Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 10,
2005
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
January 31,
2005
Dave Zirin
Mr.
Frank's Fatwah: New Republic Writer Calls for Death & Torture
of Arundhati Roy and Stan Goff
Robert Fisk
Amid
Tragedy, Defiance
Chyng Sun
Gonzales: Chief Prosecutor of Porn?
Greg Moses
The Real Scandals of the Texas Election
Mike Whitney
Cheney at Auschwitz
Ali Tonak
Turkey and the EU: Fantasies and Ultimatums
Patrick Cockburn
A
Victory for the Shia
Website of
the Day
Voting by the Script: Where Did the 8 Million Voter Turnout Figure
Come From?
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Manuel Yang
/ Peter Linebaugh
A
Dialogue About Murder in Toledo
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad: City of Empty Streets
Robert Fisk
This Election Will Change the World, But Not as the US Wanted
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
Bernard Chazelle
Why the Children of Iraq Make No Sound When They Fall
Gary Leupp
"This Kind of Subject Matter": Bush's New Ed Secretary
vs. Vermont's Lesbians
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Passion of Paul Shanley
Alexander Cockburn
The Case of Father Jerry
Ron Jacobs
Ballot of the Puppets in Iraq
Brian Cloughley
Smart Bombs; Wrong House: Iraq's Civilian Dead
Fred Gardner
Peron May Split
Sister Dianna
Ortiz
Memo to Bush from a Survivor of the Guatemalan Torturers: Stop
the Torture!
Tom Reeves
How Bush Brings Freedom to the World: the Case of Haiti
Fran Quigley
Report: Haiti Now "More Violent and More Inhuman"
Suzan Mazur
"Mr. Garsin from Kinshasa": an Old Hand Weighs In on
the Murder of Lumumba
Kurt Nimmo
Condi Rice and the Neocon Plan for the Palestinians
Lenni Brenner
Holocaust History: Beyond the UN's Rhetoric
Gilad Atzmon
The
Politics of Auschwitz
Luis Gomez
Power and Autonomy in Bolivia
Mark Gaffney
NASA Searches for a Snowball in Hell: Why Velikovsky Matters
Ben Tripp
Lament of the Mnemonopath
Richard Oxman
Meet the Fuqers
Poets' Basement
Louise, Collins, Shanahan and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
Chemical Industry: Deceit and Denial
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
February 10, 2005
Making a Path to Peace in Texas
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
By
GREG MOSES
Results from last Sunday's
election at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas (and its branch in
Oklahoma City) have yet to be officially announced, but it's
safe to predict that Rev. Dr. Jo Hudson will win the congregation's
endorsement as senior pastor to the largest gay, lesbian, and
transgender congregation in the world. When linked to the November
general election of Lupe Valdez as Dallas County Sheriff, the
election of Dr. Hudson this week may not signal a clear trend
toward lesbian leadership in North Texas, but it is another pathmarker
in hard country, and therefore a sign worth noting.
"Dr. Hudson,
where are you?" asks the famous Mennonite pacifist John
K. Stoner on a recent Friday evening from the podium of the Cathedral
of Hope. In the pews, there are about 100 of us, and we're all
looking around for new leadership. Hudson raises her hand from
the middle of the cavernous sanctuary, where she sits with her
partner, the couple visually marked out by their matching leather
jackets. "Welcome to your church Dr. Hudson!" jokes
Stoner as the audience chuckles along.
Stoner, with
30 years of peace activism behind him, is working on a project
named Every Church a Peace Church (ECAPC), and this is his first
official try at converting the religious economy of Texas into
a peace faith. If ever there was a peace church ready to bloom,
it would be the Cathedral of Hope. Since 1970, this congregation
has grown from a Metropolitan Community Church of 12 members
into the free-standing phenomenon that it is today (with live
attendance in Dallas now about 1,500 per week and many more who
watch on the web). Some day soon this sanctuary of white stone
will become a full-time peace center, as the church grows again
into a planned 11-story structure, designed by the late Philip
Johnson. Hudson, the soon-to-be Senior Pastor looks around at
the applauding crowd, smiling.
"And where
is Dan Peeler?" asks Stoner. Peeler is Minister of Children
and Families at the Cathedral and a member of the church's Order
of St. Francis and St. Clare. We'll see the order again Saturday
afternoon during closing services, dressed in long brown robes,
reading prayers from Buddhist, Moslem, African, and Native American
traditions, lighting candles, giving out peace stones. They handle
the logistical work of this conference, answering emails, covering
the registration table, and generally moving folks from one thing
to the next.
"Whose
voice are you listening to these days?" asks Stoner. "Whose
voice do you trust?" The audience feels the problem, responds
with a few long groans. So Stoner quotes Martin Luther King Jr.,
a still trustworthy voice. It's okay to talk about long white
robes in heaven, said King once upon a time, so long as we get
shoes on people's feet down here.
Next up is
Baritone Anthony Brown, who sings the barefoot songs of America,
created back in the day when fiery white preachers shouted long
sermons about white robes, but couldn't care less who had shoes.
African American spirituals answered that insanity with self-centering
resistance, singing right through the official religions of slavery.
Talk about no time like the present? Is it any wonder that the
psychotherapist professor of social science, who now teaches
at a Mennonite community college in Kansas, feels the relevance
of his songs returning?
Primordial
nature is what Professor Brown says his songs intone. Raw faith
is what it sounds like to me: a defiant commitment to something
nowhere in sight yet everywhere necessary, like freedom in 1805,
justice in 1905, or peace today. Singing, "Oh Lord, waitin
on you; Can't do nothin til the spirit comes," Brown breathes
the prayer of an entire people who during the last election went
88 percent the other way. Without mystery or surprise, Brown's
singing bears witness to steadfastness. I find it impossible
to suppress an association with Paul Robeson. Next time white
folks ask out loud, where are the people of color in our coalitions,
I will have a simpler answer. Ever listen to yourself sing?
Next up is
Michael Westmoreland-White the gregarious Baptist peace activist
and outreach coordinator for ECAPC who once as a young soldier
memorized the Sermon on the Mount (blessed are the meek, the
merciful, and the peacemakers) until the words sunk in so deep
that the military discharged him. His job tonight is to introduce
the keynote speaker, but he says a few words about his own autobiography
of pacifism first and how he came out of the Anabaptist tradition
of peace churches, inspired by writings of the late John Howard
Yoder whose 1972 book on The Politics of Jesus is most highly
revered.
And so it is
time for Professor Glen H. Stassen, son of the same Harold Stassen
who in 1943 resigned from his third term as Minnesota Governor
to join the Navy and then after World War II helped to organize
the United Nations as a way to deter war. For son Glen, who is
Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary
in Pasadena, there is a personal pain that he feels watching
the current President tear down the international institutions
that elder Stassen helped to build. Will history redeem the futile
image of the father's later career whose incessant campaigns
for president are best known by the years he did not run? Son
Glen has organized impressive arguments why the internationalist
route proposed by the Stassen family should yet be preferred.
Stassen begins
with local history. The Dallas Peace Center, founded in 1981
by the Peace Mennonite Church was first of its kind in the country.
(In the house tonight is Peace Center director Lon Burnham who
doubles as a state representative from Fort Worth and Pastor
Dick Davis of the Peace Mennonite Church.) Stassen then points
south toward the city of Waxahachie, home of the Pentecostal
Peace Fellowship, which with a name like that is bound to be
out spreading word. So really, quips Stassen, this is peace country!
Thanks to Stassen we can see a few more path-markers on our way.
"We have
a better answer," says Stassen, previewing the central thesis
of his talk. As a scholar of Christian Ethics for decades, Stassen's
central insight is that ethics of prohibition do not work. In
the Sermon on the Mount for example he finds a subtle structure
of advice that instead of saying stop that, encourages profound
alternative choices. So instead of the peace movement saying
no war, no violence, no bombs, there should be persistent pleas
for making alternative choices. Every time we say we have a better
answer, we have a better chance of convincing more people to
listen.
His life work
as a scholar has come to fruition around a theory called ëjust
peacemaking,' designed conceptually as an alternative to ëjust
war.' Stassen's first book-length treatment of just-peacemaking
theory was published in 1992, and it bears the marks of fresh
frustration from not being able to stop father Bush from starting
the First Gulf War. Back then, the peace community again got
caught chanting a simple no war prohibition, when already we
should have known better than that.
As if memories
of Gandhi and King weren't enough to teach us that peacemaking
is about a persistent program of active alternatives, the world
had more recently eyewitnessed a Revolution of Candles powerful
enough to dismantle the Berlin wall. Stassen was there when that
happened. And like many contemporaries, he watched news reports
of similar achievements in nonviolence history as Marcos was
removed from the Philippines and the Shah from Iran. Couldn't
those same methods have been used against Hussein of Iraq? There
was a better way.
As a two-time
wrestling champion, Stassen says it is important that people
come to feel secure in their own strength so that they are not
afraid to appear weak from time to time. Just peacemaking, says
Stassen, requires leadership that can clearly acknowledge personal
responsibility for things that go wrong. Leaders who are afraid
to appear weak, who need to blame everything on someone else,
who always see the world in terms of evil others and pure selves--those
leaders make lousy peacemakers. From sounds the audience is making,
Stassen knows they know who he's talking about.
In contrast
to leaders today, who bully and bomb, Stassen is quite seriously
encouraging policy commitments motivated by the Sermon on the
Mount, guided by modesty, mercy, purity of heart, and peacemaking.
Such leadership would be international in outreach and interdependent,
not like the treaty-smashing, UN-bashing unilateralists that
crowd our television screens these days.
Consider the
contrast between Turkish approaches to the Kurds and Russian
responses to the Chechnyans, two examples of Muslim inspired
independence movements. In Chechnya, says Stassen, we see a scorched-earth
policy of strong leadership that never wavers from its appearance
of rock-hard masculinity. Yet the terrorism continues. In Turkey,
on the other hand, we find a doubling of per-capita spending
in Kurdish neighborhoods, engagement with Kurdish tribal structures,
and a parliament where Kurdish representatives exceed their proportional
numbers. In this case, terrorism has receded.
But we can't
reward the terrorists like that! Stassen imitates the slogan
of reaction. But addressing grievances of people does not assist
terrorists. When grassroots get their needs met through constructive
channels, it is the terrorists who wither away. Continue to stomp
the people, says Stassen, and daily you drive new people into
the terrorists' arms. Just look at Israel.
Another pathmarker
worth noting: Sojourners editor Jim Wallis has been on tour in
Texas lately promoting his bestsellter book on God's Politics,
arguing that the right is all wrong about religion. In Austin,
for example, Wallis drew a standing-room crowd. Of all places
to meet, Stassen and Wallis wind up together in Waco. They were
up until one in the morning Central Baptist Time talking about
Christian ethics. Sometimes you want to be a fly on the wall.
Did they talk about Reno and Koresh?
"I'm so
glad Glen deals with all these details, putting things together
in a very linear way," says Karen Horst Cobb, the Santa
Fe artist who has become a global internet sensation for her
Common Dreams article last October entitled No Longer a Christian.
She is responding to Stassen's talk, explaining why she has moved
beyond religion into peacemaking.
"You know
the first time he came, people were expecting that Christ would
be a conqueror; there were so many who missed Jesus because of
their preconceived notions," says Cobb. "And when I
hear the talk about End Times today, I think that again people
may be letting their preconceived ideas get in the way. The Bible
says pretty clearly that Jesus is the Prince of Peace."
On Saturday afternoon, Cobb will return to the podium to present
her nonlinear message, that fear of isolation is our root problem.
To address it, she will argue, we most crucially need courage
for deeper love.
During question
period for Stassen a Lutheran minister speaks of his efforts
to resist the mad, self-righteous blindness and pall that lately
have been coming out of his people, as if something lurking within
them has been turned loose. And now the headlines say we're not
going to attack Iran, yet? The minister wants to know, is there
any way that we can get a vaccination for this?
Stassen says
he had made a careful study of public opinion in times of war.
This hysteria always marks the first phase, and it is fed in
three ways. For 20 percent of the people, nationalism is enough
of a motivation. Just talk about our need to band together as
a nation. Another seventeen percent defer to presidential authority,
and this number quickly doubles as soon as troops are involved,
because then they support the president and his troops. Finally,
another sixteen percent are motivated by fear of threat, which
takes you to about 53 percent majority in favor of war before
the troops are shipped off.
To just say
no in the face of this mob will never work. You have to argue
that there is a better way. Stassen says the argument for more
weapons inspection worked well enough during the buildup to Iraq
and people were sufficiently persuaded to let the weapons inspectors
do their jobs. Then the official motive for war shifted to displacing
a dictator for democracy. Although Stassen doesn't finish the
point this evening, he has said enough to imagine how the peace
movement might have said, we have a better way for this, too.
When the war
administration shifted its rationale to displacing a dictator,
there was no international institution similar to the weapons
inspection structure that could stand up and say give us a chance
to do that. So the anti-war movement got caught defending Iraq's
sovereign right to dictatorship. We just said no war. Yet, we
already knew enough about Berlin, Marcos, and the Shah to make
a credible case that dictator displacement is also possible through
concerted nonviolent means. When the administration shifted its
argument to bringing democracy to Iraq, we could have said there
is a better way.
But the people
are simply brainwashed argues another questioner. What can be
done until the whole bunch have been completely re-educated?
In every church, answers Stassen, a small group can get to work
right away. It only takes a few people to call regular meetings,
talk about just peacemaking, invite speakers, communicate with
other peace groups, and this kind of activity makes a difference.
These few people can begin the process of taking Jesus back from
those who have hijacked him.
What about
Afghanistan? asks another activist. Again, we could have talked
about a better way of confronting terrorism, one that does not
kill innocent civilians, a policing approach combined with humanitarian
development. And Iraq today? Stassen has just completed a long
memo to Peace Action arguing that "just get out" is
the moral equivalent of "just say no" and it just won't
work. Instead, we need to speak of a better way, one that recovers
internationalist commitments to the United Nations and human
rights.
Used to be
a time, Stassen reminds us, when he could teach Southern Baptist
seminary students and argue that there are two kinds of religion:
authoritarian and compassionate. And he could of course encourage
them toward the compassionate kind. But these days the Southern
Baptists won't hear it anymore. In fact, says Stassen, the Baptists
have become the new KGB, the secret police of the 21st Century.
Don't call them, they'll call you. Reagan and Gorbachev were
two people Stassen could work with, but the Southern Baptists
today? They are impossible.
* *
*
The gift shop
at the Cathedral of Hope is open late Friday night, selling lots
of books by Stassen that he signs at a high, round table. I also
need some anniversary gifts in my bag when I arrive home tomorrow,
so I grab lots of heart-shaped things. How handy this is for
me. Books and hearts. Next stop is the Kinkos on Oak Lawn to
make flyers for tomorrow, and a late-night snack at Lucky's CafÈ.
Between Kinko's and Lucky's I make a wrong turn and wind up on
smooth streets lined with mansions. On your next trip to Dallas
I would recommend this haphazard tour: Cathedral of Hope, gift
shop, and Lucky's CafÈ for your spiritual, consumer, and
nutritional needs. And why not check out the mansions? They give
you something to think about, too.
Saturday morning
they're playing gospel music at listener supported KNON 89.3
FM. I'm looking head on at a bright yellow city bus headed for
the Martin Luther King Jr. Center as I listen to a song that
assures me this is only a test. Based on a message that I find
today at Gospelflava.com, I take it that this is the song by
Bishop Larry Trotter and the Sweet Holy Spirit Combined Choirs
of Chicago from their album What's to Come is Better than What's
Been. All the great American music comes out of here, you know.
Never would have been a blues had there not been a gospel first.
And had there never been a blues, well, forget it.
I'm pondering
the meaning of this gospel test as I travel East along Inwood,
where a towering medical center on the north side of the street
looks down upon a tiny liquor store on the south side. Thinking
about this is enough to keep me distracted until I sit down at
a hamburger stand for my biscuit-sandwich breakfast. When a slinky
young woman in pink hair and t-shirt steps in front of the drink
counter to pose like a goddess, I try not to choke. The guy with
her is dressed for business with sharp tied tie, and the two
of them keep me busy concentrating on the biscuit. Today is my
28th anniversary for Christ's sake. I bought hearts last night.
There is a better way, I persuade myself. Just eat the biscuit.
I have one
more errand to run along Inwood. The clerk is keeping me busy
with small chat until he asks me what brings me to town. It's
a conference I say, at the Cathedral of Hope. He freezes. You
know that church right there, and I point over his shoulder.
His eyes narrow and he nods his head a terse two degrees. And
to me, he never says another word. Running a little late by now,
I shake hands very briefly at the registration table and already
hear Washington DC activist Damu Smith speaking in mid-lecture,
trying to wake everybody up.
* *
*
"I'm proud
to be an activist for Christ!" says Smith, speaking not
from the pulpit, but from the floor at the head of the center
aisle. Dressed in full-length purple dashiki, he's chipping away
at this Saturday morning audience of white peace activists, determined
to find a thing of beauty in here before he's done.
"The four
Gospels read like an action movie," chimes Smith. "You
see, Jesus is not just feeding people on an individual level,
but he's feeding the multitudes. He's transforming public policy!"
His rendition of the text draws some laughs. "I mean, soup
kitchens are a nice thing to do, but what we want is the kind
of church that can't wait until the day comes that soup kitchens
are not needed! The kind of world that pays people livable wages
so they don't have to work two, three, or four jobs the way some
people are working now!"
The audience
is waking up. People running this country today are people who
do not believe in worker justice, but that's anti-Christ, says
Smith. That's got nothing to do with Jesus. And this means that
peace from a Jesus perspective is not only the absence of war,
but the presence of justice. So if we want to talk about true
peace, we have to talk about affordable housing. In D.C. for
example new homes are going on the market for $350,000, so let
me ask you what's that for?
"Not for
the poor!" answers a voice from the audience.
"Not for
the poor?" exclaims Smith. "That's not even for the
working people. Forget the poor, that's not even for the middle
class!" Smith describes a modest apartment that goes to
rent for $1,700 per month. "So people are living in cars,
hotels, streets, and what do they do when they have to live like
this? When they are forced to live in these compressed circumstances
and stressed communities? What do they do? Well, not everyone
is reaching out to the Lord."
"So Black
Voices for Peace is yes talking about peace between Israel and
Palestine, and yes talking about peace in Iraq, and yes talking
about peace in Haiti and the Congo, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
But yes we're also talking about bringing peace to the ghettoes
and slums at home, to build a World House like a tent over which
we can construct the beloved community." Smith has sailed,
of course, into pure King, so he talks about the need to read
the whole King, the whole Testament of Hope, the inward journey,
the outward journey, the triple evils of racism, poverty, and
war, so that we understand what it means to have a true revolution
of values, and a true movement for peace.
"YOUR
friend George Bush," Smith taunts the audience. These are
Texas white folks, are they not? So if George Bush has friends,
these must be them, right? But Smith does not hold this audience
to that hot plate. Has George Bush ever BEEN to the Cathedral
of Hope to be fed? Smith laughs. To be fed with the word? The
audience grins back. But there's one thing George Bush has that
the peace movement needs right now. George Bush has an agenda.
Not like the peace movement, where we go into one room to talk
about peace, another room to talk about affordable housing, another
for welfare reform, and never the twain shall meet! What we need
is a World House agenda and this means demilitarize, but it also
means putting money into affordable housing, jobs, and the concept
of justice.
Smith also
references the statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
that we're not going to war against Iran, not just yet. We're
living in dangerous times, one of the most dangerous periods
in the history of the earth, and people in charge are going around
with beliefs that are going to keep us in eternal danger. With
conflict all around them, they use language that provokes.
In his State
of the Union Address, Bush talks about Syria and Iran as evil,
but what do people see? Smith asks. They see Palestinian children
being blown apart and nothing happening to Israel. No matter
how many Palestinian homes get bulldozed or children shot, our
nation can never find its way to criticize these things, and
that's unfair. We're not asking for Bush to declare solidarity
with the Palestinian struggle, because that will never happen
in a million years, but Mr. Bush, pleads Smith, can you be fair?
If we're going to build the beloved community, at least we can
tell the truth about what's happening. Smith is chipping away.
Time for the King chisel again.
A revolution
of values is needed in this nation whose leaders continue to
use threatening and belligerent language that puts the whole
world on edge. A revolution of values is needed in a nation that
is materially the most prosperous but spiritually the most impoverished.
How can we be moral leaders of the world supporting South Africa
all those years while boycotting Cuba? How can we offer moral
leadership to the world when we send landmines to Afghanistan
and Angola with labels that say made in the USA, blowing up children
and causing the highest rates of amputation in the world? What
kind of moral leadership is that?
People of faith
have got to be passionate about speaking for truth. Fifty eight
percent of white folks voted for Bush and 89 percent of Black
folks voted against him. And it's not genetic! Smith draws a
burst of laughter for this. No it's not genetic, it's experiential.
My ancestors came on slave ships, packed like sardines, thrown
overboard when they got too sick, just tossed into the ocean,
captured into slavery and brutalized by the police. When you
have that kind of experience, you tend to think a little differently
about things. When you think about four little girls being blown
up in Birmingham, when you can't walk anywhere without being
stared at, when you watch movies from balconies, drink from separate
fountains, carry your food in an ice box while you're traveling.
This is Smith's letter from Birmingham jail. In a life of economic
and racial privilege, white folks (not everyone who is white
has privilege I know that but they do) tend to accept things
a little more.
Next time Smith
comes to Dallas he wants to see Black, white, Latino, Asian,
young and old in THE SAME ROOM! Bringing folks together means
getting out more. And a life in Christ, it is NOT hanging out
with people who think like you. Jesus went to dinner with the
tax collector, and people asked him why. He said do you call
the doctor to see people who are well? Two days before the November
election, Black Voices for Peace spent the day outside the White
House talking to tourists. Smith looks up at the glorious high
ceiling of the Cathedral of Hope sanctuary, and pleads, you have
to get out of this beautiful place!
George Bush
is in the White House because 60 percent of the white people
put him there. And although we can say that homophobia and abortion
played a part, the election was mostly a widespread referendum
on Bush policies. Although Smith has been quoting King all morning,
I begin to hear subtext from Malcolm X, the famous instruction
he gave an eager college student: go back to your neighborhood
and work on white folks. White peace activists have neither mobilized
a majority of white folks nor turned out a minority of others
for their compartmentalized movement. Smith has been about as
diplomatic as he can be, and he promises to come back to help.
But there is such a gap.
* *
*
During lunch
break Peace Mennonite Pastor Dick Davis is introducing me to
a swirl of Dallas activists, and I hand out some flyers that
I made last night at Kinkos. The Veterans for Peace table is
staffed by someone who flew down from Minnesota, and when I sit
down to eat, I meet Moravians from Pennsylvania. Moravians, they
explain to me, belong to a pre-Reformation peace church, founded
upon the ashes of martyr John Huss who died singing in 1415.
"So what
are you doing here," they ask me, glancing at my flyers
from the War Resisters League. "Isn't the War Resisters
League secular?" I almost say socialist, too, but decide
to swallow the provocation with my lunch. I'm a sympathetic secularist
I explain. I take a William James approach to religious experience.
We all have some kind of faith, I think. The fourth person at
our table is a beaming activist from Dallas, and lunch passes
very quickly.
* *
*
For the afternoon
breakout session, I will look for Professor Jeff Dumas, leading
expert on the problem of military conversion. In fact, I recruited
Professor Dumas into this gig so that I could sit here and take
notes. We are assigned to a room in the children's wing. Everyone
who enters says something about the bright colors. Dumas needs
no flair to keep his listeners engaged for the next hour. No
notes, no slides, no handouts. He barely moves his hands or his
voice. He just has this mind that turns out quiet but thoughtful
words.
Dumas picked
up his scholarly interest in military conversion from the founder
of the field, the late Seymour Melman of Columbia U (see aftercapitalism.com).
And some kind of fate has planted Dumas here. If the Dallas-Fort
Worth metroplex were a state, it would rank in third or fourth
place in its ability to attract military contracts.
Dating back
to researches begun during the Vietnam era, Dumas finds two main
reasons why people support military spending. They think it makes
them safe, and they think it's good for the economy. But military
spending is making the world much more dangerous, says Dumas,
and military spending is only good for certain vested interests.
In searching for alternatives to military spending we are seeking
to remove obstacles to peace. But we also have to address public
anxieties about the damage they fear after the flow of military
dollars has been cut off.
People see
the bases, the workplaces, and the paychecks that come with military
spending, says Dumas, but they don't see how military spending
causes the industrial base of an economy to shrink or how this
shrinkage in turn contributes to huge trade deficits. Military
spending is turning our economy into a second rate economy and
the administration is making the world more dangerous. When people
fear the conversion of a military economy, it's because they
can see what they will be losing: "The abstraction of after
is harder to see."
The Pentagon's
own data on base closings demonstrate that when military spending
is converted to a civilian economy, more jobs are created. We
hear planes right now landing at nearby Love Field, a one-time
military base that has a long and prosperous history as a center
of growth for civilian enterprise. Likewise with the old Bergstrom
Air Force Base at Austin, now home of the Barbara Jordan terminal.
Says Dumas: "We don't even know the examples that we are
sitting on top of."
At the end
of World War II, one third of the national economy of the USA
was militarized, and it was successfully reconverted into a booming
civilian economy. A lot of planning went into that effort, not
by pacifists, but by corporate leaders who wanted economic growth.
Today, says Dumas, the challenge is both easier and harder. It's
easier because there are fewer industries to convert, but harder
because the vested interests that most need converting are not
"going back" to their civilian activities. Since the
Korean War, the USA has developed a permanent war economy. Converting
this economy presents both psychological problems and concrete
issues.
The world of
military research and production is totally different from the
civilian kind. Military engineers design primarily for maximum
performance in specialty areas. Military engineers don't focus
on cost. In the military, if a project is funded, the costs will
be covered. In civilian life, of course, cost is very important.
Also, military engineers are often asked not to think about their
place in the larger plans. They just work on their compartmentalized
projects.
The story of
two refrigerators: Dumas goes shopping and finds two refrigerators
priced $150 apart. What's the difference? he asks the salesman.
Why this refrigerator here is made from space age plastic strong
enough to re-enter the atmosphere! In other words, it's a military
refrigerator.
Is military
work inherently more interesting? That's an argument Dumas hears
from time to time. So he tells the story of the English aerospace
engineer who met a child with spina bifida and built a little
vehicle for him to play in. That project, says the aerospace
engineer, was the most satisfying and interesting challenge of
his life. But what about the size of civilian paychecks? Well
yes, answers Dumas, military contractors who turn civilian do
have to give up about ten to twenty percent of their income.
One more story:
in 1996, Dumas was hired by the famous nuclear lab at Los Alamos
to prepare for conversion to civilian life, and they found a
civilian problem to work on. The plastics engineers at Los Alamos
would work on methods of plastic production that would eliminate
toxic waste. Green plastic? Go figure. As soon as the project
was announced, guess what happened? Congress cut the funding.
Meanwhile,
Congress continues to fund weapons programs that the Pentagon
itself has been trying to cut. Even the most conservative constituencies
can be reached with these facts, says Dumas. Congress cuts productive
research programs on the one hand as it funds useless weapons
elsewhere. Dumas has developed quite a bit of expertise here
in Texas talking to conservative audiences about military conversion.
There is no need to assume, he says, that the work can't be done:
"I know you can do this," he says. "I know this
can be done."
In conversation
between elders at the table, several of them Mennonites, a consensus
emerges that the European Union is the economic force to watch
these days, where a much more intelligent mix of social and military
policies is going to prove that the USA, in the grip of its own
paranoid fantasies of evil, is choosing a second-rate path. Because
winning a war against terrorism, says Dumas, has nothing to do
with the size of the military. In the near term, terrorism is
best fought through superb intelligence and diligent police work.
In the long term (like Stassen said last night) the most effective
policies against terrorism involve resolute commitments to human
rights and development.
Conversation
continues at the table, way past time. Dumas is conducting a
masterful seminar and people are reluctant to go. So it is no
reflection on the fine presentation by Karen Horst Cobb that
I arrive back in the sanctuary late and tired. I hear what she
is saying about love, the centrality of love, the way we have
not paid enough attention to it. There is a deeper conversion
at stake, a revolution of values, a profound choosing. I stare
into a candle that I hold and listen to the prayers that people
have shared for millennia on various continents and times.
Thanks to the
Order of St. Francis and St. Clare, I pick up a smooth stone
on my way out the door. Using stones like this, Cobb has encouraged
all of us to build a Cairn, an Ebenezer, a little arrangement
of stones that would signify a pathmarker through rough country.
If we build these little pathmarkers, they will show our hope
that a path to peace can be found. What else would Jesus do?
Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights
Review and author of Revolution
of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of
Nonviolence. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and
Bush appears in Dime's
Worth of Difference, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey
St. Clair. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net
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