The Peace Project

Peace and Everything After

2005-05-05T16:15:00.000-04:00

I'm not going to compete with Chad's good-bye below, but I just want to say thanks to everyone who participated in the peace project -- posters, readers and commentors. You all taught me so much and, for that, you have my gratitude.

So I leave you with two more links, one as evidence that peace is possible, and the other as a sign of how much work still needs to be done.

Until next time ...

Okay, one more...

2005-05-03T11:52:00.000-04:00

Sorry no commentary--I'm writing finals, people.

A protest action against tyranny and the deteriorating socioeconomic standing of the population began in front of the US Embassy in Tashkent [Uzbekistan] on May 2. Almost 100 protesters, largely women with children, formed a line at 11:30 a.m. along the street in front of the Embassy with placards demanding help from impoverishment, unemployment, unfair trials, and police tyranny. Some protesters demanded resignation of the government, President Islam Karimov, and Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev. A lot of protesters had come to the capital from rural areas, mostly from the Kashkadarja region.

Some blows were exchanged between the police and protesters at first. The police tried to detain a toddler - and found themselves attacked by a mob of enraged women throwing rocks. Embassy security kept its distance and local law enforcement agencies gave ground for a time. At noon, traffic along the central Tashkent thoroughfares continued, closely monitored by reinforced traffic police patrols.

...

Asked why the US Embassy was chosen, protesters replied that they could not count on the local authorities' goodwill or on help from Russia and nearby countries and therefore wanted to attract attention of the US Department of State, international organizations, and the media.

Well, here's a little more attention!

Peace As Policy

2005-05-03T09:54:00.000-04:00

Before I say my sayonara, I did have one last thing I wanted to address. Recently, in a (real, live!) conversation with one of our regular commenters, I was confronted with the accusation that if our goal of peace is greater than the absence of violence, but our blog is really "just a policy blog." In case any of our other five readers were troubled by the suspicion that our blog could be thus reducible, I wanted to clarify: Yes, this is a policy blog. I know the fact that we've chosen a high-flying concept like "peace" to frame the policy discussion is quite troublesome to some of our readers (we've got the comments and conversations calling us out on the issue to prove it!), but I think we've walked the line between being overcome with our vision and being bogged down in the details. After all, we need that vision, or what's a heaven for?

Peace, as a motivational concept, has gotten a bad rap over the last few years--too many Miss America jokes, I suspect. Whether we're too concrete (just a policy blog) or too ephemeral, as AJK points out, our conception of peace is always challenged. And those challenges are what made this blog worth doing. I am so grateful to everybody who has read and commented over the last few months. Knowing that we had a critical audience forced each of us to research that much more, deliberate that much more, choose our words that much more carefully. Made us that much stronger proponents for peace.

Ame futte ji katamaru--rain hardens the ground.

I absolutely cannot top Chad's yearbook entry below. Professor Matsuda, Sue, C.G., Melissa (both!), Chip (and co.)--please add a "me, too" at the end of that.

Love and peace to all--try it, it's good for you.

Sayonara!

Peace Out

2005-05-02T15:17:00.000-04:00

Yup, it's about that time...let the cramming begin. Because exams have started and when they are over I will cry for 3 days and then move to San Francisco for the summer, I'm forced to take a hiatus from the peace blog. The three of us will probably all be back in some form or another, but the last time that was tried "Saved by the Bell: The College Years" was born. Ugly. So I think it's best to say my thanks now. And also I wanted to be sure I got to use "Peace Out" as a title before Sue or Katie.

Sue and Katie...I have learned so much from you. I looked forward to reading your posts more than I did writing my own. Both of your perspectives and styles were unique and I was moved and/or entertained the whole time. "You rang?" AND you're the kinds of friends that a friend wants to have. This has really been a fun and meaningful and memorable time. Sitting in class, "I'm not talking...you talk...make Katie talk!" Getting sun-scorched planting trees in SE. Vanilla Ice Cream and its progeny. I love you guys and thanks for being in my life. Please have the couch ready for me in NY this summer. I seriously can't think of anyone I would rather hang out with for class credit.

To all the readers and commenters out there... The Peace Project was a success because of you. We were challenged and made to question and defend ourselves. CG, AJK, Basil, Chip, Melissa...this was group effort - exploring and finding peace where we could and wrestling with the best approaches. From the comments I can tell that we all want peace, from the bourgeois to the Marxists, but some of the ways that we want to achieve it are as different as night and day. And the blog has been an amazing way for me to learn from all of you...and keep a record, of course (CG looooves prostitutes). Right now we are at 1,400 hits. Seeing that number continue to rise put pressure on us to keep you guys coming back and to provide information and reflections that would engage you and be meaningful, and The Peace Project was better for it. Thank you so much.

And Professor Matsuda! You have to be more full of love than anyone I have ever met, and it rubs off on all the people around you. From now on when I read about the deaths of innocents in armed conflicts I will always wonder their names, thanks to you. You have taught me to empathize, to connect, and to question. I really can't say enough - to have a professor take interest in us like you did, to wear the green bracelet, to read our blog, to bring your family to Twilight...where does the energy come from? You reminded me every day that peace is possible and that belief will guide my actions for the rest of my life.

I'll end the way that I started. Peace is not just about laying down our weapons and holding hands. Peace takes real work. As long as there is oppression, power over others, struggles to survive, and hate, then there will never be peace. As long as we sacrifice the dignity and worth and well-being of others for our own gain peace will be out of reach. And that's why global warming and baseball and everything else on the blog is related to peace. A people worn down by decades of economic and ethnic oppression lashing out in violence is understandable. If you beat a dog he's not going to sit there and take it - your ass is gonna get bitten. What's not understandable is why those in power continue to perpetuate the pillaging of the world's resources and then argue they are promoting peace. The exertion of power has created powder keg after powder keg around the world for all history, and with technology evolving faster now than the human capacity for rational thought, powder kegs are something we can ill afford. Please continue to fight. Fight for non-proliferation. But also fight for humanitarian aid, and education, and sustainable development, and lowering CO2 emissions, and fair trade goods...or just go plant a tree. Peace is an all-encompassing project, because we are all in this together - if peace fails we all pay the price, but wherever we can find peace, everyone wins. And that is worth fighting for. Through non-violence of course...and after exams. Lots of love.

wage peace,
chad

Aloha, Peace

2005-04-30T16:27:00.000-04:00

Here is another non-violent protest action that needs maximum coverage...which thankfully The Peace Project can offer... And oh yeah, I'm STOKED that we were contacted by individuals participating in this non-violent protest themselves. As the semester winds down for the three of us, it's nice to know The Peace Project has spread so far...

A group of students, faculty, and community comprising the group STOP U.A.R.C. has begun its non-violent occupation of the University of Hawaii's administration building in protest of the University's plans to establish a Navy research center at the school (the University Affiliated Research Center - U.A.R.C). They are demanding that the interim president of the University, David McClain, sign a letter canceling the plans because they oppose the militarization of their campus, the further militarization of their state, and the secrecy and lack of transparency the university has already shown and would continue to exhibit with a classified military project on campus.

Hawaii is already home to several military bases and has been increasingly militarized over its entire history, including notably since 9/11. Not only has the United States military done more to desecrate the native and tribal lands in Hawaii than any other entity, the proposed project would subvert academic freedom, divert resources away from academic research and pursuits, and would undermine the educational mission of the school.

So...non-violent protest, de-militarization, exposing institutional secrecy...all themes covered extensively on our Project and it's exciting to see them coming together in a concrete way here. McClain has said the sitters-in are trespassers, but hasn't had them forcibly removed yet - and the protestors say they aren't going anywhere (including students who have exams around the corner...). I of course have the highest hopes that this action will result in the University ending its involvement with the military, but if nothing else people need to know what the University is up to - hopefully this protest, and whatever media (and blog) attention it attracts will remind us to stay vigilant against the expansion of our military-industrial complex and will raise awareness of the effect US policy has had on Hawaii.

wage peace,

chad

India and Pakistan

2005-04-28T14:19:00.000-04:00

The recent peace meetings in India resulted in a commitment to an "irreversible" peace process.

K Subrahmanyam, former head of India's National Security Advisory Board and a leading defence analyst, stated: "The Pakistan government has come to the conclusion that the use of force is no longer an option, therefore, the [peace] process can only go forward, the peace process is irreversible."

This language raises an interesting question. Is the fact that the use of force is no longer an option due to the presence of nuclear weapons in both countries? If that's true, then did nuclear proliferation lead to a commitment to peace?

So, think about a few hypotheticals. If India developed nuclear weapons but Pakistan did not. If neither country successfully tested the weapons. The imbalance of power in the first case and the lack of an impetus for peace in the second leads me to think that the countries would not have the same need to sit down at the bargaining table.

Thus a problem for the peace project. Nuclear proliferation is typically not a pro-peace stance. But here, it played at least a role in the peace process. How do we reconcile these contradictions?

Remembering Genocide

2005-04-24T20:32:00.000-04:00

Ninety years ago today, Turkish officials rounded up 250 leaders of the Armenian community. Some were executed; others deported. It marked the beginning of a two-year campaign that claimed more than 1.5 million Armenian lives.

Turkey claims these deaths were casualties of war. But residents of Armenia (and 15 other countries) say that the mass executions and starvations were the first genocide of the 20th century, a precursor to the Holocaust 25 years later.

"After all, who remembers the annihilation of the Armenians," Hitler has been quoted as saying.
Armenians around the world say it is essential for them to remember.
"We can't let our children forget what happened. The world does not pay attention to Armenia as it is, so we should do our best to keep reminding them," said Borseb Gevorkian.

Governments often sweep their misdeeds under the rug (see Katie's posting on Japan for a good example of this), and, in this case, nearly everyone who remembers the Armenian genocide has died. The few who are left were children when the killing began, and they tell their stories here. Because there are so few survivors remaining, it becomes easier and easier for Turkey to deny the genocide ever occurred. Soon, it may disappear, vanishing within the pages of history.

The lack of an adequate record allows those in power to manipulate history to their own ends, denying a horror that now lives only in the memories of old men and women. The need to bear witness to history is one reason why international criminal tribunals and, by extension, the International Criminal Court, can play such a vital role in the international community. These institutions create extensive records of the crimes that occurred while instability and chaos controlled a country. Nuremberg and the Eichmann trial made it impossible for anyone to deny the occurrence of the Holocaust. Similarly, the ICTY and ICTR will make it impossible for anyone, 90 years from now, to call the civilian massacres "casualties of war."

Aside from any deterrent or rule of law function they may serve, these tribunals assist the cause of peace simply by acknowledging that these atrocities took place. They burn onto the pages of history the individual suffering and the mass killings of a people. And with that simple step, they guarantee that no government can perpetrate a genocide on its population and then escape the gaze of history.

March in Mexico City

2005-04-24T17:55:00.000-04:00

We do love our peaceful protests:

Hundreds of thousands of people have marched through Mexico City in support of the capital's embattled mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Obrador is facing charges in an obscure land dispute, and his immunity from those charges as a public official was stripped from him by a coalition of the rival PAN and PRI. His supporters claim that the charges are trumped up excuses to get him out of the presidential race of 2006, where he is currently the favorite to win the presidency.

His populist appeal sounds quite similar to Hugo Chavez, another leftist leader in Latin America who has faced his share of political opposition:

A two-hour silent march erupted with cheers and applause when Lopez Obrador took to the stage to attack political enemies and promise an all-out assault on poverty if he is elected.

"We are going to continue fight peacefully. We are sure our cause is just and that it will triumph," he shouted, pledging to use Mexico's oil wealth to improve the lives of its 40 million poor.

What's more to say? The man wants to fight for the poor, has done so successfully in the past (instituting a popular local pension system for the elderly, which I was actually going to write about a few weeks ago...), and the allegedly political attacks on him are bad for business. I'd say Vicente Fox better tread carefully here.

And no, I'm not saying that either Obrador or Chavez are saints and/or saviors. Let's not lose the plot on this one.

Sex Workers and Peace

2005-04-23T19:01:00.000-04:00

I swear the best part about keeping this blog going has been everything I've learned in researching different topics and from reading other's comments. For the past several weeks I've found myself very interested in human trafficking and sex workers and the effects of the treatment of these people and practices on peace - and I've been fortunate enough to have two friends who have done extensive research in this area and written several papers - and there is a lot to learn.

The link between treatment of sex workers, particularly under criminalization regimes, and peace is obvious after looking at the issue even briefly. When prostitution is illegal, the women who are forced into a life of survival sex suffer enormously. They become marginalized members of society, cast out by the system. Street workers in particular are easy targets for violence because their lives are so devalued socially and politically, and most sex workers couldn't fathom the idea of reporting abuse to the police. They suffer from extreme health risks, especially exposure to STD's and are often subjected to cruel and degrading treatment, even by those who are supposed to protect them (the police).

One of my friends, Melissa, wrote a thought-provoking paper on the criminalization of prostitution actually being a violation of human rights. She invoked various international treaties such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Convenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights to show that the effect of criminalizing prostitution is to deny many basic understood fundamental freedoms to these women, such as the right to be free from degrading treatment or punishment, the right to be from arbitrary arrest, the right to just and favorable conditions of work, and the right to health care and other social services.

De-criminalizing prostitution on the other hand, can lead to brothels, with security systems, adequate protection for intercourse, living wages, unions, and virtually non-existant violence. Besides deconstructionist aversion to the arbitrariness and hypocrisy surrounding a legal system that lets Anna Nicole Smith marry for millions, or not to mention allows all the drinks bought for all the women at all the bars out there not exactly in the spirit of detached and disinterested generosity, I am in favor of decriminalization of prostitution from a peace point of view. I think a huge element of peace is about empowering those without power, about ending subordination and marginalization and really working towards "substantive equality for all human beings." (that's a Matsuda quote)

I don't like the idea of sex being reduced to an economic transaction and women being objectified as they are in prostitution, but that doesn't mean the act should be criminal - we need to empower these women, give them more control over their own destinies, allow them the resources to make their own decisions and lead the kind of lives that they choose. The more power they have, the less power can be exercised over them - their lives would improve, their children's lives would improve, they would have more choices, more dignity, and I personally think that gender relations would incrementally improve as well.

Come one, that's gotta be controversial enough to get a comment, no?

The Poppy Project - London Outreach Program for Women involved in Prostitution
International Union of Sex Workers

wage peace,
chad

Darfur Update

2005-04-21T18:27:00.000-04:00

The African Union troops in Darfur are doing good things:

Like other young Darfuri women, Hawa Yehya used to be terrified to go out to look for firewood in case she was attacked and raped by Arab militia. Today the young mother is no longer afraid to make the trip.

This is not because the militias known as Janjaweed have made peace, but because African Union (AU) forces are patrolling the routes women use around Zalengei town in central Darfur.

"They are wonderful. We want them to stay," Yehya said. "Now we are not so scared to leave the camps," she said as she returned home with a large bundle of wood on her head.

However, the article goes on to say that although the locals are now happy that the AU troops are there (as opposed to when they first arrived), they expect too much--the troops are there only to monitor the ceasefire. The commander of the troops around Zalengei says that many more troops are needed--between 1,000 and 2,000. There are only 120 in the area now, and the entire AU mission in Darfur totals 3,300.

I found interesting the article's description of the Janjaweed militia's requests for assistance. Their requests for help in boring water holes on their cattle routes reminds me of Dr. Peter Bechtold's assertion that the lack of water in Darfur is the root of the conflict. If drought leads to conflict, then we should start looking again to Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, because the US government has just issued a drought alert for those three nations.

Update: The Darfur Accountability Act passed in the Senate.

Hiroshima

2005-04-21T09:50:00.000-04:00

The bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War II at the price of close to 300,000 Japanese lives. But from that destruction, even all these years later, has emerged pleas for peace.

Hiroshima's univeristy is sponsoring an intensive war and peace class, designed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the A-bomb. Every year, residents and visitors to the city send lanterns floating down the river, inscribed with messages of peace. The peace lanterns began floating only two years after the bombing of Hiroshima.

The voices of peace that emerge from the ashes of war are a constant reminder both of the destruction war has wrought upon the world and of the possibilities of peace, even for those most harmed by a conflict. The fact that Hiroshima's response is not retribution or simmering anger towards America, but a call for the abolition of nuclear weapons, is startling when we consider our own responses to destructive force used against civilians. The circumstances of each situation are vastly different, of course. But the lessons of Hiroshima may be that peace is possible, even in the most dire of circumstances.

Where have all the protestors gone?

2005-04-19T19:07:00.000-04:00

I've seen several World Bank-IMF protests here in DC since the massive one in 2000 with hundreds of arrests. I remember when I started working downtown in 2001 it was a very tense time counting down to meeting day because of all the arrests in 2000. Since then the protests have become less and less of a spectacle, until now the story is how minimal the protester presence is.

The article picks up on a few explanations for the missing protestors. Some good: perhaps people feel that their concerns are actually being addressed - after all the international community has at least made pledges to help fix some of the massive debt of poor countries (though without delivering, which is a whole other story). Also, some organizers say they are moving more into the communities where they feel their efforts are more effective. But one explanation is particulary troubling. "You, know, a lot of my friends are not here because they do not want to end up on some list as a suspected terrorist," said one activist.

This brings up a theme that I continually find myself coming back to. We have to make peace worthwhile - the government should respond positively to peaceful protest, to citizens speaking out, to vocal demonstration in the public forum, not put it on lock-down. Anti-globalization sentiment is there, and if can't be expressed peacefully because of oppressive post-9/11 policing, then the feelings will fester, and might surface in much more disturbing ways than some blocked traffic and visual blight.

The government may or may not agree with, or take action based on the voices in the streets. But peaceful demonstrations should be rewarded, supported even, or our democracy suffers and we risk suppressed opinions turning into another Weather Underground. Some seriously believe that 2005 is absolutely pivotal in the fight to stem world hunger and save some childrens' lives. These voices should be heard.

wage peace,
chad

Visit From Vietnamese PM

2005-04-19T15:21:00.000-04:00

While we're on the subject of Vietnam,

Prime Minister Phan Van Khai will make a historic visit to the U.S. soon, the first by a Vietnamese leader in 30 years, to mark 10 years since the two countries resumed diplomatic ties, a diplomat confirmed recently.

Sometimes I'm amazed by the human capacity to forgive and/or move on.

A Short Rant

2005-04-18T23:09:00.000-04:00

A large part of our discussion in Peacemaking recently has concerned individual action versus collective action. I thought this was one of our more interesting conversations, in part because many of us disagreed with Prof. M's views on the subject. However, what I was waiting to hear never came up.

What, me speak up in class? World peace will happen first.

The subject, which after massive discussion our 1L year has completely died out this year, is that of our individual career choices as attorneys. We at The Peace Project have talked about everything from Darfur to the Living Wage Campaign to the Inca Trail--but the one thing that we actually know something about, we seem to avoid. Perhaps it's passé to have this conversation when we've all been through Early Interview Week, we all know we're going to work at firms or the government or wherever.

Heaven forbid that class become sort of career therapy session, but shouldn't the topic even be broached? With great power comes great responsibility, sez Stan Lee. We keep talking about our responsibility as Americans, as citizens, as the wealthiest in the world--but can't we take this to a micro level, and remember our responsibilities in our work, where we'll be spending the vast majority of our time and energy over the next few years?

This isn't meant to knock those who are going into big defense firms--my public defender friends will someday have to face up to the fact that they are defending rapists and murderers just as my big firm friends have to acknowledge that they are defending the capitalist overlords. I’m going to a big plaintiffs’ firm, and I struggle with the fact that although I believe my work will be worthwhile and ultimately helpful to society, I’ll be making a lot of money while handing out 10¢ coupons to my faceless clients.

Look, I know this whole discussion is trite and a tad bit dated, but shouldn’t these internal struggles continue? In a dialogue dedicated to peace, shouldn’t we have on the table choices upon which we actually have some direct influence? Perhaps collective action is the only effective way of achieving results, but, as Chad noted, individual change is where it all starts. I guess what I'm saying is, the only challenge we come away with from this class shouldn't just be "What are you doing about Darfur?" Perhaps we should also keep in mind the question "What are you doing with your life?"

Baseball and Peace

2005-04-18T22:42:00.000-04:00

The Nationals played their home opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks last week. Forty thousand fans cheered and hollered as they saw their home team win in the first game played in D.C. in three decades.

And outside the stands, doing some cheering and hollering of their own, were a group of protestors, including high school students, demonstrating against the construction of a new $600 million baseball stadium. "Millions for baseball, peanuts for schools" read the signs. These protestors didn't get nearly the media coverage of the baseball team (and actually had some rather nasty insults hurled their way).

Here's the problem: I believe in public education. I want kids from inner cities and rural areas to have the same opportunities as children who grow up in affluent suburbs. I believe, more strongly than I hold any other belief, that education can be the silver bullet, solving problems of poverty, of intolerance, of the imbalanced power structure. And yes, quality, even exceptional, education for every child can be a harbinger of peace.

But, I also love baseball. I love emerging from a long tunnel and seeing the green field, pristine below me. I love the sound of a homerun. I love the excitement of a three and two pitch. And, on Thursday night, 40,000 baseball fans were right there with me (and we all wanted a new, bright stadium to house our new, bright team).

We here at the Peace Project are dedicated to bringing unheard protests to light, which is why I mention those protestors outside the baseball stadium last weekend. But, this time, I don't think they're right. They're framing the issue as an either/or -- a new baseball stadium or millions in education money for schoolkids. That simply will not happen. If the stadium bill had not been passed, the students in D.C. would not be getting a $600 million windfall for new school facilities.

That said, I am embarrassed by the funding amounts designated for D.C. public schoolchildren. Students here deserve better. They deserve new facilities, updated textbooks, and flourishing arts and athletic programs. Urban schoolchildren, as a whole, face more challenges than kids from affluent communities. They aren't read to as children. They don't have parents with the time to help them with their homework. They may have to care for younger siblings or disabled parents. English may not be their first language. These children have enough struggles before they even make it through the schoolhouse door. It shouldn't be more difficult once they get inside.

So, in the interest of bringing together my two passions, I suggest that instead of protesting the new stadium, the activists begin negotiating with the city and the team owners. Public funding is not sufficient for our kids. Designating some portion of money from the new stadium -- 50 cents of every hot dog sold, for example -- would add a private source of funding on top of the appropriations the schools get now. The schools would get more money, and the baseball team would get some positive publicity.

The fight over the baseball stadium is over. But it's not too late to still get more money for the city's schoolchildren.

Practical Arguments for Gov't Transparency

2005-04-18T15:04:00.000-04:00

I wrote several days ago about expecting more of our politicians and the post sparked a heated debate (for purposes of this blog a heated debate = 2 comments) about how much transparency we require, and is democratically required, from our gov't. If we don't like Bush then we'll criticize his using forged documents in the UN, but we would criticize him regardless, right? Whereas FDR kept us in the dark, but killing the Nazis turned out to be a good thing so he is hailed as a great leader. Where do we draw the line between effective leadership and manipulation?

I think our government (key word: "OUR") owes us the truth and would appreciate more transparency from any administration. There are always gray areas because national security means there are some things that simply can't be made public...but a gov't shrouded in secrecy I believe leads to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and a tarnished international image, amongst other evils. It's always easier to convince people of the need for immediate change on a practical line of reasoning, however, which makes me glad to see this Op-ed in the Washington Post explaining that too much secrecy actually harms national security. The National Academy of Sciences recently published a report saying that such extreme restrictions on the sharing of information in some agencies is actually hindering the possible addressing of potential vulnerabilities. The article argues that a gov't that spends billions of dollars a year classifying everything that it can risks not knowing what to disclose to the people that need to know. Secrecy doesn't just pose a threat to our democratic values, but also to our survival, especially when it comes to nuclear safety. Yet another reason for the truth. Thanks Chris.

wage peace,
chad

Touching Story from a Reader

2005-04-18T14:41:00.000-04:00

Didn't want this to get lost in the "comments" - Thanks I.B.

Hello all - I wanted to share a personal story on the effects of individual efforts for social change. I'm not saying I've figured this out by any means, but it's something that has been troubling me lately so I thought I would contribute.

Until his death at the age of 89, my grandfather lived in rural Arkansas and was an activist in many ways, particularly on environmental issues. Although he was a member of several organizations and gave money to various causes, his main form of activism, especially in later years, was trying to minimize his own impact on the earth. As Professor Matsuda put it, he removed himself from the system. I'm pretty sure he kept paying taxes, but he lived in the country, used very little electricity, tried to grow as much of his own food as he could, cooked on a wood stove, etc., etc. Although much of this behavior could be linked to growing up poor (both before and during the depression), he also truly believed that over-consumption was destroying this planet. This made him a frustrating relative at times, and I was always torn between admiration and exasperation for his actions (particularly because he felt it was his duty to criticize those of us who did not follow his lifestyle).

After several strokes and a long illness, my grandfather recently passed away. Along with grieving someone I loved, I've also been thinking a lot about the meaning of his life. Did all of that scrimping and saving and nagging make any difference in the world? I haven't come to a satisfactory answer.

Here is the evidence for "no" - the environment, so far as I can tell, has not improved over the course of his lifetime. The United States still has a huge foreign oil dependency, we still have big pollution problems, and people still spend enormous sums of money on things they don't need. And my grandfather was often bitter about these facts, and - I think - resentful that he was making these sacrifices that no one else was making.

But here is the evidence for "yes" - at his memorial service, several members of his community spoke with respect of my grandfather's love of big gardens and of his rejection of material things. And walking in the woods he loved, I heard my 9 year old niece express her frustration that so many of the wild places of the world are being destroyed. In addition, even though my grandfather's highest degree was from high school and his highest paying job was as a rural mail carrier, he never stopped educating himself through reading, and he saved enough money to send my sisters and me to college. Most striking to me was when my brother-in-law spoke about how he had been raised to scorn the "educated idiots" who thought they were better than everyone else, until my grandfather showed him that you could be educated and still be down to earth. (My brother-in-law went to college after getting to know my grandfather.)

These are just pieces, threads, of a very long, very complicated life. I think that if my grandfather had been joyful in his sacrifices (which I think Gandhi would have insisted upon), then it would be easier for me to say that yes, his individual actions were "worth it." But even so, I cannot ignore the ripple effects that I see in my family, in the community, and I hope, in the world.

I don't think I'll ever grow my own food or learn to live without electricity. But I do try to make individual decisions that will make a small difference - buying fair-trade goods, not watching too much television, and not driving when I have a choice. I don't know if these things make any difference, but I don't feel that I've lost anything by doing them either. So I don't have a tidy wrap-up for my grandfather's life. But I think that his choices did more good than harm, and I guess that's not a bad way to live your life after all.

A Guest Post (a.k.a. Proof we have actual Readers)

2005-04-17T18:21:00.000-04:00

Hi all,

This isn’t a response to Chad’s post, but I wasn’t sure where to post this so feel free to move it! I just wanted to get down something that I’ve been thinking about this week. I was lucky enough to go to ‘high tea’ at the Supreme Court with Justice Ginsburg and two female justices of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. All in all it was quite possibly the best experience I’ve had in law school (in part because I was familiar with many of the cases/issues that were discussed from my work in the Women’s Human Rights Clinic). The South African justices spoke eloquently of how proud they are of their young Constitution, and how this pride and desire to uphold its principles play a significant role in how the government actually operates. Even though the different branches of government may disagree, they all share this common pride in their Constitution that keeps them from overstepping their bounds and enables resolution. Justice Ginsburg touched on this too when discussing the real affection the Justices have for each other even when disagreeing passionately (she told one story about Scalia giving her a draft of his dissent in VMI ahead of time so she could have time to address it in her majority opinion…what a considerate guy…).

Anyway, it seems like some shared respect for the process (where it is in fact upholding the principles it is supposed to be) is absolutely crucial to a democracy. This is crumbling in our country. The Bush Administration puts the process (checks and balances, an independent judiciary) second to getting what they want. How do kids reconcile what they are being taught in social studies or government class with what is actually happening in the world?Immediately after the South African justices finished talking about this common love and respect for the Constitution, Justice Ginsburg told us of some kind of militiaman website that attacks herself and Justice O’Connor for referencing foreign law. This site apparently says that anyone who is a “true patriot” will see to it that these women don’t live another week. (!!) God forbid we look to see how courts in other countries are interpreting basic principles of liberty and equality. We may have been doing constitutional law for 200 years, but that doesn’t mean we are the most enlightened.

Now, to make this posting even more random and rambling, here’s a link to an old article about Bush having dry drunk syndrome. It’s not to be missed: http://www.counterpunch.org/wormer1011.html

Cheers,
Melissa

Patricia

2005-04-15T12:44:00.000-04:00

We have been talking extensively in class about the effectiveness and necessity of individual action versus collective efforts in achieving social justice and change. I've been struggling with this concept for a while because I believe that social change can never happen unless the oppressed and the subordinated are empowered and collectively dismantle the power structures keeping them down, but I also can't shake the nagging feeling that the ultimate change will have to be in our hearts, each and every one of us - that merely changing the law or shifting a policy doesn't get us closer to a real utopia if individuals don't truly internalize the effects of their actions and learn to love. Look at campaign finance reform for crying out out loud - all the reform in the world doesn't get rid of greed.

The problem with individual action though, is that the real effect you have on the world might seem negligable, or even non-existent. If you recycle, or don't eat fast food, or use a library instead of buying a book, or take the stairs, does it matter? Aren't you just wasting your efforts day in and day out while the world goes by around you unaffected? An experience I had on Wednesday answered that question for me. I was out with several friends at happy hour - the bar wasn't crowded but the only four seats available together ended up landing me on a stool next to an older woman, Patricia, by herself. She immediately struck up what turned out to be a very sad conversation with me - tales of her friends being killed, not graduating high school, being unemployed, her parents abandoning her, and pretty much utter hopelessness. Everyone else essentially ignored her, or gave her curt and distant responses, but I felt a tug in my heart for her and took time away from goofing off with my buddies to engage with her - to listen to her story and try to give her whatever ray of hope that I could.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm no saint - and I definitely poked fun at the situation after the woman wandered off, which I'm ashamed of - but it struck me as I was sitting there giving this woman some of my time...probably anyone in that bar, and most of the people I know, might vote to increase this woman's unemployment benefits, or fund some social program to help her get educated, or get a job, but I just don't think that's enough. Mass social organization is quite effective, and necessary, but until we learn to actually connect with others, to empathize, to reach out with our own hearts and resources, change won't be complete, and that takes place on a very personal and individual level. Otherwise, the subordination and exclusivity and superiority and greed and cold-heartedness will still be there underneath it all.

I worry that those who think individual change isn't worth it simply use their professed theory as an excuse to not truly take action until "everyone else" does. And it is definitely true that the effects of an individual effort might be minimal, but come on - for the law students out there, we know that a farmer eating his own damn wheat is sufficient to affect interstate commerce. Changing your heart, and your actions, WILL have some effect. On your friends, your family, your children, the people you meet, people that might someday be in places of power, whose decisions might make an even bigger change. We know from chaos theory than when a butterfly flaps its wings a storm can be born, so I don't think we should cop out behind the theory that only collective action moves the world. The effects might be small, and just as troubling - slow (I'm talking generations), but it might also be more permanent when hearts are actually changed - it's hard work, but it's work that must be done.

"WE MUST BECOME THE CHANGE WE WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD." - Gandhi

wage peace,
chad

Forgetting History?

2005-04-14T10:41:00.000-04:00

In a piece of news that is a little closer to my heart than others, China and South Korea are quite angry with Japan--again. The cause?* Japanese governmental approval of a set of textbooks that glosses over Japanese past wartime atrocities. This objection is hardly new. These textbooks are the product of amendments demanded by the Japanese government after a similar controversy in 2001. As always, the Nanjing Massacre (made famous in the West by The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang) is a major point of contention,

[The most controversial textbook] refers to the Japanese slaughter of some 300,000 civilians in the Chinese city of Nanjing as an "incident", rather than the "massacre" it is known as elsewhere.

. . . .
Only one of the books gives figures for the number of civilians killed in the Nanjing Massacre, while the others say "many people" died.

I spent the year in between undergrad and law school in Japan. On one of my trips to Tokyo, I visited the Yasukuni Shrine, a shrine dedicated to Japan’s war dead. The shrine is controversial not because it honors the civilian and regular soldiers’ deaths from wars dating back to the 19th century, but because it also honors more than 1,000 convicted war criminals from World War II, including executed wartime Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo and 13 other class-A war criminals.

The shrine and its museum are a source of yearly controversy in Japan, because, every year, Prime Minister Koizumi visits the shrine. Koizumi claims that his visits are acts of remembrance so as not to repeat the mistakes of war, but the visits always seem to spark a diplomatic controversy with China and South Korea.

After a visit to the shrine's museum, it wasn't difficult for me to understand why. For example, the English translations accompanying the display on the Nanjing Massacre state:

Gen. Iwane Matsui "warned Chinese troops to surrender, but Commander-in-Chief Tang Shengzhi ignored the warning. Instead he ordered his men to fight to the death and then abandoned them. The Chinese were soundly defeated, suffering heavy casualties. Inside the city, residents were once again able to live their lives in peace.''

The museum's website also declares that "There were also 1,068 'Martyrs of Showa' who were cruelly and unjustly tried as war criminals by a sham-like tribunal of the Allied forces (United States, England, the Netherlands, China and others)."

From what I can tell, this sentiment is fairly fringe in Japan. My supervisor, a high school English teacher in rural Japan, informed me that, except in tourist materials, I wouldn't see much of the "Rising Sun" flag. According to him, those who regularly hang the flags are the people who still fume about Japan losing the war. "Those kind of people would get us into trouble again," he said.

There's a lot to unpack from this whole situation--the potential threat of nationalism, the importance of a strong grounding in the complexities of history. Japan (and Germany) circa WWII are always good starting points for a discussion on the dangers of nationalism. But as long as we're bringing in extreme examples, remember that Gandhi is known as the "Father of Indian Nationalism."

Where are we now? Will we someday hesitate to fly the Stars & Stripes? Will we abandon the flag in favor of celebrating national cultural symbols--our own version of cherry blossoms, sumo, origami, tea ceremonies? Perhaps the absence of any such cultural ties means that we have nothing to fall back on. Will we refuse to learn from our own history because we fear a vacuum of national unity?

*I recognize that these historical disputes are not the only causes of difficulty between Japan and mainland Asia--conflicts over drilling and the dispute of the Tokdo/Takeshima islands, for example, certainly contribute.

Acts of God

2005-04-13T18:11:00.000-04:00

The tsunami in South Asia took hundreds of thousands of lives. But it may also have been the springboard to saving hundreds from perishing in the country's civil war.

Aceh rebels and an Indonesian government delegation have met to start the third round of peace talks aimed at bringing lasting peace to the tsunami-ravaged province. . . .

After a tsunami on 26 December devastated Aceh, the rebels proclaimed a unilateral truce saying they wanted to help rescue efforts.

But the Indonesian military said it would continue combat operations until a formal ceasefire was signed, and the army commander has claimed his troops killed nearly 200 rebels in the first two months after the disaster.

"Today's talks were conducted in a good spirit," Cowell said on Tuesday. "On the agenda were the Free Aceh Movement's demands of a ceasefire, and the amnesty of political prisoners."

I, for one, am hoping that peace can emerge from the destruction of the tsunami, even though the Indonesian government has proved me wrong thus far.

Peace Doesn't Pay

2005-04-12T10:55:00.000-04:00

And I mean that in the political sense of course - because it's obvious that peace won't pay after graduation...

I am intrigued by the interaction between the power machine and the people here. I think it's pretty non-controversial to say that administrations can use fear and the media to manipulate people's preferences (you might disagree - if so, let me hear) but I think after 9/11 there was as much going on from the other direction as well, a mandate from many Americans to really kick some ass, to raise some hell, to be protected, it's something Sue has written about - there were a lot of people who didn't want to hear about UN inspections or resolutions because they were scared. And scared people want immediate gratification, not careful planning and exit strategies.

Here is an interesting analysis relating Israeli leaders' peace achievements and how much the public appreciated them. For example - Begin's greatest diplomatic achievement - the peace treaty with Egypt - only lost popular support for him. Bombing the Iraqi reactor? Now that's how you get votes.

So what forces are at work here? Is it mainly those in power knowing how to manipulate the public to get what they want? Or is it leaders who are largely powerless because they must respond to the public's demands? I think both are factors, but the important thing to remember is that no matter what those who would attack first and ask questions later shove down our throats, we don't have to take it...while they DO have to listen to us or we can vote them out. So we have to make peace pay, which unfortunately means we have a lot of work to do, fighting the status quo, but if we reward our leaders with office for bombing wedding parties and cluster-bombing civilians then peace has little chance.

wage peace,
chad

Music for Peace

2005-04-11T10:11:00.000-04:00

Music teacher Liz Shropshire bought her plane ticket to Belgium with plans for a backpacking trip through Austria. Instead, after seeing news footage of the refugees fleeing Kosovo during the war, she decided to volunteer. She packed up suitcases filled with donated instruments (pennywhistles, drumsticks) and boarded a plane for Europe.

Six years later, the Shropshire Music Foundation has established programs in Kosovo, Northern Ireland and Uganda. The goal: teaching children something beyond war. Giving them pride in themselves. Giving them a choice.

"These kids are growing up with no reason to do anything but hate," she said. "But if they do hate, they're in prison all their lives. A lot of this program is letting these kids know they can make their own choices."

The younger children learn how to play instruments (small ones that they can keep in their pockets, that no one can take away). The teenagers learn how to teach a music class. The volunteers (all Kosovo teens, numbering around 30) run the program while Liz is in the States, trying to raise money and donations for the foundation.

The change in the teenagers -- going from children traumatized by war to teachers of other children -- has given Liz hope for the future of Kosovo.

"It's these teenagers who are changing their country," she said. "When I watch them teach right now, it almost makes me cry. They're such good teachers. And they say, 'I can do something for my country now.'"

Liz wants to expand the program to other places scarred by conflict -- Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Palestine and Israel. She hopes that by teaching children something other than hate, a new generation will grow up committed to peace.

"This is just a little music program, and we're not going to change the world tomorrow. But by helping these kids to choose peace, we may be preventing these conflicts from happening again."

She believes peace is possible. Not everyone has to change their lives and start a music program in another country (although Liz says she is "so rich because I get to do this amazing job.") But it will require small commitments on the part of everyone -- volunteering time, starting conversations, teaching their children peace.

"There's so much that could be done," she said. "We're only going to fix it if we all start doing what we can."

If a tree falls in a forest....

2005-04-10T16:41:00.000-04:00

Almost every day that Congress is in session, Lynn Woolsey, U.S. Representative from Northern California, stands up and gives a five-minute speech on the war in Iraq. Did you know about it? I didn't, and I'm one of CSPAN's five semi-regular viewers.

She's taking advantage of a House rule that gives representatives five minutes of every day to talk about whatever they want to--unfortunately, those who choose to take advantage of this rule have to do it after all House business is taken care of for the day. This means everybody has pretty much left, people at home are watching American Idol, and if you do catch her on CSPAN, you can see janitors sweeping the floor behind her (I made up that last part--how would I know? I'm watching American Idol). She's given 56 versions of her speech since last April.

Woolsey began her quixotic streak of speechifying April 20, shortly after introducing a resolution calling for a "Sensible, Multilateral American Response to Terrorism." Her "SMART" plan, drafted with the help of Physicians for Social Responsibility and other groups opposed to the war, would fight terrorism with international intelligence partnerships, "aggressive" diplomacy to root out weapons of mass destruction, bigger investments in peacekeeping and reconstruction, energy independence and addressing the root causes of terrorism.

"Instead of sending troops, let's send scientists, teachers, urban planners, agricultural experts and small-business loans to troubled parts of the world," she wrote in a summary of the plan.

As you might have guessed, I think her plan sounds promising, and I wish it hadn't disappeared into the Republican committee vortex. I'm glad she hasn't given up on it and continues to promote it. But does it matter? Is she wasting her time?

Kashmir Bus Update

2005-04-07T14:18:00.000-04:00

Some news from Kashmir ... The inaugural run of the bus service between Pakistan and India was not without its problems, but the news overall was good for Kashmiris -- Indians and Pakistanis alike.

Security in Indian Kashmir was the tightest for years -- an armored car and a busload of soldiers tailed the buses. Rebel threats had created a deep sense of unease but also defiance among Kashmiris determined to see families reunited.

"A door has opened,'' said [Indian PM] Singh, in his trademark blue turban, speaking behind bullet-proof glass. "Pakistan and especially President General Pervez Musharraf have helped us open this door. This is the beginning of a new phase. Violence is not going to solve any problems.''

Score one for peace.

Darfur Update - Too Little Too Late?

2005-04-05T22:41:00.000-04:00

I am definitely writing about Darfur as much for me as for readers, but I think it is extremely important that we remain aware of this situation of countless horror for innocent victims that would take relatively little in the way of international intervention to prevent. Unfortunately, things seem to be moving very slowly, probably a lot slower than the Janjaweed on their horses.

First, ten thousand UN peacekeeping troops are headed to Sudan... but, they aren't going to Darfur. They are instead going to Southern Sudan to help reinforce a peace agreement signed over an unrelated conflict. The US though, and others, hope that this move will speed up bringing peace to the Darfur region. (Note: this was a US initiative in the Security Council)

Also, the UN has decided to hand over prosecutions for Darfur war crimes to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Well, I agree wholeheartedly with that step. There are only two problems. One, the Sudanese gov't is refusing to cooperate. Sudan's President, in a Bushian display of religious conviction (i.e., "In Afghanistan I believe that the freedom there is a gift from the Almighty"), swore "thrice in the name of Almighty Allah that I shall never hand any Sudanese national to a foreign court." And two, (fighting the urge to type in all caps) if you know that there are war crimes going on severe enough to warrant the first ever Security Council resolution referring a conflict to the ICC, then WHY AREN'T YOU GOING IN TO STOP THEM??? (I tried so hard...) (Note 2: The US abstained from this vote, which is notable since the US vehemently opposes the ICC)

So, on the one hand, kudos to the US. We (I'm almost proud here...) declared the situation a genocide. We drafted the resolution to send troops. We allowed the referral to a tribunal we oppose. AND we even drafted a separate resolution imposing sanctions on individuals guilty of atrocities or cease-fire violations. Sure, we could be doing more on our own, but honestly if I was the Bush administration I might be doing the exact same thing given all the criticism the US got for unilateral action in Iraq. Isn't this what you want Europe (and blue states)? For us to pass the "global test"? So, as critical as I love to be of this administration, it's hard to place too much blame in this case - the UN is the real problem.

On the other hand - Sudan isn't going to cooperate with the ICC, and guess who won't be able to say a damn thing? Dubya, that's who. Our refusal to submit ourselves to the international rule of law gives other countries all the excuse they need to do the same. Bush is scared of frivolous or politically-motivated suits brought against Americans - but you know what happens to frivilous suits? Ask the fat kids who sued McDonalds. If progress is to be made than we have to be willing to make concessions, like submitting ourselves to international authority so that the perpetrators of these mass rapes and slaughters can be prosecuted.

So, I'm not letting the US off the hook - we should be using what political and military capital we have to get much more done in Darfur - what is really needed is a peacekeeping force, now. Though the rhetoric of letting Africa handle Africa's problems is noble enough, two thousand African Union troops are not getting the job done and thousands more lives are at stake. But I am going to be a little less quick to judge when we are attempting to make progress through the UN. Besides, I can always rip on the French.

wage peace,
chad

Peace and the Pope

2005-04-03T23:28:00.000-04:00

Lots of stories have appeared in the press the last few days, calling the legacy of John Paul II a difficult one for many Western Catholics. Count me among the conflicted. It is a hard task to accept as your religious leader a Pope who would never accept you (or anyone the same sex as you) as a close advisor.

But when it came to peace, there John Paul II spoke with a voice that was hard to ignore, no matter your personal feelings on the politics of the Church. He denounced wars, including the Iraq war. He championed the cause of the poor. He questioned capitalism and the great inequalities it engendered. Even on the issues with which I disagreed with him the most -- contraception and abortion -- he presented a compelling view of the culture of life, explaining that not only should it be preserved before birth, but societies should guarantee that the world's children be cared for. Every child should have an education, food, a home. This vision of life as something more than a beginning and an end -- encompassing all the portions in between -- is a position that could be a powerful tool in the struggle for peace.

The role of religion in the pursuit of peace is one that has been discussed quite a bit on this blog, and, in my view, John Paul II presents a counterpoint to the view of religions as essentially tools of power and war. His efforts to reach out to other religions were almost startling. Why did the Catholic Church need (or want) to open a dialogue with Muslims, or Protestants, or Jews, when there was little or no political pressure on it to do so? But this Pope recognized the power of apologies and discussion. And he seemed to believe it was his role to mend the ties that had been broken centuries before. In a time of greater division, when fervent nationalism and religious fantacism are threatening to tear apart the social fabric of the international community, John Paul II tried to do his part to sew the pieces back together. For that, he will always be a champion of peace.

There are countless difficulties and counterpoints to all the issues I just raised. For example, the Pope's stance on contraception will, in the long-term, likely do more to cause war than peace. And this is why his legacy will be a difficult one for Catholics living in the developed world. Yet, in these days after his passing, witnessing the sadness and joy on the part of people (religious or not), it's difficult to believe that his legacy will be anything but one of peace. May we all be so lucky.

John Paul, I hardly knew ye

2005-04-03T21:53:00.000-04:00

I have little to say about the passing of Pope John Paul II, especially since I like to be respectful when people die. At least for a while. But John Paul did have some interesting ideas so I figure a good way of celebrating his life is to spread my favorite Pope quotes. Rest in peace, big guy.

Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.

Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.

The goods of this world are originally meant for all. The right to private property is valid and necessary, but it does not nullify the value of this principle. Private property, in fact, is under a social mortgage.

The globalised organisation of work, profiting from the extreme privation of developing peoples, often entails grave situations that mock the elementary demands of human dignity.

wage peace,
chad

Greyhound to Kashmir

2005-04-02T00:34:00.000-05:00

Well I hope this is cause to celebrate - and it certainly appears it should be. Parts of one of the most heavily militarized zones in the world have been swept clear of land mines to make way for the Kashmir Bus Service, to link the Indian and Pakistani parts of the region. Many are hailing the service as a significant step towards peace, even calling the route a Peace Road. I am personally happy to hear that families who have been separated since the the first war between these two countries in 1947 will now be able to reconnect.

There are of course those that oppose the new road, principally rebel groups fighting Indian rule - they say the road is aimed at sabotaging their struggle. There acknowledge the possibility that a more permanent peace between India and Pakistan, and an agreement over control of Kashmir, might ignore the interests of Kashmirians who would prefer to be sovereign and under the control of neither country; but de-militarizing such a hot region and building an infrastructure to promote travel seems to me a great thing for peace from just about anyway you look at it. We're talking about two countries highly suspicious of eath other with serious (and infant) nuclear capabilities, no governing proliferation treaty, and no experience with nukes. What's most important right now is to build trust and open communication between these countries to minimize the destructive capacity of the conflict, and to stop the "massive and flagrant violations of human rights and humanitarian law" in the Indian-occupied parts of the region. So I am very disappointed to hear the threats from the rebel groups and will be watching on April 7th to see how opening day goes (4 days after the Real Opening Day). Props to the Kashmirians who refuse to heed the threats and plan to board the bus anyway - we are hoping for the best

wage peace,
chad

P.S. - This just in - Road Declared Safe by Authorities (for now)

Film Festival in DC

2005-04-01T17:13:00.000-05:00

A friend of a friend asked me to help publicize a film festival her organization is putting on here in DC on April 7 & 9. The friend works as a "global peace activist" at 50 Years is Enough. The title of the organization is in reference to the fact that when the IMF was created, it was only supposed to be in existence for 50 years.

The film festival (title: Speaking Truth to Power on Film: Globalization, the World Bank, and the IMF) isn't solely on the IMF--there's a lot on human rights as well (as though the two topics were completely discrete). Here's the films that they're showing:

The African Fiber
Join filmmaker Francoise Champey for a film examining trade, globalization, and their effects on small-scale cotton farmers in Africa.

To Be a Woman
The policies of the World Bank and the IMF devastate the lives of women, children, and the poor in the Global South. This film examines issues of international debt and development through the stories of the women in three African countries who are struggling to survive being “structurally adjusted.”

Thirst
Population growth, pollution, and scarcity are turning water into "blue gold," the oil of the 21st century. Global corporations are rushing to gain control of this dwindling natural resource, producing intense conflict in the US and worldwide where people are dying in battles over control of water. Thirst follows the story of resistance in Bolivia, India, and California.

I've read a lot about the IMF and globalization, and I still don't know enough to have anything more than a vague opinion that liberal economic policies are not always a good thing and Argentina is a lot cheaper to visit now (thanks, Friedman!). I know we have some well-educated (and opinionated) readers--why is a critical look at the IMF and globalization important to peace?

Go check out the website and the schedule for the pertinent logistical information.

Peace Direct

2005-03-31T14:15:00.000-05:00

Over the past couple of weeks I've been trading correspondence with Claire Devas of Peace Direct, an organization in the UK "supporting grass roots peacemaking in conflict areas." Essentially, the group works to find funding and support for people who are native to conflict areas to do what the locals think need to be done. Claire thinks that this aproach is fairly unique to Peace Direct--most organizations, according to her, send their own people into the field to tell locals what's best for them, or they employ locals on the ground to do what the organization thinks needs to be done. Peace Direct is built on a different model.

Take, for example, the work done by Sami Veglioglu at the Humanitarian Liaison Centre (HLC) in Kirkuk. Sami is a British Iraqi who returned to Iraq to set up the HLC. The HLC is, according to the Peace Direct website, a place where:

[I]ndividuals who have suffered wrongs as a result of the conflict in Iraq can have their story heard and be helped to find redress. ‘I have to reach people before they pick up a gun and take matters into their own hands’ says Sami.
....
So far the Centre has documented 2,500 cases from all sections of the community – predominantly Arabs Turkomans and Kurds, and both Muslims and Christians. Sami is now seeking to expand the Centre’s work to encompass employment creation – unemployment being a major cause of violence – by setting up an ads-listing paper which will be sold on the streets and through newsagents.

I do think there's a lot to be said for organizations who have a certain expertise and go into conflict areas to share that expertise and to do work that the locals simply cannot do, for lack of basic resources and opportunity. As Clare points out, almost every humanitarian organization around is set up that way.

However, there's certainly a place for this "grass roots peacemaking." People who actually speak the local language can't be a bad thing, right? What I like about this organization is that they're based on the idea that human rights and development are both equal parts of peace making. If we're going to "sell" this idea of peace and create a "large scale, long term peace movement," as Peace Direct is intent on doing, then I think people need to see evidence that small-scale, localized development projects contribute to peace and security.

What do you think? Is "grassroots" so 2004? Is support of an expat Iraqi problematic in terms of the idea of supporting local projects?

Go check out Peace Direct's website, it's pretty fantastic--informative and very well made. You can see full reports on Veglioglu's work in Kirkuk, which is in turn both inspiring and depressing, as well as Peace Direct's support for other projects.

Artists and Peace

2005-03-30T21:24:00.000-05:00

What role do artists play in the quest for peace? A large one, says a Pakistani comedy troupe that thinks they can help the peace process.

Mishi Khan is all for more cultural contacts between the two countries that are slowly dismantling stereotypes and making peace a real possibility. "Artists, singers and actors have no boundaries. Nothing is impossible if we set our heart on it," says the actor, who is looking forward to a taste of real India in Delhi's Chandni Chowk area, eating, shopping and talking.

Kazi, too, believes in the power of creative people to dissolve boundaries.

"Art, music and theatre fosters a better relationship and helps in demolishing prejudices," says Kazi, for whom her passage to India is a provocation to rediscover her roots in places like Aligarh, Rampur and Surat that still house members of her extended family.

Conflicts between states are usually conflicts of two groups of people. Often, they have different cultures and different languages. They understand little about the other's history or traditions.

Artists can bridge that divide by bringing society's conflicts down to the individual scale. A poet's words, revealing a small portion of herself, could perhaps connect with someone on the other side of the wall. A picture can tell an emotional story that resonates beyond cultural boundaries. Artists can take conflicts at the grand scale, along with all the stereotypes and prejudices that come with countreis at war, and reduce them to one-on-one interactions.

But this is also the great failing of artists. They interact with their audience, and perhaps break down cultural stereotypes, but they do little on the grand scale. One of the tenets of sociology is that groups act differently than individuals. So even if an artist reached every person on every side of the border, the groups of individuals could still hate one another. Maybe it's an artist's place to start the discussion, and the politician's role to finish it.

Mo' Religion

2005-03-30T14:19:00.000-05:00

I've been challenged on the emptiness of my organized religion posting below, so let me elaborate a little. I do not mean to say that organized religion is a force for evil or even inherently a bad thing. Spirituality, a belief in a higher being or source of power beyond yourself, a wonder and humility before the mysteries of the universe, and a sense of connection to other things in creation are important and noble and (I believe) necessary components of peace and happiness. And organization is unquestionably necessary to get things done - that's part of the point of this blog. But that doesn't mean you don't take a structure, or structures, that have been associated with (or responsible for?) untold atrocities and try to analyze them and hold those structures accountable and question how they can be changed.

So then we come to the question of whether organized religion can really be responsible for the terror perpetrated in its name. As one comment suggested, it is human behavior and needs and struggles that are responsible for human behavior, so religion shouldn't be blamed for these acts (see list in post below). While I see some merit in a claim like that, I also think it comes up short. We can't let structures off the hook simply because it was always individual choice at the heart of any decision. In fact, that's a little outlandish, right? Choice can be pretty easily deconstructed in a world where power structures can be so ridiculously entrenched and strong and people can be so impressionable and needy. I guess one theory would be to not blame violence on television and in video games for school shootings because the kids can make their own damn choices, but I just don't see the world as being so simple. I see religion as an especially problematic strucure because of the fundamental level at which it grips people. "God's chosen people" or "God commands you to do this" or "we are going to heaven and everyone else is going to burn in hell" are influences that might make people move more than nationalism or political ideology or other group structures. Maybe not, but it certianly seems dangerous, and I think history would indicate it is.

Lastly, is it simply saying "nothing" to say that ideologies or organized masses have been exacerbating forces in wars? Well, I've been accused of saying nothing plenty of times, but I don't think trying to start a discussion about the effects of a structure is saying nothing. Have you ever read Fast Food Nation? You could say that book is only pointing out the obvious fact that massive corporations can have a negative effect on society, but I think calling out specific structures to make people more aware is far from worthless - I certainly haven't looked at a Quarter Pounder the same since, and the book offered great suggestions for change. I think highlighting possibilities for tipping organized religion's positive/negative scale towards the good can be very constructive, and that might start with recognizing the need for change in the first place. That being said, I recognize my analysis is no Upton Sinclair and I will try to be a little more detailed and constructive in the future.

I happen to really like the Unitarian church - when I did Election Protection I spent all day chatting with two Unitarian ministers at the polls. It seems to be very inter-faith, accepting, tolerant, and encouraging of individual spiritual development while providing a support network to make that possible. Organized to do good, but not exclusive or burdened with a superiority complex. I remember one minister saying that typical meetings might include readings from Rumi or Ghandi or Martin Luther King... good things. Probably lessons that some other organized religions could learn from.

wage peace,
chad

Organized Religion

2005-03-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

I spent many hours on the Inca Trail in Peru learning about the history of the Incan Empire and the Spanish conquest of it, a truly fascinating story of civil war, political manipulation, and ruthlessness, all of which would provide great fodder for thoughts on peace. But one story that especially struck me was the story of the first Christian of Peru.

Atahualpa Inca was captured by Pizarro at a pre-arranged meeting where the Spaniards ambushed the king and killed thousands of his followers. After holding him prisoner, forcing him to give orders to his people for their benefit, and reaping a huge ransom of silver and gold for his life, Pizarro still killed Atahualpa when he was no longer needed. Pizarro, who as far as I can tell was brilliant at squeezing every possible advantage out of a situation, was going to burn Atahualpa alive but allowed him to convert to Christianty to escape that death and be hanged instead. Atahualpa, obviously not comprehending the significance of him becoming the first Incan Christian, readily agreed to a baptism and a quickie over the stake.

So Pizarro said, in the name of our loving God, accept Christ and you will be shown the mercy of a nice comfortable strangling. Yet another example on the list of atrocities done in the name of religion. The Crusades. Human Sacrifice. Female genital mutilation. Witch hunts. Islamic Jihads. Genocides. Abortion clinic bombings. Fundamentalist terrorism. Northern Ireland. And Galileo probably wouldn't think religion was a vehicle for peace...

Intense beliefs can lead to intense hostility. It seems that when religion is strongest some pretty cruel things can happen. I grew up very "religious" but have gotten further and further away from wanting anything to do with organized religion over the years. It seems that the power structures surrounding organized religion lead to just as severe atrocities as any secular or nation-state forces, and with seemingly much more inflexible justification and authority (God, and the moral high-ground). The dogmatic determination and exclusivity which I see from the religious right now, and other religious forces, is scary, especially considering the horror story that is the history of world religion. A personal quest for spirituality is no doubt an important part of life, and many of the world's religions unquestionably purport to teach peace and neighborly love. But those who think that religion is a force for good are paying attention to a very selective part of history.

Northern Ireland

2005-03-27T11:22:00.000-05:00

The peace process in Northern Ireland has been the most successful of any entrenched conflict in recent history. Of course, that isn't saying much. But the change in the politics of the country, particularly in the mindset of republicans, has been remarkable -- going from the embrace of violent means of resistance to hope that the future lies with the ballot box, not the bomb trigger.

While the two sides remain at a stalemate as to the N. Ireland government, which was suspended after allegations of IRA spying, much of the terrorist violence against the British and Protestant police forces has stopped. However, that does not mean N. Ireland is a peaceful place. The IRA has come under steady attack over the last weeks and months for their alleged involvement in a bank heist and barroom murder. Their reputation has gone from being the heroes of the armed resistance to nothing more than thugs and murderers.

Sinn Fein, the IRA's alleged political wing, is now under enormous pressure to cut ties with and even disband the paramilitary group.

In 35 years of armed conflict, as the IRA fought the British security forces to a bloody stalemate, de Faoite would not have dreamed of criticizing the IRA. But now, he and other republicans -- hardline nationalists who believe force is justified to remove British influence from Ireland -- are saying openly what for them was once unthinkable.

''It's time for Sinn Fein to break from the IRA," said de Faoite, a 65-year-old construction company executive from the southern city of Tipperary. ''Politics is the only way to go now. That break should be made."

The lessons of N. Ireland certainly do not comport with any pacifist agenda. The injustices of British rule were met with violent resistance. And violent resistance, paradoxically, led to a semblance of peace.

But what is most interesting, and hopeful, is that the ballot box is now the stronger alternative to violence. Given a chance for participation in meaningful democracy, people committed to the violent overthrow of a government will, and have, accepted politics as the better solution. And despite all the problems with the Good Friday agreement and the stalled peace process, it is that mindset that gives me hope that true peace will come to N. Ireland.

Success for the Living Wage Campaign

2005-03-24T15:39:00.000-05:00

Georgetown University has officially adopted a Living Wage policy!

Last night, the university approved a proposal by university Vice President Spiros Dimolitsas that would increase the total compensation for full-time contract workers to $13 an hour by July 1, and to $14 an hour by July 2007. It also would ensure that workers can freely associate and organize without intimidation; that workers can file grievances; and that the university provide other resources to contract workers such as English as a Second Language courses, financial planning information and library privileges.

See the details here.

We do love it when nonviolent protest meets with success. Especially when Chad posted on this very subject just a few days ago--are powerful people reading The Peace Project? Okay, maybe it's the 3 years of hard work by the Living Wage Coalition. Regardless, good work to all involved--shame can still work as a tactic of nonviolent protest.

I hope the Law Center quickly follows the main campus--considering the law school is generally both more progressive and more prosperous than main campus, I think we have reason to hope.

The Weekend of March 19

2005-03-23T13:04:00.000-05:00

Never let it be said that we at The Peace Project abandoned our duty to report on peace demonstrations--we may be late, but we did note this last weekend of anti-war protests. Sarah Ferguson at the Village Voice (writing last week) pretty much sums up why protestors should still be out in the streets:

Certainly there's more than enough reason for outrage. The House just approved another $76 billion to fund the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, with no exit plan in sight. If the budget measure passes the Senate, that would bring the total cost of the war in Iraq to more than $200 billion—with some 1,500 U.S. troops dead, more than 11,000 others seriously wounded, and perhaps tens of thousands of uncounted Iraqi casualties.

You may not have heard as much about these protests--

This year, United for Peace and Justice the nation's largest anti-war coalition, opted not to host another protest parade through the streets of Manhattan and is promoting decentralized actions instead. "We wanted to surface the real breadth of the anti-war movement," says national coordinator Leslie Cagan.

That strategy appears to be paying off; there will be vigils and demonstrations in close to 600 cities this weekend—nearly double what took place last year.

Probably the most publicized rally in the US was in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of Fort Bragg. The demonstration there included groups like Iraq Veterans Speak Out and Military Families Speak Out--groups that it's a little more difficult to paint as unpatriotic (though it's certainly not impossible, and I'm sure it's been done).

There are a couple of things here. First, the anti-war movement is trying to rally (no pun intended) after Dubya's reelection. The widespread persistence of this movement shows that people haven't given up, no matter how discouraging the political landscape. Second, I thought it significant that the groups behind many of these rallies are shifting the emphasis from the near-facts and misinformation (Okay, Prof. M.--lies.) that led us to war to the rising human and financial cost of the war. Will that be more persuasive? Only time will tell, but I tend to think that people are more willing to admit that a change is needed than that they were fooled the whole time.

I myself am starting to feel a little more hopeful, a little more optimistic.

But then, I still didn't go to any rallies.

The Politics of Fear

2005-03-23T11:33:00.000-05:00

The first pages of Seymour Hersh's book Chain of Command give a horrifying look inside the bureaucracy of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib -- the meetings of high-level officials, the memos exchanged, and the promises that something will be done. It is a disturbing, though not wholly unexpected, glimpse of the disconnect between the conditions of prisoners and the cool discussion of what to do about it.

But instead of making me outraged or determined to do something about it, the book forced me to remember the circumstances that allowed such atrocities in the first place. We've seen the images hundreds of times -- the planes plummeting into buildings, grey dust covering Manhattan, the collapsed wall of the Pentagon. And because we've witnessed these horrors again and again, we forget one very important thing -- on Sept. 11, and for days and weeks and months afterwards, we were scared. We knew it could have been any one of us on those planes or in those buildings. We didn't know why we were being attacked. And we didn't know what was going to happen next.

That's the funny thing about being afraid of something: you want someone to protect you. Our government tried to fill that void, armed with the PATRIOT Act and promises of more and better security. They had a willing populace, people who were ready to give over just a little bit of their civil liberties to make sure they were safe on airplanes and in cities. And then they were willing to give up a little more. Just to make us safe.

That's the funny thing about being safe: you never really are. But you believe you could be. So to stop that little tremble that runs through you even time you see a plane fly low, you nod your head when they ask if they can wiretap the phones of terrorists. Or drop bombs on Afghanistan. Or question prisoners who may know exactly where and when the next attack will come.

So we can rail against the administration for Abu Ghraib and shake our heads for the injustices of Guantanamo, but there was certainly a little part of me, perhaps of all of us, that would have let the government do anything after Sept. 11 to make sure that I and all the people I loved were protected. I certainly feel somewhat complicit in what my governement has done in my name. And now I'm not sure what to do to take back that little piece of power I gave up when I nodded my head and said, "Protect me. Please."

Stories of Hanging Chads

2005-03-22T21:53:00.000-05:00

I'm definitely still on a democracy binge for the time being - I promise I'll try to kick it by the end of the Final Four. I'm still waiting for comments on my last post but for the moment I'm going to assume democracy is a justifiable peaceful outcome so that I can highlight the need to wage peace to preserve ours, because right now it's hard to tell we are even living in a democracy.

The Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002 in response to the gross problems with the 2000 election. As I cynically expected, many of the reforms calling for equipment modernization, voter databases, and provisional ballots weren't implemented because of lack of funding or political disputes. Lack of funding and political disputes over voting at a time when the Carter Foundation, the leading international observer of highly contentious elections in other countries, says that Florida's voting process doesn't meet its standards. The OSCE from Europe sent monitors to many polls and concluded that the election in 2004 was "mostly free and fair" - oh, and they weren't allowed into Ohio or Florida. Some of the stories (that people either don't hear about or ignore) are mind-boggling. Flooding lines so they would be 10 hours long, kicking independent observers out of vote counts for "national security reasons", cancelling registrations for people convicted only of misdemeanors, even telling voters registered for a certain party that they were to vote on Wednesday. Reading these accounts (here, or here, for example) makes me seriously question the validity of our democracy, whether we really have one. This stuff isn't supposed to happening in America.

What's worse is how these stories have little effect on most people. Is it because we don't believe it's real? Are we that jaded about our votes actually meaning anything? Is this what we've come to expect? No one has taken to the streets - there is no uproar in Congress. The media just scratches its head over how all the exit polls could show Kerry winning yet Bush gets sworn in. How puzzling, they say.

The good news for peace is that there are a lot of people who do understand the severity of the situation and were at the polls observing. Election Protection, among others, did a superb job organizing a massive and unprecedented movement in a very short time, and documented over 1000 cases of voter intimidation on election day alone. But there is much, much more that needs to be done. We need to urge Congress to investigate all of the irregularities, to take steps to fix them, and we need to be out there educating voters well in advance of 2008 to more effectively head off these tactics. People in this country, in the past half century, have died to secure suffrage for those ignored by the power structure - we can't turn our backs on that now.

wage peace,
chad

Democracy and Peace

2005-03-22T01:37:00.000-05:00

I went to the war protests. I voted for the other guy. I've even gone to verbal blows with conservative friends in Danville, VA - that takes stamina. The war was not a good thing. But still, when I read the barrage of headlines out there about democracy coming to Iraq I'm always thinking in the back of my mind that's a good thing. How can I not? I'm a product of an American public education - democracy is freedom (and peace) and everything else is oppression.

But is that the case? Look at Iraq, for example - is a "democracy" really going to represent the interests of the Sunni, the Shia, and the Kurds? Won't it be just as oppressive as any other form of government in a land entangled by such outrageous ethnic tension? For that matter, does our American democracy represent the poor? Women? Racial minorities? And to what extent should it and can it?

I struggle with these ideas so much because I know that my preference for democracy is informed by my Western upbringing, isolation, ideals, and culture - but it's not like I can admit that and so slide into complete regime relativism, because something about self-governance and autonomy and informed and participatory citizens and an accountable state screams at me that's peace! That's the answer! That's what we should be aiming for! (Yes, it's unfortunate the voice in my head is just as loud and obnoxious as I am...)

So I can't let go of the notion that democracy, at least in principal - a collective that truly approximates the interests of the individuals comprising it, is definitely part of the peace equation. Of course even if one accepts that premise there are countless questions about implemenation and practicality and definition that seem to make the point moot anyway. Anyone have any thoughts? Or even resource ideas (Google doesn't solve everything)?

wage peace,
chad

Living Wage for Georgetown

2005-03-22T01:04:00.000-05:00

A non-violent activist movement which began three years ago with only 2 students is finally getting the attention it deserves. Today the Washington Post ran the story "GU Activists Go Hungry To Help Janitors," about the hunger strike for a living wage on Georgetown's main campus, now in its seventh day.

I am a huge fan of this form of protest and I hope it will prove effective. Calling attention to a social problem through self-sacrifice - not even inconveniencing the insitution, except insofar as it has to deal with the media, the awareness of the issue on campus, the angry phone calls from rich parents insisting that the University get its janitors above the poverty line so their kids will eat again.

The movement could use all the help it can get, especially at this stage in the hunger strike. The Georgetown Living Wage Webpage is very well organized and detailed with lots of contact information and ways to help. It may just be the second-best student webpage I've seen in a while. Quasim Shah is heading up the effort here at the law center to raise awareness, get a petition signed, and get the support of the faculty. I met with him today and he is very upbeat about the possibility of administration acquiescence on main campus, and the possibility for a piggy-back movement at the law center in the near future. I'd be happy to put anyone who wants to help in contact with him.

Here's to hoping that if it comes to a hunger strike at the Law Center we settle everything before Taco Tuesday.

wage peace,
chad

Somalia's Anarchy (And Other Things I Never Knew)

2005-03-20T21:21:00.000-05:00

Somalia was without a government for 13 years. Warlords ruled bits of the country for most of that time. Families lived (and still live) in the buildings once devoted to schools and hospitals.

A new government was elected last year, and peacekeeping troops from Uganda and the Sudan are on their way to restore order to the more dangerous parts of the country.

I'm not sure this is exactly a success story for peace. Going from anarchy to a government is certainly a stabilizing force in the region, and one hopes that the tide of refugees flowing from Somalia will be stemmed by a return to order. But how did a country go without a government for so long? And what kind of government will be in place now? Only time will tell, I suppose, but the need for a structure -- any structure -- does not often result in an ideal government.

But here's the more pressing question: did anyone know about this place? Did anyone know that Somalia has been in a state of anarchy since 1991? (For most of that time, it was the only state in the world without a government). There were the pictures from Mogadishu in 1993. And then the place vanished, with no mention of what has happened since. I find my lack of knowledge about this area incredibly disturbing -- that my only awareness of this country came from the horrific deaths of Americans who went there.

On a larger scale, my ignorance of Somalia is indicative of the bigger picture that Americans have little knowledge about the world in general. Part of the reason for this blog is to help to correct that -- to bring information about these parts of the world to light. Information about the world in which we live is essential for peace. Without knowledge of each other, of the true state of the world, we have little hope of defusing conflict or attempting to promote peace throughout the world. I don't know how to accomplish this goal. As I find out more about my own ignorance, I am overwhelmed by the amount of things that I don't know. And I am overwhelmed by the task of informing myself.

We are asking difficult questions on this blog, questions that require patience and wisdom to answer. Here's the big one for today: Will we ever learn about each other (other countries, other people)? Will we ever be able to effectively promote peace if we don't?

Panel on Darfur

2005-03-18T20:07:00.000-05:00

Darfur and the Georgetown Law Center Darfur awareness project has been a major topic of conversation on our blog (check it out: here, here, and here). This entire last week at Georgetown has been one long exercise in heightening the awareness of our fellow students and learning a whole lot ourselves (common questions: "Dar--what?" and the big one, "Who is killing who?").

Wednesday night we had an incredibly informative panel of experts on the Sudan, the situation on Darfur, and the plight of the displaced persons in camps in the Sudan and Chad. There was a massive amount of information tossed around (I think most of us understood only the edges of the situation), but there were a few points made that I wanted to share.

First, the opening speaker, Dr. Peter Bechtold (formerly of the State Department) shared an intensive 20 minute explanation of the history of the region, the composition of the people, and his thoughts on the causes behind the conflict. What particularly struck me, in light of the ongoing conversation on this blog about our expansive definition of peace, was his inclusion of the phenomenon of desertification in Africa as the primary cause of conflict in both Darfur and Rwanda. When people are struggling for their very survival, he argued, ideals of peace tend to fall by the wayside. To me, this corroborates the authors of this blog's point that environmentalism is not irrelevant to the pursuit of peace.

Second, in response to a plea from the audience for a succinct clarification of who, exactly, is killing people over there, Dr. Bechtold responded with an informative and complex answer on the root causes of the violence and cautioned students to not oversimplify the situation. However, Roberta Cohen (from the Brookings Institute Project on Internal Displacement) retorted that overemphasis on complexities can frustrate action when it is so desperately needed to save lives today. She warned us all not to lose our moral compass and to resist letting complexities lead us to moral equivalencies between the vastly differently situated actors in Darfur.

Lastly, and I think most importantly, John Prendergast of The International Crisis Group stressed the untapped power of the American citizen. We usually don't have a direct influence on US foreign policy, but in this case, where the administration has already declared an ongoing genocide, a big part of the battle has already been done. Now it is our duty to pressure our representatives to push further action for Darfur. Our actions are not in vain and futility is not an excuse for a failure to act.

Bolivian Blockades Work

2005-03-18T19:18:00.000-05:00

It's nice to see non-violent protests being met with changes in policy and not violence or indifference. Indigenous Bolivians have not seen any improvement in their situation since the country became a democracy in 1982. They feel that the economy is being run for the benefit of the wealthy elite (imagine, if you can) as wealth inequalities have increased and there has been no reduction in poverty. The latest protests have consisted of massive nationwide roadblocks that have paralyzed much of Bolivia's industry, preventing trucks from being able to return from port. The blockades were principally to protest a bill opening up foreign investment in oil with low taxes on profits, a move that the indigenous population felt would allow exploitation of Bolivia's natural resources without benefit to them. The blockades have been called off by the opposition leader after a compromise tax of 32% was agreed to.

I happen to like the idea of native peoples not losing their natural resources without getting any benefit, but regardless of where you stand on the trade issues here, it is exciting to see well-organized and non-violent protesting actually effecting change. The people spoke and those in power responded, not with bullets but with compromise. Score one for peace.

wage peace,
chad

Aid Workers Retreat from Darfur

2005-03-18T19:00:00.000-05:00

Sadly, UN staff have been forced to evacuate parts of Darfur where the Janjaweed has announced it would begin to target foreign aid workers. As horrible as that news is, it actually gives me hope that we'll get a real UN response. It reminds me of stories of brutality against whites in the Civil Rights movement drawing more national attention sometimes than the plight of African-Americans. It's sad that's what it takes to move people, but if the UN might be more likely to act when its own are threatened then I'll take what I can get. God bless BBC.com, which actually has had fairly regular stories on Darfur, but the UN retreat prompted CNN's first story in 6 days, so that is definitely something.

wage peace,
chad

IRI-tated

2005-03-17T13:57:00.000-05:00

Besides publicizing the acts for peace that are not covered in the mainstream press, it is just as important that we are aware of shameful acts which are allowed to take place because people don't know about them. I had never heard of the International Republican Institute (IRI) until several weeks ago, and R-word aside, I wouldn't have suspected a U.S. gov't-sponsored institute to be so insidious. I guess I'm not yet sufficiently cynical.

The IRI's official website seems noble enough. The group is "non-partisan" and "non-profit" and "supports the growth of political and economic freedom" and "human rights around the world." The IRI is federally funded through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED, a Reagan product) and though it's original focus was "planting the seeds of democratic institutions and processes in Latin America," it has expanded to support democracy across the globe. Uh-oh... "planting seeds?" In Latin America? In the 80's? Let's take a closer look....

I guess you know it's bad news when every Google hit after the IRI's official homepage turns up words like "conservative think tank," "Exxon Secrets," and "World Control," for a non-partisan group, mind you. Trying to follow the trail of money is mind-boggling, but what else would you expect? The IRI's Venezuela budget was increased 6-fold in 2001, months before the aborted coup against Chavez. The money was then apparently used to support a Youth Participation Foundation (YPF), which interviewed Venezuelan politicians, activists, candidates, media, and NGOs had never heard of. The IRI's Caracas office, when asked, said that the YPF ceased to exist "several years ago" and wouldn't comment further on their Venezuela work.

Or we could look at Haiti, where the IRI has been very active over the past several years supporting Aristide opposition groups. The IRI has recieved funding for Haiti from USAID, even though USAID was "kicking and screaming," and even the NED itself has distanced itself from the IRI's activities there.

After reading about the IRI's activties, a look at it's Board brought no surprises - respresentatives from Lockheed Martin, Ford, Time Warner, and of course big name right-wingers in the Republican party.

Party politics aside, it is the secrecy and lost trails of money that is unacceptable. When our government is able to funnel money to groups implicated in counter-insurgencies and coups and we cannot get our questions answered, democracy suffers, and peace suffers. I can find out anything I need to know about an American Idol participant at the click of a mouse, but where my tax dollars go is a mystery, and it's scary.

Wage peace,
chad

Afghani Women

2005-03-16T14:10:00.000-05:00

One of our main purposes in starting this blog was to publicize those incidents of protest that we just don't hear about through the mainstream press. Unless you have your Google News Alerts properly set up, you may not have heard about the rise in the number of self-immolations by women in the Herat Province of Afghanistan. These women are often in horrible situations of physical and psychological abuse, and their suicides are usually attributed to a feeling of absolute futility and despair--however, this article recognizes the element of protest involved in the circumstances of their suicides:

Ahmad Bassir is a Herat-based correspondent for Radio Free Afghanistan. He says women see no difference between their lives now and under the Taliban, and that desperation drives them to attempt suicide.

"They say we were hoping that after the fall of Taliban and after the transitional authority took power, the situation would improve for women, and there would be fewer restrictions. But we see that there have been no changes, and women are using this very violent act [of self-immolation] to show their protest. Most of these girls are literate, they are knowledgeable, and several of them are students," Bassir said.

By the way, I also saw some discussion on this topic over at kos, quite a bit more in-depth. Check it out.

There's not much about this that invites comment--I think we see the tragedy here. However, these women's protest should be recognized and acknowledged.

The Past and the Present

2005-03-16T12:20:00.000-05:00

Two stories from this week:

The new Holocaust museum opened in Israel.

A video projected on a wall at the entrance shows daily Jewish life in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, while visitors can see victims' personal artefacts, including braids of hair cut by a mother from her 11-year-old daughter, before the girl was deported from Germany to her death.
"We gave the victims an identity. We gave them a voice. We gave them a face," said curator Yehudit Inbar.
The names and photographs of some of the victims recorded in a three million page collection of testimonies are displayed, surrounded by a watery abyss, in the museum's Hall of Names.

The estimate of deaths from illness and starvation in Darfur has soared from 70,000 to 180,000. Amnesty International roughly estimates an additional 50,000 people have died from violence.

A UN report earlier this year concluded that while the killings in Darfur did not amount to genocide, killings, torture, enforced disappearances and sexual violence were carried out on a widespread and systematic basis and could amount to crimes against humanity.
The BBC's Susannah Price at the UN says the latest reports from Darfur say lawlessness and attacks by the Janjaweed militia continue to blight the lives of civilians.

The Janjaweed attacked villages, targeted an internally displaced peoples camp and burnt abandoned homes to discourage those who wanted to return, she says.

Please take action to stop this genocide. Call your Senator or Congressman and ask them to support the Darfur Accountability Act, which would impose focused sanctions on the Sudan and support the expansion of the African Union force. Do what you can to give these victims an identity, a voice, a face.

Other Peace Project Updates

2005-03-16T01:44:00.000-05:00

This posting is mainly for Georgetown students - apologies to the immense group of other readers out there...

Darfur Awareness week is up and running and is getting the job done. I have already spent 2 hours at the table and have been amazed but satisfied at the number of people who have stopped by without really knowing what's going on. "What's a Darfur?" We have a petition going for the Darfur Accountability Act, letters to send to Bush and Congress-people, green awareness bracelets, and plenty of information and multimedia. If you haven't stopped by yet, then please do, and come to the panel reception Wednesday night for some great discussion and wine and cheese. And then more wine (aww yeah, Sue).

Also, Shaina Aber and Catherine Baer Tyler are putting on a production of Twilight, by Anna Deavere Smith, on Friday, April 22 here at Georgetown. The documentary theatre explores the human impact of the LA riots of 1992 through the words of those who experienced them. I'm sure we'll work out some wine that night as well. I'm very excited about this play, and not just because I'm in it - Shaina and Catherine are passionate people and I'm sure it will be excellent. More on it as the date approaches.

Sorry for the short post - still recovering from the Inca Trail for Spring Break.

wage peace,
chad

Hiatus

2005-03-05T13:06:00.000-05:00

There's going to be a short break in posting while Sue, Chad, and I take our respective school vacations. We'll be back in a week or so!

The Value of Life

2005-03-03T23:05:00.000-05:00

A thesis has been advanced time and again over the last few years: large-scale war between major states is obsolete.

One possible theory (among many) for this notion is that the costs of war have simply outweighed the benefits. For developed nations with a large amount of intellectual capital, the loss of individual life which accompanies war is no longer outweighed by the marginal societal benefits of winning power struggles. Increasing standards of living (lower birth rates, higher levels of education, more societal investment in each citizen) results in a value system driven by individuals. When parents know they will not lose half of their children in the first years of life, they allow themselves to love each one to the full capacity of the human heart. When society places an emphasis on free and public education for all, it begins to invest in each individual, putting time, money and thought into giving each person a chance for success. When the loss of each life becomes painful for a country, when numbers of military casualties in the hundreds are just as unacceptable as numbers in the hundreds of thousands were in the past, then governments will begin to take their decisions to begin war (particularly war with other developed countries which have massive destructive capabilities) much more seriously.

Could this kind of thinking represent a new path for the spread of peace throughout the world? While it is important to argue for nations and groups to avoid violence as a solution, it might be just as important to bring up the standard of living so that the cost of conflict becomes so prohibitive that the idea of war for material gain becomes untenable.

People all over the spectrum (not just on this blog) struggle with the definition of "peace" in real terms -- is it merely the absence of conflict or the betterment of all of mankind? Even if peace is narrowly defined as the former, this kind of analysis shows that achieving the latter is paramount to any kind of success.

(thanks to TMQ and AJK for this idea)

America's Forgotten Atrocity

2005-03-03T22:49:00.000-05:00

Fascinating new book out by John Mack Faragher called "A Great and Noble Scheme" - thanks Melissa. No, I haven't read the book - maybe if I wasn't 150 pages behind in Tax - but there is a great 6 page review and interview with the author on Salon.com that really makes you do some double-takes.

The book is about the Acadians,

"a French-speaking hybrid people long cut off from their European origins who occupied a strange position on the margins of American history and in between the imperial ambitions of Britain and France. For 150 years they lived along the coastline of what are now the Maritime Provinces, forging extraordinarily warm relationships with their Indian neighbors and insisting on their own neutrality as sovereignty of the region swung back and forth between the great powers."

Funny I read never about the Acadians in history class. Apparently they were the victims of North America's first ethnic-cleansing campaign, sort of a dry-run for others you may have heard of like the Trail of Tears. Not only that, but they were also the scapegoats for attacks by Native Americans on other settlers. The Native Americans knew the land, could disappear, and could avoid retaliatory attacks themselves, so the New Englanders, unable to find the perpetrators of the vicious attacks, took it out on someone else. Sound familiar? What is that they say about those not dooming repetition are historically known? Something like that...

Seriously though, as the article points out, and I agree, many Americans think that our history is somehow removed from the reality of the rest of the world. That we come from something more pure, more right. That we are an exception to patterns of behavior evidenced by everyone else throughout time...and this notion still probably affects our attitudes in foreign policy. We're different. Who needs the UN? Stories like the Acadians' help remind us that we are part of a larger global pattern of calculated and violent struggles for power, and that perhaps one approach to peace might be exercise a little humilty rather than think we are on a mission from God.

That's it for me until the 14th - Spring Break in Peru.

wage peace,
chad

Wisdom From Up North

2005-03-03T14:17:00.000-05:00

One last post before Spring Break--check out this open letter to Condi Rice from Lloyd Axworthy, the President of the University of Winnipeg (linked from kos). The letter was in response to Condi's temper tantrum at Canada's refusal to join in the missile defense system:

As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.
Sure, that doesn't match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a "liberation war" in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.

This viewpoint reminded me a lot of some discussions we've had in class--can we use our superior economic power to buy peace? Instead of investing billions of dollars in a failed military system, perhaps we could invest that money in a new global war on poverty. There's always the argument that investing in military technology results in all sorts of lovely technology that we enjoy every day (cell phones, internet, etc). But, as Professor Matsuda has suggested, why don't we skip the middleman? Why don't we invest directly in non-military R&D?

The difficulty is in selling that kind of investment to the American public. I count three of us here already sold on the idea. Anybody else?

A Minute for Darfur - March 17, 2005

2005-03-02T13:40:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago in Peacemaking class, while talking about the movie Hotel Rwanda, Carolyn Wylie questioned the class about why we thought so little was being done to prevent the same horrors in the Sudan right now. Isn't the only good thing to come of Rwanda the opportunity to learn the lesson "never again"? Why are so many people talking about something that happened a decade ago instead of acting now to save lives? Very heartfelt and valid observations. Disappointingly, though, not many people in the class, or elsewhere in the law center community, even know enough to engage on the topic. That won't be the case for long if Carolyn has anything to say about it.

Carolyn, along with the National Lawyers Guild and the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy, is organizing an entire week of awareness and action regarding the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, focusing on the national Minute for Darfur on March 17, when people all across the country will have a moment of silence at 3pm. Throughout the week, Carolyn hopes to educate people on the history of the conflict in Sudan, highlight UN and other international failures to intervene, and show people avenues such as petitions and letter-writing to take action.

Flyers will be posted and tables set up to distribute information at the law school March 14-18. There will also be multimedia presentations to show the stories of the refugees and victims of violence in Darfur. Green bracelets which read "Not On My Watch - Save Darfur" will be available to show support. Additionally, there will be a panel discussion on March 16 with professors and human rights organization representatives, followed by a reception.

The Peace Project will be devoting some time to this effort, and we hope all of our readers are able to do the same. After the peace accord was signed in Sudan, Darfur fell out of the headlines, so as Carolyn says, "We must reinvigorate action and let everyone know that we care and that we will not allow this to continue." Stay tuned to The Peace Project for updates and contact Carolyn Wylie at clw26@law.georgetown.edu if you can help at all.

Organize Darfur Awareness wherever you are...

wage peace,
chad

Killing the Children

2005-03-02T13:15:00.000-05:00

By now you have all heard about the Supreme Court's decision in Roper v. Simmons to end the juvenile death penalty in the United States. I've waited until today to write about the decision--in all honesty, I waited in hopes that I would find an editorial that could voice my thoughts more clearly than I am able. Instead, most commentators celebrating the decision are focusing their attention on the fact that now the US has joined the rest of the civilized world (see today's New York Times editorial, for example).

Clearly this is an important point--the decision was, after all, essentially based on this reasoning. However, the embarrassment I felt (can I now put this in the past tense?) for my country because of our willingness to tolerate state killings of children does not explain the joy I felt yesterday morning. The death penalty, the acceptance of state sponsored violence against its own citizens, coarsens our society, hardens us all to violence and death. This decision represents an attempt to regain some our humanity, to restore some sensitivity that is necessary if we are ever going to even want to live in peace with each other.

Cheers, all. A sign of hope.

In Memory of Dorothy Russell

2005-03-01T21:37:00.000-05:00

I finally got the call yesterday afternoon which I had been cautiously and confusedly dreading and looking forward to for several years. It was my mom. "This is it," she said. "Nannie isn't going to make it through the night."

Nannie was one of the most loving people you could ever know. I remember when I was a kid she was the only person I knew who could hug me so hard it hurt. And she taught me some valuable lessons, like ducks can't really tell the difference between the bread and your fingers. For much of my life she didn't have her mind (I think she started calling my brother Brett and me "Chett" before I was even a teenager) but you can see the kind of person she was in the family that she has left behind. The connection that my family has is the envy of most of my friends, and it is largely because of the love that she instilled in Dad and his brothers.

It was one of the hardest things I have ever done to sit there and watch my grandmother's body desperately gasping for what would be her last breaths... for hours. I couldn't stand to think about how much pain there might be, praying she couldn't feel it, and wishing I could take it all away. I didn't even want to be in the room with her - to be confronted with such suffering really hurt, but any tiny part of her consciousness still inside had to know that we loved her and she wasn't alone. My mom made me promise that when I became a lawyer I would fight for a right for people like Nannie to not have to suffer like she did last night, like she did so many nights before that. And I will. It's not right that my dog Jordan was able to pass on more humanely than Nannie. As a law student I understand all of the "arguments" against allowing someone to die with dignity - what if a "cure" is right around the corner, how to define consent, ethical problems for the medical profession, potential for abuse... - but no "argument" mattered last night in that room. I am fighting for peace out of a love for all humanity, and that means wanting to ease suffering and promote human dignity and potential. But there was no food or water or vaccine or shelter that could have eased Nannie's suffering or promoted her dignity last night. She needed a different kind of love.

Nannie couldn't be at peace for a long time. Now she finally is. We love you and will miss you, Nannie. Have fun with Pop!

Choice, Dignity
Alzheimer's Association

wage peace,
chad

Agent Orange

2005-02-28T19:33:00.000-05:00

Vietnamese plaintiffs, alleging that Agent Orange caused birth defects among millions of individuals after the Vietnam conflict, are suing the manufacturers of the chemical.

[T]he chemical companies say no such link has been proved.

The defendants - which include Dow Chemical and the Monsanto Corporation - also argue that the US government is responsible for how the chemical was used, not the manufacturers.

They maintain that US courts cannot punish corporations for carrying out the orders of a president exercising his powers as commander in chief.

These companies have already paid out millions to settle lawsuits with veterans whose health was allegedly affected by the substance. A victory for the plaintiffs would show 1) that the harm to civilians in a conflict is given equal weight as that to combatants; and 2) that the actions of private companies during wartime carries consequences.

We've already seen banks dole out millions for laundering a dictator's money and storing Nazi gold. Corporations have been attacked for using slave labor in pre-Civil War America and during WWII. Could reparations for the creation of weapons harmful to civilian populations be far behind?

There are certainly difficulties with this argument (and I'm sure I'll get many posts disagreeing with my premise). The consequences of holding weapons manufacturers responsible for the ramifications of the use of their products could lead to an end to the industry altogether. If companies were liable every time they created a bomb, certain segments of our economy would collapse. Additionally, holding a company liable for following a command of a President seems devoid of the mens rea normally associated with these cases (the naked profiteering of the Nazi cases, for example, in which the bank's directors knew that the gold was coming from Jews in concentration camps). And, in some ways, these cases substitute the cub for the lion -- the President can't be sued for the decision to go to war and use these weapons, so plaintiffs settle for the next best thing.

But would holding companies liable for the effects their weapons have on civilian populations be such a bad thing? A few million dollars here or there really does little to a large company's bottom line. I doubt a large chemical manufacturer will go out of business solely because of a lawsuit. Essentially, it could be viewed as the cost of doing business. Companies reap monetary benefits from creating these chemicals, knowing that later, they may have to redistribute some of those profits. They could pay for the privilege to cause the harm.

Also, if companies knew the liability they may face from the use of the weapons on civilian populations, they may be hesitant to create such chemicals (or bombs. or biological agents) in the first place.

I have very little sympathy for the "we were just following orders" argument. Any company that profits by the creation of weapons does not do so because it was ordered to by its President. Corporations follow a set of rules that are driven by simple economics. It was profitable to make Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, so these companies made it. Forcing the company to pay for the harm that resulted while they made money from their government contracts does not seem a terribly high price to pay.

I'd be interested to know what other people think about this incredibly complex issue. Thoughts?

The Numbers Game

2005-02-26T18:25:00.000-05:00

The widely-cited number of 70,000 dead in Darfur is clearly wrong, but no one is quite sure what the actual number is. 300,000? Less? More?

The only major study of deaths in Darfur so far has been conducted by the UN's World Health Organisation which estimated that as many as 70,000 people had died of disease and malnutrition caused by the conflict between March and October 2004.

So the number doesn't count those individuals killed in the violent strikes by the Janjaweed. But there are many countries and international organizations who have a stake in seeing the number remain "low." The Sudan, for one. The African Union. The UN. As long as the number does not reach the proportions of "genocide" (which, suprisingly, the U.S. has already acknowledged has occured in Darfur), there is little obligation on the part of the international community. With the larger numbers, the hundreds of thousands, the international outcry may be a little louder, on the level of a Rwanda, and may require a response.

But does it matter? 70,000 or 300,000 -- what, truly, is the difference? Why are we not outraged by this, by the fact that our governments are doing nothing and watching it happen? The tsunami caused an outpouring of generosity from the American people; the slaughter of innocents on this scale should at least cause us to ask our leaders why more is not being done.

Please write a letter, send an e-mail, call your Congressman. Send a message to the U.S. and the U.N. that we will not let this happen. Never again.

The Pentagon, Always Thinking Ahead

2005-02-26T12:51:00.000-05:00

If there's no Han Solo, then I want no part of this:

A top U.S. space commander says the United States can't rule out attacking the satellites and other spacecraft of enemy nations in the future.

Does planning for conflict make it certain that such conflict will occur? Well, that's a question for another day, because we certainly won't hear about this very much in the near future.

[Washington-based defence analyst Theresa Hitchens] noted the Pentagon has become increasingly uneasy about the response from U.S. lawmakers concerned about a potential push to make space a battlefield. As a result, the U.S. military has increased its public relations efforts to downplay future space plans and to cast them as appearing to be defensive in nature, she added.

Articles like this make me wonder why we haven't had any deep sea wars. Does anybody know about covert opps down in the dark? I am hereby assigning myself the task of researching Pentagon plans for Preemptive War in the Abyss. I'll also keep an eye on this--PR campaigns by our defense department make me suspicious, for some reason.

Silent Vigil for Peace

2005-02-24T13:52:00.000-05:00

A small gesture in support of peace:

For 2 1/2 years, a silent vigil for peace has taken place each week on the West Lawn of the US Capitol. Started by Quakers, this vigil is not a protest, nor a march, but a non-partisan, ecumenical silent vigil, under the simple banner, "Seek Peace and Pursue It", a quote from Psalms 34.

March 19th is the day before the two-year anniversary of the start to the war in Iraq. The peace activists are hoping to fill the lawn at noon with individuals engaged in a moment of silence. I'll be there. Please join us if you can.

Swords into Plowshares

2005-02-23T20:38:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking more about what truly constitutes peace since my last post, addressing the anonymous comment. Perhaps the reason people are reluctant to expand the concept is because most people would agree that a world of aggression is undesirable (getting shot = bad), but beyond that, everything starts to look like politics, right? Capitalism, Socialism, economic distribution, political rights, the environment, nationalism, efficiency... I think it's all either a tool for, or a roadblock to, a peaceful world, but who wants to be called a warmonger for not recycling? So we disassociate these ideas.

Gordon Bennett, and many others, makes the designations "negative peace" (stopping war) and "positive peace" (developing a peaceful world). I mention him because he has been working on a treaty to link the two, the Global Wellness Fund Treaty. Nations would pledge to reduce military budgets on a gradual scale and the harvested money would go into the Global Wellness Fund, to "attack" malnutrition, inadequate shelter, low education levels, and would fund other development projects, only without the bullets. Because as Eisenhower said,

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Connecting postive and negative peace would lead to the enhanced national security that all of the hawks hunger for, but also would promote humane values and personal fulfillment. Please respond - and a huge thanks for all the comments to the project so far.

Some men see things as they are and ask, Why? I like to dream of things that never were and ask, Why Not? - George Bernard Shaw

wage peace,
chad

Young Americans

2005-02-22T18:35:00.000-05:00

Okay, critiquing Channel One (the "free" "news" service beamed into classrooms across the country in exchange for advertising) for their indoctrination of children into our lovely potato-chip-and-soda culture isn't exactly original. But now the military is using the channel to get to kids:

"We have to watch this short thing every morning in homeroom called 'Channel One News,'" Isa explained with a weary tone. "It's educational, supposedly. You know, the day's news, so we'll be up on current events. But in between the stories, there are more and more ads for the Army and the Marines."

I'm no fan of military recruiters on school campuses for several reasons (if you have to ask, look up just a few inches...top left...that's the ticket), and every one of these kids will run into a recruiter at some point in the next few years of their lives. Recruiters are darn persistent in exposing students to the benefits of the military life:

“Obviously, our recruiters do work at high schools, where they have the opportunity to meet students. It can be anything from attending football or basketball games to working with the guidance department,” said Mary Auer, public affairs officer from the U.S. Army’s Indiana Recruiting District. “We have a wide range of ways to connect with that particular age group.”

And since schools have to provide directory information to recruiters under threat of losing federal funding, it's not as if the military is running short of young bodies to recruit (note: Microsoft Word synonyms for recruit: employ, take on, enlist, draft, conscript. Just for those interested in trivia).

As a side note, imagine my horror when, in the course of researching this post, I found that Phyllis Schlafly and I come dangerously close to agreeing when it comes to Channel One advertising. Sorry, I refuse to provide a link to a Schlafly web site.

So, military recruiters--scavengers circling dead-end lives, or beneficent guides on the path of life?

Shoe-horning

2005-02-22T12:46:00.000-05:00

Thanks to an anonymous commenter for this observation:

...I'm not sure why you lump all treaties together, as if Kyoto and the ICC were similar. And when did "global warming" become an issue of "peace"? I suppose when you use such a flimsy definition of peace anything can be shoe-horned into it. In this sense, your definition of peace is "anything the authors of this blog think is good."

This challenge is exactly one of the things that we are attempting to explore with this blog. What is peace? Surely everyone would agree that peace entails more than simply the absence of war (though that would be a good start). For instance, I wouldn't characterize oppressive slavery or apartheid regimes as peaceful. There has to be more to peace, looking beyond just international military aggression and to individual human contentment and fulfillment. Pragmatically, oppressed people become desperate people, and understandably so. But normatively, can't our goal be a world where people are not forced to want, where the human spirit is free? And as Jimmy Carter said, "Hunger, disease, and poverty are enemies of human potential which are as relentless as any repressive government."

So is global warming an issue of peace? Definitely. Industrialized nations have been pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere causing irreversible damage that affects not only themselves, but every person and everything living on the planet. Dangers from global warming include rising sea levels, extreme weather events, disruption of natural ecosystems, increase in disease, decrease in agricultural production, and really bad movies starring Dennis Quaid. If global warming isn't a threat to peace than what is?

Simple ways to help reduce global warming

peace,
chad

To My Lost Friend

2005-02-22T11:51:00.001-05:00

Walter Poirier was last seen in Bolivia four years ago this week. He disappeared while working for the Peace Corps in the Zongo Valley.

I'd like to dedicate this posting to my beautiful, fearless friend, who would patiently teach me how to play golf one minute and steal lawn ornaments from his neighbor's yards the next. As one of his friends said, "The only person I know who could be your worst enemy and your best friend in the same day."

Walter's pranks were legendary. But I will always remember him for the small kindnesses he showed, like the time he intentionally bowled gutter balls so his friend would not have the worst score on the lane. I'm certain it was that unselfish core that led him to the Peace Corps. He gave his life in the service of something greater than himself and, for that, I thank him.

But it's still hard for me to believe he's gone. Here's what I wrote in a column four years ago, after finding out he was missing. It holds true today.

It is impossible that anything horrible happened to Walter.
I firmly believe he is on an adventure still, wandering around in the mountains of Bolivia, taking the time to watch a sunset or enjoythe scent of the forest. Maybe he lost track of time or found a nice mountainside village where he wanted to hang out for a while.
A few days from now, he'll wander out of the woods, look around and say "What's the big deal?"
Walter Poirier would not be gone so easily.

Double Standards in Nonproliferation

2005-02-20T15:14:00.000-05:00

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has been in force for 35 years now and there are still thousands of nuclear weapons on the planet with enough power to end human life several times over. Signatories to the treaty promised to work in good faith to end the nuclear arms race and to work towards complete disarmament under strict international control, but instead more weapons have been developed and more nations have become nuclear powers.

I don't see how we can expect other nations to disarm or to not pursue nuclear capability when we, the only nation to actually use a nuclear weapon on a population, still possess massive nuclear power and have a pre-emptive strike foreign policy. And who do we invade? North Korea, who pulled out of the treaty and announced that it had nukes? Nope. So what incentive does that create? Our ally, Israel, isn't even a treaty signatory, so develops weapons unrestrained and unmonitored, and Bush has pledged our support if their security is threatened by Iran. Does Iran really even have a choice?

There is no reason why, after seeing the horror that we visited on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there should be even one nuclear weapon left on the planet. The International Peace Walk will cover 15 to 20 miles a day for almost 2 months and end in NYC on May 2 for the UN review of the future of the Nonproliferation Treaty. Sooner or later the US will have to realize that this "do as we say, not as we do" policy is not working.

Wage Peace,
chad

The Peace Project and You

2005-02-19T19:24:00.000-05:00

Thank you so much to all of our readers and commenters! As I write this the counter says we have had over 1,000 visitors - waaaay more hits than we ever expected. The semester is winding down, and though we will probably try to keep the Peace Project going to some extent, we need to assess what we've done so far for purposes of our class project. Please just take two seconds to tell us what you thought of the Project - How often you checked in, did you learn anything, did you enjoy it, particular posts or comments that might have affected you, do you think there was any point to what we tried to do? Even if you've never commented before, this is the perfect time to click "Post a Comment" below and join the fray - it would really help us in our write-up. Thanks again for reading!

wage peace,
The Peace Project

What's obscene?

2005-02-19T15:36:00.000-05:00

Thanks, billmon:

Life Imitates Art Imitating Life

The producers of a "Frontline" documentary about U.S. combat troops in Iraq on Thursday criticized a PBS decision to send member stations an edited satellite feed of the program that cut out profanity used by soldiers.
Los Angeles Times
PBS Under Fire for Editing Iraq War Documentary
February 18, 2005

"They train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write fuck on their airplanes because it's obscene!"
Col. Kurtz
Apocalypse Now
1979

Thailand's Hard Line

2005-02-18T12:08:00.000-05:00

Following the brutal oppression of demonstrations by the minority Muslim population, a bomb went off in Thailand yesterday, killing six people. It was the latest in a surge of violence in the south that has killed more than 500 people.

Here's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's response:

He told reporters he would use military muscle and economic sanctions to punish villages that were sympathetic to Islamic separatists.

Some 1,580 southern villages have been surveyed for their co-operation with the government, and categorised as red, yellow or green, depending on the degree of violence found there.
...

"If the money sanctions do not work, I will send soldiers to lay siege to the red zone villages and put more pressure on them," he added.

And so the cycle of violence begins again. More bombings, followed by a violent military response, cannot be far behind.

Maybe if the Muslim protest had ended peacefully, instead of with nearly 80 people suffocated as they were transported away from the scene, the separatists would not have continued to resort to terrorist violence. Or maybe it would have happened regardless.

But if the government had given the oppressed minority the opportunity to protest peacefully, to have their voices heard and receive government attention without bombings, there is a small chance they could have stopped the cycle before it began.

Defining Genocide

2005-02-18T10:23:00.000-05:00

There is a scene in Hotel Rwanda where Don Cheadle's character listens to the radio as some suit and some other suit discuss the semantics of the slaughter - is it "genocide?" "Acts of genocide?" Meanwhile thousands of people are being exterminated around him.

I guess there are two reasons why there is such an argument over defining "genocide." One being that some do not want it used so much that it is robbed of its shocking and motivating value. The other being that once genocide is recognized there are ensuing legal obligations under the Genocide Convention (which the US finally got around to ratifying in 1988, although with 7 reservations and understandings). Ratifiers of the treaty promise to "prevent and punish" genocide, defined as:

[A]ny of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members
of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

This treaty could be a very powerful tool for UN intervention when groups of people are targeted. Applying the term "genocide" to the situation in Sudan would not lessen the horror of past atrocities such as the Holocaust. It would mean that we are learning from the past, and taking action to prevent future Holocausts. The Genocide Convention should be looked at not as a burden, but as an opportunity for international cooperation towards peace.

The UN's refusal to act in Sudan because the government "has not pursued a policy of genocide," although "in some instances individuals, including government officials, may commit acts with genocidal intent," while 70,000 people have been killed and 2,000,000 have been driven from their homes is inexcusable. This is "intent to destroy, in whole or in part." These are "conditions of life calculated to bring about ... physical destruction." Why are we letting Rwanda happen again?

Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur

peace,
chad

Nobel Prize

2005-02-17T18:17:00.001-05:00

Nominees for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize have been leaked, with Oxfam and Save the Children topping the list. Bono makes an appearance, as does the Pope.

It's interesting that in this time when civilians and soldiers are losing their lives in Iraq, when genocide has been declared in Darfur (and yet people continue to die), that the peace prize may go to those who cared for victims of a tsunami. Perhaps humanity can better respond to nature's ravages than to our man-made disasters.

Any suggestions for nominees for the Nobel?

Bus Service Through Kashmir

2005-02-17T14:34:00.000-05:00

From Kashmir:

Signaling a tangible breakthrough in India-Pakistan peace talks, the two governments agreed Wednesday to establish a bus service to allow travel between the capitals of divided, disputed Kashmir.

. . .

It was part of a series of measures intended to thaw relations between the nuclear neighbors, including the reopening of consulates in the two countries and the establishment of additional rail and bus links.

Apparently these accords don't deal with some of the biggest problems between the two countries (namely Kashmir), but it's certainly a step in the right direction:

For Mr Manzoor Ahmad, a resident of Baramulla district in north Kashmir, through which the road from here leads to Muzaffarabad, it is the happiest news of the past 50 years. “We have been craving to see my elder brother settled on the other side all these years”, he adds. “We would have been much happier if my elder brother was still alive,” he laments.

Doing Something for Darfur

2005-02-16T23:05:00.000-05:00

Cathleen Falsani of the Chicago Sun-Times knows how many of us feel. Helpless. Disempowered. She writes about Darfur in her column; here are some of the comments that resonated with me:

I felt helpless - hopeless, even - to affect change in the bloodiest of battle zones in a country, on a continent, a world away. . . .

What can one person in Chicago do or say to change the horrific reality in Darfur. . . .

I'm not going to get on a plane for Darfur and put myself between a Janjaweed and the farmer he's trying to burn to death. Are you?

And lastly...

We must do something. Even if it's a gesture as small as adding our names to a petition, spending an hour in a picket line, or uttering a plea for divine intervention.

There is always something we can do. Learn about what is happening in Darfur. Did you know there was a green bracelet campaign to help stop the Darfur genocide? Order them here or contact me to get one. It's something. Please help us to be on the lookout for other ways to raise awareness.

Peace,
chad

Peace Demonstration Prevented in Nepal

2005-02-15T20:41:00.000-05:00

Bad news for humans rights activists in Nepal:

A much anticipated peace rally scheduled for Thursday in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, ended in silence when the main organisers of the demonstration were arrested soon after their arrival.

Some of you may remember how the new king of Nepal came to power--in 2001, the former heir to the throne massacred his parents and several family members before committing suicide. The king's younger brother, Prince Gyanendra, assumed the throne. On February 1, King Gyanendra sacked the government and assumed absolute control, suspending civil liberties and arresting several prominent politicians. He defended his actions by placing blame on the government for failing to provide for elections and failing to make peace with Maoist rebels.

The stated intent of the failed rally was:

[T]o call on the new government directly appointed by the king to create a peaceful environment in the country and to put an end to the king's arrests of political leaders and rights workers.

The situation in Nepal is too complex to summarize here (though it's done here rather well), but from a peacemaker's perspective, you have to ask--if the king is so concerned about democracy and stability, is the denial of a peaceful outlet for political activity a wise idea?

The Peace Project

2005-02-15T17:56:00.000-05:00

Welcome to The Peace Project.

We are students at Georgetown University Law Center, devoted to the irresistible and difficult notion that peace is possible. Some may think us naive; some may disagree with our premise. But we hope others out there will see what we have come to accept – that war is not inevitable, that talking about peace is not embarrassing, that our world could be a vastly different place if we opened our eyes to the possibility of peace.

Our goals for this blog are threefold. First, we hope to bring to light the struggles of individuals and groups who are dedicated to peace – those who protest, those who speak out, those who ask questions and receive no answers. Bringing together news of these groups will help anyone who asks for peace to remember they are not toiling in obscurity.

Second, we want to serve as a connection portal for individuals all over the world who feel like they are the only ones fighting for peace. Linking groups and individuals together – some grassroots peace organizing – can only make our movement stronger.

Third, we want to use our experiences as students in Georgetown’s Peacemaking class to stimulate discussions about these topics. Based on our readings and our class discussions, we hope to place world issues within the context of peace.

This is our small mark on the world, our shout into the void of futility. Thank you for reading.