This is a blog dedicated to the Danish cartoons that began the riots over the Prophet Muhammed. You can see the cartoons here -
http://face-of-muhammed.blogspot.com/2006/03/12-muhammed-cartoons.html
26 November 2006
24 November 2006
Oldie, but a goodie
Editorial Observer: Accounting for the Invisible Casualties of War
>Shouldn’t Be a Matter of Politics
>
>November 14, 2003
> By ANDREW ROSENTHAL
>
>
>
>One of the most enduring memories from the funeral of my
>friend Michael Kelly, who was killed covering the war in
>Iraq for Atlantic Monthly, was standing by his open grave
>in a cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., watching an Army officer
>in dress uniform make his way through the cold, persistent
>drizzle and up the small hill to Michael's wife and boys.
>He spoke to the family quietly and then got down on one
>knee on the wet artificial turf that had been placed there
>in a vain attempt to shield the mourners from the earth. He
>gave the boys a flag and a medal.
>
>Michael Kelly was not one of their own. He was brash and
>brave, but distinctly unmilitary. Yet the Army took pains
>to make this simple gesture that drove home the way the
>military honors death: it endows that inescapable but
>inescapably tragic part of their lives with a sense of
>moment, of ceremony and dignity, and most of all it faces
>death squarely and honestly.
>
>This is a central part of the warrior's culture, but it is
>all too often missing from the way President Bush is
>running the Iraq war. As the toll nears 400, the casualties
>remain largely invisible. Apart from a flurry of ceremonies
>on Veterans Day, this White House has done everything it
>
>can to keep Mr. Bush away from the families of the dead, at
>least when there might be a camera around.
>
>The wounded, thousands of them, are even more carefully
>screened from the public. And the Pentagon has continued
>its ban on media coverage of the return of flag-draped
>coffins to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, denying the
>dead soldiers and their loved ones even that simple public
>recognition of sacrifice. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of
>the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained rather lamely that the
>ban had been in place since 1991 - when another President
>Bush wanted to avoid the juxtaposition of his face and
>words with pictures of soldiers' coffins.
>
>Some Republicans say it would take up too much of the
>president's time to attend military funerals or meet the
>coffins returning from Iraq. "They're coming back
>continually," the conservative commentator Bay Buchanan
>said on CNN on Tuesday. "The president cannot be flying up
>there every single week."
>
>
>But someone of rank from the White House could and should
>be at each and every military funeral. Ideally, Mr. Bush
>would shake the hand of someone who loved every person who
>dies in uniform - a small demand on his time in a war in
>which the casualties are still relatively small. And he has
>more than enough advisers, cabinet secretaries and other
>officials so attending funerals should not be such an
>inconvenience.
>
>The White House talks about preserving the privacy and
>dignity of the families of the war dead. But if this was
>really about the families, the president or Vice President
>Dick Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would be
>handing flags to widows and mothers in the time-honored
>way. And if protecting the privacy of Americans who are
>suffering was such a priority, the White House wouldn't
>call in the cameras to watch Mr. Bush embracing victims of
>every hurricane, earthquake or suburban California
>wildfire.
>
>Along with the coverage of these casualties, the coverage
>
>of combat in Iraq has virtually ceased. The "embedded"
>correspondents who reported on the stunningly swift march
>to Baghdad during the invasion are gone. The Pentagon has
>ended the program. The ever-upbeat Mr. Rumsfeld likes to
>say that the attacks on American soldiers are brief and
>relatively few in number, compared with the number of men
>in arms in the field in Iraq. But without real news
>coverage, it's hard to know the truth.
>
>Letters from American soldiers who have died in Iraq,
>published on the Op-Ed page on Tuesday, suggest that Mr.
>Rumsfeld's accounting may be highly selective. Shortly
>before he died on June 17, Pvt. Robert Frantz wrote this to
>his mother: "We've had random gunfire within a 100-meter
>radius all night, every night, since I have been here. It
>kinda scares you the first couple nights, but you tend to
>get used to it."
>
>The idea of a slow, painful and bloody holding action in
>which gunfire is a nightly occurrence contrasts sharply,
>
>perhaps too sharply for comfort, with the display of
>overwhelming force, low casualties and lightning-swift
>conclusions that Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld put on in the
>spring. The administration undoubtedly feels that showing
>coffins on television or having the president attend
>funerals would undermine public support for the war. (The
>ban on covering the arrival of coffins at Dover was in
>effect during the popular Afghanistan war, but was not
>enforced.) That seems like more of an acknowledgment of how
>fragile that support is than any poll yet taken.
>
>The Bush administration hates comparisons between Iraq and
>Vietnam, and many are a stretch. But there is a lesson that
>this president seems not to have learned from Vietnam. You
>cannot hide casualties. Indeed, trying to do so probably
>does more to undermine public confidence than any display
>of a flag-draped coffin. And there is at least one direct
>parallel. Thirty-five years ago, at the height of the
>
>Vietnam War, the Pentagon took to shipping bodies into the
>United States in the dead of night to avoid news coverage.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/opinion/14FRI4.html?ex=1069834045&ei=1&en=660f
>5cd6223c62e2
>Shouldn’t Be a Matter of Politics
>
>November 14, 2003
> By ANDREW ROSENTHAL
>
>
>
>One of the most enduring memories from the funeral of my
>friend Michael Kelly, who was killed covering the war in
>Iraq for Atlantic Monthly, was standing by his open grave
>in a cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., watching an Army officer
>in dress uniform make his way through the cold, persistent
>drizzle and up the small hill to Michael's wife and boys.
>He spoke to the family quietly and then got down on one
>knee on the wet artificial turf that had been placed there
>in a vain attempt to shield the mourners from the earth. He
>gave the boys a flag and a medal.
>
>Michael Kelly was not one of their own. He was brash and
>brave, but distinctly unmilitary. Yet the Army took pains
>to make this simple gesture that drove home the way the
>military honors death: it endows that inescapable but
>inescapably tragic part of their lives with a sense of
>moment, of ceremony and dignity, and most of all it faces
>death squarely and honestly.
>
>This is a central part of the warrior's culture, but it is
>all too often missing from the way President Bush is
>running the Iraq war. As the toll nears 400, the casualties
>remain largely invisible. Apart from a flurry of ceremonies
>on Veterans Day, this White House has done everything it
>
>can to keep Mr. Bush away from the families of the dead, at
>least when there might be a camera around.
>
>The wounded, thousands of them, are even more carefully
>screened from the public. And the Pentagon has continued
>its ban on media coverage of the return of flag-draped
>coffins to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, denying the
>dead soldiers and their loved ones even that simple public
>recognition of sacrifice. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of
>the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained rather lamely that the
>ban had been in place since 1991 - when another President
>Bush wanted to avoid the juxtaposition of his face and
>words with pictures of soldiers' coffins.
>
>Some Republicans say it would take up too much of the
>president's time to attend military funerals or meet the
>coffins returning from Iraq. "They're coming back
>continually," the conservative commentator Bay Buchanan
>said on CNN on Tuesday. "The president cannot be flying up
>there every single week."
>
>
>But someone of rank from the White House could and should
>be at each and every military funeral. Ideally, Mr. Bush
>would shake the hand of someone who loved every person who
>dies in uniform - a small demand on his time in a war in
>which the casualties are still relatively small. And he has
>more than enough advisers, cabinet secretaries and other
>officials so attending funerals should not be such an
>inconvenience.
>
>The White House talks about preserving the privacy and
>dignity of the families of the war dead. But if this was
>really about the families, the president or Vice President
>Dick Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would be
>handing flags to widows and mothers in the time-honored
>way. And if protecting the privacy of Americans who are
>suffering was such a priority, the White House wouldn't
>call in the cameras to watch Mr. Bush embracing victims of
>every hurricane, earthquake or suburban California
>wildfire.
>
>Along with the coverage of these casualties, the coverage
>
>of combat in Iraq has virtually ceased. The "embedded"
>correspondents who reported on the stunningly swift march
>to Baghdad during the invasion are gone. The Pentagon has
>ended the program. The ever-upbeat Mr. Rumsfeld likes to
>say that the attacks on American soldiers are brief and
>relatively few in number, compared with the number of men
>in arms in the field in Iraq. But without real news
>coverage, it's hard to know the truth.
>
>Letters from American soldiers who have died in Iraq,
>published on the Op-Ed page on Tuesday, suggest that Mr.
>Rumsfeld's accounting may be highly selective. Shortly
>before he died on June 17, Pvt. Robert Frantz wrote this to
>his mother: "We've had random gunfire within a 100-meter
>radius all night, every night, since I have been here. It
>kinda scares you the first couple nights, but you tend to
>get used to it."
>
>The idea of a slow, painful and bloody holding action in
>which gunfire is a nightly occurrence contrasts sharply,
>
>perhaps too sharply for comfort, with the display of
>overwhelming force, low casualties and lightning-swift
>conclusions that Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld put on in the
>spring. The administration undoubtedly feels that showing
>coffins on television or having the president attend
>funerals would undermine public support for the war. (The
>ban on covering the arrival of coffins at Dover was in
>effect during the popular Afghanistan war, but was not
>enforced.) That seems like more of an acknowledgment of how
>fragile that support is than any poll yet taken.
>
>The Bush administration hates comparisons between Iraq and
>Vietnam, and many are a stretch. But there is a lesson that
>this president seems not to have learned from Vietnam. You
>cannot hide casualties. Indeed, trying to do so probably
>does more to undermine public confidence than any display
>of a flag-draped coffin. And there is at least one direct
>parallel. Thirty-five years ago, at the height of the
>
>Vietnam War, the Pentagon took to shipping bodies into the
>United States in the dead of night to avoid news coverage.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/opinion/14FRI4.html?ex=1069834045&ei=1&en=660f
>5cd6223c62e2
A Rebirth of "We the People"
By Jim Rough
Draft written for "The Good Society,"
a journal of PEGS, Committee on the Political Economy of the Good
Society
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/pegs/
A good system of governance needs to work for
both individuals and society as a whole. In the
eighteenth century the old forms of governance
headed by a king and hereditary aristocracy were
not working to the benefit of most people, and a
new system was needed. Through what we now call
the "U.S. Constitutional Convention," "We the
People" of the former colonies transformed
themselves from the rule of inherited privilege
to the rule of law. This transformation affected
governance, economics, and all aspects of life,
creating a new version of the "Good Society."
Today, that newer system is having problems, both
for us collectively and for us as individuals.
Another fundamental change is needed.
This article suggests how "We the People" might
transform ourselves once again, using a seemingly
innocuous U.S. Constitutional amendment. This
amendment borrows from the strategy of the
founders to facilitate all of us to become "We
the People" and to manage our system.
The Problem
Currently, our constitutional, rule of law,
majority-voting, free market system is on
automatic pilot managing both itself and us.
Because the system is based on competition, it
encourages each of us to maximize our own
"special interest," while the "general interest"
takes care of itself. When people were
independent farmers, fishers, and craftspeople on
a seemingly infinite planet, this self-oriented
approach automatically served the general
interest. It was a win/win game, where healthy
competition made things better for everyone.
But as we confront the limits of planetary
resources, as technology and trade link us
together, and as transnational corporations hold
sway, we are becoming more interdependent than
independent. Competition within an interdependent
whole does not serve the general interest. It's
more like the heart and lungs competing for blood
within one body. The body can't survive that way.
Consider one element within our system, a
hypothetical defense contractor. It competes for
money against other possible uses of tax dollars,
like education, protecting the environment, or
public health. With deeper pockets than its
competition, it can hire many lobbyists and make
large political donations to spread a message of
fear, emphasizing real and imaginary dangers. It
garners a big part of the budget in this country
and then sells its products to whichever client
can pay, whether or not they are a risk to our
country. The primary aim of this industry isn't
to maximize national security, but to grow the
market for its products.
By design, all companies aim more primarily for
profits than for citizen well being or a healthy
environment, or other human values. But this
design was made for a time when none of us was
powerful enough to manipulate the demand or
supply of labor or resources, ruin the commons,
or manipulate government to serve our ends. With
the shift from being independent to being
interdependent, the competitive stance of our
system now undermines local communities,
increases long-term health problems, exacerbates
global warming, promotes inequities of wealth,
risks war, crime and terrorism, and limits
individual freedoms.
To earn a living today, even if you work for
yourself, you must direct your attention, energy
and talents to serving a special interest. Those
who ignore this imperative and seek to serve
humanity directly, like to help preserve the
commons, will struggle financially.
Even our thinking process is affected by this
competition. Our political system doesn't
recognize the possibility of a "general-interest"
viewpoint, but enforces special interest
battling. Those who try to enact legislation in
the public interest, like most environmentalists,
must pretend they are a special-interest group,
and compete against well-organized, well-funded
groups who really do serve special interests.
Also, because of our competitive mind-frame, we
don't look too deeply at problems. Like someone
in an argument, rather than searching out the
underlying causes, we blame individuals like
"greedy" CEO's, "lazy" welfare recipients,
"bureaucratic" civil servants, "corrupt"
politicians, or "apathetic" citizens. We look to
non-systemic answers like better education,
active citizen involvement, better leaders, more
volunteerism, small group dialogues, fairer laws,
etc. These are vital, but for real change to
happen, we must take charge of our system.
Many people think human nature is a problem. They
imagine people to be naturally competitive and
unable to reach consensus in large groups. The
structure of our system makes it seem this way.
I've asked many people, for example, "Which set
of values should have priority in society:
Corporate values or human values?" I think
everyone has already reached consensus on
this-human values should predominate. But since
our system is in control of society, it directs
us to enact the opposite. Our job is to keep our
heads down, to serve corporate interests, and to
be in denial about what is happening in the big
picture.
"We the People" Are the Solution
How do we take charge of our system so that it
works for individuals, for all of us, for other
species, and for future generations? Key is that
we need to become "We the People." We need to
call "time out" from the system, convene everyone
together, face the big issues, dialogue
creatively, develop new options, and reach
consensus on a shared vision. If we can do this,
many of society's problems would just go away.
Accomplishing this is not as difficult as it
might seem. Once we escape from the
all-encompassing competitive stance imposed by
our system, and we are facilitated to hold a
general-interest conversation, we will find that
people are naturally attuned to this. Adding the
following "Citizens Amendment" to the U.S.
Constitution, would make the necessary change:
Each year, a lottery selects twenty-four
registered voters to form a "Wisdom
Council." This Wisdom Council is a symbol
and proxy for all the people of the United
States. It meets for up to one week to
choose issues, talk about them, and create
unanimous statements. A meeting facilitator
assures a creative, collaborative process.
At the end of the week, the Wisdom Council
presents its "Statements of the People"
to the nation in a new ceremony, like a State
of the Union message. The Wisdom Council
will then disband permanently and the next
year a new Wisdom Council will be randomly
selected.
Before considering how this Amendment would
establish an inclusive and wise "We the People,"
and how it would benefit society, notice that it
poses little risk. Congress, the Supreme Court,
laws, the media, government programs, elections,
lobbyists, and all the other elements of our
system remain unchanged. It makes no change to
our economic system either. Corporations, the
markets and the distribution of wealth are
untouched. The Citizens Amendment simply adds a
succession of different small groups that meet,
make statements, and disband. These groups have
no power of coercion, and there is little cost.
Policy continues to be set in the normal way,
through experts and elected representatives.
Transformational Conversation
Key to understanding how the Wisdom Council would
transform society is to recognize the
transformational quality of talking and thinking
it engenders, both within the Wisdom Council and
among the larger population.
I call it "choice-creating" rather than
"decision-making" because people seek progress
through breakthroughs more than through logic.
With choice-creating, diverse passionate voices
are assets rather than liabilities because they
make breakthroughs more likely. Just from talking
in this way, people change their minds and how
they feel, and they build a sense of community.
The best way for any group to reach consensus on
a difficult issue is for them to have a
breakthrough. Then consensus happens quickly,
individual views are respected, and all are
motivated to help implement the result. Debate
and deliberation, the ideals of our founders,
mute this possibility. These modes are oriented
toward critical thinking and winning the
competition, instead of creative thinking and
seeking what is best for all. Even
"consensus-building," where people are expected
to suppress their own individuality for the
benefit of the group, mutes the possibility for
breakthroughs.
The Wisdom Council is structured for choice-creating in a number of
ways.
* It is a "time out" from the usual political conversation.
* It is a diverse group of ordinary people who speak only for
themselves.
* The group must reach unanimity.
* The group has been symbolically anointed to speak as "We the People.
* And the group is aided by a facilitator-
hopefully, one who uses "Dynamic Facilitation."
Dynamic Facilitation (DF) is a new social
invention oriented to helping groups achieve
choice-creating. [1]
Tom Atlee, the author of "The Tao of Democracy:
Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That
Works for All" (www.taoofdemocracy.com) says,
"Part of why I love Dynamic Facilitation so much
is that it works with people AS THEY ARE. It
doesn't require that they buy into a set of rules
about how they're going to talk together. They
can be [jerks[ and the facilitator makes sure (a)
that they don't get shut down because of that,
(b) that the people they target -- and the group
as a whole -- continue to feel safe and (c) that
whatever gift they bring gets heard and made
available to the group mind. This alone makes DF
incredibly useful in a pluralistic democracy. Add
to that its power to metabolize conflict into
useful insights and to engender co-creativity
among diverse people, and it's a real
treasure."[2]
The Wisdom Council Can Transform Society
At first glance, a Wisdom Council doesn't seem
like it would do very much. "OK, so the group
determines a unanimous conclusion and presents
it, then what?" The Wisdom Council would identify
a general-interest viewpoint, express it in a
powerful new way and enable all-of-us-together to
have more influence over legislation.
But this is only a minor influence. It would also
educate people about the important issues,
involve more citizens in current affairs, include
minority voices and those who are currently
underrepresented, help overcome the dominance of
corporate controlled media, raise the important
issues and put them on the national agenda, and
raise the quality of the political conversation.
One big impact of the Amendment would be in how
it opens the door to a transformation of how we
make collective decisions. Consider, for example,
what it would mean to have a legitimate,
thoughtful voice of an inclusive "We the People."
This would approximate a true democracy. For
example, as the Wisdom Council process continues,
the Supreme Court [might] build trust in the
dynamic views of "We the People" today. At some
point they [might well] hold those views to be a
more relevant standard for their judgements than
the static positions taken by "We the People" of
the eighteenth century.
Currently, we do not make collective decisions in
a thoughtful way. Special interests buy the
media, politicians, and expert voices to defeat
legislation that is in the public interest.
"Sound bites" generated by highly paid public
relations firms make bad proposals sound good,
and good ones sound costly, bureaucratic, or
stupid. But a Wisdom Council can help all of us
to examine, understand, and appreciate the
underlying issues more deeply, and build the
political will for thoughtful actions.
With the Amendment in place, you and I will
participate in creating a shared vision of what
all people want. To have such a vision is a shift
in leadership style from our current reactive
mode, stopping bad things from happening, to a
pro-active mode, helping good things to happen. A
visionary leadership style requires fewer laws.
It would transform government efficiency, how the
media reports the news, and how individuals
contribute to society.
The Wisdom Council promises to shift the basis of
society from competition for scarce resources,
like a scarcity of jobs, toward cooperation to
enhance our shared abundance. In my community,
for instance, there are limited jobs for teachers
in the local school and the schools are cutting
back because of lack of funds. Yet at the same
time, there are many people who may or may not
have teaching credentials, who would dearly love
to teach kids. Our present system impoverishes
individuals and society alike by keeping this
pressing need and these vital human resources
apart. With a Wisdom Council in place, common
sense can reassert itself over the dictates of
the system.
To enact the Citizens Amendment is to open the
door to a transformation of our selves, as well.
For instance, it would help us break out of our
collective denial about the big problems we face
and our feelings of powerlessness over them. It
provides a way for all of us to become creative
and empowered in serving others and life on this
planet.
An Example from History
The best example of how the Wisdom Council can
transform our society today is how something like
it initiated a world-transformation during the
years 1787-1791. The delegates to the U.S.
Constitutional Convention didn't think of
themselves as "We the People." Most believed in
the benefits of having an aristocracy and were
fearful of democracy. They didn't include slaves,
women, Native Americans, or those who had no
property in their design for governance. But
despite these non-democratic tendencies, the
founders described the U.S. Constitution as
having been written by "We the People."
This phrasing was not what they wanted to say. To
them, it was really the states that were
ordaining and establishing this Constitution. But
since the Convention had already decided that the
Constitution would go into effect after
ratification by nine of the thirteen states, and
no one knew which states would adopt it, the
document couldn't start with a list of states.
"We the People" was a grammatically convenient
phrase.
Besides representing itself as speaking for We
the People, the U.S. Constitutional Convention
was like a constitutionally anointed Wisdom
Council in many ways. It was a small group of
people who took "time out" from the normal course
of events for a high-visibility meeting. It
addressed the big issues of the day, established
a higher than normal quality of conversation,
sought consensus rather than a majority, issued a
near-unanimous proposal and then disbanded. The
final document was signed by 39 out of 42 present.
One might ask about the Constitutional
Convention, as people often do about the Wisdom
Council, "How could there be any real change
without follow-up?" It just presented its
conclusion and disbanded. Action happened because
its conclusions sparked a widespread conversation
throughout the land and initiated a
self-organizing dynamic of change. It was from
this larger conversation that the Constitution
was implemented and the Bill of Rights was added.
The whole process took only one Wisdom
Council-like meeting, plus four and a half years
of talking and thinking. In the end, "We the
People" really did "ordain and establish" the new
system.
The Citizens Amendment would establish annual
symbolic meetings of "We the People." Those
selected for Wisdom Councils would be given more
power to affect change than were the original
founders. These citizens are anointed by the U.S.
Constitution to speak for "We the People." They
are not beholden to various states or
constituencies, but can speak their minds and
hearts freely. They are not limited in what they
can talk about or recommend, but can pick any
issue, and frame it in their own way. In fact,
they need not even propose an answer. They can
just describe a problem and ask their fellow
citizens to solve it. They have the advantage of
a facilitator, the mass media and the Internet to
generate citizen resonance.
Plus, these "constitutional conventions" are not
just one-time phenomena. They are ongoing.
You and I were born into a system that we didn't
design. Nor did we have the chance to critically
examine and approve it before we came under its
control. We say that we live in a democracy
because we live in a rule-of-law system, we have
a large measure of freedom, and we vote for
elected representatives to make the laws.
Although this may be the best system on earth,
without us choosing it, it is not a democracy.
Thomas Jefferson pointed this out in a letter he
wrote to his friend, James Madison. From the
actuarial tables of his time, he had calculated
that a majority of any given generation would be
dead after about nineteen years. With this
statistic in mind, he wrote: "It may be proved
that no society can make a perpetual
constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth
belongs always to the living generation. . . .
Every constitution, then, and every law naturally
expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced
longer, it is an act of force and not of
right."[3]
Going Forward
The Wisdom Council is a new concept that needs
testing. Schools, unions, towns, cities,
counties, states, nations and all large systems
that seek democratic governance can use it.
Consultant, Nancy Rosanoff, established one
Wisdom Council experiment in Pleasantville, NY.
Nine citizens were randomly selected with the
blessing of the Town Trustees. They met for eight
hours-four hours on each of a Saturday and
Sunday. They were dynamically facilitated to
achieve unanimity. In the last half-hour, they
made a presentation to the Town Trustees. A quick
summary of their unanimous conclusions
illustrates how creative and thoughtful such a
group can be:
Theme: We need to have more pride in
Pleasantville. We can't just be a bedroom
community but need to be a real community.
There were three subheadings:
1) We need to set up a community infrastructure
to separate New York City commuter parking from
downtown parking and to redirect traffic. (They
had a design for how to do it and how to pay for
it.)
2) We need to create community spirit by
establishing a real center to the town. (The
group suggested using awnings, landscaping and
lighting, and an ongoing committee to encourage
more diverse kinds of downtown businesses.)
3) Youth should be a priority. (The group
identified an abandoned building that should be
an activity center and described ideas for its
funding. They proposed a weekend bus for youth
activities.)
So far this experiment is missing crucial pieces
that create a "We the People." The people of
Pleasantville should enact the Wisdom Council
through a citizens' initiative. The random
selection should be done in a public ceremony,
everyone in town should be invited to a
large-scale presentation of the results, and
there should be organized opportunities for
people to dialogue about the ideas and add their
views. A more complete experiment is planned for
Ashland, OR in the fall of 2003. [4] [This has
now been successfully held. - Tom Atlee] A
non-profit organization, the Center for Wise
Democratic Processes has been formed to help
communities organize Wisdom Councils.[5]
There is interest from a TV producer in a Wisdom
Council experiment for national television. One
way this might happen is to randomly select
sixteen people each quarter to meet for three
days and to have them present their unanimous
findings to a live local and national audience.
Viewers would be encouraged to watch the show
with friends or in churches and community
centers, and to comment on the results through
the Web. This allows people to experience the
Wisdom Council process and to start building a
general-interest perspective. If the timing is
right, this TV show can help establish a
"people's agenda" for the Presidential debates
and the next election.
A common response of many people when they first
hear about the Citizens Amendment is to dismiss
the concept as unworkable. But it is our current
system that will soon prove itself to be
unworkable without this change. It is on
automatic pilot, programmed with
eighteenth-century assumptions about the nature
of human beings and what is needed in the world.
It directs us to keep our heads down, to stay in
denial about our collective situation, while it
drives us toward a world we didn't choose and
that is unsustainable. The Wisdom Council offers
a way for us to call "time out," to come together
as We the People, and to take charge of our
destiny. The potential benefits are immense and
the risk is low. I hope you will investigate
further and experiment with this proposal.
Draft written for "The Good Society,"
a journal of PEGS, Committee on the Political Economy of the Good
Society
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/pegs/
A good system of governance needs to work for
both individuals and society as a whole. In the
eighteenth century the old forms of governance
headed by a king and hereditary aristocracy were
not working to the benefit of most people, and a
new system was needed. Through what we now call
the "U.S. Constitutional Convention," "We the
People" of the former colonies transformed
themselves from the rule of inherited privilege
to the rule of law. This transformation affected
governance, economics, and all aspects of life,
creating a new version of the "Good Society."
Today, that newer system is having problems, both
for us collectively and for us as individuals.
Another fundamental change is needed.
This article suggests how "We the People" might
transform ourselves once again, using a seemingly
innocuous U.S. Constitutional amendment. This
amendment borrows from the strategy of the
founders to facilitate all of us to become "We
the People" and to manage our system.
The Problem
Currently, our constitutional, rule of law,
majority-voting, free market system is on
automatic pilot managing both itself and us.
Because the system is based on competition, it
encourages each of us to maximize our own
"special interest," while the "general interest"
takes care of itself. When people were
independent farmers, fishers, and craftspeople on
a seemingly infinite planet, this self-oriented
approach automatically served the general
interest. It was a win/win game, where healthy
competition made things better for everyone.
But as we confront the limits of planetary
resources, as technology and trade link us
together, and as transnational corporations hold
sway, we are becoming more interdependent than
independent. Competition within an interdependent
whole does not serve the general interest. It's
more like the heart and lungs competing for blood
within one body. The body can't survive that way.
Consider one element within our system, a
hypothetical defense contractor. It competes for
money against other possible uses of tax dollars,
like education, protecting the environment, or
public health. With deeper pockets than its
competition, it can hire many lobbyists and make
large political donations to spread a message of
fear, emphasizing real and imaginary dangers. It
garners a big part of the budget in this country
and then sells its products to whichever client
can pay, whether or not they are a risk to our
country. The primary aim of this industry isn't
to maximize national security, but to grow the
market for its products.
By design, all companies aim more primarily for
profits than for citizen well being or a healthy
environment, or other human values. But this
design was made for a time when none of us was
powerful enough to manipulate the demand or
supply of labor or resources, ruin the commons,
or manipulate government to serve our ends. With
the shift from being independent to being
interdependent, the competitive stance of our
system now undermines local communities,
increases long-term health problems, exacerbates
global warming, promotes inequities of wealth,
risks war, crime and terrorism, and limits
individual freedoms.
To earn a living today, even if you work for
yourself, you must direct your attention, energy
and talents to serving a special interest. Those
who ignore this imperative and seek to serve
humanity directly, like to help preserve the
commons, will struggle financially.
Even our thinking process is affected by this
competition. Our political system doesn't
recognize the possibility of a "general-interest"
viewpoint, but enforces special interest
battling. Those who try to enact legislation in
the public interest, like most environmentalists,
must pretend they are a special-interest group,
and compete against well-organized, well-funded
groups who really do serve special interests.
Also, because of our competitive mind-frame, we
don't look too deeply at problems. Like someone
in an argument, rather than searching out the
underlying causes, we blame individuals like
"greedy" CEO's, "lazy" welfare recipients,
"bureaucratic" civil servants, "corrupt"
politicians, or "apathetic" citizens. We look to
non-systemic answers like better education,
active citizen involvement, better leaders, more
volunteerism, small group dialogues, fairer laws,
etc. These are vital, but for real change to
happen, we must take charge of our system.
Many people think human nature is a problem. They
imagine people to be naturally competitive and
unable to reach consensus in large groups. The
structure of our system makes it seem this way.
I've asked many people, for example, "Which set
of values should have priority in society:
Corporate values or human values?" I think
everyone has already reached consensus on
this-human values should predominate. But since
our system is in control of society, it directs
us to enact the opposite. Our job is to keep our
heads down, to serve corporate interests, and to
be in denial about what is happening in the big
picture.
"We the People" Are the Solution
How do we take charge of our system so that it
works for individuals, for all of us, for other
species, and for future generations? Key is that
we need to become "We the People." We need to
call "time out" from the system, convene everyone
together, face the big issues, dialogue
creatively, develop new options, and reach
consensus on a shared vision. If we can do this,
many of society's problems would just go away.
Accomplishing this is not as difficult as it
might seem. Once we escape from the
all-encompassing competitive stance imposed by
our system, and we are facilitated to hold a
general-interest conversation, we will find that
people are naturally attuned to this. Adding the
following "Citizens Amendment" to the U.S.
Constitution, would make the necessary change:
Each year, a lottery selects twenty-four
registered voters to form a "Wisdom
Council." This Wisdom Council is a symbol
and proxy for all the people of the United
States. It meets for up to one week to
choose issues, talk about them, and create
unanimous statements. A meeting facilitator
assures a creative, collaborative process.
At the end of the week, the Wisdom Council
presents its "Statements of the People"
to the nation in a new ceremony, like a State
of the Union message. The Wisdom Council
will then disband permanently and the next
year a new Wisdom Council will be randomly
selected.
Before considering how this Amendment would
establish an inclusive and wise "We the People,"
and how it would benefit society, notice that it
poses little risk. Congress, the Supreme Court,
laws, the media, government programs, elections,
lobbyists, and all the other elements of our
system remain unchanged. It makes no change to
our economic system either. Corporations, the
markets and the distribution of wealth are
untouched. The Citizens Amendment simply adds a
succession of different small groups that meet,
make statements, and disband. These groups have
no power of coercion, and there is little cost.
Policy continues to be set in the normal way,
through experts and elected representatives.
Transformational Conversation
Key to understanding how the Wisdom Council would
transform society is to recognize the
transformational quality of talking and thinking
it engenders, both within the Wisdom Council and
among the larger population.
I call it "choice-creating" rather than
"decision-making" because people seek progress
through breakthroughs more than through logic.
With choice-creating, diverse passionate voices
are assets rather than liabilities because they
make breakthroughs more likely. Just from talking
in this way, people change their minds and how
they feel, and they build a sense of community.
The best way for any group to reach consensus on
a difficult issue is for them to have a
breakthrough. Then consensus happens quickly,
individual views are respected, and all are
motivated to help implement the result. Debate
and deliberation, the ideals of our founders,
mute this possibility. These modes are oriented
toward critical thinking and winning the
competition, instead of creative thinking and
seeking what is best for all. Even
"consensus-building," where people are expected
to suppress their own individuality for the
benefit of the group, mutes the possibility for
breakthroughs.
The Wisdom Council is structured for choice-creating in a number of
ways.
* It is a "time out" from the usual political conversation.
* It is a diverse group of ordinary people who speak only for
themselves.
* The group must reach unanimity.
* The group has been symbolically anointed to speak as "We the People.
* And the group is aided by a facilitator-
hopefully, one who uses "Dynamic Facilitation."
Dynamic Facilitation (DF) is a new social
invention oriented to helping groups achieve
choice-creating. [1]
Tom Atlee, the author of "The Tao of Democracy:
Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That
Works for All" (www.taoofdemocracy.com) says,
"Part of why I love Dynamic Facilitation so much
is that it works with people AS THEY ARE. It
doesn't require that they buy into a set of rules
about how they're going to talk together. They
can be [jerks[ and the facilitator makes sure (a)
that they don't get shut down because of that,
(b) that the people they target -- and the group
as a whole -- continue to feel safe and (c) that
whatever gift they bring gets heard and made
available to the group mind. This alone makes DF
incredibly useful in a pluralistic democracy. Add
to that its power to metabolize conflict into
useful insights and to engender co-creativity
among diverse people, and it's a real
treasure."[2]
The Wisdom Council Can Transform Society
At first glance, a Wisdom Council doesn't seem
like it would do very much. "OK, so the group
determines a unanimous conclusion and presents
it, then what?" The Wisdom Council would identify
a general-interest viewpoint, express it in a
powerful new way and enable all-of-us-together to
have more influence over legislation.
But this is only a minor influence. It would also
educate people about the important issues,
involve more citizens in current affairs, include
minority voices and those who are currently
underrepresented, help overcome the dominance of
corporate controlled media, raise the important
issues and put them on the national agenda, and
raise the quality of the political conversation.
One big impact of the Amendment would be in how
it opens the door to a transformation of how we
make collective decisions. Consider, for example,
what it would mean to have a legitimate,
thoughtful voice of an inclusive "We the People."
This would approximate a true democracy. For
example, as the Wisdom Council process continues,
the Supreme Court [might] build trust in the
dynamic views of "We the People" today. At some
point they [might well] hold those views to be a
more relevant standard for their judgements than
the static positions taken by "We the People" of
the eighteenth century.
Currently, we do not make collective decisions in
a thoughtful way. Special interests buy the
media, politicians, and expert voices to defeat
legislation that is in the public interest.
"Sound bites" generated by highly paid public
relations firms make bad proposals sound good,
and good ones sound costly, bureaucratic, or
stupid. But a Wisdom Council can help all of us
to examine, understand, and appreciate the
underlying issues more deeply, and build the
political will for thoughtful actions.
With the Amendment in place, you and I will
participate in creating a shared vision of what
all people want. To have such a vision is a shift
in leadership style from our current reactive
mode, stopping bad things from happening, to a
pro-active mode, helping good things to happen. A
visionary leadership style requires fewer laws.
It would transform government efficiency, how the
media reports the news, and how individuals
contribute to society.
The Wisdom Council promises to shift the basis of
society from competition for scarce resources,
like a scarcity of jobs, toward cooperation to
enhance our shared abundance. In my community,
for instance, there are limited jobs for teachers
in the local school and the schools are cutting
back because of lack of funds. Yet at the same
time, there are many people who may or may not
have teaching credentials, who would dearly love
to teach kids. Our present system impoverishes
individuals and society alike by keeping this
pressing need and these vital human resources
apart. With a Wisdom Council in place, common
sense can reassert itself over the dictates of
the system.
To enact the Citizens Amendment is to open the
door to a transformation of our selves, as well.
For instance, it would help us break out of our
collective denial about the big problems we face
and our feelings of powerlessness over them. It
provides a way for all of us to become creative
and empowered in serving others and life on this
planet.
An Example from History
The best example of how the Wisdom Council can
transform our society today is how something like
it initiated a world-transformation during the
years 1787-1791. The delegates to the U.S.
Constitutional Convention didn't think of
themselves as "We the People." Most believed in
the benefits of having an aristocracy and were
fearful of democracy. They didn't include slaves,
women, Native Americans, or those who had no
property in their design for governance. But
despite these non-democratic tendencies, the
founders described the U.S. Constitution as
having been written by "We the People."
This phrasing was not what they wanted to say. To
them, it was really the states that were
ordaining and establishing this Constitution. But
since the Convention had already decided that the
Constitution would go into effect after
ratification by nine of the thirteen states, and
no one knew which states would adopt it, the
document couldn't start with a list of states.
"We the People" was a grammatically convenient
phrase.
Besides representing itself as speaking for We
the People, the U.S. Constitutional Convention
was like a constitutionally anointed Wisdom
Council in many ways. It was a small group of
people who took "time out" from the normal course
of events for a high-visibility meeting. It
addressed the big issues of the day, established
a higher than normal quality of conversation,
sought consensus rather than a majority, issued a
near-unanimous proposal and then disbanded. The
final document was signed by 39 out of 42 present.
One might ask about the Constitutional
Convention, as people often do about the Wisdom
Council, "How could there be any real change
without follow-up?" It just presented its
conclusion and disbanded. Action happened because
its conclusions sparked a widespread conversation
throughout the land and initiated a
self-organizing dynamic of change. It was from
this larger conversation that the Constitution
was implemented and the Bill of Rights was added.
The whole process took only one Wisdom
Council-like meeting, plus four and a half years
of talking and thinking. In the end, "We the
People" really did "ordain and establish" the new
system.
The Citizens Amendment would establish annual
symbolic meetings of "We the People." Those
selected for Wisdom Councils would be given more
power to affect change than were the original
founders. These citizens are anointed by the U.S.
Constitution to speak for "We the People." They
are not beholden to various states or
constituencies, but can speak their minds and
hearts freely. They are not limited in what they
can talk about or recommend, but can pick any
issue, and frame it in their own way. In fact,
they need not even propose an answer. They can
just describe a problem and ask their fellow
citizens to solve it. They have the advantage of
a facilitator, the mass media and the Internet to
generate citizen resonance.
Plus, these "constitutional conventions" are not
just one-time phenomena. They are ongoing.
You and I were born into a system that we didn't
design. Nor did we have the chance to critically
examine and approve it before we came under its
control. We say that we live in a democracy
because we live in a rule-of-law system, we have
a large measure of freedom, and we vote for
elected representatives to make the laws.
Although this may be the best system on earth,
without us choosing it, it is not a democracy.
Thomas Jefferson pointed this out in a letter he
wrote to his friend, James Madison. From the
actuarial tables of his time, he had calculated
that a majority of any given generation would be
dead after about nineteen years. With this
statistic in mind, he wrote: "It may be proved
that no society can make a perpetual
constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth
belongs always to the living generation. . . .
Every constitution, then, and every law naturally
expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced
longer, it is an act of force and not of
right."[3]
Going Forward
The Wisdom Council is a new concept that needs
testing. Schools, unions, towns, cities,
counties, states, nations and all large systems
that seek democratic governance can use it.
Consultant, Nancy Rosanoff, established one
Wisdom Council experiment in Pleasantville, NY.
Nine citizens were randomly selected with the
blessing of the Town Trustees. They met for eight
hours-four hours on each of a Saturday and
Sunday. They were dynamically facilitated to
achieve unanimity. In the last half-hour, they
made a presentation to the Town Trustees. A quick
summary of their unanimous conclusions
illustrates how creative and thoughtful such a
group can be:
Theme: We need to have more pride in
Pleasantville. We can't just be a bedroom
community but need to be a real community.
There were three subheadings:
1) We need to set up a community infrastructure
to separate New York City commuter parking from
downtown parking and to redirect traffic. (They
had a design for how to do it and how to pay for
it.)
2) We need to create community spirit by
establishing a real center to the town. (The
group suggested using awnings, landscaping and
lighting, and an ongoing committee to encourage
more diverse kinds of downtown businesses.)
3) Youth should be a priority. (The group
identified an abandoned building that should be
an activity center and described ideas for its
funding. They proposed a weekend bus for youth
activities.)
So far this experiment is missing crucial pieces
that create a "We the People." The people of
Pleasantville should enact the Wisdom Council
through a citizens' initiative. The random
selection should be done in a public ceremony,
everyone in town should be invited to a
large-scale presentation of the results, and
there should be organized opportunities for
people to dialogue about the ideas and add their
views. A more complete experiment is planned for
Ashland, OR in the fall of 2003. [4] [This has
now been successfully held. - Tom Atlee] A
non-profit organization, the Center for Wise
Democratic Processes has been formed to help
communities organize Wisdom Councils.[5]
There is interest from a TV producer in a Wisdom
Council experiment for national television. One
way this might happen is to randomly select
sixteen people each quarter to meet for three
days and to have them present their unanimous
findings to a live local and national audience.
Viewers would be encouraged to watch the show
with friends or in churches and community
centers, and to comment on the results through
the Web. This allows people to experience the
Wisdom Council process and to start building a
general-interest perspective. If the timing is
right, this TV show can help establish a
"people's agenda" for the Presidential debates
and the next election.
A common response of many people when they first
hear about the Citizens Amendment is to dismiss
the concept as unworkable. But it is our current
system that will soon prove itself to be
unworkable without this change. It is on
automatic pilot, programmed with
eighteenth-century assumptions about the nature
of human beings and what is needed in the world.
It directs us to keep our heads down, to stay in
denial about our collective situation, while it
drives us toward a world we didn't choose and
that is unsustainable. The Wisdom Council offers
a way for us to call "time out," to come together
as We the People, and to take charge of our
destiny. The potential benefits are immense and
the risk is low. I hope you will investigate
further and experiment with this proposal.
America's Abu Ghraibs
May 31, 2004
By BOB HERBERT
Most Americans were shocked by the sadistic treatment of
Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. But we shouldn't
have been. Not only are inmates at prisons in the U.S. frequently
subjected
to similarly grotesque treatment, but Congress passed a law in 1996 to
ensure that in most cases they were barred from receiving any financial
compensation for the abuse.
We routinely treat prisoners in the United States like
animals. We brutalize and degrade them, both men and women.
And we have a lousy record when it comes to protecting well-behaved,
weak
and mentally ill prisoners from the predators surrounding them.
Very few Americans have raised their voices in opposition
to our shameful prison policies. And I'm convinced that's primarily
because
the inmates are viewed as less than human.
Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights,
represented several prisoners in Georgia who sought compensation in the
late-1990's for treatment that was remarkably similar to the abuses at
Abu
Ghraib. An undertaker named Wayne Garner was in charge of the prison
system
at the time, having been appointed in 1995 by the governor, Zell
Miller, who
is now a U.S. senator.
Mr. Garner considered himself a tough guy. In a federal
lawsuit brought on behalf of the prisoners by the center,
he was quoted as saying that while there were some inmates
who "truly want to do better . . . there's another 30 to 35
per cent that ain't fit to kill. And I'm going to be there
to accommodate them."
On Oct. 23, 1996, officers from the Tactical Squad of the Georgia
Department
of Corrections raided the inmates' living quarters at Dooly State
Prison, a
medium-security facility in Unadilla, Ga. This was part of a series of
brutal shakedowns at prisons around the state that were designed to
show the
prisoners that a new and tougher regime was in charge.
What followed, according to the lawsuit, was simply sick. Officers
opened
cell doors and ordered the inmates, all males, to run outside and
strip.
With female prison staff members looking on, and at times laughing,
several
inmates were subjected to extensive and wholly unnecessary body cavity
searches. The inmates were ordered to lift their genitals, to squat, to
bend
over and display themselves, etc.
One inmate who was suspected of being gay was told that if
he ever said anything about the way he was being treated,
he would be locked up and beaten until he wouldn't "want to
be gay anymore." An officer who was staring at another
naked inmate said, "I bet you can tap dance." The inmate
was forced to dance, and then had his body cavities
searched.
An inmate in a dormitory identified as J-2 was slapped in
the face and ordered to bend over and show himself to his cellmate. The
raiding party apparently found that to be hilarious.
According to the lawsuit, Mr. Garner himself, the commissioner of the
Department of Corrections, was present at the Dooly Prison raid.
None of the prisoners named in the lawsuit were accused of
any improper behavior during the course of the raid. The suit
charged that the inmates' constitutional rights had been violated
and sought compensation for the pain, suffering, humiliation and
degradation they had been subjected to.
Fat chance.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act, designed in part to limit "frivolous"
lawsuits by inmates, was passed by Congress and signed into law by Bill
Clinton in 1996. It specifically prohibits the awarding of financial
compensation to prisoners "for mental or emotional injury while in
custody
without a prior showing of physical injury."
Without any evidence that they had been seriously physically
harmed, the inmates in the Georgia case were out of luck.
The courts ruled against them.
This is the policy of the United States of America.
Said Mr. Bright: "Today we are talking about compensating prisoners in
Iraq
for degrading treatment, as of course we should. But we do not allow
compensation for prisoners in the United States who suffer the same
kind of
degradation and humiliation."
The message with regard to the treatment of prisoners in the U.S.
has been clear for years: Treat them any way you'd like. They're
just animals.
The treatment of the detainees in Iraq was far from an aberration.
They, too, were treated like animals, which was simply a logical
extension of the way we treat prisoners here at home.
---
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
By BOB HERBERT
Most Americans were shocked by the sadistic treatment of
Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. But we shouldn't
have been. Not only are inmates at prisons in the U.S. frequently
subjected
to similarly grotesque treatment, but Congress passed a law in 1996 to
ensure that in most cases they were barred from receiving any financial
compensation for the abuse.
We routinely treat prisoners in the United States like
animals. We brutalize and degrade them, both men and women.
And we have a lousy record when it comes to protecting well-behaved,
weak
and mentally ill prisoners from the predators surrounding them.
Very few Americans have raised their voices in opposition
to our shameful prison policies. And I'm convinced that's primarily
because
the inmates are viewed as less than human.
Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights,
represented several prisoners in Georgia who sought compensation in the
late-1990's for treatment that was remarkably similar to the abuses at
Abu
Ghraib. An undertaker named Wayne Garner was in charge of the prison
system
at the time, having been appointed in 1995 by the governor, Zell
Miller, who
is now a U.S. senator.
Mr. Garner considered himself a tough guy. In a federal
lawsuit brought on behalf of the prisoners by the center,
he was quoted as saying that while there were some inmates
who "truly want to do better . . . there's another 30 to 35
per cent that ain't fit to kill. And I'm going to be there
to accommodate them."
On Oct. 23, 1996, officers from the Tactical Squad of the Georgia
Department
of Corrections raided the inmates' living quarters at Dooly State
Prison, a
medium-security facility in Unadilla, Ga. This was part of a series of
brutal shakedowns at prisons around the state that were designed to
show the
prisoners that a new and tougher regime was in charge.
What followed, according to the lawsuit, was simply sick. Officers
opened
cell doors and ordered the inmates, all males, to run outside and
strip.
With female prison staff members looking on, and at times laughing,
several
inmates were subjected to extensive and wholly unnecessary body cavity
searches. The inmates were ordered to lift their genitals, to squat, to
bend
over and display themselves, etc.
One inmate who was suspected of being gay was told that if
he ever said anything about the way he was being treated,
he would be locked up and beaten until he wouldn't "want to
be gay anymore." An officer who was staring at another
naked inmate said, "I bet you can tap dance." The inmate
was forced to dance, and then had his body cavities
searched.
An inmate in a dormitory identified as J-2 was slapped in
the face and ordered to bend over and show himself to his cellmate. The
raiding party apparently found that to be hilarious.
According to the lawsuit, Mr. Garner himself, the commissioner of the
Department of Corrections, was present at the Dooly Prison raid.
None of the prisoners named in the lawsuit were accused of
any improper behavior during the course of the raid. The suit
charged that the inmates' constitutional rights had been violated
and sought compensation for the pain, suffering, humiliation and
degradation they had been subjected to.
Fat chance.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act, designed in part to limit "frivolous"
lawsuits by inmates, was passed by Congress and signed into law by Bill
Clinton in 1996. It specifically prohibits the awarding of financial
compensation to prisoners "for mental or emotional injury while in
custody
without a prior showing of physical injury."
Without any evidence that they had been seriously physically
harmed, the inmates in the Georgia case were out of luck.
The courts ruled against them.
This is the policy of the United States of America.
Said Mr. Bright: "Today we are talking about compensating prisoners in
Iraq
for degrading treatment, as of course we should. But we do not allow
compensation for prisoners in the United States who suffer the same
kind of
degradation and humiliation."
The message with regard to the treatment of prisoners in the U.S.
has been clear for years: Treat them any way you'd like. They're
just animals.
The treatment of the detainees in Iraq was far from an aberration.
They, too, were treated like animals, which was simply a logical
extension of the way we treat prisoners here at home.
---
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
23 September 2006
V-Day Karama Partners Issue Statement on Violence in Middle East
August 7, 2006
V-Day's mission is to end violence against women and girls worldwide. As such, we stand in opposition to war. We ask all political leaders to break the old paradigm of responding to violence with more violence. Instead we urge them to seek more sophisticated solutions that work to reveal the root causes of violence and transformation of violence rather than the escalation of it.
Following is a statement from our V-Day Karama partners on the ongoing violence in Lebanon and Gaza. “Karama,” the Arabic word for dignity, is a unique partnership with nine countries of the Middle East and North Africa: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Sudan.
-V-Day
STATEMENT FROM V-DAY KARAMA PARTNERS
As Arab organizations and representatives of human rights efforts, as citizens in countries living under political violence and different types of occupations, and as women working together to gain peace with dignity, we oppose all forms of violence.
Therefore, we condemn the horrific attacks and extreme military force being used against civilians, including women and children, in Lebanon and Gaza. We condemn the rush to inflict weapons and killing instead of attempting non-violent negotiations and prisoner exchange.
We condemn the United States government's material and political support of the attacks by Israel, the G8's one-sided response, and the deafening silence from some Arab Governments which ignores and condones the heinous scale of civilian casualties and infrastructural damage suffered by the families and communities of Lebanon and Gaza—more than 650 death in Lebanon and 106 in Gaza since 25 June 2006.
As the Israeli air strikes continue well-past 1,500 bombings, as the death and destruction mounts, we condemn the disproportionate harm being done to Lebanese and Palestinian civilians—taking lives, health, homes, livelihoods, economic development, the rule of law, infrastructure, and governance for years to come. In just the past few days, Beirut has seen the appearance of 500,000 displaced families and refugees.
We are women leaders from nine countries across the Arab Region, linked through V-Day Karama, addressing violence against women from every angle of society and politics. When political and military violence erupts, our work begins there.
This includes the conflicts elsewhere in Iraq and Sudan that have leveraged exponential political, military, and humanitarian crises that undermine community and human security for a generation. As the Karama partners we are coordinating common actions to cease these crises. "Karama" means dignity, a prerequisite for establishing peace and keeping an end to violence.
We are women in the region asking the international community and international human rights organizations to take a decisive stand against the attack without any neutrality. We believe that this is the time for these organizations to show their support of our issues and to act immediately to cease fire, take urgent action for solidarity with Lebanese and Palestinian people, and to provide humanitarian assistance for the displaced.
Starting immediately, Karama partners in and around Lebanon and Gaza have set forth the following actions:
- Hold a prominent event on the 2nd of September in Jordan by V-Day Karama, Al Gad News Paper and TV Satellite Channel, and Arab Women Organization of Jordan to support women's NGOs in Lebanon in their struggle for providing humanitarian assistance.
- Activities to support Lebanese women's organizations in the nine countries that Karama work in, as Lebanese people start facing shortages in food, medicine, and fuel.
- Distribute the statements and calls from Lebanese Civil Society Organizations to the international organizations and UN agencies.
- In Addition to activities will be held by Karama partners in each of the Arab Countries.
Organization/Country
1. V-Day Karama
Based in nine Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Sudan, and Tunisia) with headquarters in Egypt and a regional office in Jordan
2. Arab Women of Organization
Jordan
3. Women in Communication Society
Algeria
4. The Human Forum for Women
Jordan
5. Women Will of Iraq
Iraq
6. ACT
Egypt
7. Egyptian Family Foundation
Egypt
8. The Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights
Egypt
9. Syrian Committee for Women Causes
Syria
10. Research Centre for Refugees Studies
Jordan
11. Kafa (Enough) Violence and Exploitation
Lebanon
12. Hey Institute
Egypt
13. The Lebanese Democratic Forum for Women
Lebanon
14. Najdeh, Palestinian Women Forum
Lebanon
15. Al Nadeem Centre
Egypt
16. Jordanian Society for Professional Ethics
Jordan
17. Women Organization to Combat Illiteracy
Jordan
18. The Jordanian Society for Development
Jordan
19. Izdihar Project for Family Development
Jordan
20. Al Asera Al Bedaa' Society
Jordan
21. Al Nakheel Society
Morocco
22. The Alliance for Syrian Women
Syria
23. UMI Society
Egypt
24. Women and Society Organization
Egypt
25. Union de l'Action Féminine ,
Morocco
26. The Society for Women In Crises
Algeria
27. The Egyptian Centre for Housing Rights
Egypt
28. The Center for Studies & Programs of Alternative Development
Egypt
29. Al Hassna Magazine
Lebanon
30. Jordan Society for Profession and Work Ethics
Jordan
31. Women Movement for Peace Society
Algeria
32. EACPE
Egypt
33. Mosawa Network,
Jordan
34. The Egyptian Forum for Women and Development,
Egypt
35. Salmmah Centre for Gender and Development
Sudan
36. Siha Horn of Africa Network,
Sudan
37. Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling,
Palestine
38. Women against Violence,
Palestine
39. Eve Centre for Counseling,
Morocco
40. Tunisian Women Society for Research and Development
Tunisia
41. The Arab Society for Sociologists
Tunisia
42. The Arab Alliance for women
Egypt
43. Center for Egyptian Women Issues
Egypt
44. Gender Centre for Research And Training
Sudan
45. Women Society for Solidarity with Urban Families
Algeria
46. The National Union for Algerian Women
Algeria
47. The National Committee for Women and Sport
Algeria
48. National Society for Women's Development
Algeria
49. The National Organizations for Families Victims of Terrorism
Algeria
50. The National Society for Urban Women and development
Algeria
51. Parliamentarian Women's Forum
Algeria
52. Society for Enhancement of Women's Activities
Algeria
53. Iqra' (read) Society)
Algeria
54. National Society for Family Development
Algeria
55. The Moroccan Society for Advocating Women's Rights/ Fama Centre
Morocco
56. The Moroccan Society for Combating Violence against Women
Morocco
About V-Day Karama
In 2005, V-Day continued its initiatives in Africa, Asia and the Middle East by launching the Karama Program, envisioned by V-Day Special Representative and Karama Chair, Hibaaq Osman, in Cairo, Egypt. “Karama,” the Arabic word for dignity, is a unique partnership with nine countries of the Middle East and North Africa: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Sudan. Through women's organizations and inter-regional agencies such as the Arab League and the African Union, Karama brings together women, men, governments, activists and artists to examine the impact of violence on women's health, education, and economics, and to create and encourage campaigns at the national, regional, and international levels to end violence against women, tailored to the cultural realities of the target country. Headquartered in Cairo, Karama works closely with organizations working in different sectors, and on different issues in each society, such as education, health, religion, art, economics, and policy.
V-Day's mission is to end violence against women and girls worldwide. As such, we stand in opposition to war. We ask all political leaders to break the old paradigm of responding to violence with more violence. Instead we urge them to seek more sophisticated solutions that work to reveal the root causes of violence and transformation of violence rather than the escalation of it.
Following is a statement from our V-Day Karama partners on the ongoing violence in Lebanon and Gaza. “Karama,” the Arabic word for dignity, is a unique partnership with nine countries of the Middle East and North Africa: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Sudan.
-V-Day
STATEMENT FROM V-DAY KARAMA PARTNERS
As Arab organizations and representatives of human rights efforts, as citizens in countries living under political violence and different types of occupations, and as women working together to gain peace with dignity, we oppose all forms of violence.
Therefore, we condemn the horrific attacks and extreme military force being used against civilians, including women and children, in Lebanon and Gaza. We condemn the rush to inflict weapons and killing instead of attempting non-violent negotiations and prisoner exchange.
We condemn the United States government's material and political support of the attacks by Israel, the G8's one-sided response, and the deafening silence from some Arab Governments which ignores and condones the heinous scale of civilian casualties and infrastructural damage suffered by the families and communities of Lebanon and Gaza—more than 650 death in Lebanon and 106 in Gaza since 25 June 2006.
As the Israeli air strikes continue well-past 1,500 bombings, as the death and destruction mounts, we condemn the disproportionate harm being done to Lebanese and Palestinian civilians—taking lives, health, homes, livelihoods, economic development, the rule of law, infrastructure, and governance for years to come. In just the past few days, Beirut has seen the appearance of 500,000 displaced families and refugees.
We are women leaders from nine countries across the Arab Region, linked through V-Day Karama, addressing violence against women from every angle of society and politics. When political and military violence erupts, our work begins there.
This includes the conflicts elsewhere in Iraq and Sudan that have leveraged exponential political, military, and humanitarian crises that undermine community and human security for a generation. As the Karama partners we are coordinating common actions to cease these crises. "Karama" means dignity, a prerequisite for establishing peace and keeping an end to violence.
We are women in the region asking the international community and international human rights organizations to take a decisive stand against the attack without any neutrality. We believe that this is the time for these organizations to show their support of our issues and to act immediately to cease fire, take urgent action for solidarity with Lebanese and Palestinian people, and to provide humanitarian assistance for the displaced.
Starting immediately, Karama partners in and around Lebanon and Gaza have set forth the following actions:
- Hold a prominent event on the 2nd of September in Jordan by V-Day Karama, Al Gad News Paper and TV Satellite Channel, and Arab Women Organization of Jordan to support women's NGOs in Lebanon in their struggle for providing humanitarian assistance.
- Activities to support Lebanese women's organizations in the nine countries that Karama work in, as Lebanese people start facing shortages in food, medicine, and fuel.
- Distribute the statements and calls from Lebanese Civil Society Organizations to the international organizations and UN agencies.
- In Addition to activities will be held by Karama partners in each of the Arab Countries.
Organization/Country
1. V-Day Karama
Based in nine Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Sudan, and Tunisia) with headquarters in Egypt and a regional office in Jordan
2. Arab Women of Organization
Jordan
3. Women in Communication Society
Algeria
4. The Human Forum for Women
Jordan
5. Women Will of Iraq
Iraq
6. ACT
Egypt
7. Egyptian Family Foundation
Egypt
8. The Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights
Egypt
9. Syrian Committee for Women Causes
Syria
10. Research Centre for Refugees Studies
Jordan
11. Kafa (Enough) Violence and Exploitation
Lebanon
12. Hey Institute
Egypt
13. The Lebanese Democratic Forum for Women
Lebanon
14. Najdeh, Palestinian Women Forum
Lebanon
15. Al Nadeem Centre
Egypt
16. Jordanian Society for Professional Ethics
Jordan
17. Women Organization to Combat Illiteracy
Jordan
18. The Jordanian Society for Development
Jordan
19. Izdihar Project for Family Development
Jordan
20. Al Asera Al Bedaa' Society
Jordan
21. Al Nakheel Society
Morocco
22. The Alliance for Syrian Women
Syria
23. UMI Society
Egypt
24. Women and Society Organization
Egypt
25. Union de l'Action Féminine ,
Morocco
26. The Society for Women In Crises
Algeria
27. The Egyptian Centre for Housing Rights
Egypt
28. The Center for Studies & Programs of Alternative Development
Egypt
29. Al Hassna Magazine
Lebanon
30. Jordan Society for Profession and Work Ethics
Jordan
31. Women Movement for Peace Society
Algeria
32. EACPE
Egypt
33. Mosawa Network,
Jordan
34. The Egyptian Forum for Women and Development,
Egypt
35. Salmmah Centre for Gender and Development
Sudan
36. Siha Horn of Africa Network,
Sudan
37. Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling,
Palestine
38. Women against Violence,
Palestine
39. Eve Centre for Counseling,
Morocco
40. Tunisian Women Society for Research and Development
Tunisia
41. The Arab Society for Sociologists
Tunisia
42. The Arab Alliance for women
Egypt
43. Center for Egyptian Women Issues
Egypt
44. Gender Centre for Research And Training
Sudan
45. Women Society for Solidarity with Urban Families
Algeria
46. The National Union for Algerian Women
Algeria
47. The National Committee for Women and Sport
Algeria
48. National Society for Women's Development
Algeria
49. The National Organizations for Families Victims of Terrorism
Algeria
50. The National Society for Urban Women and development
Algeria
51. Parliamentarian Women's Forum
Algeria
52. Society for Enhancement of Women's Activities
Algeria
53. Iqra' (read) Society)
Algeria
54. National Society for Family Development
Algeria
55. The Moroccan Society for Advocating Women's Rights/ Fama Centre
Morocco
56. The Moroccan Society for Combating Violence against Women
Morocco
About V-Day Karama
In 2005, V-Day continued its initiatives in Africa, Asia and the Middle East by launching the Karama Program, envisioned by V-Day Special Representative and Karama Chair, Hibaaq Osman, in Cairo, Egypt. “Karama,” the Arabic word for dignity, is a unique partnership with nine countries of the Middle East and North Africa: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Sudan. Through women's organizations and inter-regional agencies such as the Arab League and the African Union, Karama brings together women, men, governments, activists and artists to examine the impact of violence on women's health, education, and economics, and to create and encourage campaigns at the national, regional, and international levels to end violence against women, tailored to the cultural realities of the target country. Headquartered in Cairo, Karama works closely with organizations working in different sectors, and on different issues in each society, such as education, health, religion, art, economics, and policy.
An Open Letter to President Bush, Read by Eve Ensler at V-Day Paris
March 31, 2003
Paris, France
Dear Mr. President,
I am writing as a woman, as a citizen of the world, as an American who has just visited 16 countries, including Afghanistan, Jordan and Pakistan, working with V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.
I am writing because I believe your war on Iraq reveals your profound lack of understanding of the world.I am writing because I believe your war on Iraq reveals your profound lack of understanding of the world.
I believe your war indicates a desire to dominate, rather transform, heal, improve, or build relationships.
I do not think you understand that the United States is one country and one culture and not the only country and culture. That the spirit of domination threatens the world’s diversity and difference—the very forces that are most magical and essential to the human experience.
I do not think that you have sat with the panicked Afghan women in Kabul who believe the war will shift attention away from their country and thus bring an end to their short-lived security. I do not think you have seen the desperate face of the woman in a Ramallah refugee camp, a widow who just lost her two sons. I do not think you have been privy to the generosity of the Muslim women in the ghettos of Cairo, in the kitchens of Bosnia, in the high offices of Jordan. I do not think you have allowed these people to enter you.
I think you are in the process of polluting all that is great about America, destroying the dream, erasing the years of struggle for democracy, human rights, self-determination, tolerance and peace.
Here is a response to some of your terribly dangerous misconceptions, based on what I have seen in my travels:
1. The Muslim world is not populated by terrorists. Most people long for peace, long for justice, long for cooperation.
2. Muslims do not hate Americans. They despise the current American government as they feel it has no respect for their values, culture, religion, or ways of being. They are suspicious of a government that bombs places like Afghanistan with the promise of reconstruction and then abandons the job before the majority of people have heat, water or electricity. Terrorists are born in the cracks of broken promises.
3. The people of the Muslim world want to love Americans, as the experiment of democracy in the United States has been a great inspiration to them.
4. The loss of American lives is not worse then the loss of Iraqi lives or Israeli lives or Palestinian lives or Bosnian lives or Afghani lives. Three thousand deaths--whether it be in the World Trade Center or the streets of Baghdad or in Mazur Sharif—will always be equal to the destruction of three thousand dreams, stories, and families.
5. You cannot help people through force or violence. You help people by serving them, by asking questions, through humility, by being engaged in a process of discovery, admitting that you do not have answers and seeking answers together. You help people by providing safety and resources so they can do their best thinking. You help people by trusting they have the capacity to help themselves.
Mr. President, there is a new paradigm. I have seen it manifest itself everywhere, from Manhattan to Manila, Sarajevo to Johannesburg. Women and men who have suffered enormous violence are not buying AK-47s or machetes or weapons of mass destruction. They are not plotting retaliation or revenge. I have seen how in the Rift Valley of Africa the women who were mutilated are now opening safe houses to protect young girls from Female Genital Mutilation. In Houston, Denver, New York, Los Angeles, and Kauai, women are telling their stories of rape and domestic battery, risking shame and embarrassment so other women will be free. In Juarez, Mexico, women activists are risking assassination as they speak out against the murder and disappearances of hundreds of poor women. In the refugee camps of Peshawar, Afghan women who lost every right under the Taliban are bringing up girls and boys to be equal. In the community centers of Mostar, women who were raped during the Bosnian war are working with soldiers to heal their trauma. In Islamabad, women are risking Fatwa to save other women from acid burnings and honor killings. In the streets of Paris, women are risking everything to hide women from their pimps and save their daughters from sex slavery. These are the new warriors--those who transform the violence into healing. Those who are creative and imaginative and careful in their response.
Women and men all over the world know that the time of violence is over. Your war will not divide or distract us or undo this new paradigm. Yes, the story of violence is in our bodies. But so is the new determination and strength. We grieve the centuries of rape, bombings, brutality, and cruelty. We refuse to act in kind. Instead we hold and transform this violence, and we do everything in our power to prevent this from happening again to anyone, anywhere.
We urge you to stop the bombing, to stop the dominating.
End the old paradigm. Join us here on the other side.
Sincerely,
Eve Ensler
Activist/Playwright/Founder, V-Day
Paris, France
Dear Mr. President,
I am writing as a woman, as a citizen of the world, as an American who has just visited 16 countries, including Afghanistan, Jordan and Pakistan, working with V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.
I am writing because I believe your war on Iraq reveals your profound lack of understanding of the world.I am writing because I believe your war on Iraq reveals your profound lack of understanding of the world.
I believe your war indicates a desire to dominate, rather transform, heal, improve, or build relationships.
I do not think you understand that the United States is one country and one culture and not the only country and culture. That the spirit of domination threatens the world’s diversity and difference—the very forces that are most magical and essential to the human experience.
I do not think that you have sat with the panicked Afghan women in Kabul who believe the war will shift attention away from their country and thus bring an end to their short-lived security. I do not think you have seen the desperate face of the woman in a Ramallah refugee camp, a widow who just lost her two sons. I do not think you have been privy to the generosity of the Muslim women in the ghettos of Cairo, in the kitchens of Bosnia, in the high offices of Jordan. I do not think you have allowed these people to enter you.
I think you are in the process of polluting all that is great about America, destroying the dream, erasing the years of struggle for democracy, human rights, self-determination, tolerance and peace.
Here is a response to some of your terribly dangerous misconceptions, based on what I have seen in my travels:
1. The Muslim world is not populated by terrorists. Most people long for peace, long for justice, long for cooperation.
2. Muslims do not hate Americans. They despise the current American government as they feel it has no respect for their values, culture, religion, or ways of being. They are suspicious of a government that bombs places like Afghanistan with the promise of reconstruction and then abandons the job before the majority of people have heat, water or electricity. Terrorists are born in the cracks of broken promises.
3. The people of the Muslim world want to love Americans, as the experiment of democracy in the United States has been a great inspiration to them.
4. The loss of American lives is not worse then the loss of Iraqi lives or Israeli lives or Palestinian lives or Bosnian lives or Afghani lives. Three thousand deaths--whether it be in the World Trade Center or the streets of Baghdad or in Mazur Sharif—will always be equal to the destruction of three thousand dreams, stories, and families.
5. You cannot help people through force or violence. You help people by serving them, by asking questions, through humility, by being engaged in a process of discovery, admitting that you do not have answers and seeking answers together. You help people by providing safety and resources so they can do their best thinking. You help people by trusting they have the capacity to help themselves.
Mr. President, there is a new paradigm. I have seen it manifest itself everywhere, from Manhattan to Manila, Sarajevo to Johannesburg. Women and men who have suffered enormous violence are not buying AK-47s or machetes or weapons of mass destruction. They are not plotting retaliation or revenge. I have seen how in the Rift Valley of Africa the women who were mutilated are now opening safe houses to protect young girls from Female Genital Mutilation. In Houston, Denver, New York, Los Angeles, and Kauai, women are telling their stories of rape and domestic battery, risking shame and embarrassment so other women will be free. In Juarez, Mexico, women activists are risking assassination as they speak out against the murder and disappearances of hundreds of poor women. In the refugee camps of Peshawar, Afghan women who lost every right under the Taliban are bringing up girls and boys to be equal. In the community centers of Mostar, women who were raped during the Bosnian war are working with soldiers to heal their trauma. In Islamabad, women are risking Fatwa to save other women from acid burnings and honor killings. In the streets of Paris, women are risking everything to hide women from their pimps and save their daughters from sex slavery. These are the new warriors--those who transform the violence into healing. Those who are creative and imaginative and careful in their response.
Women and men all over the world know that the time of violence is over. Your war will not divide or distract us or undo this new paradigm. Yes, the story of violence is in our bodies. But so is the new determination and strength. We grieve the centuries of rape, bombings, brutality, and cruelty. We refuse to act in kind. Instead we hold and transform this violence, and we do everything in our power to prevent this from happening again to anyone, anywhere.
We urge you to stop the bombing, to stop the dominating.
End the old paradigm. Join us here on the other side.
Sincerely,
Eve Ensler
Activist/Playwright/Founder, V-Day
This Is Most Fragile Time for Afghanistan
After her most recent trip to Afghanistan, playwright and women's activist Eve Ensler pleads for the U.S. to keep its promises to stabilize the country, which she likens to a patient at a dangerous point of recovery.
I have just returned from Afghanistan. This was my third trip. I write now because the situation is urgent. Afghanistan today reminds me of a person who has been seriously ill. She is just beginning to recover, the fever has broken and there are those early moments where she suddenly feels alive. We know this is the most dangerous time. The energy is part of the fever itself, a kind of delirium, but the patient thrilled with the possibility of living, if not protected can go wild with activity. This exertion can have deadly consequences. In the case of Afghanistan this somewhat frenzied, disorganized activity comes not just from a momentary recovery-a ceasing of bombs falling but from a deep panic that the recovery is short lived and not guaranteed and so everything must be done now or it will disappear forever.
I would say this is the most fragile time I have experienced in Afghanistan.
Under the Taliban it was a tortured, ruinously oppressed country, but women in particular knew what to prepare for, they knew how to defend themselves against the madness, they could identify their enemies, they were braced for violence. They had learned how to maneuver in clandestine ways. Now for example, the situation is less clear, there is the pretense of liberation, although the ongoing threat of violence can be felt.
For example, at our recent women's leadership training conference women, who were visionary about the future, felt compelled to still wear burqas. On March 8, there were huge events celebrating International Women's day. One event at the Afghan Women's Union unveiled a statue symbolizing women's freedom and power. Hundreds attended. A day later the statue was stolen. The Women's Minister who in theory is the symbolic representative of Afghan women cannot move anywhere in the country without bodyguards. Although women are now working to create new businesses, build schools, open hospitals, the majority of the people in Afghanistan still live without heat, electricity or running water.
Having spent time in recent months with Afghan women in Kabul, as well as women and men in Amman, Cairo, Ramallah, Islamabad, and Peshawar, I can say that the Muslim world is highly suspect of the intentions of the U.S. government. They are watching Afghanistan. It is the test case. If the U.S. does not deliver security, substantial aid and reconstruction, we may never recover the trust of the Muslim world. If we turn our backs on Afghanistan, if we do not fulfill our promises, there is a good chance that the patient will never recover nor will she fulfill her dream of a free, safe and prospering Afghanistan. Terrorists are born in the cracks of broken promises.
- Eve Ensler
Eve Ensler, playwright of "The Vagina Monologues," is the Founder and Artistic Director of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.
This commentary appeared on Women¹s eNews (http://womensenews.org) on April 30, 2003
http://www.vday.org/contents/vday/press/media/0305021
I have just returned from Afghanistan. This was my third trip. I write now because the situation is urgent. Afghanistan today reminds me of a person who has been seriously ill. She is just beginning to recover, the fever has broken and there are those early moments where she suddenly feels alive. We know this is the most dangerous time. The energy is part of the fever itself, a kind of delirium, but the patient thrilled with the possibility of living, if not protected can go wild with activity. This exertion can have deadly consequences. In the case of Afghanistan this somewhat frenzied, disorganized activity comes not just from a momentary recovery-a ceasing of bombs falling but from a deep panic that the recovery is short lived and not guaranteed and so everything must be done now or it will disappear forever.
I would say this is the most fragile time I have experienced in Afghanistan.
Under the Taliban it was a tortured, ruinously oppressed country, but women in particular knew what to prepare for, they knew how to defend themselves against the madness, they could identify their enemies, they were braced for violence. They had learned how to maneuver in clandestine ways. Now for example, the situation is less clear, there is the pretense of liberation, although the ongoing threat of violence can be felt.
For example, at our recent women's leadership training conference women, who were visionary about the future, felt compelled to still wear burqas. On March 8, there were huge events celebrating International Women's day. One event at the Afghan Women's Union unveiled a statue symbolizing women's freedom and power. Hundreds attended. A day later the statue was stolen. The Women's Minister who in theory is the symbolic representative of Afghan women cannot move anywhere in the country without bodyguards. Although women are now working to create new businesses, build schools, open hospitals, the majority of the people in Afghanistan still live without heat, electricity or running water.
Having spent time in recent months with Afghan women in Kabul, as well as women and men in Amman, Cairo, Ramallah, Islamabad, and Peshawar, I can say that the Muslim world is highly suspect of the intentions of the U.S. government. They are watching Afghanistan. It is the test case. If the U.S. does not deliver security, substantial aid and reconstruction, we may never recover the trust of the Muslim world. If we turn our backs on Afghanistan, if we do not fulfill our promises, there is a good chance that the patient will never recover nor will she fulfill her dream of a free, safe and prospering Afghanistan. Terrorists are born in the cracks of broken promises.
- Eve Ensler
Eve Ensler, playwright of "The Vagina Monologues," is the Founder and Artistic Director of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.
This commentary appeared on Women¹s eNews (http://womensenews.org) on April 30, 2003
http://www.vday.org/contents/vday/press/media/0305021
VM in the ME
I am writing from Cairo. Today we were part a truly momentous event, the opening of Bayat Hawa, the first shelter in Egypt for battered women. This event not only opened the first safe place for women here, but it broke open the silence and invisibility of women’s pain. It signaled that change is possible. I spent the afternoon in the new house, listening to a group of women who have suffered and continue to suffer enormous violence. Most of them had been beaten by their husbands, their brothers, their fathers. Traditionally, women do not report this to anyone as “privacy” of the family is valued above all else, and there are no laws that would protect them from such assault. If women complain, they risk their husbands, marrying another wife and taking their children away from them. Saffa, a fifteen-year old girl who was beaten by her father for years, was married at 14 and then seriously beaten by her husband. She has now moved back to her father’s house where the abuse continues. As Saffa told her story the sadness in her eyes was matched by the depth of her desire for a new life, for education, for a way out.
[...]
The policies of the United States are in many cases, escalating this war. If we look at Iraq as one example, we see that under the terrible tyranny of Saddam Hussein, women lived difficult lives, but they were actually one of the most liberated and free in the Middle East. Since the U.S. invasion and occupation, the situation has becoming increasingly desperate. Women now face ongoing abductions, honor killings, and fundamentalist oppression. They are being raped and acid burned. They do not feel safe leaving their homes or keeping jobs. Shariah law – which could seriously limit their rights - is likely to become part of the new constitution.
Where people feel threatened and undermined by outside invasion, fundamentalism grows. Fundamentalism survives on the suppression and silencing of women. As the United States sustains policies of empire building and hegemony, in the supposed name of “security”, women throughout the world, become increasingly imperiled and insecure.
As I have traveled these last eight years, I have had the honor to meet women and men across this planet who have witnessed or suffered enormous violence, and rather than getting an AK47 or a machete, they feel this violence, grieve this violence and allow it to transform within their beings. Then they devote their lives to making sure it never happens to another woman or girl. We have come to call these people ‘Vagina Warriors.’ There are thousands, perhaps millions of these warriors in the world. They are fierce, obsessed, can’t be stopped, driven. They are citizens of the world. They cherish humanity over nationhood. They are done being victims. They know no one is coming to rescue them. They are community makers. They bring everyone in.
They are women and men who constantly sacrifice their own personal security and by doing so create real safety and freedom for the rest. They realize that the end goal is becoming vulnerable, realizing the place of our connection to one another rather than becoming secure, in control and alone.
- Eve Ensler
http://www.vday.org/contents/vday/vmoment/wfntest
[...]
The policies of the United States are in many cases, escalating this war. If we look at Iraq as one example, we see that under the terrible tyranny of Saddam Hussein, women lived difficult lives, but they were actually one of the most liberated and free in the Middle East. Since the U.S. invasion and occupation, the situation has becoming increasingly desperate. Women now face ongoing abductions, honor killings, and fundamentalist oppression. They are being raped and acid burned. They do not feel safe leaving their homes or keeping jobs. Shariah law – which could seriously limit their rights - is likely to become part of the new constitution.
Where people feel threatened and undermined by outside invasion, fundamentalism grows. Fundamentalism survives on the suppression and silencing of women. As the United States sustains policies of empire building and hegemony, in the supposed name of “security”, women throughout the world, become increasingly imperiled and insecure.
As I have traveled these last eight years, I have had the honor to meet women and men across this planet who have witnessed or suffered enormous violence, and rather than getting an AK47 or a machete, they feel this violence, grieve this violence and allow it to transform within their beings. Then they devote their lives to making sure it never happens to another woman or girl. We have come to call these people ‘Vagina Warriors.’ There are thousands, perhaps millions of these warriors in the world. They are fierce, obsessed, can’t be stopped, driven. They are citizens of the world. They cherish humanity over nationhood. They are done being victims. They know no one is coming to rescue them. They are community makers. They bring everyone in.
They are women and men who constantly sacrifice their own personal security and by doing so create real safety and freedom for the rest. They realize that the end goal is becoming vulnerable, realizing the place of our connection to one another rather than becoming secure, in control and alone.
- Eve Ensler
http://www.vday.org/contents/vday/vmoment/wfntest
23 August 2006
Window on Iran
From: Fatemeh Keshavarz
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2006 6:42 PM
Subject: Window on Iran
Dear Friends,
In the past few months, the U.S. media coverage of Iran has gone from bad to unbelievable. It used to emphasize the negative and leave out the positive. It now appears to be inventing information that those of us in close contact with Iran are unable to trace. For example, in May 2006 there was a report in the papers here that the Iranian Jews will be forced to wear a uniform. Last weekend, another breaking news was: Ahmadinejad is imposing a ban on the use of foreign words. There is no truth to either of these (I won't list more).
Some of us in the Iranian American community feel that, due to the explosive conditions in the Middle East, we must provide our American friends and family members with possibility of access to reliable information, small as its impact might be. This is why I have put this e-mail update together to keep you informed of events in contemporary Iran. Its frequency would be once a week -- unless there is significant breaking news. I have made contact with friends who will monitor the news in Iran, and I will try to follow reliable publications here. Needless to say, I will not be able to be comprehensive.
If you feel you don't need these updates, please let me know to take you off the list. If you wish to check how informed you might be about Iran, take a look at the following questions:
On the issue of the Iranian nuclear program, did you know that:
* The Iranian supreme religious leader issued a legal decree (fatwa) on November 6, 2004 in which all development, production, and use of nuclear weapons is considered against the Islamic principles and should not be undertaken under any circumstances.
* Iranian nuclear facilities have been inspected over 2000 time during the past three years (some surprise inspections) by the IAEA and nothing illegal has been found. The IAEA's report has specified "to date, there is no evidence that undeclared material are related to any weapon's programs."
* Iran is home to tens of thousands of people affected by Saddam Husain's chemical weapons, and people have a strong feeling against the use of such weapons (I know some of these people personally).
* Iran has described the package of incentives from the west as potentially acceptable and announced a while ago that there will be an official and detailed reply by August 22nd, 2006.
On the issues related to the local politics, did you know that:
* the Taliban are an enemy of Iran and have engaged in regular assassinations of Iranian diplomats.
* The Iranian regime considers al-Qa'ideh a terrorist organization.
* Iranians held night long vigils to commemorate the victims of 9/11.
* Iran does not support the Shiite extremist Moqtada al-Sadr, and prefers peace, stability, and democratic elections in Iraq because it does not wish its own Kurdish population to aspire to separatist ideas and because a democratic election in Iraq will give a prominent role to the Iraqi Shiites.
* According to all major historians of the region, in reality, Iran exercises little influence on the Hezbollah.
On the social and cultural front, did you know:
* the latest best-selling titles in Iran are the DaVinci Code and Hillary Clinton's My life in (Persian translation)
* according to the latest statistics, close to 70% of the Iranian university students are women
* IVF, and gamete donation, as well as transsexual operations are legal in Iran.
* Iranian cinema produces critically acclaimed films (often openly critical of the regime).
* Iranian women golfers, race car drivers, and polo players compete internationally.
I hope my next messages will be much shorter. Please let me know if you wish your name to be taken off this list, or if you wish to add someone's name to it. I will send out my first update message soon.
Best,
Fatemeh Keshavarz
========================
Fatemeh Keshavarz, Professor and Chair
Dept. of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatuares
Washington University in St. Louis
Tel: (314) 935-5156
Fax: (314) 935-4399
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2006 6:42 PM
Subject: Window on Iran
Dear Friends,
In the past few months, the U.S. media coverage of Iran has gone from bad to unbelievable. It used to emphasize the negative and leave out the positive. It now appears to be inventing information that those of us in close contact with Iran are unable to trace. For example, in May 2006 there was a report in the papers here that the Iranian Jews will be forced to wear a uniform. Last weekend, another breaking news was: Ahmadinejad is imposing a ban on the use of foreign words. There is no truth to either of these (I won't list more).
Some of us in the Iranian American community feel that, due to the explosive conditions in the Middle East, we must provide our American friends and family members with possibility of access to reliable information, small as its impact might be. This is why I have put this e-mail update together to keep you informed of events in contemporary Iran. Its frequency would be once a week -- unless there is significant breaking news. I have made contact with friends who will monitor the news in Iran, and I will try to follow reliable publications here. Needless to say, I will not be able to be comprehensive.
If you feel you don't need these updates, please let me know to take you off the list. If you wish to check how informed you might be about Iran, take a look at the following questions:
On the issue of the Iranian nuclear program, did you know that:
* The Iranian supreme religious leader issued a legal decree (fatwa) on November 6, 2004 in which all development, production, and use of nuclear weapons is considered against the Islamic principles and should not be undertaken under any circumstances.
* Iranian nuclear facilities have been inspected over 2000 time during the past three years (some surprise inspections) by the IAEA and nothing illegal has been found. The IAEA's report has specified "to date, there is no evidence that undeclared material are related to any weapon's programs."
* Iran is home to tens of thousands of people affected by Saddam Husain's chemical weapons, and people have a strong feeling against the use of such weapons (I know some of these people personally).
* Iran has described the package of incentives from the west as potentially acceptable and announced a while ago that there will be an official and detailed reply by August 22nd, 2006.
On the issues related to the local politics, did you know that:
* the Taliban are an enemy of Iran and have engaged in regular assassinations of Iranian diplomats.
* The Iranian regime considers al-Qa'ideh a terrorist organization.
* Iranians held night long vigils to commemorate the victims of 9/11.
* Iran does not support the Shiite extremist Moqtada al-Sadr, and prefers peace, stability, and democratic elections in Iraq because it does not wish its own Kurdish population to aspire to separatist ideas and because a democratic election in Iraq will give a prominent role to the Iraqi Shiites.
* According to all major historians of the region, in reality, Iran exercises little influence on the Hezbollah.
On the social and cultural front, did you know:
* the latest best-selling titles in Iran are the DaVinci Code and Hillary Clinton's My life in (Persian translation)
* according to the latest statistics, close to 70% of the Iranian university students are women
* IVF, and gamete donation, as well as transsexual operations are legal in Iran.
* Iranian cinema produces critically acclaimed films (often openly critical of the regime).
* Iranian women golfers, race car drivers, and polo players compete internationally.
I hope my next messages will be much shorter. Please let me know if you wish your name to be taken off this list, or if you wish to add someone's name to it. I will send out my first update message soon.
Best,
Fatemeh Keshavarz
========================
Fatemeh Keshavarz, Professor and Chair
Dept. of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatuares
Washington University in St. Louis
Tel: (314) 935-5156
Fax: (314) 935-4399
Facts from Palast
The Fear Factory
I'm going to tell you something which is straight-up heresy: America is not under attack by terrorists. There is no WAR on terror because, except for one day five years ago, al Qaeda has pretty much left us alone.
That's because Osama got what he wanted. There's no mystery about what Al Qaeda was after. Like everyone from the Girl Scouts to Bono, Osama put his wish on his web site. He had a single demand: "Crusaders out of the land of the two Holy Places." To translate: get US troops out of Saudi Arabia.
And George Bush gave it to him. On April 29, 2003, two days before landing on the aircraft carrier Lincoln, our self-described "War President" quietly put out a notice that he was withdrawing our troops from Saudi soil. In other words, our cowering cowboy gave in whimpering to Osama's demand.
The press took no note. They were all wiggie over Bush's waddling around the carrier deck in a disco-aged jump suit announcing, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED." But it wasn't America's mission that was accomplished, it was Osama's.
Am I saying there's no danger, no threat? Sure there is: 46 million Americans don't have health insurance. IBM is legally stealing from its employees' pension plan and United Airlines has dumped its pensions altogether. Four-million three-hundred thousand Americans were injured, made sick or killed by their jobs last year. TXU Corporation is right now building four monster-sized power plants in Texas that will burn skuzzy gunk called "lignite." The filth it will pour into the sky will snuff a heck of a lot more Americans than some goofy group of fanatics with bottles of hydrogen peroxide.
But Americans don't ask for real protection from what's killing us. The War on Terror is the Weapon of Mass Distraction. Instead of demanding health insurance, we have 59 million of our fellow citizens pooping in their pants with fear of Al Qaeda, waddling to the polls, crying, "Georgie save us!"
And what does he give us? In my own small town, the federal government has paid for loading an SUV with .50 caliber machine guns to watch for an Al Qaeda attack at the dock of the ferry that takes tourists to the Indian casino in Connecticut. The casino dock is my town's officially designated "Critical Asset and Vulnerability Infrastructure Point (CAVIP)." (To find the most vulnerable points to attack in the USA, Al Qaeda can download a list from the Department of Homeland Security -- no kidding.)
But that's not all. Bush is protecting us from English hijackers with a fearsome anti-terrorist tool: the Virginia-class submarine. The V-boat was originally meant to hunt Soviet subs. But there are no more Soviet subs. So, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin have "refitted" these Cold War dinosaurs with new torpedoes redesigned to carry counter-terror commandoes. That's right: when we find Osama's beach house, we can shoot our boys right up under his picnic table and take him out. These Marines-in-a-tube injector boats cost $2.5 billion each -- and our President's ordered half a dozen new ones.
Lynn Cheney, the Veep's wife, still takes in compensation from Lockheed as a former board member. I'm sure that has nothing to do with this multi-billion dollar "anti-terror" contract.
Fear sells better than sex. Fear is the sales pitch for many lucrative products: from billion-dollar sailor injectors to one very lucrative war in Mesopotamia (a third of a trillion dollars doled out, no audits, no questions asked).
Better than toothpaste that makes our teeth whiter than white, this stuff will make us safer than safe. It's political junk food, the cheap filling in the flashy tube. What we don't get is safety from the real dangers: a life-threatening health-care system, lung-murdering pollution production and a trade deficit with China that's reducing mid-America to coolie status. Protecting us from these true threats would take a slice of the profits of the Lockheeds, the Exxons and the rest of the owning class.
War on Terror is class war by other means -- to keep you from asking for real protection from true menace, the landlords of our nation give you fake protection from manufactured dangers. And they remind you to be afraid every time you fly to see Aunt Millie and have to give up your hemorrhoid ointment to the underpaid guy in the bell-hop suit with a security badge.
Oh, hey, you never got the punch line.
So, Osama Walks into This Bar, See? and Bush says, "Whad'l'ya have, pardner?" and Osama says, "Well, George, what are you serving today?" and Bush says, "Fear," and Osama shouts, "Fear for everybody!" and George pours it on for the crowd. Then the presidential bartender says, "Hey, who's buying?" and Osama points a thumb at the crowd sucking down their brew. "They are," he says. And the two of them share a quiet laugh.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2984547.stm
tuesday april 29, 2003
excerpt:
The United States has said that virtually all its troops, except some training personnel, are to be pulled out of Saudi Arabia.
The decision was confirmed by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a joint news conference with Saudi Defence Minister Prince Sultan.
Saudi Arabia is home to some of Islam's holiest sites and the deployment of US forces there was seen as a historic betrayal by many Islamists, notably Osama Bin Laden.
It is one of the main reasons given by the Saudi-born dissident - blamed by Washington for the 11 September attacks - to justify violence against the United States and its allies.
But news of the US pull-out does not mean the campaign is over for Bin Laden and his followers, according to the BBC's Arab affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi.
Their agenda now goes beyond the boundaries of one country, he says. Their goal is to liberate all Muslim societies from foreign troops and what they see as ungodly secular rulers.
I'm going to tell you something which is straight-up heresy: America is not under attack by terrorists. There is no WAR on terror because, except for one day five years ago, al Qaeda has pretty much left us alone.
That's because Osama got what he wanted. There's no mystery about what Al Qaeda was after. Like everyone from the Girl Scouts to Bono, Osama put his wish on his web site. He had a single demand: "Crusaders out of the land of the two Holy Places." To translate: get US troops out of Saudi Arabia.
And George Bush gave it to him. On April 29, 2003, two days before landing on the aircraft carrier Lincoln, our self-described "War President" quietly put out a notice that he was withdrawing our troops from Saudi soil. In other words, our cowering cowboy gave in whimpering to Osama's demand.
The press took no note. They were all wiggie over Bush's waddling around the carrier deck in a disco-aged jump suit announcing, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED." But it wasn't America's mission that was accomplished, it was Osama's.
Am I saying there's no danger, no threat? Sure there is: 46 million Americans don't have health insurance. IBM is legally stealing from its employees' pension plan and United Airlines has dumped its pensions altogether. Four-million three-hundred thousand Americans were injured, made sick or killed by their jobs last year. TXU Corporation is right now building four monster-sized power plants in Texas that will burn skuzzy gunk called "lignite." The filth it will pour into the sky will snuff a heck of a lot more Americans than some goofy group of fanatics with bottles of hydrogen peroxide.
But Americans don't ask for real protection from what's killing us. The War on Terror is the Weapon of Mass Distraction. Instead of demanding health insurance, we have 59 million of our fellow citizens pooping in their pants with fear of Al Qaeda, waddling to the polls, crying, "Georgie save us!"
And what does he give us? In my own small town, the federal government has paid for loading an SUV with .50 caliber machine guns to watch for an Al Qaeda attack at the dock of the ferry that takes tourists to the Indian casino in Connecticut. The casino dock is my town's officially designated "Critical Asset and Vulnerability Infrastructure Point (CAVIP)." (To find the most vulnerable points to attack in the USA, Al Qaeda can download a list from the Department of Homeland Security -- no kidding.)
But that's not all. Bush is protecting us from English hijackers with a fearsome anti-terrorist tool: the Virginia-class submarine. The V-boat was originally meant to hunt Soviet subs. But there are no more Soviet subs. So, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin have "refitted" these Cold War dinosaurs with new torpedoes redesigned to carry counter-terror commandoes. That's right: when we find Osama's beach house, we can shoot our boys right up under his picnic table and take him out. These Marines-in-a-tube injector boats cost $2.5 billion each -- and our President's ordered half a dozen new ones.
Lynn Cheney, the Veep's wife, still takes in compensation from Lockheed as a former board member. I'm sure that has nothing to do with this multi-billion dollar "anti-terror" contract.
Fear sells better than sex. Fear is the sales pitch for many lucrative products: from billion-dollar sailor injectors to one very lucrative war in Mesopotamia (a third of a trillion dollars doled out, no audits, no questions asked).
Better than toothpaste that makes our teeth whiter than white, this stuff will make us safer than safe. It's political junk food, the cheap filling in the flashy tube. What we don't get is safety from the real dangers: a life-threatening health-care system, lung-murdering pollution production and a trade deficit with China that's reducing mid-America to coolie status. Protecting us from these true threats would take a slice of the profits of the Lockheeds, the Exxons and the rest of the owning class.
War on Terror is class war by other means -- to keep you from asking for real protection from true menace, the landlords of our nation give you fake protection from manufactured dangers. And they remind you to be afraid every time you fly to see Aunt Millie and have to give up your hemorrhoid ointment to the underpaid guy in the bell-hop suit with a security badge.
Oh, hey, you never got the punch line.
So, Osama Walks into This Bar, See? and Bush says, "Whad'l'ya have, pardner?" and Osama says, "Well, George, what are you serving today?" and Bush says, "Fear," and Osama shouts, "Fear for everybody!" and George pours it on for the crowd. Then the presidential bartender says, "Hey, who's buying?" and Osama points a thumb at the crowd sucking down their brew. "They are," he says. And the two of them share a quiet laugh.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2984547.stm
tuesday april 29, 2003
excerpt:
The United States has said that virtually all its troops, except some training personnel, are to be pulled out of Saudi Arabia.
The decision was confirmed by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a joint news conference with Saudi Defence Minister Prince Sultan.
Saudi Arabia is home to some of Islam's holiest sites and the deployment of US forces there was seen as a historic betrayal by many Islamists, notably Osama Bin Laden.
It is one of the main reasons given by the Saudi-born dissident - blamed by Washington for the 11 September attacks - to justify violence against the United States and its allies.
But news of the US pull-out does not mean the campaign is over for Bin Laden and his followers, according to the BBC's Arab affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi.
Their agenda now goes beyond the boundaries of one country, he says. Their goal is to liberate all Muslim societies from foreign troops and what they see as ungodly secular rulers.
12 July 2006
Jordan Times
Project seeks to get more women into the workforce
By Grace Peacock
AMMAN — Civil society organisations joined forces with the business community, government representatives and the European Union yesterday to tackle the high rates of unemployment among women in both Jordan and Gaza.
“We want to find a way to help men and women work together. We want to target women of all parts of society and help them use the skills they have to match them with a job,” said Elena Abu Adas, managing director of Tatawor Association, a nonprofit organisation that hosted the workshop.
Over 70 people took part in Tatawor’s project ‘Free to Work’ — a 24-month initiative financed by the European Commission to determine employment opportunities in Jordan and Gaza and help women assess their skills, undergo further training and ultimately find a job.
“Unemployment here is really high and we want to know why most of the unemployed people are women?” said Mariam Abu Adas, Tatawor’s project manager.
She pointed out that women account for 82 per cent of Jordan’s unemployment rate.
A recent report by the Ministry of Labour put the country’s unemployment rate at 15 per cent, while the poverty rate is estimated at 14.8 per cent.
“There are so many women here who are disempowered because they don’t have jobs. But if they use their skills to find work then they could really be empowered,” she added, explaining that the policy framework in both Jordan and Gaza needs to change to make the workforce more accessible for women.
Abu Adas also hopes to challenge what is commonly referred to as the “culture of shame” that exists in these regions whereby women are prevented from working due to objections from family members.
The project Free to Work is in its first stage and is designed to study the economy for actual and potential markets and identify the resources needed to develop further job opportunities.
Women who take part in the programme will have their skills analysed and will receive personalised training to help them meet their career aims and ambitions.
“We hope to assist a wide range of women from 16 to 60, educated or uneducated from all walks of life,” said Abu Adas, who encourages unemployed women to contact Tatawor.
Hanan Quirdy is a mother of three and says she was the first female industrial machinery driver in Amman. She believes the Free to Work initiative will help other women break through the same barriers she experienced to take on what has traditionally been a man’s job.
“This project helps me and other women be more sure that we can do what we want. It’s become my own personal challenge to do this job and be a driver and it should be every woman’s challenge to find herself the job they like,” she said.
For more information on the Free to Work project, call: 554 6556 or email info@tatawor.org.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
By Grace Peacock
AMMAN — Civil society organisations joined forces with the business community, government representatives and the European Union yesterday to tackle the high rates of unemployment among women in both Jordan and Gaza.
“We want to find a way to help men and women work together. We want to target women of all parts of society and help them use the skills they have to match them with a job,” said Elena Abu Adas, managing director of Tatawor Association, a nonprofit organisation that hosted the workshop.
Over 70 people took part in Tatawor’s project ‘Free to Work’ — a 24-month initiative financed by the European Commission to determine employment opportunities in Jordan and Gaza and help women assess their skills, undergo further training and ultimately find a job.
“Unemployment here is really high and we want to know why most of the unemployed people are women?” said Mariam Abu Adas, Tatawor’s project manager.
She pointed out that women account for 82 per cent of Jordan’s unemployment rate.
A recent report by the Ministry of Labour put the country’s unemployment rate at 15 per cent, while the poverty rate is estimated at 14.8 per cent.
“There are so many women here who are disempowered because they don’t have jobs. But if they use their skills to find work then they could really be empowered,” she added, explaining that the policy framework in both Jordan and Gaza needs to change to make the workforce more accessible for women.
Abu Adas also hopes to challenge what is commonly referred to as the “culture of shame” that exists in these regions whereby women are prevented from working due to objections from family members.
The project Free to Work is in its first stage and is designed to study the economy for actual and potential markets and identify the resources needed to develop further job opportunities.
Women who take part in the programme will have their skills analysed and will receive personalised training to help them meet their career aims and ambitions.
“We hope to assist a wide range of women from 16 to 60, educated or uneducated from all walks of life,” said Abu Adas, who encourages unemployed women to contact Tatawor.
Hanan Quirdy is a mother of three and says she was the first female industrial machinery driver in Amman. She believes the Free to Work initiative will help other women break through the same barriers she experienced to take on what has traditionally been a man’s job.
“This project helps me and other women be more sure that we can do what we want. It’s become my own personal challenge to do this job and be a driver and it should be every woman’s challenge to find herself the job they like,” she said.
For more information on the Free to Work project, call: 554 6556 or email info@tatawor.org.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Poems
I wrote these when I was still in Jordan, and just now found them on a disk...
Found
You are reminiscent of the
Desert of my dreams.
An unattainable desire,
A need that will not be filled,
The only place resembling home,
An emotion I have yet to claim...
Or lay a finger on.
If love exists it is in your gaze.
As elusive as that which
Stirs my heart to passion.
Wadi Rum
The Canadian Geese have arrived, with them memories of the desert have also taken flight.
I had awoken at 5.30 in the morning to catch the miracle of the desert sunrise. It was surprisingly cold, my breathe visible upon my pale hands - I suppose I'd never believed a place so hot and dry could get so ghastly cold.
Peering out of the beitshar across the flat plane of sand to the crest of the wadi we were encamped within, I began to trek to where the land seemingly disappeared from the eye, but not the mind. I wondered at the piles of sand at the base of this rocky outcropping where I found myself in the early morning twilight. Gently stepping onto the top of one my leg was immediately engulfed to the knee, surprisingly reminiscent of the snow drifts of my winter home.
Finally finding a place where I felt comfortable I settled in for the sunrise that had always inhabited my dreams.
In front of me tiny feet marched across the ripples and waves of sand. I could only guess at who they might belong - Rodent? Scorpion? Better not to think of what might reappear to take the journey back to whence it had come.
Gradually, nudging its way above the distant peaks, the sun began its daily pilgrimage above one jabal and then another.
Startled; looking up for a plane, tank, or unknown monster. A sound like a million running, pounding feet, yet closer to the sound of a jet taking off. Sounds like this make the simple word sound seem too small and unable, or maybe unwilling, to capture the full measure of what was heard.
Across the horizon a flock of birds whose size was incomprehensible appeared and disappeared as quickly.
Desert silence returns; was that the true sound of a bird? Where had it previously hid before that instant? Could it be that they only shared their true essence in the absence of all others...
Missing
Unrecognizable to those that
Surround me.
Living in distant lands
And memories.
The sandy wind blowing through
My hair,
Tangled and uncontrollable-
Resembling the web of
My life.
Blown back into
My present reality,
Walking sidewalks that fade to
Desert horizons inside
My mind.
Neither belonging
Here
Nor there;
The world I was born into
And that of
My own choosing.
Found
You are reminiscent of the
Desert of my dreams.
An unattainable desire,
A need that will not be filled,
The only place resembling home,
An emotion I have yet to claim...
Or lay a finger on.
If love exists it is in your gaze.
As elusive as that which
Stirs my heart to passion.
Wadi Rum
The Canadian Geese have arrived, with them memories of the desert have also taken flight.
I had awoken at 5.30 in the morning to catch the miracle of the desert sunrise. It was surprisingly cold, my breathe visible upon my pale hands - I suppose I'd never believed a place so hot and dry could get so ghastly cold.
Peering out of the beitshar across the flat plane of sand to the crest of the wadi we were encamped within, I began to trek to where the land seemingly disappeared from the eye, but not the mind. I wondered at the piles of sand at the base of this rocky outcropping where I found myself in the early morning twilight. Gently stepping onto the top of one my leg was immediately engulfed to the knee, surprisingly reminiscent of the snow drifts of my winter home.
Finally finding a place where I felt comfortable I settled in for the sunrise that had always inhabited my dreams.
In front of me tiny feet marched across the ripples and waves of sand. I could only guess at who they might belong - Rodent? Scorpion? Better not to think of what might reappear to take the journey back to whence it had come.
Gradually, nudging its way above the distant peaks, the sun began its daily pilgrimage above one jabal and then another.
Startled; looking up for a plane, tank, or unknown monster. A sound like a million running, pounding feet, yet closer to the sound of a jet taking off. Sounds like this make the simple word sound seem too small and unable, or maybe unwilling, to capture the full measure of what was heard.
Across the horizon a flock of birds whose size was incomprehensible appeared and disappeared as quickly.
Desert silence returns; was that the true sound of a bird? Where had it previously hid before that instant? Could it be that they only shared their true essence in the absence of all others...
Missing
Unrecognizable to those that
Surround me.
Living in distant lands
And memories.
The sandy wind blowing through
My hair,
Tangled and uncontrollable-
Resembling the web of
My life.
Blown back into
My present reality,
Walking sidewalks that fade to
Desert horizons inside
My mind.
Neither belonging
Here
Nor there;
The world I was born into
And that of
My own choosing.
10 July 2006
Courtesy
I read this article in the Saint Louis Post Dispatch on July 3rd, and wanted to laugh my ass off. Who'd have thought!?!?!?! Courtesy? I mean that must have taken some real geniuses in D.C. to come up with that one. What saddens me is that they are trying to put it off as a cultural phenonemon. I'm sorry, but if you break into my house, kill or beat up the men in my family, and then yell at me to answer questions possibly using force, shit I'm NOT answering you. I'll spit in your face, and give you a reason to be doing what you're doing. This is NOT cultural!!!!!! Arabs are not inately violent people who are out there trying to kill Americans, its human nature to be pissed and in shock when something like this happens to the people you love. What is cultural is that these women probably only know these men, and very few if any others. Family is everything, and you don't talk to strange men, so maybe if these soldiers wer taught something about Middle Eastern culture they would learn that men and women do not socialize outside of the family sphere and sometimes work.
SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
LENGTH: 885 words
HEADLINE: U.S. Troops Try Courtesy in Iraqi City
BYLINE: By ANTONIO CASTANEDA, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: RAMADI Iraq
BODY:
U.S. troops are switching tactics in the fight against insurgents in parts of this rebellious city, replacing confrontation with courtesy in hopes of winning public trust and undercutting support for the militants.
It's too early to assess the change, which is largely confined to the more affluent western areas of Ramadi, a city of 400,000 people that is considered the most violent in Iraq's restive Anbar province.
Still, U.S. officers believe the new approach is paying off. Attacks are down enough in western Ramadi to allow Iraqi soldiers to patrol larger areas without Americans at their side.
"We've had some success in making inroads to the population there," said Army Col. Sean MacFarland, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, which oversees all U.S. military forces in the city. "We're beginning to see a turn there for the better."
Marines based in western Ramadi now regularly knock on people's front doors instead of storming through. Instead of roaming the streets in armored Humvees, Marines took a census of the area sitting down and listening to people's concerns and complaints.
"You'd be surprised at how many people in Ramadi are shocked when we knock and ask to come in. And in Arab culture, it makes all the difference," said 2nd Lt. Ryan Hub of Sumter, S.C., who as a teenager lived in Kuwait for two years while his Air Force officer father was stationed there.
To reinforce their goodwill gestures, Marines are trying to repair Ramadi's water works to demonstrate that Americans can improve conditions. Reconstruction projects in the city have long been stalled because of persistent sabotage by insurgents.
The changed approach also applies to the Iraqi army. Marines recently held public meetings where residents could scold Iraqi soldiers for allegedly mistreating residents and stealing from their homes.
"It was time for a different fight in Ramadi," said Capt. Max Barela, 36, commander of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. "I've been told that we're conducting ourselves more as police than Marines."
Less U.S. firepower is being used. Commanders say they are content to let gunmen escape if retaliatory fire could injure civilians or cause serious property damage.
No airstrikes have been called in by Barela's unit, which arrived here in March. During the winter, Marines ordered more than a dozen aerial bombings in western Ramadi.
In more dangerous areas of the city, Marines still use aggressive tactics such as blowing in doors with shotguns when residents don't immediately answer the door to evade possible gunmen. But they want to get away from that.
"You've got an enemy that understands the effects of our mistakes," Hub said, referring to damage caused by U.S. forces that insurgents trumpet in propaganda. "I think part of the battle of Ramadi is the (information campaign) that insurgents are winning."
Earlier this year, Marines believed the city was not ready for softer methods. Tactics such as random vehicle searches took a sharp edge: Marines would toss stun grenades at randomly selected vehicles, then rush the drivers with guns pointed.
"If you're treating everyone like terrorists, kicking down doors and tearing through their homes, that's what you'll get terrorists," said Cpl. Daniel Tarantino, 21, of Gainesville, Ga.
There is little sign of change in central Ramadi, where street battles are common, or in southern neighborhoods where few American patrols have ventured in months. And violence still flares in western Ramadi, although at lower levels.
But Marines believe the new approach is working in the west, where wealthier and better educated Iraqis live. The provincial governor, along with hundreds of fellow tribesmen from the Alwani clan, live in the area. Two sprawling U.S. bases are nearby.
Basic military tactics have also helped reduce violence in that area. Marines installed concrete roadblocks on getaway routes once used by insurgents. Marines also walk some 15-20 miles a week through the area's streets, citing the refrain, "Patrol it or you don't control it."
Even here, though, the tension of war still grates on Marines. One Marine, sweating during an overnight patrol that snaked deep into the city, cursed at a boy in a driveway to keep his lights off. Another Marine struggled to contain his temper with an Iraqi man who didn't understand English.
"It's difficult for a lot of Marines to accept. It's not the Marine ethos," Hub said of the new tactics. "The history of the Marine Corps is that they're known for overwhelming firepower."
Commanders point to the long stretch of devastated buildings that make up downtown Ramadi to skeptics who argue that the city's people first need to fear the U.S. military before order can be restored.
"It requires 10 times more discipline to win a counterinsurgency than to win a total war. Any Marine can go out in the city and kill people, but this requires discipline, and to think more," said 2nd Lt. John Warren, 27, of Greenville, S.C.
Barela, the company commander, concedes the approach carries added risks, but says his Marines try to vigorously follow tactics that make them "hard to kill." Several Marines in the company have been wounded but none have been killed.
"We've risked a lot to put ourselves in contact with the Iraqi people," Barela said.
LOAD-DATE: July 3, 2006
SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
LENGTH: 885 words
HEADLINE: U.S. Troops Try Courtesy in Iraqi City
BYLINE: By ANTONIO CASTANEDA, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: RAMADI Iraq
BODY:
U.S. troops are switching tactics in the fight against insurgents in parts of this rebellious city, replacing confrontation with courtesy in hopes of winning public trust and undercutting support for the militants.
It's too early to assess the change, which is largely confined to the more affluent western areas of Ramadi, a city of 400,000 people that is considered the most violent in Iraq's restive Anbar province.
Still, U.S. officers believe the new approach is paying off. Attacks are down enough in western Ramadi to allow Iraqi soldiers to patrol larger areas without Americans at their side.
"We've had some success in making inroads to the population there," said Army Col. Sean MacFarland, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, which oversees all U.S. military forces in the city. "We're beginning to see a turn there for the better."
Marines based in western Ramadi now regularly knock on people's front doors instead of storming through. Instead of roaming the streets in armored Humvees, Marines took a census of the area sitting down and listening to people's concerns and complaints.
"You'd be surprised at how many people in Ramadi are shocked when we knock and ask to come in. And in Arab culture, it makes all the difference," said 2nd Lt. Ryan Hub of Sumter, S.C., who as a teenager lived in Kuwait for two years while his Air Force officer father was stationed there.
To reinforce their goodwill gestures, Marines are trying to repair Ramadi's water works to demonstrate that Americans can improve conditions. Reconstruction projects in the city have long been stalled because of persistent sabotage by insurgents.
The changed approach also applies to the Iraqi army. Marines recently held public meetings where residents could scold Iraqi soldiers for allegedly mistreating residents and stealing from their homes.
"It was time for a different fight in Ramadi," said Capt. Max Barela, 36, commander of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. "I've been told that we're conducting ourselves more as police than Marines."
Less U.S. firepower is being used. Commanders say they are content to let gunmen escape if retaliatory fire could injure civilians or cause serious property damage.
No airstrikes have been called in by Barela's unit, which arrived here in March. During the winter, Marines ordered more than a dozen aerial bombings in western Ramadi.
In more dangerous areas of the city, Marines still use aggressive tactics such as blowing in doors with shotguns when residents don't immediately answer the door to evade possible gunmen. But they want to get away from that.
"You've got an enemy that understands the effects of our mistakes," Hub said, referring to damage caused by U.S. forces that insurgents trumpet in propaganda. "I think part of the battle of Ramadi is the (information campaign) that insurgents are winning."
Earlier this year, Marines believed the city was not ready for softer methods. Tactics such as random vehicle searches took a sharp edge: Marines would toss stun grenades at randomly selected vehicles, then rush the drivers with guns pointed.
"If you're treating everyone like terrorists, kicking down doors and tearing through their homes, that's what you'll get terrorists," said Cpl. Daniel Tarantino, 21, of Gainesville, Ga.
There is little sign of change in central Ramadi, where street battles are common, or in southern neighborhoods where few American patrols have ventured in months. And violence still flares in western Ramadi, although at lower levels.
But Marines believe the new approach is working in the west, where wealthier and better educated Iraqis live. The provincial governor, along with hundreds of fellow tribesmen from the Alwani clan, live in the area. Two sprawling U.S. bases are nearby.
Basic military tactics have also helped reduce violence in that area. Marines installed concrete roadblocks on getaway routes once used by insurgents. Marines also walk some 15-20 miles a week through the area's streets, citing the refrain, "Patrol it or you don't control it."
Even here, though, the tension of war still grates on Marines. One Marine, sweating during an overnight patrol that snaked deep into the city, cursed at a boy in a driveway to keep his lights off. Another Marine struggled to contain his temper with an Iraqi man who didn't understand English.
"It's difficult for a lot of Marines to accept. It's not the Marine ethos," Hub said of the new tactics. "The history of the Marine Corps is that they're known for overwhelming firepower."
Commanders point to the long stretch of devastated buildings that make up downtown Ramadi to skeptics who argue that the city's people first need to fear the U.S. military before order can be restored.
"It requires 10 times more discipline to win a counterinsurgency than to win a total war. Any Marine can go out in the city and kill people, but this requires discipline, and to think more," said 2nd Lt. John Warren, 27, of Greenville, S.C.
Barela, the company commander, concedes the approach carries added risks, but says his Marines try to vigorously follow tactics that make them "hard to kill." Several Marines in the company have been wounded but none have been killed.
"We've risked a lot to put ourselves in contact with the Iraqi people," Barela said.
LOAD-DATE: July 3, 2006
02 June 2006
Wall by Simone Bitton
WALL (Mur) is a cinematic meditation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which the filmmaker blurs the lines of hatred by asserting her double identity as Jew and Arab. In an original documentary approach, the film follows the separation fence that is destroying one of the most historically significant landscapes in the world, while imprisoning one people and enclosing the other.
On the building site of this mad wall, daily utterances and holy chants, in Hebrew and in Arabic, defy the discourses of war, passing through the deafening noise of bulldozers. MUR offers its spectators a last glimpse of the beauty of this land and the humanity of its inhabitants a moment before they disappear behind the wall.
http://www.wallthemovie.com
http://www.stopthewall.com
I watched this film last night...Actually early this morning, but that is neither here nor there. I couldn't sleep for the pain it evoked in my soul. Here are some of the thoughts I wrote down while I was watching Wall...
~Seperation creates an enemy without a name or face that is only known through society, i.e. family upbringing and social stigma.
~Socially instilled fear and racism/nationalsm. Is nationalism as bad as racism? Both are mere concepts/ideas/intagible thoughts that evolved at the same time in history (1850ish). (ONLY) A century and a half has brought us to this point. Both create boundaries between people - superiority based on ideas that have no real tangible basis.
~Use of the repressed to build their own imprisonment.
~I began by loving all things Jewish. Their religion was like a mystical meoldy to my soul.
The Holocaust seared these people to my being and I felt connected not only through beauty, but the terror of lost lives.
This love affair lasted for many years and sustained me through my worst trials. Things began to slowly change for me. The first intfatada shook me and brought me to tears; the second made me question everything I held dear.
How does the oppressed become the oppressor? How do they forget the lessons in their own history? What world do I live in for this to be reality?
My childish dream to live on a kibbutz and die an old lady wandering the streets of Jerusalem has changed to those of the outraged warrior. I now ask how I can help to bring change when peace is only to be found in the mosques and temples, the hearts of individuals, and the innocence of babes, as it lies no where else in this war torn land.
Neither are the other, they are us. The only thing that seperates us is culture and tradtion and the pride that stops us from seeing the why that lies therein. When we understand these things we see that all along we were killing our OWN brothers and sisters in needless meaningless battle.
~The question is what you see
~A possessive mad love from those who had survived the ghettos of Poland. Like Rachel the Poet;
"I shall lock the doors to my heart
And cast the key into the sea
My heart shall know no more dread
Upon hearing you approach
I have but one consolation;
That I have brought this on myself"
Shuli Dichter, Maanit Kibutz:" So sarcastic. So terrible. So cynical! Its beyond irony. So to console ourselves for killing ourselves we'll write in history books that we brought it on ourselves. That will be our sole consolation.
Silence frightens me most. Desperate people keep silent. I'm not despaied. I'm fighting. "
On the building site of this mad wall, daily utterances and holy chants, in Hebrew and in Arabic, defy the discourses of war, passing through the deafening noise of bulldozers. MUR offers its spectators a last glimpse of the beauty of this land and the humanity of its inhabitants a moment before they disappear behind the wall.
http://www.wallthemovie.com
http://www.stopthewall.com
I watched this film last night...Actually early this morning, but that is neither here nor there. I couldn't sleep for the pain it evoked in my soul. Here are some of the thoughts I wrote down while I was watching Wall...
~Seperation creates an enemy without a name or face that is only known through society, i.e. family upbringing and social stigma.
~Socially instilled fear and racism/nationalsm. Is nationalism as bad as racism? Both are mere concepts/ideas/intagible thoughts that evolved at the same time in history (1850ish). (ONLY) A century and a half has brought us to this point. Both create boundaries between people - superiority based on ideas that have no real tangible basis.
~Use of the repressed to build their own imprisonment.
~I began by loving all things Jewish. Their religion was like a mystical meoldy to my soul.
The Holocaust seared these people to my being and I felt connected not only through beauty, but the terror of lost lives.
This love affair lasted for many years and sustained me through my worst trials. Things began to slowly change for me. The first intfatada shook me and brought me to tears; the second made me question everything I held dear.
How does the oppressed become the oppressor? How do they forget the lessons in their own history? What world do I live in for this to be reality?
My childish dream to live on a kibbutz and die an old lady wandering the streets of Jerusalem has changed to those of the outraged warrior. I now ask how I can help to bring change when peace is only to be found in the mosques and temples, the hearts of individuals, and the innocence of babes, as it lies no where else in this war torn land.
Neither are the other, they are us. The only thing that seperates us is culture and tradtion and the pride that stops us from seeing the why that lies therein. When we understand these things we see that all along we were killing our OWN brothers and sisters in needless meaningless battle.
~The question is what you see
~A possessive mad love from those who had survived the ghettos of Poland. Like Rachel the Poet;
"I shall lock the doors to my heart
And cast the key into the sea
My heart shall know no more dread
Upon hearing you approach
I have but one consolation;
That I have brought this on myself"
Shuli Dichter, Maanit Kibutz:" So sarcastic. So terrible. So cynical! Its beyond irony. So to console ourselves for killing ourselves we'll write in history books that we brought it on ourselves. That will be our sole consolation.
Silence frightens me most. Desperate people keep silent. I'm not despaied. I'm fighting. "
17 March 2006
You can’t wash your hands when they’re covered in blood
By: Hart Viges
My name is Hart Viges. September 11 happened. Next thing I was in the recruiting office. I thought that was the way I could make a difference in the world for the better. So I went to infantry school and jump school and I arrived with my unit of the 82nd Airborne Division. I was deployed to Kuwait in February 2003. We drove into Iraq because Third Infranty Division was ahead of schedule, and so I didn’t need to jump into Baghdad airport. As we drove into Samawa to secure their supplies my mortar platoon dropped numerous rounds on this town. I watched Kiowa attack helicopters fire hellfire missile after Hellfire missile.
I saw C130 Spector gunship...it will level a town. It had bet-fed artillery rounds pounding with these super-Gatling guns. I don’t know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds. I have my imagination to pick at for that one. But I clearly remember the call-out over the radio saying “Green light on all taxi-cabs. The enemy is using them for transportation.” One of our snipers called back on the radio saying, “Excuse me, but did I hear that order correctly? Green light on all taxi cabs?” “Roger that soldier. You’d better start buckling up.” All of a sudden the city just blew up.
Didn’t matter if there was an innocent in the taxi-cab – we laid a mortar round on it, snipers opened up. Next was Fallujah. We went in without a shot. But Charlie Company decided they were going to take over a school for the area of operations. Protesters would come saying, “Please get out of our school. Our children need this school. We need education.” They came back, about 40 or 50 people. Some had the bright idea of shooting AK-47s up in the air. Well a couple of rounds fell into the school...
They laid waste to the group of people. Then we went to Baghdad. And I had days that I don’t want to remember. I try to forget. Days where we’d take contractors out to a water treatment plant outside of Baghdad. We caught word that this is a kind of a scary place but when I arrived there’s grass and palm trees, a river. It’s the first beautiful place that seemed untouched by the war in Iraq. As we were leaving, RPGs came flying at us. Two men with RPGs ran up in front of us from across the road. “Drop your weapons.” “Irmie salahak.” They’re grabbing onto women and kids so [we] don’t fire. I can’t take any more and I swing my [gun] over. My sight’s on his chest, my finger’s on the trigger. And I’m trained to kill but this is no bogey man, this is no enemy. This is a human being. With the same fears and doubts and worries. The same messed-up situation. I don’t pull the trigger this time...it throws me off.
It’s like they didn’t tell me about this emotional attachment to killing. They tried to numb me, they tried to strip my humanity. They tried to tell me that’s not a human being – that’s a soft target. So now, my imagination is running...What is he pulled his trigger? How many American soldiers or Iraqi police, how many families destroyed because I didn’t pull my trigger. After we leave this little village we get attack helicopters, Apaches, two Bradley fighting vehicles, and we go back. And we start asking questions. Where are they? Eventually they lead us to this hut where this family is living, and myself and [another soldier] started searching for AK47s, for explosives, for RPGs, you know...evidence. And all I can find is a tiny pistol, probably to scare off thieves. Well because of that pistol we took their two young men... Their mother is at my feet trying to kiss my feet like I deserve my feet to be kissed. Screaming, pleading. I don’t need to speak Arabic to know love and concern and fear. I had my attack helicopter behind me, my Bradley fighting vehicle, my armor, my M4 [semi-automatic] with, laser sight. I’m an 82nd Airborne killer.
But I was powerless...to ease this woman’s pain. After I came home I applied for conscientious objector [status]. I’m a Christian, what was I doing holding a gun to another human being? Love they neighbor. Pray for those who persecute you, don’t shoot them. I get my conscientious objector packet approved. I’m free. It’s all gone now, right? No! I still swerve at trash bags...fireworks...I can’t express anything. All my relationships are falling apart because they can’t (...) understand me.
How do they know the pain I’ve gone through or the sights I’ve seen? The innocence gone, stripped, dead? I couldn’t stand the pain. People were leaving me. I couldn’t cut my wrists. So I called the police. They come stomping through my door. I have my knife in my hand. “Shoot me.” All of a sudden I was the man with the RPG, with all the guns pointed at him, thinking “Yes, we can solve the world’s problems by killing each other”. How insane is that? Lucky I lived through that episode. See, you can’t wash your hands when their covered in blood. The wounds carry on. This is what war does to your soul, to your humanity, to your family.
* The Independent
My name is Hart Viges. September 11 happened. Next thing I was in the recruiting office. I thought that was the way I could make a difference in the world for the better. So I went to infantry school and jump school and I arrived with my unit of the 82nd Airborne Division. I was deployed to Kuwait in February 2003. We drove into Iraq because Third Infranty Division was ahead of schedule, and so I didn’t need to jump into Baghdad airport. As we drove into Samawa to secure their supplies my mortar platoon dropped numerous rounds on this town. I watched Kiowa attack helicopters fire hellfire missile after Hellfire missile.
I saw C130 Spector gunship...it will level a town. It had bet-fed artillery rounds pounding with these super-Gatling guns. I don’t know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds. I have my imagination to pick at for that one. But I clearly remember the call-out over the radio saying “Green light on all taxi-cabs. The enemy is using them for transportation.” One of our snipers called back on the radio saying, “Excuse me, but did I hear that order correctly? Green light on all taxi cabs?” “Roger that soldier. You’d better start buckling up.” All of a sudden the city just blew up.
Didn’t matter if there was an innocent in the taxi-cab – we laid a mortar round on it, snipers opened up. Next was Fallujah. We went in without a shot. But Charlie Company decided they were going to take over a school for the area of operations. Protesters would come saying, “Please get out of our school. Our children need this school. We need education.” They came back, about 40 or 50 people. Some had the bright idea of shooting AK-47s up in the air. Well a couple of rounds fell into the school...
They laid waste to the group of people. Then we went to Baghdad. And I had days that I don’t want to remember. I try to forget. Days where we’d take contractors out to a water treatment plant outside of Baghdad. We caught word that this is a kind of a scary place but when I arrived there’s grass and palm trees, a river. It’s the first beautiful place that seemed untouched by the war in Iraq. As we were leaving, RPGs came flying at us. Two men with RPGs ran up in front of us from across the road. “Drop your weapons.” “Irmie salahak.” They’re grabbing onto women and kids so [we] don’t fire. I can’t take any more and I swing my [gun] over. My sight’s on his chest, my finger’s on the trigger. And I’m trained to kill but this is no bogey man, this is no enemy. This is a human being. With the same fears and doubts and worries. The same messed-up situation. I don’t pull the trigger this time...it throws me off.
It’s like they didn’t tell me about this emotional attachment to killing. They tried to numb me, they tried to strip my humanity. They tried to tell me that’s not a human being – that’s a soft target. So now, my imagination is running...What is he pulled his trigger? How many American soldiers or Iraqi police, how many families destroyed because I didn’t pull my trigger. After we leave this little village we get attack helicopters, Apaches, two Bradley fighting vehicles, and we go back. And we start asking questions. Where are they? Eventually they lead us to this hut where this family is living, and myself and [another soldier] started searching for AK47s, for explosives, for RPGs, you know...evidence. And all I can find is a tiny pistol, probably to scare off thieves. Well because of that pistol we took their two young men... Their mother is at my feet trying to kiss my feet like I deserve my feet to be kissed. Screaming, pleading. I don’t need to speak Arabic to know love and concern and fear. I had my attack helicopter behind me, my Bradley fighting vehicle, my armor, my M4 [semi-automatic] with, laser sight. I’m an 82nd Airborne killer.
But I was powerless...to ease this woman’s pain. After I came home I applied for conscientious objector [status]. I’m a Christian, what was I doing holding a gun to another human being? Love they neighbor. Pray for those who persecute you, don’t shoot them. I get my conscientious objector packet approved. I’m free. It’s all gone now, right? No! I still swerve at trash bags...fireworks...I can’t express anything. All my relationships are falling apart because they can’t (...) understand me.
How do they know the pain I’ve gone through or the sights I’ve seen? The innocence gone, stripped, dead? I couldn’t stand the pain. People were leaving me. I couldn’t cut my wrists. So I called the police. They come stomping through my door. I have my knife in my hand. “Shoot me.” All of a sudden I was the man with the RPG, with all the guns pointed at him, thinking “Yes, we can solve the world’s problems by killing each other”. How insane is that? Lucky I lived through that episode. See, you can’t wash your hands when their covered in blood. The wounds carry on. This is what war does to your soul, to your humanity, to your family.
* The Independent
What Iraqis Really Think About The Occupation
By: Tom Hayden
The lack of critical media coverage at the beginning of the Iraq War is widely acknowledged. But the media’s failure to cover Iraq voices of opposition is arguably a greater default.
The mainstream media convey the impression that there are two categories of Iraqis – the handful of fanatical jihadists and the majority who show their yearning to be free during January’s elections. In this paradigm, our troops are seen as defending, even cultivating, a nascent democracy. Not surprisingly, a Fox News poll in February revealed that 53% of Americans believed the Iraqis wanted our troops to stay while only 35% thought the Iraqis wanted us to leave.
To a public fed this distorted narrative and nothing more, the actual facts may be too jarring to believe. There has been little or no coverage of these realities:
A majority of Iraqis in polls favor US military withdrawal and an end of the occupation. At the time of January’s election 69% of Shiites and 82% of Sunnis favored “near-term withdrawal”. Surveys done for the Coalition Provisional Authority in June 2004 showed that 55% majority “would feel safer is US troops left immediately.”
A recent summary of numerous Iraqi surveys, by the independent Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, concluded that a majority of Iraqis “oppose the US presence in Iraq, and those who strongly oppose it greatly outnumber those who strongly support it.” The PDA report went on to say that “the fact that [these surveys] have played little role in the public discourse on the Iraqi mission imperils US policy and contributes to the present impasse.”
The only Iraqis who strongly support the US occupation are the Kurds, less than 20% of the population whose semiautonomous status is protected by the United States, and who are represented disproportionately in the Iraqi regime. By backing the Kurds and southern Shiites, the United States is intervening in a secretarian civil war. The US-trained Iraqi security forces are dominated by Kurdish and Shiite militias.
In mid-September of this year, the 18-member National Sovereignty Committee in the US-sponsored Iraqi parliament issued a unanimous report calling for the end of occupation.
In June, more than 100 members of the same parliament, or more than one-third, signed a letter calling for “the departure of the occupation”. They criticized their regime for bypassing parliament in obtaining an extension of authority from the United Nations Security Council.
In January, US intelligence agencies warned in a “grim tone” that the newly elected Iraqi regime would demand a timetable for US withdrawal, which indeed was the platform of the winning Shiite party. After the election, nothing came of the worry. The winners simply abandoned the campaign pledge that helped elect them.
In June, the former electricity minister of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Aiham Al-Sammarae, created an organization to begin dialogue with 11 insurgent groups. The London Times reported that high-ranking US military officials joined one round of talks.
In 2004, 20 Iraqi political parties formed a National Foundation Congress to become a public voice for withdrawal. In May 2005, it held a second Congress, releasing a three-point platform demanding a withdrawal timetable, an interim international peacekeeping force, and internationally supervised elections. Virtually none of these realities have been reported in the American media, with the exception of articles by Nancy Youssef of Knight-Ridder.
These various Iraqi peacemakers deserve to be heard by Congress and the American people. Some of them are risking their lives. Al-Sammarae reportedly discovered a car bomb next to his Baghdad home.
Another high-status Iraqi leader, who asked that his name not be used, wrote of being “active in trying to bring the US and UK embassies to negotiate with heads of the opposition in Iraq [...but] unfortunately had been dismissed by representatives of both countries. He did meet with some of the US senators who visited Baghdad some time ago and suggested ideas but it seemed that no one was really interested in settling the issue and military force was believed to be the only means of stopping the uprising and insurgency.”
What could account for the failure of the mainstream media either to report these facts or interview these respected opponents of the war? There are apologists like Charles Krauthammer, who falsely asserted in the Washington Post that “there is no one to negotiate with”, as if military suppression is the only option.
But what accounts for the failure of more objective reporters to notice what is before their eyes? Are they embedded in the biased assumptions of empire? Supportive of the American troops? Blinded by the paradigms presented them?
From its beginning, this war has been one of perception. Perhaps the media elites, whose collaboration with the Pentagon gave public justification during the 2003 invasion, now worry that if they report that a majority of the Iraqis we are supposedly “saving from terrorism” are actually calling for our departure, any remaining support for the war will collapse.
* The Nation
The lack of critical media coverage at the beginning of the Iraq War is widely acknowledged. But the media’s failure to cover Iraq voices of opposition is arguably a greater default.
The mainstream media convey the impression that there are two categories of Iraqis – the handful of fanatical jihadists and the majority who show their yearning to be free during January’s elections. In this paradigm, our troops are seen as defending, even cultivating, a nascent democracy. Not surprisingly, a Fox News poll in February revealed that 53% of Americans believed the Iraqis wanted our troops to stay while only 35% thought the Iraqis wanted us to leave.
To a public fed this distorted narrative and nothing more, the actual facts may be too jarring to believe. There has been little or no coverage of these realities:
A majority of Iraqis in polls favor US military withdrawal and an end of the occupation. At the time of January’s election 69% of Shiites and 82% of Sunnis favored “near-term withdrawal”. Surveys done for the Coalition Provisional Authority in June 2004 showed that 55% majority “would feel safer is US troops left immediately.”
A recent summary of numerous Iraqi surveys, by the independent Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, concluded that a majority of Iraqis “oppose the US presence in Iraq, and those who strongly oppose it greatly outnumber those who strongly support it.” The PDA report went on to say that “the fact that [these surveys] have played little role in the public discourse on the Iraqi mission imperils US policy and contributes to the present impasse.”
The only Iraqis who strongly support the US occupation are the Kurds, less than 20% of the population whose semiautonomous status is protected by the United States, and who are represented disproportionately in the Iraqi regime. By backing the Kurds and southern Shiites, the United States is intervening in a secretarian civil war. The US-trained Iraqi security forces are dominated by Kurdish and Shiite militias.
In mid-September of this year, the 18-member National Sovereignty Committee in the US-sponsored Iraqi parliament issued a unanimous report calling for the end of occupation.
In June, more than 100 members of the same parliament, or more than one-third, signed a letter calling for “the departure of the occupation”. They criticized their regime for bypassing parliament in obtaining an extension of authority from the United Nations Security Council.
In January, US intelligence agencies warned in a “grim tone” that the newly elected Iraqi regime would demand a timetable for US withdrawal, which indeed was the platform of the winning Shiite party. After the election, nothing came of the worry. The winners simply abandoned the campaign pledge that helped elect them.
In June, the former electricity minister of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Aiham Al-Sammarae, created an organization to begin dialogue with 11 insurgent groups. The London Times reported that high-ranking US military officials joined one round of talks.
In 2004, 20 Iraqi political parties formed a National Foundation Congress to become a public voice for withdrawal. In May 2005, it held a second Congress, releasing a three-point platform demanding a withdrawal timetable, an interim international peacekeeping force, and internationally supervised elections. Virtually none of these realities have been reported in the American media, with the exception of articles by Nancy Youssef of Knight-Ridder.
These various Iraqi peacemakers deserve to be heard by Congress and the American people. Some of them are risking their lives. Al-Sammarae reportedly discovered a car bomb next to his Baghdad home.
Another high-status Iraqi leader, who asked that his name not be used, wrote of being “active in trying to bring the US and UK embassies to negotiate with heads of the opposition in Iraq [...but] unfortunately had been dismissed by representatives of both countries. He did meet with some of the US senators who visited Baghdad some time ago and suggested ideas but it seemed that no one was really interested in settling the issue and military force was believed to be the only means of stopping the uprising and insurgency.”
What could account for the failure of the mainstream media either to report these facts or interview these respected opponents of the war? There are apologists like Charles Krauthammer, who falsely asserted in the Washington Post that “there is no one to negotiate with”, as if military suppression is the only option.
But what accounts for the failure of more objective reporters to notice what is before their eyes? Are they embedded in the biased assumptions of empire? Supportive of the American troops? Blinded by the paradigms presented them?
From its beginning, this war has been one of perception. Perhaps the media elites, whose collaboration with the Pentagon gave public justification during the 2003 invasion, now worry that if they report that a majority of the Iraqis we are supposedly “saving from terrorism” are actually calling for our departure, any remaining support for the war will collapse.
* The Nation
Staying Alive
By: Ahdaf Soueif
In Baghdad on any given day you might come across her. I will not tell you her name – but you’ll recognize her. She is tall and slim, has silver hair and dresses in black with black trainers and thick black socks. Her husband, now dead, used long ago to be an Iraqi ambassador. Now she sets out from her home every morning and walks. She walks through the streets looking and listening and asking questions. Her project is to memorise what is happening to the people and the daily life of her country. She’s eighty-eight and doesn’t have much time.
None of us has much time.
Have you ever seen a patched book? Here it is: SJ’s slim volume The Poet. SJ has a Ph.D. in Arabic literature from Baghdad University. The ancient piece of machinery coaxed into printing her book either dries up or floods. On pages where the damage is too bad SJ writes out the missing words by hand on a piece of paper and glues it in place. ‘War gives birth,’ she writes, ‘and mothers do the bringing up.’ She sells The Poet at 125 dinars a copy, hoping eventually to pay back the 3,000 dinars it’s cost to produce. Three thousand dinars equal one dollar and fifty cents.
I’m asked what Arab women are doing in these critical times. They are doing what they’ve always done: toughing it out, spreading themselves thin, doing their work, making ends meet, trying to protect their children and support their men, turning to their sisters and their mothers for solidarity and laughs. There was a time, I guess, when women’s political action was born of choice, of a desire to change the world. Now, simply to hold on to our world action is thrust upon us.
F is an Egyptian architect. She has always been active in women’s organizations. She did voluntary literacy work with poor urban women and her book on mothers and children was published by the UNDP. Her husband is one of the fourteen anti-war activists detained recently in Cairo. Last Monday she and her two daughters, both engineering students, went to visit him in Tora jail. Her daughters were astounded at the hundreds of women and children waiting to visit political detainees. Children were waiting to visit grandfathers in their seventies. F’s husband is from the left but the majority of the detainees are Islamists. The majority are unofficially detained. They have never been to court and there is no document that gives them prisoner status. They are not allowed to give power of attorney to anyone. Without documents wives cannot draw their husband’s salaries, cannot travel, cannot marry off a daughter or even bury a child. Because of the conditions in the jail, the detainees’ families have to provide them with food, clothes, books, cigarettes. The distance from the centre of Cairo to Tora jail is twenty miles. Because the detainees have no official status there is no agreed system for visits. The women show up and hope that they and their provisions will be allowed in. If they are not they have to come back the next day. F and her colleagues now find themselves campaigning at least for the proper application of the hated emergency laws under which Egyptians have laboured since 1981. In the Arab world today, the human rights of women are indivisible from those of men.
The emergency laws proscribe demonstrations or unauthorized public gatherings. Five of the marches that have taken place in Cairo over the last two weeks have been women’s marches called by women’s NGOs and timed with the Women in Black demonstrations across the world. Unlike marches involving men they managed to reach both the American and Israeli embassies. Men who demonstrate get shot before they come anywhere near these, but the authorities are still wary of brutalizing women in public. It seems, though, that their patience may be wearing thin; the latest demo saw 150 women cornered by some 2,000 riot police so their protest took place in front of Shepheard’s Hotel round the corner from the American embassy. Today’s demonstration in front of the Arab League headquarters will link Iraq and Palestine, for while the world’s attention is on Iraq, Ariel Sharon’s army shoots at ambulances and bulldozes houses down on top of pregnant women. Since November 2000, 51 Palestinian women have had to give birth at checkpoints. Twenty-nine of these 51 babies died.
And yet Palestinian women continue to have babies. Is that a political choice? At the centre of most women’s lives ate the children. Soha, a nursing student, breaks down and cries in her home in Aida Camp when a rocket whizzes through her kitchen window at supper-time and out through the facing wall into the mercifully empty bedroom. Her mother tells her to buck up and not scare the children. It is sobering to note that the first Palestinian woman to make the political decision to become a human bomb was a nurse, caring daily for children injured or maimed by Israeli bullets. In between these two extremes – the giving and the giving up of life – hundreds of thousands of women go on about their business as best they can.
A great many of the cultural workers in the West Bank and Gaza are women. Marina Burhan operates a childrens’ theatre out of Beit Jala despite her roof having been blown off. Carol Michel keeps the small cultural centre in Bethlehem working – curfews permitting. Suad al-Amiri restores houses in the old city of al-Khalil (Hebron) and takes the Israeli army to court when they try to demolish her work. Tania Nasir researches traditional embroidery patterns. Adila Laidi stages concerts and painting competitions in Ramallah despite her computers being ripped apart and excrement smeared on her walls again by the army. ‘By responding to the occupation, interpreting it through art, we are no longer its victims, we work our own will upon it.’ She says. Vera and Tania take advantage of a sudden lifting of curfew to slip out and have highlights put in their hair. They say it makes them feel stronger and able to cope with the soldiers.
Karma, though sixty years younger than our Baghdad friend, does not walk the streets of Ramallah. She sits at home and compiles the Hearpalestine newsletter and website, recording what she can of the daily demolitions, expropriations, arrests and killings. Keeping the children alive. Keeping culture alive. Preserving history and telling the story – these seem to be at the heart of our women’s concerns right now.
Peter Hansen, writing in the paper last Wednesday of the terrible hunger in Gaza, says that ‘the Palestinian extended family and community network have saved the territories from...absolute collapse.’ Women are the backbone of these families and networks and they are performing the same function in Iraq. Families who have, share with those who have not, through the agency of the churches and the mosques.
Last night IK told me that her mother, in Baghdad, has sold the Virgin’s golf. An icon of the Virgin that has been in the family for more than 300 years. A neighbour in trouble – Christian, Jew or Muslim – would come and whisper a prayer, perhaps make a pledge. When the afflicted was healed, the traveler berthed, the child conceived, the neighbour would fulfil the pledge. Over the decades the Virgin was adorned with the most delicate filaments of gold. To her children’s appalled protests that the gold was not hers to sell, their mother replied that the Virgin had no need of gold when there were people in the city who were starving. But what comes next? Where do you go after you’ve sold the Virgin’s gold?
* The Guardian, 13 March 2003 published this in a shorter form. The full essay appeared for the first time in Mezzaterra, 2004.
In Baghdad on any given day you might come across her. I will not tell you her name – but you’ll recognize her. She is tall and slim, has silver hair and dresses in black with black trainers and thick black socks. Her husband, now dead, used long ago to be an Iraqi ambassador. Now she sets out from her home every morning and walks. She walks through the streets looking and listening and asking questions. Her project is to memorise what is happening to the people and the daily life of her country. She’s eighty-eight and doesn’t have much time.
None of us has much time.
Have you ever seen a patched book? Here it is: SJ’s slim volume The Poet. SJ has a Ph.D. in Arabic literature from Baghdad University. The ancient piece of machinery coaxed into printing her book either dries up or floods. On pages where the damage is too bad SJ writes out the missing words by hand on a piece of paper and glues it in place. ‘War gives birth,’ she writes, ‘and mothers do the bringing up.’ She sells The Poet at 125 dinars a copy, hoping eventually to pay back the 3,000 dinars it’s cost to produce. Three thousand dinars equal one dollar and fifty cents.
I’m asked what Arab women are doing in these critical times. They are doing what they’ve always done: toughing it out, spreading themselves thin, doing their work, making ends meet, trying to protect their children and support their men, turning to their sisters and their mothers for solidarity and laughs. There was a time, I guess, when women’s political action was born of choice, of a desire to change the world. Now, simply to hold on to our world action is thrust upon us.
F is an Egyptian architect. She has always been active in women’s organizations. She did voluntary literacy work with poor urban women and her book on mothers and children was published by the UNDP. Her husband is one of the fourteen anti-war activists detained recently in Cairo. Last Monday she and her two daughters, both engineering students, went to visit him in Tora jail. Her daughters were astounded at the hundreds of women and children waiting to visit political detainees. Children were waiting to visit grandfathers in their seventies. F’s husband is from the left but the majority of the detainees are Islamists. The majority are unofficially detained. They have never been to court and there is no document that gives them prisoner status. They are not allowed to give power of attorney to anyone. Without documents wives cannot draw their husband’s salaries, cannot travel, cannot marry off a daughter or even bury a child. Because of the conditions in the jail, the detainees’ families have to provide them with food, clothes, books, cigarettes. The distance from the centre of Cairo to Tora jail is twenty miles. Because the detainees have no official status there is no agreed system for visits. The women show up and hope that they and their provisions will be allowed in. If they are not they have to come back the next day. F and her colleagues now find themselves campaigning at least for the proper application of the hated emergency laws under which Egyptians have laboured since 1981. In the Arab world today, the human rights of women are indivisible from those of men.
The emergency laws proscribe demonstrations or unauthorized public gatherings. Five of the marches that have taken place in Cairo over the last two weeks have been women’s marches called by women’s NGOs and timed with the Women in Black demonstrations across the world. Unlike marches involving men they managed to reach both the American and Israeli embassies. Men who demonstrate get shot before they come anywhere near these, but the authorities are still wary of brutalizing women in public. It seems, though, that their patience may be wearing thin; the latest demo saw 150 women cornered by some 2,000 riot police so their protest took place in front of Shepheard’s Hotel round the corner from the American embassy. Today’s demonstration in front of the Arab League headquarters will link Iraq and Palestine, for while the world’s attention is on Iraq, Ariel Sharon’s army shoots at ambulances and bulldozes houses down on top of pregnant women. Since November 2000, 51 Palestinian women have had to give birth at checkpoints. Twenty-nine of these 51 babies died.
And yet Palestinian women continue to have babies. Is that a political choice? At the centre of most women’s lives ate the children. Soha, a nursing student, breaks down and cries in her home in Aida Camp when a rocket whizzes through her kitchen window at supper-time and out through the facing wall into the mercifully empty bedroom. Her mother tells her to buck up and not scare the children. It is sobering to note that the first Palestinian woman to make the political decision to become a human bomb was a nurse, caring daily for children injured or maimed by Israeli bullets. In between these two extremes – the giving and the giving up of life – hundreds of thousands of women go on about their business as best they can.
A great many of the cultural workers in the West Bank and Gaza are women. Marina Burhan operates a childrens’ theatre out of Beit Jala despite her roof having been blown off. Carol Michel keeps the small cultural centre in Bethlehem working – curfews permitting. Suad al-Amiri restores houses in the old city of al-Khalil (Hebron) and takes the Israeli army to court when they try to demolish her work. Tania Nasir researches traditional embroidery patterns. Adila Laidi stages concerts and painting competitions in Ramallah despite her computers being ripped apart and excrement smeared on her walls again by the army. ‘By responding to the occupation, interpreting it through art, we are no longer its victims, we work our own will upon it.’ She says. Vera and Tania take advantage of a sudden lifting of curfew to slip out and have highlights put in their hair. They say it makes them feel stronger and able to cope with the soldiers.
Karma, though sixty years younger than our Baghdad friend, does not walk the streets of Ramallah. She sits at home and compiles the Hearpalestine newsletter and website, recording what she can of the daily demolitions, expropriations, arrests and killings. Keeping the children alive. Keeping culture alive. Preserving history and telling the story – these seem to be at the heart of our women’s concerns right now.
Peter Hansen, writing in the paper last Wednesday of the terrible hunger in Gaza, says that ‘the Palestinian extended family and community network have saved the territories from...absolute collapse.’ Women are the backbone of these families and networks and they are performing the same function in Iraq. Families who have, share with those who have not, through the agency of the churches and the mosques.
Last night IK told me that her mother, in Baghdad, has sold the Virgin’s golf. An icon of the Virgin that has been in the family for more than 300 years. A neighbour in trouble – Christian, Jew or Muslim – would come and whisper a prayer, perhaps make a pledge. When the afflicted was healed, the traveler berthed, the child conceived, the neighbour would fulfil the pledge. Over the decades the Virgin was adorned with the most delicate filaments of gold. To her children’s appalled protests that the gold was not hers to sell, their mother replied that the Virgin had no need of gold when there were people in the city who were starving. But what comes next? Where do you go after you’ve sold the Virgin’s gold?
* The Guardian, 13 March 2003 published this in a shorter form. The full essay appeared for the first time in Mezzaterra, 2004.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
