Our grief goes out to the ever-higher number of known victims of the earthquake and tsuamis in southern Asia. Nonviolence isn’t just protesting politicians, it’s also about supporting our brothers and sisters in time of need. As of this writing, the death tool from the earthquake and tsuami has climbed over 140,000. That’s many times the “3000 who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_Terrorist_Attacks. That’s more than the “estimate of 100,000 iraq civilians”:http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/iraq.deaths/ that have died in the two years since the U.S. led invasion. We humans seem to do a good job of creating mass misery for ourselves but nature can strike harder, faster. Who can truly imagine such instant, unexpected mass death?
Please consider a generous donation to a relief organization like the “American Red Cross”:http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate.html or “American Friends Service Committee”:http://www.afsc.org/give/asia-relief.htm. Please also write letters to your respective governments: “more can be done”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/opinion/30thu2.html.
Update: reader Ric Moore says “Helping in Tsunami is good, but donors should be aware that donations to the American Red Cross go to a general response fund, whereas the “International Red Cross has Tsunami relief separated”:http://donate.ifrc.org/ (Thanks for the tip Ric!)
http://donate.ifrc.org/
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Yearly Archives ⇒ 2004
The Left Wing Conspiracy Revealed by Nonviolence.org
December 10, 2004
Nonviolence.org readers may not be aware that my personal site has been the talk of the political internet for the last few days. Since posting an “account of getting a phone call from a CBS News publicist”, I’ve been linked to by a Who’s Who of blogging gliteratti: Wonkette, Instapundit, The Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, RatherBiased, etc. For a short time yesterday, the story was a part of the second-ranked article on Technorati’s Politics Attention index.
A hack from CBS News called me to say they were doing a program on an issue that’s central to Nonviolence.org’s mandate: conscientious resistance to military service. After looking over the material, I thought the interviews of resisters who have fled to Canada would be interesting to my readers and so wrote a short entry on it. Thinking it all a little funny that a publicist would care about Nonviolence.org, I mentioned the incident in the “Stories of Nonviolence.org” section of my personal site. One by one the leading political sites of the blogosphere have run the story as further proof of the vast left-wing mainstream media conspiracy. It’s rather funny actually.
I have to wonder is who’s kidding who with all this feigned outrage? For those missing the irony gene: the Nonviolence.org PayPal account currently has a balance $6.18, the bulk of which comes from the last donation – $5.00 back on November 20th. My corner of the left wing conspiracy is funded by the vast personal wealth I accumulate as a bookstore clerk.
Wonkette’s pages advertise “sponsorship opportunities,” she’s a recent cover girl on New York Times Magazine, her husband is an editor at New York magazine and in October she cashed out her blogging fame for a $275,000 advance for her first novel (“It’s not Bridget Jones does Washington, it’s Nick Hornby does politics”: good grief). Eugene Volokh has clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court (for Sandra Day O’Connor), teaches law at UCLA and just had a big op-ed in the Times. Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds teaches law at the University of Tennessee, has served on White House advisory panels, and is a paid correspondent for MSNBC. Yet he, like the others, calls a two minute phone call “recruiting”?
I’m beginning to think the real interest comes from the fact that this top tier of bloggers is totally in bed (literally) with the MSM. Their income comes from their connections with media and political power. Their carefully-crafted fascade of snarkish independence would crumble if their phone logs were made public. They’re not really blogging in their pajamas, folks.
By mentioning the existance of blog publicists, I’ve threatened to blow their cover. Pay no attention to the men behind the curtains: my social gaffe was in publicly admitting that the mainstream media courts political blogs. Kudos to journalist Derek Rose on admitting the practice:
But why shouldn’t a news organization’s publicity department court bloggers? As a MSM member, I get emails from TV flacks all the time promoting their scoops. From ABC, for example, I’ve received emails regarding a tape they got of the Beltway sniper’s call to the Rockville police; Barbara Walters’ Hillary Clinton interview; and their ‘Azzam the American’ video … as well as a Rush Limbaugh drug laundering story that never panned out. I even got attention from publicists when I was working for a newspaper that didn’t have a 20th of the circulation of Instapundit…
Rose aside, there’s incredible distortion in the “reporting,” a term I have to use very loosely. Wonkette says “Kelley claims that a CBS minion put the screws to him to post something about a ’60 Minutes’ package on conscientious objectors” yet all readers have to do is follow the link to see I never said anything like that. Why do the cream of bloggers feel like a posse of self-absorbed seventh graders? When I started Nonviolence.org back in 1995, I thought the brave new political world of the internet might be All the President’s Men. Boy was I wrong: it turns it’s just Heathers. God help us.
Seattle Five Years Later
December 6, 2004
It’s been five years since the instantly-famous world trade protests in Seattle invented a new sort of activism. Angry confrontations with police dominated the pictures coming from the protests. The protest marked the coming-out party of the Independent Media movement, both both brought together and reported on the protests.
In the _Seattle Weekly_, Geov Parrish asks “Is This What Failure Looks Like?”:http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0447/041124_news_wtogeov.php:
bq. But it’s one thing to shut down a high-level meeting for a day; it’s quite another to get your priorities enacted as public policy. And so, in the half-decade since Seattle’s groundbreaking protests, anti-globalization and fair-trade organizers in the United States have struggled to find ways to not simply create debate but win.
I’ve always respect Geov, who’s been one of the rare pacifist organizers who’s acted as a bridge between the gray-haired oldline peace groups and the younger Seattle-style activists. So it’s kind of funny to see his thoughtful article described by Counterpunch this way. Read Charles Munson’s critique, “Seattle Weekly Trashes Anti-Globalization Movement”:http://www.counterpunch.org/munson11302004.html.
The WTO protests were a landmark and radicalized a lot of new activists. But despite being 99% peaceful, they never shook the image of the black-clad anarchist spoiled brats throwing bricks through windows. Although I had friends who donned the black hankerchiefs, the black bloc always reminded me of the loser high school kids who turn over dumpsters behind the 7 – 11; the high political rhetoric seemed secondary to the joy of being “bad.” It was look-at-me! activism, which is fun and occassionally useful, but not the stuff to create fundamental social change.
I participated in a few post-Seattle events: the anti World Bank protests in Washington DC and the Republican National Convention protests in my hometown of Philadelphia, serving as an Indymedia worker for both. I witnessed wonderful creativity, I marveled at the instant community of the Indymedia Centers, I was fasincated by the cell-phone/internet organizing.
But there was also this kind of nagging sense that we were trying to recreate the mythical “Seattle.” It was as if we were all derivative rock bands trying to jump on the bandwagon of a breakthrough success: the Nivana clones hoping to recatch the magic. It was hard to shake the feeling we were play acting ourselves sometimes.
It’s good to honestly reflect on the protests now. We need to see what worked and what didn’t. The fervor and organizing strategies changed activism and will continue to shape how we see social-change organizing. The world is better for what went down in Seattle five years ago, and so is North American polticial organizing. But let’s stop idolizing what happened there and let’s see what we can learn. For we’ve barely begun the work.
It’s Official: US Abuse at Gitmo
November 30, 2004
While the images of U.S. soliders torturing iraqi prisoners at Al Grahib Prison in Badgdad have been broadcast around the world, US officials have frequently reassured us that conditions at the U.S. detention camp in Guantamano Bay, Cuba, were acceptable and in accord with the Geneva Convention’s rules for treatment of prisoners. As proof the Pentagon and Bush Administration have frequently cited the fact that the International Red Cross regularly inspects prison conditions at Guantamano. They forgot to tell us what they’ve seen.
A confidential report prepared by the International Red Cross this summer found that conditions at Guantamano Bay were “tantamount to torture.” Strong words from a cautious international body. Because of the way the IRC works, its reports are not made available to the public but instead presented to the accused government, in the hope that they will correct their practices. In predicable fashion, the Bush Adminstration privately denied any wrongdoing and kept the IRC findings secret. In a display of incredible audacity it then defended itself _from other accusations of torture_ by citing the IRC’s presence at Guantanamo, conveniently omitting the IRC’s strongly-worded criticisms. Amazing really.
The IRC report is still secret. We only know of it second-hand, from a memo obtained by the _Times_ that quotes from some of its findings (“Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo“http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html, Nov 29). What kind of stuff is going on there? The _Times_ recently interviewed British prisoners who had been detained in Afghanistan and iraq and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Here’s one story:
bq. One one regular procedure was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels.
It’s not needles under fingernails or electrodes to the privates, but it is indeed “tantamount to torture.” While it was hard to believe these prisoners’ stories when they were first published a few months ago, they become much more credible in light of the IRC conclusions.
We still don’t know about what’s happening in the camp. The Bush Administration has the power, not to mention the duty, to immediately release International Red Cross reports. But the United States has chosen to suppress the report. No torturing government has ever admitted to its actions. Saddam Hussein himself denied wrongdoing when _he_ ran the Al Grahib prison and used it for torture. We rely on bodies like the International Red Cross to keep us honest.
There are those who defend torture by appealing to our fears, many of which are indeed grounded in reality. We’re at war, the enemy insurgents are playing dirty, Osama bin Laden broke any sort of international conventions when he sent airliners into the World Trade Center. Very true. But the United States has a mission. I believe in the idealistic notion that we should be a beacon to the world. We should always strive for the moral high ground and invite the world community to join us. We haven’t been doing that lately. Yes it’s easier to follow the lead of someone like Saddam Hussein and just torture anyone we suspect of plotting against us. But do we really want him as our role model?
Selling Quakerism to The Kids
November 23, 2004
A few weeks ago I got a bulk email from a prominent sixty-something Friend, who wrote that a programmed New Age practice popular in our branch of Quakerism over the last few years has been a “crucial spiritual experience for a great many of the best of our young adult Friends to whom [Liberal Friends] must look for its future” and that they represented the “rising generation of dedicated young adult Friends.” Really? I thought I’d share a sampling of emails and posts I’ve gotten over just the last couple of days.
New Pacifist Introductions
November 22, 2004
Clark Hanjian has recently written “A Pacifist Primer”:/issues/pacifist_primer.php, a great introduction to classic pacifism.
bq. For all of my adult life, I have been a pacifist and associated with pacifists. We are a minority, largely misunderstood, and often disparaged. In light of our precarious standing, I would like to clarify what many of us mean when we say “I am a pacifist.”
Newly discovered: the “Bruderhof Peacemakers Guide”:http://www.peacemakersguide.org/. From their description:
bq. Anyone can be a peacemaker. The Bruderhof Peacemakers Guide was created to inspire and empower you to work for peace, and to arm you with living proof of the power of nonviolence to effect change and resolve conflicts. Some of the peacemakers featured on this website are famous, others obscure, but all have dedicated their lives to building a more peaceful and just world through nonviolent means. For each you will find a short biography, an original portrait, and links to further reading.
Yasser Arafat Death: Yes, It is That Important
November 12, 2004
The Palestinian president “Yasser Arafat”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arafat died a few days ago, after weeks of deteriorating health. As the most recognizable face of the Palestinian struggle for the last fifty years, Yassir Arafat was undoubtedly one of the most important world leaders of the Twentieth Century. While he didn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, he was far from the first architect of murder to walk off with it (our own Henry Kissinger comes to mind), and he is one of a few men who could legitimately claim to have defined war and peace in our age.
There’s a saying in my religious tradition that some problems can only be resolved after a certain amount of funerals have passed. It’s been hard to imagine how a lasting peace could be built in the Middle East while he and his counterparts in the Israeli gerontocracy remained in power. The twentieth century saw plenty of autocratic leaders who came to personify their nation and whose decades-long tenure came to represent the stalemate to real change or lasting peace. When the death of Zaire’s iconic strongman “Mobutu Sese Seko”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobuto_Sese_Seko in 1997 opened up possibilities for peaceful realignments in the region, even though war was the first result. For the death of strong-willed leaders doesn’t always bring about peace. When Yugoslavia’s “Josip Broz Tito”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito died, the power vacuum imploded the country and set the stage for decades of civil wars. The atrocities and chaos brought the word “ethnic cleansing” into our vocabulary.
Perhaps the saddest commentary on all this was one I heard on the street. Two men were talking loudly about having a TV show interrupted the day before, only five minutes before a scheduled program break. “It’s not like it’s that important that you can’t wait five minutes” repeated the one, over and over. Yes, my friend, Arafat’s death is that important.
Johan Maurer: More about boldness
November 12, 2004
Johan has a great post about “Quaker evangelizing in Russia”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2004/11/more-about-boldness.htm that really applies to Quakers reaching out anywhere. My favorite paragraph:
bq. I personally have a hard time with hobbyist Quakerism, especially when defined in terms of ultrafinicky prescriptions of how “we” do things, “our” special procedures and folkways, or anything else that detracts from Jesus being in the center of our community life. How can we present something so stilted and crabby and culturally specific as an answer to spiritual bondage? It is just another form of bondage!