Killing from a Distance

The age of heroes
warriors
brave men
Fades with the parchment their stories are told on

Murder is mechanized
computerized
fun
In graphic color and surround sound war hums a new song

Only that dot blinking
A heart beat
A soul
A glassy eye can not see the tears
Cannot see the young of years

Sit safe in a bunker
while she cries
While he dies
And another dot on your screen goes out

Another dream ends
a nightmare begins
You play unseeing God with joystick in hand
As you spray the blood and brains of one "could-be" terrorist
You seed the ground to sprout a hundred more

You think you're safe
And for now you are
But we are all less safe for what you do
And who you give your dogged obedience to.

Pavlov is dead
Bite the hand
Put down the game of death
And come home.

War is over.

Connections and Fall Out

When one tugs at
a single thing in nature,
he finds it attached to
the rest of the world.

~ John Muir

James Cameron's blockbuster movie, Avatar, reminds us of the subtle connections we have to this planet.  Although the Na'vi are highly idealized, falling easily into the category of Rousseau's Noble Savage, it challenges us to question our version of civilization, technology, science, etc., over the simpler state of existence or have we reached a place where the two can enhance one another.

Starbase - Education that Kills

In other countries children are abducted from their beds and forced to serve in a military.  In our country the child recruiters don't have to go to all that trouble, they have full access to our children at school.  Not only that, but the school provides the Department of Defense with the personal information on our children, unless we fill out a form to "opt-out".  Under the No Child Left Behind (a program that becomes more sinister as we learn the military implications of this program) schools are required to report to Uncle Sam certain demographic information on our kids.  Is your child struggling with math, chemistry, etc.?  Is your child late or absent often?  Is your child from a single parent home or on reduced lunches or from a poor neighborhood?  Uncle Sam wants to know if your child fits any of these markers.  If so your child will become the target of aggressive recruitment.  But now DoD has taken another big step in recruitment strategy.  Rather than go to the schools to recruit, the schools are bringing the kids, K-5, to the military bases under the guise of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.  Here, your child will be told about all the great career opportunities available in the military (but they won't hear about the realities of war or what these machines they are being allowed to touch and experience do to the children in Iraq and Afghanistan). 

Working Together

We don't have to
agree with each other
in order to explore
together.

~ Margaret Wheatley

The strength of team work is in the diversity of experience and ideas in the team.  Working as I do in the semiconductor industry I've seen this dynamic play out over and over again.  Admittedly, getting the team through the beginning stages is the hardest part.  It takes time for the group to solidify and learn each others work styles.  Much of this is cultural.  And certainly if it wasn't for the artificial necessity of work, these teams would not make the effort.

But I'd think that peace is worth that effort.  There are so many different groups working on peace related issues that rarely cross pollinate.  I spent years working on GLBT issues, never meeting others working on  Human Rights issues globally.  Yet I see now that it was a loss to our work, as the global work has crossed many of the difficult bridges we were struggling over.  But what about something even more diverse.  What about the sacredness of human life?  We all agree that murder is wrong.  But then what about state sanctioned murder, war and capital punishment?  What about abortion?  How can anyone say that life is more precious before birth than after?  I see so many possibilities for humans to work together on the sanctity of life issue.  But for so many people it seems that life is only special when it is still in the womb, unable to defend itself, and American.  In the name of Freedom and spreading Democracy we have annihilated so many innocent children and pregnant women by dropping bombs indiscriminately on civilian areas.  Are darker colored humans less than a single American embryo?  I should hope not.

I'm reading Nicolas Kristof's, Half the Sky, that shows the brutal violence against women worldwide.  We're talking about young girls being sold into sexual slavery, or girls allowed to starve while their brothers eat and get medical care.  In China and India Ultrasound techs are not allowed to reveal the gender of the child because females will be aborted.  Instead we find that the female child in these countries has a very high likelihood of dying by age 5, a very slow and miserable death at that.  The level of misogyny in our world is overwhelming and heartbreaking.  I wonder if throwing stones or yelling hateful words at young, poor pregnant women attempting to get into an abortion clinic isn't exactly that, America's misogyny.  Women have the unequal burden when bringing a child into this world.  It is her life that will be most drastically altered.  It seems to me, that if we all banded together to work on improving life for women in the world, that would reduce abortion.  And one way to improve the lives of women in this world is to end wars and help provide support in education and health care both to women abroad and at home.

I hope that we can all begin to find common ground to work from.  The richness of experience we all bring to these issues can help us foster into existence a truly sustainable solution.

Human Smoke

I've started reading a book emphatically recommended to me by a physician from Iran that has taken refuge in our lovely city of Portland. The book, Human Smoke The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (2008) by Nicholson Baker, is filled with quotes by world leaders and excerpts from govement transcripts. There are first hand accounts from journalists and others speaking from all possible perspectives as this war unfolded.
If you're interested in history, power, politics or peace, this book is a must read. There are also numerous quotes by Gandhi, adding insight into the Indian struggles and success against the British Empire.
The opening quote of the book is by Alfred Nobel of the Nobel Prize. Speaking to his friend the Baroness Bertha von Suttner (a founder of the European antiwar movement)regarding his expolsives factories, they "will put an end to war even sooner than your congresses. On the day that two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops."
But the weapons continue to grow in number and magnitude of destruction. The targets of these evil machinations are no longer military but almost entirely peace loving, tax paying civilians. It seems that the goal of modern warfare is to see who has the most civilians left at the end as a determination for winning. The weapons not only maim and kill the living, but pollute with radioactive waste such that those left surviving will suffer for many generations levels of cancer and deformation in their young previously unknown. To kill even one person, guilty or innocent, is the deepest crime against the human soul. May we learn to save lives and save ourselves.