| NGWS in Action november - december 2004 page one The Issue of Security "When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure." ~ Rudolph BahroIntroduction Safety and security are fundamental human needs. Since 9/11 security in all its many forms has grown to be an issue of great importance to a majority of Americans. We live today in a world that is completely interconnected. We cannot take a breath that does not effect the world and the world's breathing effects us as well. We are not an isolated entity that can "go it alone" because there is no such thing any longer. Many of our corporations do business in other countries, most of the goods that we use every day are manufactured in other countries. We drive our cars and heat our homes and run our nation on the backs of other countries. How can we cut ourselves off from the opinions and ideas and needs of other countries? Do we only associate with those that agree with where we stand at the moment on some issue - or do we wisely LISTEN to others to better understand how what we do might effect them - and ultimately US, because WE are after all, US. We are not some separate entity any more - we are part of a global community whether anyone likes it or not. So we MUST be willing to listen to others and learn and understand, and sometimes, maybe because of what we hear, we will change our mind or our direction because we come to realize a greater wisdom. But if we are unwilling to listen or participate in any group endeavor (like the UN - which is the instrument for the voice of the worlds nations - big and small - powerful and weak) we will eventually pay for it - in lives lost - jobs lost... Who knows what we might lose if we make enough people in the world community angry with us? The more angry people there are in the world who feel the U.S. is arrogant and unjust and dangerous - the better chance we have of being bombed and hurt. There is no way in the world we can keep terrorists from coming across our borders and doing us harm. Not all the armies of the world together guarding our borders could keep someone from coming across them if they wanted to. Nor can we kill all the terrorists, because the more we kill the more we create. The only way we can hope to ever create safety in our country is by using love and justice and compassion with the countries of the world - by making friends and allies and helping those that are down-trodden - with the Peace Corps instead of the Army. As long as we fight and act the bully and separate ourselves from the rest of the world the more danger we are in. Think about it. Really THINK about it. Which method is going to save us? Which method makes us more secure? Who can actually protect us - the bully or the peace maker? Barbara Allen
In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the
ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for
the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue
an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more
powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don't want.
Securing World Security by Tom Carney
Security is a primordial need. It can be documented as
paramount in the long struggle we have made from the darkest night of
time, when we were still hulking around and living in caves, to this day.
Security means, above all else, the freedom from fear, the need to feel
safe in one’s environment. Everyone, who has any awareness at all, knows
this need. Parents of children and the children of parents perhaps know
this need more vividly than anyone else.
The evolution of humanity is evident in the history of
people endeavoring to create civilizations and societies that would offer
better and better conditions of safety and freedom from fear for the
health and growth of the inhabitants. Today, in a world that has, over the
centuries, evolved into what is in essence a global community, this basic
need for safety and freedom from fear is being exploited by a group of
individuals at a level and intensity greater than ever before. To increase
their own wealth and power, these persons are exploiting this basic human
need by imposing their will and designs on others through the use of force
and violence.
As always was the case, the exploitation of the need is
being manipulated through the generation and magnification of fear which
knows no boundaries and recognizes no limits. The goal of the manipulation
is to create such a condition of fear that people will be willing to give
up their personal and community freedoms to allow others to protect them
from the supposed threats to their safety and security.
Our need for security has always been manipulated in this
manner by the Dwellers on the Dark Side. Through their shallow and venial
tools, from petty criminals and con men to history’s despots, demagogues
and dictators, they manipulate humanity from all sides, frequently
managing to whip us into an emotional and irrational frenzy in which
brother kills brother.
The primary tool of manipulation is, as it has always been,
the vicious beast of fear and hate. This monster--created eons ago by the
Forces of Retrogression in their forges of darkness--has emerged through
the partly open “door where evil dwells.” Reconditioned and updated with
all the latest whiz bangs and bangles of science, it “Slouches toward
Bethlehem to be born.” W.B. Yeats, “The Second
Coming”
Today this monster, surrounded by a cloud of fear and hate,
has generated armies of followers in practically every nation on the
globe. We have huge world-wide fear and hate driven demonstrations of
insane destruction and killing. Real live maniacs are acting out by
blowing up and burning down entire sky-scrapers, hotels, churches, planes,
ships, trains, and busses full of people. Uncountable tons of bombs are
being dropped on population centers. The men, woman and children of many
nations including our Arab brothers and sisters, in more thousands than we
care to realize, are daily throwing their lives and limbs into this
frenzy.
These acts, create enormous waves of fear and hate. They
trigger immediate reactions on the part of those who are the targets. The
demand for retribution and revenge swell from these waves of fear,
engulfing reason and understanding. Thus the ancient nemesis of humanity,
the vicious cycle of fear, hate, destruction and revenge, continues to
churn.
This new fear generator is creating a world wide market for
big ticket security items which we think are absolutely necessary to
protect us, to make us safe. We have, for example, items like Humvees, @
$175,000 each and tanks and planes. Who knows how much a tank or plane
costs? Millions of dollars is my guess. And of course, we have the very
expensive big “one use only” computer guided bombs. These seldom hit their
intended targets but they do blow up wherever they hit and generate an
awful lot of SHOCK AND AWE, and casualties.
Then there are the thousands and thousands of guns of all
kinds. We also have uncountable tons of explosives, shells, bullets and
rockets; and, of course there is the body armor which, even if they have
it, really doesn’t do that great a job of keeping bullets and shrapnel out
the bodies of our children, our husbands, our wives, our fathers and our
mothers. This brings us to the most morally expensive and mind boggling of all security products, the soldiers. It is hard to realize that at the highest levels of the corporate Security Business soldiers are considered to be simply products. Referred to as “troops on the ground”, the soldiers are needed, like any bomb or gun, to keep the illusion of security, the illusion that we are being protected, happening. We will be paying the cost for this product for a very long time.
It is interesting to realize that, by very far, the largest
generator of world-wide Terror is not al-Qaeda or any of the countries of
the Middle East, including Palestine, Afghanistan or Iran. And it was
certainly not the ruined, desperate country full of starving children that
Iraq was on the eve of our heartless and mindless attack. The largest
generator of terror in the world is the United States of America. Prospects For Peace :
Real Security What is security? Where does it come from and who is responsible for it? from Resurgence Magazine issue #218 ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, the Revolution in Military Affairs shifted into fast forward. The asymmetric warfare we had worried about for decades became a reality. A poorly financed and technologically impoverished antagonist proved it could mount devastating attacks on the United States. It is clear that you can't effectively guard an open society, especially one that has inflicted itself with alarming vulnerabilities built up over decades. Vulnerabilities include energy, water, telecommunication, financial transfers, and transportation. If you destroy some critical bits of infrastructure, you can make a large city uninhabitable pretty quickly. Looking over the list of other issues that erode security - the effect of climate change and conflict on increasing flows of refugees; the risks of famine and war; water problems; disease outbreaks and genetically modified organisms - it's not a picture for a peaceful world. Traditional thinking about all these issues has been influenced by the supposition that governments are the axis of power and the locus of action, so we need to focus on governmental and international institutions and instruments. That's the wrong mindset, dangerously incomplete and obsolete, in a world that is now clearly tripolar, with power and action centred not just in governments, but also in the private sector and an internet-empowered civil society. In a tripolar society, power is enlarged and diffused, and everything can happen a lot faster, because there are a lot more ways and channels in which it can happen. In the model that we grew up with, governments rule physical territory in which national economies function, and strong economies support hegemonic military power. In the new model, already emerging under our noses, economic decisions don't pay much attention to national sovereignty in a world where more than half of the two hundred largest economic entities are not countries but companies. Governments can no longer control their economies or look after their people when trillions of dollars of capital are sloshing around instantaneously at a whim. The gap between rich and poor has grown, and this unwelcome growth is apparently accelerating. According to the World Bank, of the six billion people on Earth, three billion live on less than $2 a day, and 1.2 billion live on less than $1 a day, which defines the absolute poverty standard. Access to clean water is denied to 1.5 billion people. Meanwhile, the world's richest 200 people are worth an average of $5 billion each. This naturally increases envy and anger. The instability of economies and politics erodes a sense of national identity, and therefore decreases stability and makes conditions ripe for fundamentalism. When nations can't take care of their people, people lose confidence in them and often tend not to vote, because they're not pleased with any of the candidates. The growing influence of extreme right-wing parties in Western European countries certainly indicates that the problem of extremism and fundamentalism is not just limited to poor countries. What needs to emerge, and may be starting to emerge, is networked governance. But that only works if it's really tripolar, engaging all three poles - the public and private sectors, plus nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) or civil society. IN HINDSIGHT, it's clearly an error to think of 9/11 as evil in a vacuum. There has been much debate about root causes, trying to figure out why people are so angry with America. A lot has been said about the humiliation and deculturisation which America inflicts on others, and the hypocrisy that weighs non-American lives and freedoms less than our own. Working in about fifty countries, I've been endlessly impressed with how stupidly America can behave, even through its experienced diplomatic apparatus. We Americans are thoroughly disliked, to a degree much greater than our political leaders seem to realise. That's going to be very hard to turn around even if we start now. In fact, we're going hard in the opposite direction, eroding or undercutting practically every peace-promoting, risk-reducing effort put forward by the international community, appearing hypocritical and unilateral, imposing mass-media culture, and showing little understanding of the values of diversity and tolerance or even, of the rule of law for which we supposedly stand. The new American doctrine of exceptionalism (what used to be called 'isolationism') is uniting the rest of the world, even our closest allies, against us. I think we will look back on the rapid destruction of treaty regimes that have taken decades to create, and of the credibility we were trying to build, and ask, "What on earth possessed us to do that?" Strategies for Security In a remarkable speech on 2nd October, 2001, Tony Blair said, "We need, above all, justice and prosperity for the poor and dispossessed." Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that "Peace is not the absence of war: it is the presence of justice." We also need to remember George Kennan's prescient warning, at the start of the Cold War, that the biggest danger was that we'd become like our enemies. Many elements of the Patriot Act passed by Congress after 9/11 - abrogating civil liberties, ignoring the Freedom of Information Act, generally constricting the flow of public information - move us in that direction. Military superiority won't be enough to win the 'War on Terrorism'. For true security we need five dimensions:
It's clearer every day that the world's best armed forces, costing $11,000 a second, are not making us secure. That's because there is no significant military threat to the United States that can be defended against. It is not possible to defend against, say, nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction that are smuggled in without leaving a radar track or other return address. Someone could wrap a warhead in bales of marijuana, put it in a shipping container, bring it aboard a ship into any of our harbours, and nobody would notice. The point is that anonymous, asymmetric attacks can be quite devastating, but are undeterrable in principle, because you don't know who is responsible for them. That can be especially true with suicidal adversaries. We have already learned that interdiction by prior intelligence can't be relied upon. So the only lastingly effective defense is prevention. How do we do that? We have seen on 9/11 that at the level of intelligence foresight it doesn't work reliably. So what is the alternative? It is to work at the level of root causes. Only by eliminating the social conditions that feed and motivate the pathology of hatred can we bring about lasting security. SECURITY HAS TWO main elements: freedom from fear of privation or attack. Freedom from fear of privation and freedom from fear of attack are not independent, but are both vital to being and feeling safe. Can we be and feel safe in ways that work better and cost less than present arrangements? Is there a path to security that is achieved from the bottom up, not from the top down; that is the province of every citizen, not the monopoly of national government; that doesn't rely on the threat or use of violence; that makes others more, not less secure, whether on the scale of the village or the globe? Can a new approach to building real security also advance other overarching goals, and, ideally, save enough money to pay for other things we need? Politics of Risk Scholars call it the "risk society." Advanced by German sociologist Ulrich Beck and others, the theory implies that for millions of ordinary people, the best choice is simply the safest choice. The ideal that always seems to elude our risk society – especially after Sept. 11, 2001 – is that of total safety. We yearn for a kind of utopia in which cocoons of absolute security will envelop our fragile bodies, our precious families and enterprises. Nowhere is the effect of this contemporary mindset more apparent than in the 2004 presidential election. In a risk society – especially one scarred by the trauma of a recent major terrorist attack – the act of voting for a president becomes an exercise in risk assessment. In a fear-driven climate shaped by a barrage of terror warnings and the obsessive media coverage of every possible threat to our security, most voters are looking to choose not the best leader, but the least risky one. It was already clear in the Democratic primaries that the election would be about the ideal of safety rather than ideals themselves. The nebulous factor called "electability" carried Kerry to the nomination over the more vocal Howard Dean, who was framed by the media as riskier for opposing the Patriot Act and the Iraq War. By choosing Kerry – who supported both – Democratic voters signaled that the election would be essentially a referendum on security issues. Over the past months, George W. Bush and Kerry have continually vowed to make the nation "safer," each claiming to be the better warrior. Kerry, while calling for a "more sensitive" approach, is careful never to question the basic assumptions that underlie the war on terrorism or the Iraq War. During the primaries, Kerry spoke about "replacing" the Patriot Act because of the dangers it posed to our civil liberties; these days, he speaks merely of "improving" the legislation. The only real difference between Kerry and Bush is that the senator wants to democratize risk; his message is that more multilateral collaboration and grassroots participation in managing risk will keep us safe. He calls for more diplomacy abroad to ensure multinational cooperation against terror, and neighborhood patrols to guard against an attack at home. President Bush, of course, specializes in the politics of risk. His administration likes to tout itself as a conclave of hard-nosed risk managers. Recently, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke to an audience in Chicago about the array of new threats faced by the United States, including "improvised explosive devices" such as suicide bombs, package bombs and truck bombs, and the challenge of "balancing risks" to meet these emerging threats. The subtext: Do you really want to change leaders when terrorists are coming soon to a city near you? This isn't to say that this preoccupation with risk is entirely new. The Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek points to the Hollywood films of the '70s and '80s, which reflected the fear of nuclear war – the hero racing against time to stop nukes from raining down apocalypse on Moscow and Washington D.C. In the post-9/11 era, John Poindexter's much-discussed and ultimately abandoned plan for a Total Information Awareness program at the Pentagon can best be understood as a new version of this fantasy – not as a sinister Orwellian plot but a naïve attempt to create data sets that will "crack the code" of "terrorist chatter" and miraculously thwart attack after attack. The reality, however, is that there are no databases, computer software, surveillance technologies or weaponry that can definitively end the threat of a terrorist attack. The notion of any "endgame" for terrorism is illusory. Politics aside, threat levels from attacks – nuclear or terrorist – will always fluctuate, even as they did in the days when phrases like "Def-Con 4" or "Orange Alerts" were not part of our national consciousness. More importantly, effective risk assessment entails prioritization – what threats are greater or more pressing than others – which in turn requires reliable information about the risks we face. In a democracy, it is ideally the role of the media to present the risks faced by their audiences in a sensible hierarchy. U.S. residents instead are treated to wall-to-wall coverage of terror alerts and political stage-shows designed to capitalize on the 9/11 attacks. Our political campaigns and media outlets have become little more than messaging machines that lazily reach for the most spectacular risks (like terrorism) in order to attract the largest possible audience, across class, ethnic and geographic lines. The result is that people remain ignorant of more pressing risks to their well-being, such as declining household incomes, unemployment, lack of health insurance and the pervasiveness of HIV infection. But in the end it is our civic duty to do an end-run around the mainstream media to inform ourselves of the real dangers we confront both in our everyday lives and as a nation. It is up to the voters to decide what they should be most afraid of. Ballvé (mballve@pacificnews.org) is an editor at the San Francisco-based Pacific News Service. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post and other publications.
Orion Magazine - September/October issue
Whatever It Takes In the weeks following the presidential election of 2000, I began to keep a chart, a table of hours spent defending the homeland against the assault of the new administration. Right from the start, Bush came after the National Forests Roadless Rule, which I and millions of others had spent countless hours on over the previous three years in our efforts to protect the last, farthest stretches of our national forests. Then the contagion spread and spilled. As I tallied the near-daily losses, I felt my life spinning, taking me further and further from hikes in the mountains, from the joys of writing, from community involvement; further from reading for pleasure; and (I could barely even acknowledge this last one) threatening to steal the hours spent with family. All I had really wanted to do, in escaping from my work in the oil industry to this outback of Montana so long ago, was to leave behind the world of politics and policy and disappear into the senses: to the sound of the Yaak River gurgling and the honking of geese. Is it not this way for all of us in some measure, or are we truly a nation divided, beset by a war of values? Do the boys at Halliburton know what I am talking about when I speak of such things? In addressing them, to what might I compare such a sensation, such a desire? To the bliss of a noncompetitive government contract? To the physical heft of two bags of gold, one held in each hand? The irony is this: The more I desire to live a quiet life in the garden, the more stridently I find myself called out of that garden. So imperiled are our communities today that activism is not the choice it once was, but a necessity.
IT IS AN EASY THING to forget or overlook or revise or reconstruct, but we were at war before September 11th. Not nearly as much of the rest of the world reviled our affluence and materialism -- and our addictions -- before as do now; but even then, the hate, the fury, was spreading. Even then, the war was all around us, beneath us, within us: The war of not-paying-attention; the war of taking our many blessings for granted; the war of insensitivity, the war of diminishing passion. Does anyone still remember what it was like, in the weeks and months after? We were going to come together -- not just in this country, but worldwide. In fact, we were together, briefly, united in our grief and shock. We stepped back and questioned our lives. In that stepping back, we asked ourselves, bombers and poets alike, What matters? Does what I am doing matter? Time spent with loved ones was -- for a while -- everything. Then came the second war -- the flesh-and-bone, bombs-falling-from-the-sky war, the adventure in Baghdad. But beyond the crowing, beyond the bring-it-onism, other quiet and not-so-quiet terrors proceeded. A seniors' drug prescription "rescue" tucked into a trillion-dollar deficit, which makes life harder for seniors but more lucrative for large drug companies and their stockholders. A Clear Skies Initiative, which increases (invisibly, it's true) mercury pollution. A Healthy Forests initiative that threatens the only remaining truly healthy forests in the last roadless areas. The privatization of public treasures and legacies; the poisoning of water supplies; the gutting of Superfund clean-up responsibilities; the oppression and disenfranchisement of gays and other minorities; the centralization and near takeover of the media; the boarding-up of public schools, as if in some silent but not-so-secret Great Depression; the shameful charade involving the chief executive's glib and callous search under the Oval Office desk for weapons of mass destruction -- with 13,000 people dead as a result. Nearly everyone I know, it seems, is angry at our ghost of a government -- at a federal government that we have allowed to go AWOL, leaving only a handful of corporations to run the show. This is the biggest government, the most power-mad, heartless-son-of-a-bitch machine-of-a-government this country has ever known, yet the safeguards of government are nowhere in evidence.
RICK BASS is the author of eighteen books of fiction and
nonfiction, including, most recently,
Caribou Rising: Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich-'in
Culture and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
(Sierra Club
Books, 2004). In the spring of 2005 Houghton Mifflin will publish his
novel The Diezmo.
True
Security
by Fritjof Capra
We cannot fight terrorism
effectively without understanding its roots.
from
Resurgence issue 211
THE HORRIFIC terrorist
attacks against the United States on September 11 mark
the end of an era — the end of over 200 years of
invulnerability on the US continent. We had heard
fundamentalist rhetoric about "striking at the heart of
America" for years, but we took it as an empty threat.
We did not recognize the emergence of a new weapon on
the international stage against which we were powerless
— the desperate, reckless suicide bomber.
Understanding
international terrorism from a systemic perspective
means understanding that its very nature derives from a
series of political, economic and technological problems
that are all interconnected. Terrorism is always a
weapon of the politically disempowered, who feel that
they are unable to voice their grievances through
conventional political processes. In order to combat
them effectively, we need to understand clearly the
terrorists’ frustration.
This does not mean that we
should shrink from capturing the terrorists and bringing
them to justice. Their crimes are abhorrent beyond
words. But we must learn to distinguish between, on the
one hand, their criminal methods and fundamentalist
ideologies and, on the other hand, the grievances that
drive them into committing such desperate and horrific
acts. We cannot fight terrorism effectively without
understanding its roots. Indeed, we owe a systemic
analysis and corresponding action to the victims of the
attacks of 11th September, as Prime Minister Tony Blair
stated eloquently in his speech to the Labour Party
Conference: "[People] don’t want revenge. They want
something better in memory of their loved ones. I
believe their memorial can and should be greater than
simply the punishment of the guilty. It is that out of
the shadow of this evil should emerge lasting good:
destruction of the machinery of terrorism wherever it is
found; hope amongst all nations of a new beginning where
we seek to resolve differences in a calm and ordered
way; greater understanding between nations and between
faiths; and above all justice and prosperity for the
poor and dispossessed, so that people everywhere can see
the chance of a better future through the hard work and
creative power of the free citizen, not the violence and
savagery of the fanatic."
The terrorism we are
concerned with is directed against the United States,
and hence the attempt to understand its roots has to
begin with the understanding of America’s image in the
world. This image is multi-faceted. It includes many
positive aspects of our society such as individual
liberty, cultural diversity and economic opportunity, as
well as the great enthusiasm for American technology,
fashion, sport and entertainment, especially among the
world’s youth.
On the other hand, the
United States is seen by many as the driving force of a
new form of global capitalism that is supported by
military force and is often socially unjust and
environmentally destructive.
To understand the
political context of the recent terrorist attacks, we
need to look specifically at the US role in the Middle
East. The common view in the United States is that it
has assumed the role of peacemaker in the region, but in
other parts of the world, and especially in the Muslim
world, the view is quite different. There is widespread
anti-American sentiment, based on a number of concerns.
They include resentment against:
US uncritical support
for the Israeli occupation of Arab land, for the
dispossession of Palestinians and for state-sponsored
assassinations;
US support of
undemocratic and repressive Arab governments, in
particular that of Saudi Arabia;
ten years of sanctions
and military attacks against Iraq, which have resulted
in the deaths of half a million children;
the US massive military
presence in the region (seen by Muslim
fundamentalists, especially in Saudi Arabia, as the
presence of infidels in the holy land of Islam), as
well as its role as the largest supplier of arms in
the Middle East.
These grievances have
contributed to the rise of several radical Islamic
movements.
NOW, WHY DOES the United
States support repressive regimes, ignore UN
resolutions, and promote violence in the Middle East?
A longer version of this
article is available on the author’s website
www.fritjofcapra.net
Fritjof Capra is the
author of many books including The Tao of Physics, The
Turning Point and Web of Life.
"For me the
spiritual path has always been learning how to die. That involves not just
death at the end of this particular life, but all the falling apart that
happens continually. The fear of death - which is also the fear of
groundlessness, of insecurity, of not having it all together - seems to be
the most fundamental thing that we have to work with... We have so much
fear of not being in control, of not being able to hold on to things. Yet
the true nature of things is that you're never in control. You're never in
control. You can never hold on to anything. That's the nature of how
things are... So my own path has been training to relax with
groundlessness and the panic that accompanies it....training to die
continually."
My kids are
entering their preteen years - a time when they are tightly tuned into how
they measure up to their peers, alert to those things that will reassure
them - signs that they do indeed belong to their tribe. They hang onto
encouraging words as if they are shining jewels. The only words I have
been able to offer are: "All the people that look like they have it all
together all the time, actually don't. No one does. Happiness comes down
to how well we can relax with our insecurities and love ourselves anyway."
A Pause for
Beauty #65 From
Heron
Dance
In the Presence of
Fear by Wendell Berry A US citizen's thoughts on the terrorist attacks in America. from Resurgence Magazine issue #2101. The time will soon come when we will not be able to remember the horrors of 11th September without remembering also the unquestioning technological and economic optimism that ended on that day. 2. This optimism rested on the proposition that we were living in a 'new world order' and a 'new economy' that would grow on and on, bringing a prosperity of which every new increment would be unprecedented. 3. The dominant politicians, corporate officers and investors who believed this proposition did not acknowledge that the prosperity was limited to a tiny percentage of the world's people, and to an even smaller number of people even in the United States; that it was founded upon the oppressive labour of poor people all over the world; and that its ecological costs increasingly threatened all life, including the lives of the supposedly prosperous. 4. The 'developed' nations had given to the 'free market' the status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their farmers, farmlands and communities, their forests, wetlands and prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted universal pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing business. 5. There was, as a consequence, a growing worldwide effort on behalf of economic decentralization, economic justice, and ecological responsibility. We must recognize that the events of 11th September make this effort more necessary than ever. We citizens of the industrial countries must continue the labour of self-criticism and self-correction. We must recognize our mistakes. 6. The paramount doctrine of the economic and technological euphoria of recent decades has been that everything depends on innovation. It was understood as desirable, and even necessary, that we should go on and on from one technological innovation to the next, which would cause the economy to grow and make everything better and better. This of course implied at every point a hatred of the past, where all innovations, whatever their value might have been, were discounted as of no value at all. 7. We did not anticipate anything like what has now happened. We did not foresee that all our sequence of innovations might be at once overridden by a greater one: the invention of a new kind of war that would turn our previous innovations against us, discovering and exploiting the debits and the dangers that we had ignored. We never considered the possibility that we might be trapped in the web-work of communication and transport that was supposed to make us free. 8. Nor did we foresee that the weaponry and the war science that we marketed and taught to the world would become available, not just to recognized national governments, which possess so uncannily the power to legitimize large-scale violence, but also to 'rogue nations', and dissident or fanatical groups and individuals whose violence, though never worse than that of nations, is judged by the nations to be illegitimate. 9. We had accepted uncritically the belief that technology is only good; that it cannot serve evil as well as good; that it cannot serve our enemies as well as ourselves; that it cannot be used to destroy what is good, including our homelands and our lives. 10. We had accepted too the corollary belief that an economy (either as a money economy or as a life-support system) that is global in extent, technologically complex, and centralized is invulnerable to terrorism, sabotage, or war, and that it is protectable by 'national defence'. 11. We now have a clear, inescapable choice that we must make. We can continue to promote a global economic system of unlimited 'free trade' among corporations, held together by long and highly vulnerable lines of communication and supply, but now recognizing that such a system will have to be protected by a hugely expensive police force that will be worldwide, whether maintained by one nation or several or all, and that such a police force will be effective precisely to the extent that it oversways the freedom and privacy of the citizens of every nation. 12. Or we can promote a decentralized world economy which would have the aim of assuring to every nation and region a local self-sufficiency in life-supporting goods. This would not eliminate international trade, but it would tend toward a trade in surpluses after local needs had been met. 13. One of the gravest dangers to us now, second only to further terrorist attacks against our people, is that we will attempt to go on as before with the corporate programme of global 'free trade', whatever the cost in freedom and civil rights, without self-questioning or self-criticism or public debate. 14. This is why the substitution of rhetoric for thought, always a temptation in a national crisis, must be resisted by officials and citizens alike. It is hard for ordinary citizens to know what is actually happening in Washington in a time of such great trouble; for we all know, serious and difficult thought may be taking place there. But the talk that we are hearing from politicians, bureaucrats and commentators has so far tended to reduce the complex problems now facing us to issues of unity, security, normality, and retaliation. This article originally appeared on www.OrionOnline.org, the website of Orion and Orion Afield magazines, under the feature headline 'Thoughts on America', and will be included in a soon-to-be-released anthology of several related essays by Mr. Berry, In the Presence of Fear, published by the Orion Society. Wendell Berry is a farmer and
a poet. The New York Times recently called him "The Prophet of Rural
America". "It's difficult enough to think about one's own mortality; it's overwhelming to think about the mortality of the species. And that's what we're talking about." So said Jonathan Granoff '70 on the Public Radio International show Humankind in 2002. He's referring to the consequences of nuclear war. Granoff, an attorney from Pennsylvania, is president of the Global Security Institute (GSI), an organization whose mission is "to achieve incremental steps that enhance security and lead to the global elimination of nuclear weapons." Founded by former California senator Alan Cranston, the GSI has a board of advisers that includes Jane Goodall, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Rigoberta Menchu. The institute works to educate, and influence policy made by global leaders. Its constituents include Congress, heads of state and government, and parliamentarians. In a world that is constantly shaken by terrorists, political conflicts, and regime changes, the possibility of nuclear disaster is not an idle threat. On Humankind, Granoff stated that "the greatest threat humanity faces is the inevitable - accidental or intentional - use of a nuclear device." Currently, the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States hold enough firepower to literally destroy the planet. Which is why Granoff devotes his time, scarce as it is, to advocating the elimination of nuclear arms. In addition to the GSI, Granoff is also involved with organizations such as the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, the NGO Committee on Disarmament at the UN, the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, the Temple of Understanding, the Middle Powers Initiative, and the Committee on Arms Control and National Security. He's involved in the peace and security movement partly because "it forces us to realize that our fate is interconnected with our alleged adversary, that if we lob nuclear weapons at an adversary, we suffer as well. We cut off the limb we're sitting on." He hopes that people can come to an understanding of what he terms "global responsibility," a sense of accountability that extends beyond patriotism. "We think, 'Well, I'll protect my nation, and that will be enough.' Not now," said Granoff. "A hydrofluorocarbon molecule...does not care about national boundaries." The danger posed by nuclear weapons isn't limited to an intentional attack by one group or country. With thousands of warheads at the ready, there is also the possibility of accidental detonation. According to the GSI Website, there are 20 to 30 nuclear weapons accidents, false alarms, or malfunctions per year. Decreasing stockpiled arms, while increasing the security of remaining nuclear weapons and materials, could make such incidents less frequent. But as Granoff sees it, reducing the number of nuclear weapons isn't enough. As long as the potential for mutual destruction exists, everyone in the world is at risk. Granoff holds world leaders accountable for this gamble. "The little boys have got to give up their toys, because the stakes are too high right now." — Rachel Beck '04 To learn more about the Global Security Institute, visit www.gsinstitute.org http://www.aavc.vassar.edu/vq/summer2004/security.html Terry Tempest Williams Diary
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/sidebars/OSD/diary08.html Wangari Maathai has won the Nobel Peace Prize. I burst into tears. The first African woman, the first environmentalist, to be recognized by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. It had been their intention to widen the scope of the prize. The Committee's statement reads: "Peace on Earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment." Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement of Kenya has planted 30 million trees since its inception in 1977 -- 30 million trees that have helped to prevent erosion and provide firewood for cooking fires. For decades, Wangari has said over and over to anyone who would listen, "The women of Africa are carrying the environmental crisis on their backs as they spend 8 to 10 hours a day in search of firewood to be able to cook dinner for their children." Together, the women of the Green Belt Movement literally gathered seeds in the folds of their skirts and planted them in their villages. They watered them, nurtured them, and when they were tall enough to transplant, they took them to the elementary schools where the children became the caretakers of trees. Thousands of schools have responded. Millions of children have participated. Green Belt forests were planted, while educating the next generation about the perils of deforestation. She is a beacon of passionate engagement in the name of environmental justice. Throughout President Moi's presidency, Wangari Maathai participated in respectful dissent and was an outspoken critic of his policies. She was arrested in 1991, freed, and arrested again in 1999 after sustaining injuries to her head when attacked by police while planting trees in the Karura Public Forest, part of a protest against deforestation. This was another response to Moi's backing the development of a high-end housing project that resulted in the clearing of hundreds of acres of forest. In 2002, at the end of Moi's reign, Wangari Maathai ran for the Parliament and won. She was named the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources, And Wildlife. Wangari has literally sought peace for the planet through the collecting of seeds. Kenyan women have planted these seeds in the soils of their own communities. I met Wangari Maathai in July, 1985, during the U.N. Decade for Women Conference and Forum held in Nairobi. She changed my life. I had never seen such a passionate, intelligent, relentless voice for the Earth. She spoke in stories, she held seeds in hand, and she invited anyone who was interested to visit one of the children's forests to come with her. I followed her into the villages. She showed me the seedlings, the nurseries, the women who were leading the Green Belt Movement. I was so inspired that when I returned home, a small group of us who had attended the conference started the Green Belt Movement of Utah. For $10.00, you could plant a tree in Kenya. We made up little certificates, we gave talks in women's groups and literary clubs, Mormon relief societies, schools, and churches, and along the way, we not only educated ourselves, but educated our community about deforestation, not just in Africa, but Utah, as well. We sent modest amounts of money to the Green Belt Movement. It was our own gesture of solidarity with the Kenyan women. When I met her, she was 44 years old. I was 29. Today she is 64 years old. I am 49. You could see deep changes, not so much in her face, but her eyes, sobered by all she has witnessed, the full end of the spectrum, violence as well as regeneration. Twenty years later, I had the privilege of welcoming Wangari and her son into our home in Castle Valley. Brooke was away which saddened me. I had talked about her for years. When I saw her step out of the car and stand against the redrock cliffs, her beautiful African self -- I wept. We held each other close. I heard her low, calm voice once again and was reassured that goodness and greatness, does exist in the world. For twenty years, her photograph has stood on my desk as a reminder of what is possible, as a reminder of the sacrifices necessary to do good work, But also the joy. Wangari has the widest, brightest smile of any human being I know. At dinner, I asked her what she had learned in these twenty years. She did not hesitate. "Patience. Patience." And then she talked about how often those working on the margins to create the open space of justice and democracy are not the ones who end up inhabiting that space. "We have to step inside that space we have created for political engagement and claim it for ourselves." she said. This is what she has done. "Deputy Minister," she said smiling. "Not the Minister. Not yet." She spoke of her regrets of being away from her children while she was in jail. Her son spoke of what that was like for him and when he realized who is mother was not just for him but for millions of Kenyans. He has his own ethical vision in place and it is evolving through the lens of science. He just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. I dedicated "The Open Space of Democracy" to my teachers. Professor Wangari Maathai is one of them.
Quote from Wangari Maathai:
"Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment," the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, said in announcing the winner. He praised Wangari’s "contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace."
|