw something nice?
People would write things like "Non-violence is love in action" or "Hope. There's nothing stopping us!"-and we'd draw pictures, too. All these kids were coming up to us. "We want to draw!" This was by the BART station and people were coming home from work. We wrote, "Welcome home!" So people were curious and they wanted to draw things, too.
It was incredible how it broke down all these barriers between strangers. So there was this guy, Ken. You know the Street Spirit newspaper? [yes] He was trying to sell those. "Want to buy a paper? One dollar." I was watching all these people pass by him. It's not unusual. There are so many homeless people.
So I went up to him and asked if I could buy him dinner. But when I went to my bag, "Oh, no!" I didn't have my wallet, and I felt so bad. But I had some chocolate banana muffins that I'd baked for Chris's birthday for all of us to have afterwards. So I said, "Can I give you a muffin?" He said, "Sure. I'll take anything."
What struck me about this guy was that he didn't have any sense of entitlement. He didn't have any anger. For someone on the street, that's a powerful script to have. And I ended up talking with him.
He told me a story about how one morning (this was when he had an apartment) how he woke up and really wanted to do drugs. But, no. He said, I'm going to ask God. So he closed his eyes and asked, "What should I do?" When he opened his eyes he had this urge to do the dishes. So he just went over and started washing them. He ended up cleaning the kitchen, and then the whole apartment. When he was done, there was a knock at his door. It was his sister who he hadn't seen in years and years! They spent the night together catching up. When she left, he thought, "Wow, those answers are out there! You just have to listen."
So after my mentorship program ended, I had a week before classes started again. And suddenly I was at a loss for what to do. I was totally not feeling like going back to school. There was no place I needed to be. I was just in a place of reflection or searching for that truth, and wondering. See, I really want to see people living much more compassionately. I want to see a lot of change happening and I want to help bring about that change if that's something you can even do.
So I went for a run and I thought about Ken. I thought, "Okay, I'm just going to ask." And as I was running back down the hills, this thought popped into my head: walking to Santa Clara. It was just such a perfect click! And I was so happy! I would walk from Berkeley and see everything I was missing on the drive. This was on a Saturday, and I left on Monday.
RW: I got your email and I wondered if you were really going to do that. It was kind of shocking, the idea of actually walking from Berkeley to Santa Clara to attend a Wednesday evening meditation. Then, of course, I wondered if anyone else would join you. But no one did, right?
AL: No. Well, Pancho [Ramos-Stierle] called and said, "This is a great idea!" But when I told him I was leaving Monday, it turned out he already had other plans. And Nipun sent me an email. "Oh, this is a great idea!" He told me about Reverend Heng Sure's pilgrimage all the way up the coast doing prostrations all the way. He said, "Why don't you start your walk at the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery? You can meet Reverend Heng Sure." So I got there and Nipun was there. He said, "Are you really going to do this?" I told him I was. "Are you okay with that?" he asked.
"Yes, definitely."
"Are you sure?"
I could sense him feeling a little bit responsible for me.
RW: He was worried, I imagine.
AL: Yes. For this young, childish-looking, college student. She seems pretty innocent. Later, after the walk, Nipun said, "Actually we were trying to convince you not to go!" [laughs]. So we met with Rev. Heng Sure and he told me about Peace Pilgrim, this woman who walked across the U.S. multiple times. And he gifted me with his book of letters he wrote to his teacher on his own pilgrimage. Then I left.
RW: You left and walked...
AL: I walked up Channing, took a right on Shattuck and walked down into Oakland. Then, in downtown Oakland, I turned left and walked past Lake Merritt and down E. 14th, a nine-mile stretch.
RW: Which gets into kind of a rough part of town. Tell me about some of your experiences.
AL: I remember, as I got into Oakland, that I became very aware of my race and my clothes and my privilege. Taking ethnic studies classes, these sociological positions really were fresh in my mind. These are things I grapple with all the time-especially the privilege part. So as I walked, I was getting into more and more black neighborhoods and I wondered, what would this be like if I was a black person? How would people look at me? How would this be different if I was a white person? It must be kind of funny to see this Asian American woman who looks like she's fourteen with a big backpack walking through these areas.
What's interesting is that when I was walking through the Fruitvale area and further down East 14th Street, which is a pretty bad area, I noticed that people really didn't notice me. I wondered if this is what homeless people feel in a nice area.
RW: So how did you know that people didn't see you?
AL: There was no eye contact. People were just doing their own thing. One woman was walking with three kids and she looked at me and asked, "Are you okay? Are you lost?" I was like, "Yes, I'm fine." She asked, "Are you trying to get to BART? I can help you." She just looked at me like, why are you here?
I said, "No, I just want to walk. Thank you."
She's like, "Okay. Well, where are you going?"
I said, "I'm going to Santa Clara." [laughs]
She says, "You're walking to Santa Clara!? No, honey, you've got to take BART for that! Take this bus, and then hop on that bus, and then you got to get on BART." [laughs] And I said, "Okay. Thanks. But I'm just going to walk."
She just looked at me. "Well, alright."
I almost had a feeling of guilt for walking through there like how some research student might feel going into some community as an outsider and studying them. I was just walking and wanted to meet whoever I happened to meet up with. My aim wasn't to do research, but I felt like that outsider intruding.
Then as I kept walking, I noticed in one neighborhood I got this sense that there were drug deals going on all around me. I could just feel it. There were all these cars parked with doors half-open with these guys looking out kind of shifty-eyed with music coming out of the cars. They weren't making eye contact. I think I was just so much out of their context, that they just weren't seeing me.
RW: They're not looking for connection, but it was more than that?
AL: It's something you just feel in the air. Even with North Berkeley versus South Berkeley you get two different feelings. Walking through Oakland, when the sign came up "Welcome to San Leandro," I remember feeling the sense of relief and lightness. It was cleaner and there were sidewalks and grassy lawns. I thought, so this is why my parents wanted a stable secure life for me.
I wouldn't want to raise my kids out in East Oakland, either. It's pretty intense. I remember sitting at a bus stop and watching two kids, three or four years old. There was a young man, probably younger than me, watching them. I was sitting there, taking a break. I remember watching the young man. He was talking into his phone, and all of the sudden he got real angry and started swearing. Meanwhile, this little girl is cozying up to me. I was talking with her, "What's your name? Is that your brother?" Meanwhile he was wandering off. No one was watching him. He was climbing a chain link fence, really, really high. And this young man starts shouting into the phone and swearing. This little girl starts clinging tighter to me, and puts her hood up. She's scared.
I'm watching and "Oh, my gosh"-the state of life for these kids, being raised in this environment. I could see their need for some sort of validation and comfort and security, guidance, some sort of structure. Then the bus came. As the little boy was getting on the bus, I said, "You're a good climber." I wanted him to know that he'd been seen. And I wondered, where are these kids going to be in ten years?
So along the way, just watching, seeing little kids being neglected and watching adults in these states-I just don't know what to do sometimes. I want to connect with them and, really, [emotion comes up] I want to have some sense that it's going to be ok. That's it's not going to go who knows where...?
RW: One evening as we were driving back from the Wednesday night meditation I could hear that you really want to know what's real. And that has stayed in my mind about you, Audrey. You can follow a person like that for years. It's a life-long investigation. So how do you feel about me characterizing you this way?
AL: I think it's pretty accurate. I don't know when I became more into philosophy. I guess you could call it that. The love of knowledge, right? I remember in high school when I was a junior and senior, I'd always be asking that question: What is real? Is this real? It's interesting to revisit that-because my world has expanded so much from there. I've encountered so much this last year. But, at the heart of it, I'm still asking this same question.
RW: Yes. So you got into San Leandro. Are there other things you'd like to tell? You still had something like 25 or 30 miles to go.
AL: Two things stuck out for me. Right after the walk when people would be talking with me about it, it helped to show me where my own prejudices are. As I was walking, I'd notice what kind of people I was more receptive to. How do I see this person right in front of me?
In San Leandro there aren't as many benches as there are in Oakland, and I felt like sitting down. At the first bench there were a couple of kids, and I wanted to sit by myself. So I kept walking. I told myself, I'll sit at the next bench. When I got there, someone was sitting there, too. But I still wanted to sit by myself. Then I thought, "Do I really want to sit by myself? Or is it that I'm just not comfortable sitting next to a black man?"
So I decided to sit down next to him. I said, "Hi, How are you?" He said, "I'm good. How are you?" I think his name was Robert. I found out he was from Oakland and I asked, "Do you like San Leandro better than Oakland?" He said, "Yes, definitely!" He said it was so much better for his kids. He was telling me there are good and bad parts of Oakland and I asked which were the bad parts. "East 14th St." he said. "Oh, I was just there yesterday."
We had a great conversation. Then the bus came and he left.
RW: You challenged your own anxiety and it turned out being rewarding.
AL: Yes. There's a problem of projecting one's fears on people. People can sense fear or ill will. And we can also sense love. And we respond to what we sense.
RW: Yes. And some of us may be aware enough, at times, to know that I'm afraid and I'm projecting my fears on someone and still be in the grip of it. It's not like I'm asking you to solve my problem, but it is an issue.
AL: Yes. That's something I grapple with. But just name it in your head. "I'm afraid of this." In theory, I don't agree with this fear, but it's there nonetheless.
Then, for me, if I'm not living according to my values, if I'm not fully, to the best of my ability embracing something out of fear, then when I die-and we're all going to die-what's the point? What's the point of living if you're not really alive? What's the point of living half-heartedly? You have nothing to lose. That's how I look at it.
That's why I took this walk. I didn't really second-guess it that much. If I end up always asking, what if? What if? Then I won't have really lived. I want to be able to die and to say, I'm happy. I did what I could.
I still have fears. They pop up. And a lot of times, those fears aren't about anything real. It reminds me of my new year's resolution last year, not to be embarrassed about anything. Embarrassment comes from a rejection of oneself for some sort of social norm, right? None of that is rooted in anything real. Knowing yourself is something real.
When I first got to Berkeley, I'd never seen homeless people. I had lived in the suburbs. I was terrified, and it really bothered me. But after living in Berkeley for a few years, my feeling about homeless people began to change.
Here's a story. I met this guy named Eddie Zang. He came to speak in my Asian American Studies class. He had been in prison for twenty years for a robbery he committed when he was sixteen. His family moved here from China and they were really, really poor. He got into drugs and into a bad crowd. He was in San Quentin. He got his GED there. He started the first poetry slam in San Quentin. He started writing. He did lots of stuff.
He'd actually just gotten out of prison when he talked to our class. I ended up talking with him afterwards and we went out to lunch together. You've heard how in prison it's very segregated racially? So in class someone asked him, "How do you talk to black people? How do you talk to white people? How do you talk to latino people?" His answer was, "I just go up to people and I say, Hi. My name's Eddie. What's your name?" [laughs]
It's so simple!
RW: Great story. Now I know on the walk you stayed the night with a friend. What other moments stand out that you haven't talked about?
AL: There are so many. And I'm still thinking about it all. But I do want to talk about Deepak. The first night, I'm in San Leandro and I'm thinking "maybe I could sleep here. Or maybe there." I had my sleeping bag. It was getting dark. I didn't want to sleep on someone's lawn. There were no trespassing signs. I didn't want to break the law. And so I just sat down. I thought, well, maybe I'll just eat a snack and turn on my cell phone to see if anything comes up. I had all these messages! And about a minute after I turned it on, Deepak called. Hello Audrey! Where are you? I'll come and pick you up.
I debated, but decided maybe it was ok to take this. He came and picked me up and he had all these ideas. You stay at my house tomorrow and I'll take you to Freemont and you can walk from there. "No. You're taking me back here tomorrow and I'm going to keep walking!" He took me out and got me ice cream. It was interesting to suddenly be on track with someone, because I'd just been on my own.
RW: You insisted that he drove you back to the same spot?
AL: Yes. So we went to his home. His wife, Mandi, had to work the night shift at the hospital, but she told Deepak, you call her every hour until she picks up the phone! Their generosity was another thing in itself.
RW: The next day you continued, and how did that go?
AL: I walked through the rest of San Leandro and Hayward and down into Fremont where Deepak and Mandi live. I stayed there again. The next morning I got up really early because I knew I had a long ways to go. But Deepak got up and fixed me breakfast: No, no! You have to eat this. And he packed all this food for me. So much kindness! At the same time, to what extent do I accept all this and to what extent is it too much?
But they told me life is a marathon, not a sprint. You don't have to do everything the first time around! I said, "Okay" [singsong voice] And I thought, "It doesn't matter. I'm going to walk." [laughs] But it was nice to hear those words and they've stuck with me.
It was really awesome because later that day I was walking along the Great American Parkway. You know, before Chromite? It was about 7:15. And I saw Deepak walking towards me and we walked the last few blocks.
RW: Not only did you have all those experiences out in the world, but you had these experiences with your friends and their caring. Is there anything you'd like to add?
AL: There are so many stories, but now sometimes it seems like a dream. It's like doing a Vipassana retreat. It's a complete experience. This walk was only three days, but I experienced things first hand.
A couple of times people offered me rides and I really got scared. This guy pulled over. "Where are you going? Can I give you a ride?"
"No, I'm going to walk."
"Come on. I'll give you a ride."
"NO!" -I don't know what hit me.
RW: You would have to admit, wouldn't you, that there are things to be afraid of?
AL: Yes. But I've heard so many stories of how dangers have been transformed. I know that's possible, too. That was the main time I got scared. I noticed how my body reacted. But you have to put yourself out there to get some street smarts. You can't live in a bubble all your life. And having encountered all these things on an experiential level, I take my experiences with me wherever I go.
I love this quote from Kurt Hahn who founded Outward Bound. He said, "There is more in us than we know. Perhaps if we can be made to see it, for the rest of our lives, we'll never settle for less."
I Am Dr. Tiller
New website expressing solidarity with Dr. George Tiller: http://iamdrtiller.com/
If you haven't heard the story, please visit http://www.democracynow.org and search through its recent coverage.
“Until one understands the heart of a woman, nothing else about abortion makes any sense at all.” -Dr. George Tiller
I was inspired when I heard that one of Dr. Tiller's colleagues had pledged publicly to continue providing late-term abortions. I have never been a pro-choice activist, but I am strongly considering becoming one in light of this horrible crime. While I object to calling the killer a "terrorist," I think that his goals were clear: He wanted to strike fear in the hearts of anyone who would dare perform an abortion in America by killing one of the country's most prominent abortionists. Fortunately I believe he and his cohorts will fail in this goal. This action has already sparked new debate over abortion, debate that is likely to continue until the anti-abortion-inspired violence is widely condemned.
As I listen to Dr. Warren Hern, director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic, call anti-abortion activists "terrorists" who would support or direct the killing of doctors like himself, I cringe because I know deep in my heart that upping the rhetoric on either side will not help this volatile situation. Why not refuse to acknowledge these violent elements (appealing to non-violent anti-abortion activists instead) and/or attempt reconciliation (where feasible)? To respond in fear or in hate/anger will not change the situation in favor of peace. I know the risk is great, but now is the time to stand up for the rights of women and abortion doctors and supporters. We must refuse to be intimidated or conquered by anger and dare to be compassionate for even the most violent of opponents. Let the dialogue begin.
If you haven't heard the story, please visit http://www.democracynow.org and search through its recent coverage.
“Until one understands the heart of a woman, nothing else about abortion makes any sense at all.” -Dr. George Tiller
I was inspired when I heard that one of Dr. Tiller's colleagues had pledged publicly to continue providing late-term abortions. I have never been a pro-choice activist, but I am strongly considering becoming one in light of this horrible crime. While I object to calling the killer a "terrorist," I think that his goals were clear: He wanted to strike fear in the hearts of anyone who would dare perform an abortion in America by killing one of the country's most prominent abortionists. Fortunately I believe he and his cohorts will fail in this goal. This action has already sparked new debate over abortion, debate that is likely to continue until the anti-abortion-inspired violence is widely condemned.
As I listen to Dr. Warren Hern, director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic, call anti-abortion activists "terrorists" who would support or direct the killing of doctors like himself, I cringe because I know deep in my heart that upping the rhetoric on either side will not help this volatile situation. Why not refuse to acknowledge these violent elements (appealing to non-violent anti-abortion activists instead) and/or attempt reconciliation (where feasible)? To respond in fear or in hate/anger will not change the situation in favor of peace. I know the risk is great, but now is the time to stand up for the rights of women and abortion doctors and supporters. We must refuse to be intimidated or conquered by anger and dare to be compassionate for even the most violent of opponents. Let the dialogue begin.
Monday, June 8, 2009
A Letter from Hamas to Obama
Monday, June 8, 2009
Obama administration envoy George Mitchell is traveling to the Mideast. Rep. Donna Edwards recently returned from Gaza.
As Obama was traveling to Cairo, the Palestinian group Hamas, which won the most recent Palestinian election, sent a letter to President Obama through the feminist peace group CODEPINK, which just had a delegation in Gaza. Here is the text of the letter:
His Excellency President Barack Obama,
President of the United States of America.
June 3rd 2009
Dear Mr. President,
We welcome your visit to the Arab world and your administration's initiative to bridge differences with the Arab-Muslim world.
One long-standing source of tension between the United States and this part of the world has been the failure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.
It is therefore unfortunate that you will not visit Gaza during your trip to the Middle East and that neither your Secretary of State nor George Mitchell have come to hear our point of view.
We have received numerous visits recently from people of widely varied backgrounds: U.S. Congressional representatives, European parliamentarians, the U.N.-appointed Goldstone commission, and grassroots delegations such as those organized by the U.S. peace group CODEPINK.
It is essential for you to visit Gaza. We have recently passed through a brutal 22-day Israeli attack. Amnesty International observed that the death and destruction Gaza suffered during the invasion could not have happened without U.S.-supplied weapons and U.S.-taxpayers' money.
Human Rights Watch has documented that the white phosphorus Israel dropped on a school, hospital, United Nations warehouse and civilian neighborhoods in Gaza was manufactured in the United States. Human Rights Watch concluded that Israel's use of this white phosphorus was a war crime.
Shouldn't you see first-hand how Israel used your arms and spent your money?
Before becoming president you were a distinguished professor of law. The U.S. government has also said that it wants to foster the rule of law in the Arab-Muslim world.
The International Court of Justice stated in July 2004 that the whole of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are occupied Palestinian territories designated for Palestinian self-determination, and that the Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal.
Not one of the 15 judges sitting on the highest judicial body in the world dissented from these principles.
The main human rights organizations in the world, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have issued position papers supporting the right of the Palestinian refugees to return and compensation.
Each year in the United Nations General Assembly nearly every country in the world has supported these principles for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. Every year the Arab League puts forth a peace proposal based on these principles for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Leading human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch have also stated that Israel's siege of Gaza is a form of collective punishment and therefore illegal under international law.
We in the Hamas Government are committed to pursuing a just resolution to the conflict not in contradiction with the international community and enlightened opinion as expressed in the International Court of Justice, the United Nations General Assembly, and leading human rights organizations. We are prepared to engage all parties on the basis of mutual respect and without preconditions.
However, our constituency needs to see a comprehensive paradigm shift that not only commences with lifting the siege on Gaza and halts all settlement building and expansion but develops into a policy of evenhandedness based on the very international law and norms we are prodded into adhering to.
Again, we welcome you to Gaza which would allow you to see firsthand our ground zero. Furthermore, it would enhance the US position; enabling you to speak with new credibility and authority in dealing with all the parties.
Very Truly Yours,
Dr. Ahmed Yousef
Deputy of the Foreign Affairs Ministry
Former Senior Political Advisor
to Prime Minister Ismael Hanniya
Obama administration envoy George Mitchell is traveling to the Mideast. Rep. Donna Edwards recently returned from Gaza.
As Obama was traveling to Cairo, the Palestinian group Hamas, which won the most recent Palestinian election, sent a letter to President Obama through the feminist peace group CODEPINK, which just had a delegation in Gaza. Here is the text of the letter:
His Excellency President Barack Obama,
President of the United States of America.
June 3rd 2009
Dear Mr. President,
We welcome your visit to the Arab world and your administration's initiative to bridge differences with the Arab-Muslim world.
One long-standing source of tension between the United States and this part of the world has been the failure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.
It is therefore unfortunate that you will not visit Gaza during your trip to the Middle East and that neither your Secretary of State nor George Mitchell have come to hear our point of view.
We have received numerous visits recently from people of widely varied backgrounds: U.S. Congressional representatives, European parliamentarians, the U.N.-appointed Goldstone commission, and grassroots delegations such as those organized by the U.S. peace group CODEPINK.
It is essential for you to visit Gaza. We have recently passed through a brutal 22-day Israeli attack. Amnesty International observed that the death and destruction Gaza suffered during the invasion could not have happened without U.S.-supplied weapons and U.S.-taxpayers' money.
Human Rights Watch has documented that the white phosphorus Israel dropped on a school, hospital, United Nations warehouse and civilian neighborhoods in Gaza was manufactured in the United States. Human Rights Watch concluded that Israel's use of this white phosphorus was a war crime.
Shouldn't you see first-hand how Israel used your arms and spent your money?
Before becoming president you were a distinguished professor of law. The U.S. government has also said that it wants to foster the rule of law in the Arab-Muslim world.
The International Court of Justice stated in July 2004 that the whole of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are occupied Palestinian territories designated for Palestinian self-determination, and that the Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal.
Not one of the 15 judges sitting on the highest judicial body in the world dissented from these principles.
The main human rights organizations in the world, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have issued position papers supporting the right of the Palestinian refugees to return and compensation.
Each year in the United Nations General Assembly nearly every country in the world has supported these principles for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. Every year the Arab League puts forth a peace proposal based on these principles for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Leading human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch have also stated that Israel's siege of Gaza is a form of collective punishment and therefore illegal under international law.
We in the Hamas Government are committed to pursuing a just resolution to the conflict not in contradiction with the international community and enlightened opinion as expressed in the International Court of Justice, the United Nations General Assembly, and leading human rights organizations. We are prepared to engage all parties on the basis of mutual respect and without preconditions.
However, our constituency needs to see a comprehensive paradigm shift that not only commences with lifting the siege on Gaza and halts all settlement building and expansion but develops into a policy of evenhandedness based on the very international law and norms we are prodded into adhering to.
Again, we welcome you to Gaza which would allow you to see firsthand our ground zero. Furthermore, it would enhance the US position; enabling you to speak with new credibility and authority in dealing with all the parties.
Very Truly Yours,
Dr. Ahmed Yousef
Deputy of the Foreign Affairs Ministry
Former Senior Political Advisor
to Prime Minister Ismael Hanniya
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Cynthia McKinney Announces New Organization
Which way forward for the Black Left? The path leads in the same direction it always has: agitation, organization, and confrontation with Power. Cynthia McKinney chose a Harlem church to announce formation of DIGNITY, to bring the Black body politic back from its current comatose state. "Dignity is attempting to show real change is possible" - if people fight for it. "We want to organize networks so that we can relay information quickly to a large number of people."
Cynthia McKinney Announces Formation of DIGNITY
the editors
Former congresswoman (D-GA) and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney addressed a packed house at St. Mary’s Church, in Harlem, on Sunday, May 31. Also sharing the podium were Glen Ford and Margaret Kimberley, of Black Agenda Report, Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council, Prof. Anthony Monteiro, of the African American Studies Department, Temple University, and writer/activist Mae Jackson. The event was titled, “Which Way Forward for the Black Left?”
” We agreed to found an action organization and to call it Dignity.”
Thank you all for being here.
On Thursday, General Taguba spoke to journalists and said that the photos currently being withheld by President Obama show rape. On Friday, he went even further and said that he saw video of U.S. soldiers raping and sodomizing detainees. From the first batch of photos that were released, we know that detainees were also murdered. In your name and mine.
But some of us here in the U.S. are not shocked or surprised that this kind of behavior could occur. For those of us who have our eyes open, the gritty streets of America are filled with the experience of unarmed black and brown men being beaten, raped, sodomized, and even murdered by terroristic agents of the state.
We remember the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Kwame Touré. We remember George Jackson, Soledad and Attica. We remember the American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican Independistas, the Chicano Movement, and we remember the FBI. We know about Area A in Chicago and we’ve heard the San Francisco 8 recount for us their experiences of torture at the hands of law enforcement. We’ve heard them tell how 30 years later, the very same people who tortured them showed up on their doorsteps to re-arrest them for crimes they did not commit.
So when General Taguba verifies that torture, rape, and murder were used by U.S. service men and women, we cannot be surprised.
When we see Dick Cheney say that torture worked, we in this audience, are not surprised.
The gritty streets of America are filled with the experience of unarmed black and brown men being beaten, raped, sodomized, and even murdered by terroristic agents of the state.”
When we hear that Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown who allowed the San Francisco 8 prosecution to move forward is rumored to want to be the Governor of California, and expects our votes to win, we are not surprised.
Or that Gavin Newsome, current mayor of San Francisco who is abetting the ethnic cleansing of the last remaining black neighborhood in that city wants to be Governor and expects black, brown, and progressive white votes, we are not surprised.
So, when yet another young man is gunned down by the police, be it Oscar Grant in Oakland or Omar Edwards in New York City, and the policy doesn’t change to stop it. We shouldn’t be surprised.
The authorities have proven that they will do everything and more if the people let them get away with it.
Our President has breathed new life into the Democratic Party. But the fact is, our precious breath, that gives that Party life, is killing us.
Glen Ford, Roy Singham, Dedon Kamathi of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, and I all came together earlier this year, to not only lament the present, but to change the future. We decided that while our movement was nascent, coming out of my Power to the People campaign, that there was power in organization. That there was hope in mobilization. And that victory was possible in implementation. We agreed to found an action organization and to call it Dignity.
There will be some who will maintain that this country, founded as a settler state, never had any dignity since it rested on taking and not sharing land that belonged to someone else.
” We decided that while our movement was nascent, coming out of my Power to the People campaign.”
After deep engagement in slavery, the take-over of whole countries, denial of self-determination, and endless war and occupation, still others would say that our country has certainly lost whatever dignity it might have been able at one time to earn.
And after Abu Ghraib, dignity is no longer possible.
For about ten years, I went around the country proclaiming the black body politic to be at first moribund, then comatose. I now see the same fate awaiting the Progressive community even as we witness ongoing war, even ramping up the war machine during the greatest transfer of wealth out of black and brown communities by the wholesale theft of people’s homes.
Bait and switch schemes, whitewashing, and red herrings shouldn’t be left for the people alone to decipher as they are also trying to save themselves from drowning. Some of us know what’s going on and we’re organizing Dignity in order to inform and then stop it.
We are tired of watching politicians acknowledge our pain, win office, and then go about their business adding more to the existing pain.
We can change the policies only by changing the nature of the debate that leads up to the selection of our policymakers. That means that we must have a way to get our message out independent of CNN, FOX, the New York Times, Clear Channel, or Public Radio. People must know in advance what the issues are, what the possibilities of policy are, and be informed, correctly, not only in slick Madison Avenue style campaigns designed to mislead. We need media of our own.
” I went around the country proclaiming the black body politic to be at first moribund, then comatose.”
And finally, we need actions that serve as a wake-up call to all of our elected officials that for a critical number of us, and Glen just happens to believe that we have the right number of people supporting us in general now, business as usual is over.
We have brains, we have brawn, and we’ve got guts. But is that enough?
We’ve learned from our neighbors to our South, from Mexico, Cuba, and Haiti; Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua that we don’t have to settle for less than what we need from politics.
And I’m tired of feeling trapped in the politics of self-abnegation. If people in other parts of the world can do it, then we must be able to do it, too. That remains to be seen, however.
So, Dignity is attempting to show that real change is possible.
Dignity will show that just voting for special interest politicians who reflect special interest political parties in new faces is not enough.
It is clear that some people are satisfied with that, but we demand more.
Honestly, I called Glen, ready to give up, saying that I’ve done what I could do. And Glen, then Dedon, then Roy, and so many others across our country said, no. People began contacting me personally, as if they could sense what I was feeling. They started adding comments on our youtube videos, and I know many people are talking among themselves, expressing disappointment in whispered tones with the direction so far of the Obama Administration.
” Dignity is attempting to show that real change is possible.”
I was saddened to read a message from Cindy Sheehan saying that she won’t run against Pelosi next election. That’s a big blow to us and I hope she will reconsider.
Who was it that said the race goes not to the swift but to he who can endure?
I’m willing to try one more thing, one more time. And Dignity is our effort to endure; to deliver a much-needed victory to the people. Before it’s too late.
Please support us with your money, your brain, and your time.
Please be sure to sign in. In the days ahead, we will contact you. You all have networks. We want to organize networks so that we can relay information quickly to a large number of people.
Because of your contributions today, Dignity soon will have an internet presence and a weekly television show. We intend to have a distribution mechanism so that our supporters can place our television show on cable access stations across the country; we want to be on the radio, and we also want to be in the faces of the people who got our votes or have authority over our tax dollars and who continue to disappoint us.
We are not abused spouses turning the other cheek for another slap in the face. We are individuals who know that this country can be better because we still have faith in the good will and the values of the American people.
Help us organize Dignity, and with dignity, we will stand up for our rights!
For more information on DIGNITY, contact Ms. McKinney at hq2600@gmail.com
Cynthia McKinney Announces Formation of DIGNITY
the editors
Former congresswoman (D-GA) and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney addressed a packed house at St. Mary’s Church, in Harlem, on Sunday, May 31. Also sharing the podium were Glen Ford and Margaret Kimberley, of Black Agenda Report, Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council, Prof. Anthony Monteiro, of the African American Studies Department, Temple University, and writer/activist Mae Jackson. The event was titled, “Which Way Forward for the Black Left?”
” We agreed to found an action organization and to call it Dignity.”
Thank you all for being here.
On Thursday, General Taguba spoke to journalists and said that the photos currently being withheld by President Obama show rape. On Friday, he went even further and said that he saw video of U.S. soldiers raping and sodomizing detainees. From the first batch of photos that were released, we know that detainees were also murdered. In your name and mine.
But some of us here in the U.S. are not shocked or surprised that this kind of behavior could occur. For those of us who have our eyes open, the gritty streets of America are filled with the experience of unarmed black and brown men being beaten, raped, sodomized, and even murdered by terroristic agents of the state.
We remember the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Kwame Touré. We remember George Jackson, Soledad and Attica. We remember the American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican Independistas, the Chicano Movement, and we remember the FBI. We know about Area A in Chicago and we’ve heard the San Francisco 8 recount for us their experiences of torture at the hands of law enforcement. We’ve heard them tell how 30 years later, the very same people who tortured them showed up on their doorsteps to re-arrest them for crimes they did not commit.
So when General Taguba verifies that torture, rape, and murder were used by U.S. service men and women, we cannot be surprised.
When we see Dick Cheney say that torture worked, we in this audience, are not surprised.
The gritty streets of America are filled with the experience of unarmed black and brown men being beaten, raped, sodomized, and even murdered by terroristic agents of the state.”
When we hear that Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown who allowed the San Francisco 8 prosecution to move forward is rumored to want to be the Governor of California, and expects our votes to win, we are not surprised.
Or that Gavin Newsome, current mayor of San Francisco who is abetting the ethnic cleansing of the last remaining black neighborhood in that city wants to be Governor and expects black, brown, and progressive white votes, we are not surprised.
So, when yet another young man is gunned down by the police, be it Oscar Grant in Oakland or Omar Edwards in New York City, and the policy doesn’t change to stop it. We shouldn’t be surprised.
The authorities have proven that they will do everything and more if the people let them get away with it.
Our President has breathed new life into the Democratic Party. But the fact is, our precious breath, that gives that Party life, is killing us.
Glen Ford, Roy Singham, Dedon Kamathi of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, and I all came together earlier this year, to not only lament the present, but to change the future. We decided that while our movement was nascent, coming out of my Power to the People campaign, that there was power in organization. That there was hope in mobilization. And that victory was possible in implementation. We agreed to found an action organization and to call it Dignity.
There will be some who will maintain that this country, founded as a settler state, never had any dignity since it rested on taking and not sharing land that belonged to someone else.
” We decided that while our movement was nascent, coming out of my Power to the People campaign.”
After deep engagement in slavery, the take-over of whole countries, denial of self-determination, and endless war and occupation, still others would say that our country has certainly lost whatever dignity it might have been able at one time to earn.
And after Abu Ghraib, dignity is no longer possible.
For about ten years, I went around the country proclaiming the black body politic to be at first moribund, then comatose. I now see the same fate awaiting the Progressive community even as we witness ongoing war, even ramping up the war machine during the greatest transfer of wealth out of black and brown communities by the wholesale theft of people’s homes.
Bait and switch schemes, whitewashing, and red herrings shouldn’t be left for the people alone to decipher as they are also trying to save themselves from drowning. Some of us know what’s going on and we’re organizing Dignity in order to inform and then stop it.
We are tired of watching politicians acknowledge our pain, win office, and then go about their business adding more to the existing pain.
We can change the policies only by changing the nature of the debate that leads up to the selection of our policymakers. That means that we must have a way to get our message out independent of CNN, FOX, the New York Times, Clear Channel, or Public Radio. People must know in advance what the issues are, what the possibilities of policy are, and be informed, correctly, not only in slick Madison Avenue style campaigns designed to mislead. We need media of our own.
” I went around the country proclaiming the black body politic to be at first moribund, then comatose.”
And finally, we need actions that serve as a wake-up call to all of our elected officials that for a critical number of us, and Glen just happens to believe that we have the right number of people supporting us in general now, business as usual is over.
We have brains, we have brawn, and we’ve got guts. But is that enough?
We’ve learned from our neighbors to our South, from Mexico, Cuba, and Haiti; Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua that we don’t have to settle for less than what we need from politics.
And I’m tired of feeling trapped in the politics of self-abnegation. If people in other parts of the world can do it, then we must be able to do it, too. That remains to be seen, however.
So, Dignity is attempting to show that real change is possible.
Dignity will show that just voting for special interest politicians who reflect special interest political parties in new faces is not enough.
It is clear that some people are satisfied with that, but we demand more.
Honestly, I called Glen, ready to give up, saying that I’ve done what I could do. And Glen, then Dedon, then Roy, and so many others across our country said, no. People began contacting me personally, as if they could sense what I was feeling. They started adding comments on our youtube videos, and I know many people are talking among themselves, expressing disappointment in whispered tones with the direction so far of the Obama Administration.
” Dignity is attempting to show that real change is possible.”
I was saddened to read a message from Cindy Sheehan saying that she won’t run against Pelosi next election. That’s a big blow to us and I hope she will reconsider.
Who was it that said the race goes not to the swift but to he who can endure?
I’m willing to try one more thing, one more time. And Dignity is our effort to endure; to deliver a much-needed victory to the people. Before it’s too late.
Please support us with your money, your brain, and your time.
Please be sure to sign in. In the days ahead, we will contact you. You all have networks. We want to organize networks so that we can relay information quickly to a large number of people.
Because of your contributions today, Dignity soon will have an internet presence and a weekly television show. We intend to have a distribution mechanism so that our supporters can place our television show on cable access stations across the country; we want to be on the radio, and we also want to be in the faces of the people who got our votes or have authority over our tax dollars and who continue to disappoint us.
We are not abused spouses turning the other cheek for another slap in the face. We are individuals who know that this country can be better because we still have faith in the good will and the values of the American people.
Help us organize Dignity, and with dignity, we will stand up for our rights!
For more information on DIGNITY, contact Ms. McKinney at hq2600@gmail.com
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Letter to Obama from the Japanese Communist Party
Shii calls on Obama to display initiative in initiating international talks aimed at banning nuclear weapons
Japanese Communist Party Chairperson Shii Kazuo on April 28 met Jim Zumwalt, charge d'affaires ad interim in U.S. Embassy Tokyo and handed him a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama calling on him to take the initiative in starting international negotiations aimed at abolishing nuclear weapons.
April 28, 2009
The text of the letter is as follows:
The President of the United States of America
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama,
I am writing this letter to you, on behalf of a political party that has worked resolutely for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth, hand in hand with the people of Japan, the only A-bombed nation, which suffered untold disasters.
I was deeply impressed to read your speech delivered on April 5 in Prague in which you said, "I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." For the first time, the United States, the biggest nuclear-weapon state in the world, put forward its national goal of "a world without nuclear weapons," namely the elimination of nuclear weapons.
You also said in the speech, "as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act." You made clear to the world for the first time as U.S. president that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an event that has a bearing upon human morals and talked about the U.S. having a responsibility to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
You added in the speech, "To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy but also a cowardly thing to do. That's how wars begin. That's where human progress ends." By so saying, you called on all nations to cooperate for establishing "a world without nuclear weapons," and stressed that "voices for peace and progress must be raised together."
That you made such official declarations as a U.S. president is of historic significance for both humanity as a whole, and the people of the world's only A-bombed country in particular, which I heartily welcome.
However, I beg to differ with you when you said in the speech: The goal of a world without nuclear weapons will not be reached, "perhaps not in my lifetime." I cannot agree because nuclear-weapon states have never engaged in negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons as their common goal, and therefore, we cannot set a timeframe in advance for how long it takes, as this is a task no one has ever tackled.
After its establishment, the first United Nations General Assembly resolution adopted on January 24, 1946 decided, in response to the proposal by six countries including yours, and with the support of all the member countries, that the United Nations will work for the "elimination of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction." But in the 63 years since then, the nuclear-weapon states have not even called for negotiations for their elimination, not to mention entering into such negotiations.
By demonstrating the initiative for "a world without nuclear weapons," you will open up the door to a challenge that no one has ever undertaken. It might take long to proceed from a call for negotiations to their actual opening, and then to reach agreement. This is an historic undertaking that demands "patience and persistence" as stressed in your speech. But it is only by taking the leadership in starting this undertaking that your speech in Prague will exercise its real power to bring about progress and world peace. Consequently, I strongly request that you take the initiative for starting international negotiations for the conclusion of an international treaty for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
In your speech in Prague, you promised to take "concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons." These include starting negotiations for a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, pursuing the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and a new treaty that verifiably ends production of fissile materials intended for use in nuclear weapons. I believe that these concrete steps can have a positive and constructive significance when they are tackled together with the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons.
Having seen these kinds of negotiations on partial measures, I am convinced that the whole process has proved that "a world without nuclear weapons" cannot be achieved only through these measures in the absence of the objective of abolishing nuclear weapons themselves. Indeed, this is clearly demonstrated by the fact that there are still more than 20,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled all over the world.
As an illustration, we cannot forget that the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water (Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, PTBT) concluded in 1963, banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, but that it actually legitimized underground nuclear tests, and, in the end, triggered a massive nuclear arms race.
The same holds true for the regime of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This is a discriminatory treaty unprecedented in history because it allows the five powers to possess nuclear weapons while imposing on non-nuclear-weapon states an obligation of non-possession. The Japanese Communist Party is of course against an increase in the number of nuclear-weapon states for any reason, but it has at the same time criticized the discriminatory inequality of the treaty.
The international community accepted such inequality only because the nuclear powers pledged that they would make sincere efforts for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Yet the existence of this treaty has not prevented new nuclear-weapon states or those planning to go nuclear from coming into existence. To be candid with you, underlying this is the fact that the nuclear powers have not been true to their pledge in the last 39 years since the NPT entered into force.
Above all, it is regrettable that the previous U.S. government and other countries disaffirmed in the 2005 NPT Review Conference "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals" that had been agreed upon in the 2000 NPT Review Conference. Mr. President, you stated in the Prague speech, "(the NPT regime) could reach the point where the center cannot hold." We have to stress that underlying your fear is the fact that the nuclear-weapon states have maintained the said attitudes for the last 39 years.
The way out of this danger will come when the nuclear-weapon states adopt an attitude of sincerity and responsibility for the elimination of nuclear weapons. We must stress that only when they tackle the task of eliminating nuclear weapons, will they obtain the political and moral power to dissuade other countries from pursuing nuclear weapons. I sincerely hope that the nuclear-weapon states confirm the "unequivocal undertaking" towards the elimination of nuclear weapons in the 2010 NPT Review Conference.
As regards the Japan-U.S. relationship, the JCP's basic policy is to turn it from the present one of domination-subordination to one of equal footing. Our firm belief is that only under an equal relationship can we develop real friendship between our two peoples. On this mutual relationship, there are many differences of opinion between your government and our party. Nevertheless, I dared to focus, and wanted to convey our opinion, on one point, the task for all humanity, namely the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The only guarantee against nuclear weapons being used is to create "a world without nuclear weapons." You raised this major goal to the world. Let me repeat once again that I welcome your statement, and hope that the spirit of your statement will be given full play in world politics. I would like to conclude my letter with a wish for the friendship between the United States and Japan to develop.
Sincerely yours,
Kazuo Shii
Chairperson of the Executive Committee
Japanese Communist Party
Member of the House of Representatives, National Diet
Japanese Communist Party Chairperson Shii Kazuo on April 28 met Jim Zumwalt, charge d'affaires ad interim in U.S. Embassy Tokyo and handed him a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama calling on him to take the initiative in starting international negotiations aimed at abolishing nuclear weapons.
April 28, 2009
The text of the letter is as follows:
The President of the United States of America
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama,
I am writing this letter to you, on behalf of a political party that has worked resolutely for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth, hand in hand with the people of Japan, the only A-bombed nation, which suffered untold disasters.
I was deeply impressed to read your speech delivered on April 5 in Prague in which you said, "I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." For the first time, the United States, the biggest nuclear-weapon state in the world, put forward its national goal of "a world without nuclear weapons," namely the elimination of nuclear weapons.
You also said in the speech, "as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act." You made clear to the world for the first time as U.S. president that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an event that has a bearing upon human morals and talked about the U.S. having a responsibility to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
You added in the speech, "To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy but also a cowardly thing to do. That's how wars begin. That's where human progress ends." By so saying, you called on all nations to cooperate for establishing "a world without nuclear weapons," and stressed that "voices for peace and progress must be raised together."
That you made such official declarations as a U.S. president is of historic significance for both humanity as a whole, and the people of the world's only A-bombed country in particular, which I heartily welcome.
However, I beg to differ with you when you said in the speech: The goal of a world without nuclear weapons will not be reached, "perhaps not in my lifetime." I cannot agree because nuclear-weapon states have never engaged in negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons as their common goal, and therefore, we cannot set a timeframe in advance for how long it takes, as this is a task no one has ever tackled.
After its establishment, the first United Nations General Assembly resolution adopted on January 24, 1946 decided, in response to the proposal by six countries including yours, and with the support of all the member countries, that the United Nations will work for the "elimination of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction." But in the 63 years since then, the nuclear-weapon states have not even called for negotiations for their elimination, not to mention entering into such negotiations.
By demonstrating the initiative for "a world without nuclear weapons," you will open up the door to a challenge that no one has ever undertaken. It might take long to proceed from a call for negotiations to their actual opening, and then to reach agreement. This is an historic undertaking that demands "patience and persistence" as stressed in your speech. But it is only by taking the leadership in starting this undertaking that your speech in Prague will exercise its real power to bring about progress and world peace. Consequently, I strongly request that you take the initiative for starting international negotiations for the conclusion of an international treaty for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
In your speech in Prague, you promised to take "concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons." These include starting negotiations for a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, pursuing the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and a new treaty that verifiably ends production of fissile materials intended for use in nuclear weapons. I believe that these concrete steps can have a positive and constructive significance when they are tackled together with the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons.
Having seen these kinds of negotiations on partial measures, I am convinced that the whole process has proved that "a world without nuclear weapons" cannot be achieved only through these measures in the absence of the objective of abolishing nuclear weapons themselves. Indeed, this is clearly demonstrated by the fact that there are still more than 20,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled all over the world.
As an illustration, we cannot forget that the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water (Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, PTBT) concluded in 1963, banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, but that it actually legitimized underground nuclear tests, and, in the end, triggered a massive nuclear arms race.
The same holds true for the regime of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This is a discriminatory treaty unprecedented in history because it allows the five powers to possess nuclear weapons while imposing on non-nuclear-weapon states an obligation of non-possession. The Japanese Communist Party is of course against an increase in the number of nuclear-weapon states for any reason, but it has at the same time criticized the discriminatory inequality of the treaty.
The international community accepted such inequality only because the nuclear powers pledged that they would make sincere efforts for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Yet the existence of this treaty has not prevented new nuclear-weapon states or those planning to go nuclear from coming into existence. To be candid with you, underlying this is the fact that the nuclear powers have not been true to their pledge in the last 39 years since the NPT entered into force.
Above all, it is regrettable that the previous U.S. government and other countries disaffirmed in the 2005 NPT Review Conference "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals" that had been agreed upon in the 2000 NPT Review Conference. Mr. President, you stated in the Prague speech, "(the NPT regime) could reach the point where the center cannot hold." We have to stress that underlying your fear is the fact that the nuclear-weapon states have maintained the said attitudes for the last 39 years.
The way out of this danger will come when the nuclear-weapon states adopt an attitude of sincerity and responsibility for the elimination of nuclear weapons. We must stress that only when they tackle the task of eliminating nuclear weapons, will they obtain the political and moral power to dissuade other countries from pursuing nuclear weapons. I sincerely hope that the nuclear-weapon states confirm the "unequivocal undertaking" towards the elimination of nuclear weapons in the 2010 NPT Review Conference.
As regards the Japan-U.S. relationship, the JCP's basic policy is to turn it from the present one of domination-subordination to one of equal footing. Our firm belief is that only under an equal relationship can we develop real friendship between our two peoples. On this mutual relationship, there are many differences of opinion between your government and our party. Nevertheless, I dared to focus, and wanted to convey our opinion, on one point, the task for all humanity, namely the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The only guarantee against nuclear weapons being used is to create "a world without nuclear weapons." You raised this major goal to the world. Let me repeat once again that I welcome your statement, and hope that the spirit of your statement will be given full play in world politics. I would like to conclude my letter with a wish for the friendship between the United States and Japan to develop.
Sincerely yours,
Kazuo Shii
Chairperson of the Executive Committee
Japanese Communist Party
Member of the House of Representatives, National Diet
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