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Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
The Future is Now, Let’s Get Started
December 1, 1999
It’s a reflective time here at the Nonviolence Web. The initial vision of our work has pretty much exhausted itself in the four years we’ve been online. In internet time, that’s equivalent to twenty years so we’re pretty happy.
The Nonviolence Web grew out of downturn in activist publishing in the early 1990s. A lot of peace groups were very drained, emotionally and financially, by the aftermath of the Gulf War and were laying off staff. Small book and magazine publishers were also being pressured by rapidly-declining readership levels and increasing production costs. Although no one might have guessed it at the time, in retrospect it became clear that the 1980s were a golden age for small publishing and activist organizing.
But by the mid-90s the situation had changed. The demographic group that had bought so many books were now having babies and in general reading more books on spirituality and child-rearing. The books published didn’t appeal to the next generation — which was demographically smaller — anyway and the result was that the audience for activist publications was shrinking fast.
By the mid-1990s it was time to rethink the project of radical publishing. Luckily, the Web came along at that point. Just as printing presses opened the way to a flurry of political and religious tracts in mid-Seventeenth Century Europe, the web made possible a new form of publishing. The Nonviolence Web began in 1995 to be a part of that work.
Now that first flurry is over. In the U.S. at least, even the local pizza joint has a website and the importance of internet organizing is undisputed. The web has become a mass-phenomenon and new users continue to double it’s size every year. But I’m not sure most activists have really figured out how to use it. I’m not sure we have reinvented publishing. I think most of what we’ve done is taken the old forms and replicated them online. For example, during the recent U.S. bombing campaign in the Balkans, most Nonviolence Web member groups — major U.S. peace groups — put up extremely predictable and boring press releases (see my May 1999 essay, The Real Phantom Menace is Us).
Why haven’t we reinvented the form? Where is this work going in the next five, ten, twenty years?
The internet and publishing world is abuzz with the promise of the so-called New Media, website and organizations which create focal points for audiences and are pioneering the possibilities of the internet. The Nonviolence Web is one of the few activist New Media projects and with our recent decision to stop our free webmastering for other organization we’re plunging even deeper into the world of online organizing!
Over the next few months, the Nonviolence Web will embark on a project where we’ll introduce you to some of the pioneers of New Media. But we’ll do more. We want to blow open the concept of what a peace group does and how we do it. We’ll be talking with interesting people doing art, satire, local organizing and thinking. We look at the future of the internet, of the future of the peace movement, and of emerging opportunities like online video.
The Real Phantom Menace is Us
May 27, 1999
Being the home to a couple of dozen peace groups, the Nonviolence Web has published a lot of press releases calling for an end to bombing in Kosovo and Yugoslavia. They’re all very fine but also all very predictable.
But as we write, the U.S. government continues pursuing a war that has no clear realistic goals, has led to even more killing in the region, and has seriously disrupted post Cold-War relationships with Russia and China (See George Lakey’s “Cold War Returning? — A Chilling Russian Visit”).
At home, Americans just watch the pictures on TV as they go about living a glorious Spring. We laugh, cry, work and play; we make trips to the shore for Memorial Day weekend; and we obediently flock to a movie called Phantom Menace that tells the story of the start of cinema’s most famous Evil Empire.
A new empire is being shaped here. The United States has been able to claim the title of “empire” for at least a hundred years. But something new is at work here ( see my own War Time Again). We’re witnessing the birth of a new American order which is starting a new wars every three months. New kinds of wars, which barely touch American lives, even those of the bombers waging them from 20,000 feet. The Pentagon and State Department’s planners are building on lessons learned at the start of the decade in the Gulf War. They’re refined their missiles for accuracy but they’ve learned how to spin the media
Now every new villain is presented to the media as the new Hitler. Saddam Hussein. Osama bin Laden. Milosvic. Everyone calling for peace is painted as a neo-isolationist, a contemporary Chamberlain appeasing a tyrant. Afterwards it’s easy to see how overly-dramatic the propaganda was and how ineffectual all the American bombs were. But still, here we are in Kosovo, in another Nineties war and next year we’ll be in yet another. Unless we stop the zest for these Clinton wars now.
What do we have to do to end this war? And what do we need to do to stop the U.S.‘s newfound zest for cruise missiles? How can peace and antiwar activists start acting beyond the press releases and isolated vigils to think creatively about linking folks together to bring new people and ideas into the peace movement?
I don’t pretend to know what exactly we need. All I know is that I’m personally bored of the standard issue peace actions we’ve been engaging in and want to see something new. Some of it might look like clichés from the 60s and some might look like rip-offs of McDonald’s latest ad campaign. But we need to build an antiwar culture that will intrude upon a sunny spring and remind people that a war is on. The real phantom menace this summer is an American Empire that is retooling it’s military and re-conditioning its citizens to think of war as a normal course of affairs.
American Spies and Blood for Oil
January 15, 1999
Saddam Hussein was right: the U.N. teams inspecting Iraq did contain U.S. spies. His expulsion of the teams was legitimate, and the U.S. bombing that followed was farce.
Karl Marx once wrote: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” We’re seeing that today, with each successive military action by the U.S. against Iraq becoming ever more transparent and ridiculous.
Perhaps you haven’t heard the news. It was conveniently released the day before President Clinton’s Senate impeachment trial was to begin and the major American news networks didn’t give it much attention. They were too busy with segments on how the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice designed his own robes. With hooks like fashion and sex attending the impeachment trial, how could they be blamed for under-reporting more Iraq news.
But on January 7th, the New York Times confirmed rumors that United States planted spies on the United Nations: “United States officials said on Wednesday that American spies had worked undercover on teams of United Nations arms inspectors ferreting out secret Iraqi weapons programs.” The Washington Post and Boston Globe further reported that the operation was aimed at Saddam Hussein himself. NBC News reported that U.N. communication equipment was used by U.S. intelligence to pass along intercepted Iraqi messages.
This is exactly what Saddam Hussein has been charging the U.N. teams with. He has long claimed that the teams, run by the United Nations Special Commission or UNSCOM, were full of “American spies and agents.” It was for this reason that he denied the inspectors access to sensitive sites. And it was this refusal that prompted President Clinton to attack Iraq last month.
So what’s going on here? Senior U.S. officials told NBC News that the main targets of last month’s attack weren’t military but economic. The cruise missiles weren’t aimed at any alleged nuclear or biological weapons factories but instead at the oil fields. Specifically, one of the main targets was the Basra oil refining facilities in southern Iraq.
In a separate article, NBC quoted Fadhil Chalabi, an oil industry analyst at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London, as saying Iraq’s oil producing neightbors are “hoping that Iraq’s oil installations will be destroyed as a result of American air strikes. Then the [U.N.-mandated] oil-for food program would be paralyzed and the market would improve by the disappearance of Iraqi oil altogether.”
Since the start of the Gulf War, Iraq has produced relatively-little oil because of a combination of the U.N. sanctions and an infrastructure destroyed by years of war. A report by the United States Energy Information Administration back in the summer of 1997 stated Iraq’s per capital Gross National Product was at levels not seen since the 1940s.
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have picked up this slack in production and made out like bandits. Before the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia was only allowed to pump 5.4 millions barrels a day under it’s OPEC quota. Today it produces 8 million barrels a day, a fifty percent increase that translates into billions of dollars a year in profit. If the sanctions against Iraq were lifted, Saudi production would once more have to be limited and the Anglo-American oil companies running the fields would lose ten billion dollars a year in revenue.
t’s time to stop kidding ourselves. This is a war over money. The U.S. and Britain are getting rich off of Saudi Arabia’s increased oil production and don’t want anyone muscling in on their oil profits. It is in the economic interest of the U.S. and Britain to maintain Iraqi sanctions indefinitely and their foreign policy seems to be to set off periodic crises with Iraq. France and Russia meanwhile both stand to get lucrative oil contracts with a post-sanctions Iraq so they routinely denounce any bombing raids and just as routinely call for a lifting of sanctions.
Saddam Hussein is also making out in the current state of affairs. A economically-healthy Iraqi population wouldn’t put up with his tyranny. He currently rules Iraq like a mob boss, siphoning off what oil profits there are to pay for fancy cars and presidential palaces. He gets to look tough in front of the TV cameras and then retreats to safe underground bunkers when the bombs start falling on the Iraqi people.
It is time to stop all of the hypocrisy. It is estimated that over a million Iraqis have died as a results of the post-Gulf War sanctions. These oil profits are blood money and it is long past time that they end.
Why We Mourn and Protest
December 19, 1998
Many of the this week’s critics of the Nonviolence Web are insisting that the U.S. needs to bomb Iraq in order to secure a future world of peace: “Are you an idiot? We needed to bomb them.
Otherwise, many more INNOCENT will eventually die at the hands of Saddam Hussein. Sometimes force is necessary in order to prevent much greater violence later.”
This is the logic that has brought us to most violent century in human existence. War is always fought for peace. Acts of violence are always justified with the argument that they’re preventing acts of violence later. We kill for peace. And they kill for peace. And as the death count rises we build even bigger and smarter bombs. And they build even bigger and smarter bombs.
The million-dollar cruise missiles going into Iraq aren’t go to hurt Saddam Hussein. He’s safely ensconced in one of his presidential palaces watching CNN (meanwhile, President Clinton sits in the White House watching CNN as well). All the cruise missiles in the U.S. Navy won’t bring Hussein from power.
It is the people of Iraq who feel the sting of these bombings. Just as it is them who have born the brunt of eight years of brutal sanctions. It is the mothers who suffer as they watch their children die because even the most basic medical supplies are non-existent. It is the little ones themselves suffering as yet another wave of bombs come raining down on their world from that abstract entity called the “U.S.”
American policy is wrong precisely because we are at war not with Saddam Hussein, but with the people of Iraq-the citizens, the poor and meek, the downtrodden and hurting.
The nation of Iraq will always have the technical know-how to build weapons of mass destruction. Because the fact is that we live in a world where every industrialized nation with a couple of smart chemistry Ph.D.‘s can build these bombs. India and Pakistan just a few months ago set off nuclear weapons, we know Israel has a stockpile. We can’t just bomb every country with a weapon of mass destruction or with the capacity to produce such a weapon.
We need to build a world of real peace, of peace between nations built on the rule of law, yes, but also on reconciliation. We need foreign policy that recognizes that it is the rulers and the policies of other nations with which we disagree. That recognizes that it is wrong to ever condemn a whole people for the excesses of their leaders.
A number of U.S. peace groups have called for today to be a day of National Mourning and Protest. Let us gather to remember that we stand together in solidarity with those suffering in Iraq. Let us vigil quietly and then yell out loudly that war to end war is wrong.
End the Sanctions. Stop the Bombing. Declare peace with the Iraqi People.
No More Coincidences: Big Bill’s Zipper Strikes Again
December 16, 1998
Back in February, I concluded my “Stop the Zipper War Before it Starts” with the following:
Nothing’s really changed now except U.S. political interests. Hussein is still a tyrant. He’s still stockpiling chemical weapons. Why are U.S. political interests different now? Why does Bill Clinton want U.S. media attention focused on Iraq? Look no further than Big Bill’s zipper. Stop the next war before it starts. Abolish everyone’s weapons of mass destruction and let’s get a President who doesn’t need a war to clear his name.
I put this at the bottom of the piece because then the idea that Clinton might have done this was still way out there.
Since then most every major turning point in the President’s scandals has been echoed by military maneuverings.
On August 17th Clinton gave a televised address which was widely criticized as being “too little, too late” and non-repentant enough. Public opinion turned sharply against him. Three days later Big Bill sent 100 cruise missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan in order to assassinate Osama bin Laden, the previously unknown archenemy of the United States.
And now, on the afternoon before the House of Representatives was scheduled to begin proceedings on his Impeachment, Clinton has ordered an attack on Iraq. Congress will of course delay the vote. Rumors are that this new bombing campaign might last more than a few days, and come January’s new Congressional term there will be five less Republicans.
Each time these coincidences happen, a few pundits that mutter about “Wag the Dog” scenarios before assuring the audience that Clinton would never do that. Everyone talks about coincidence and then moves on.
But coincidence has been Clinton’s friend throughout his scandals. Remember the long-lost Whitewater documents that mysteriously appeared on Hillary Clinton’s coffee-table when investigators were threatening to issue here a subpoena? Remember the job offers that Clinton cronies arranged for key witnesses just before they either recanted their stories or lied under oath? All of Clinton’s scandals have been of the “who cares” variety-shady land dealings twenty years ago in Arkansas, his having sex with an intern in the Oval Office. They displayed a lack of judgment and character, but were not Impeachable. But his scandals have grown and taken a life of their own as Clinton and his wife have been visited by an ever-growing amount of coincidences.
Enough is enough. How much more are we to believe? As I write this the missiles are screaming over Baghdad and Iraqis are dying horrible deaths. This is real. This is not some political game. It is time for Americans to stop denying that these coincidences are really coincidental.
It is time to demand Clinton’s resignation.
And if he refuses, then it is time to subpoena White House records on the last year of military actions. If they show that Clinton has murdered in his desperate attempt to save his Presidency, then it is time not only to impeach him but to put him into jail.
Hussein Backs off, Clinton Whines
November 14, 1998
Sddam Hussein has just backed off. He’s agreed to a diplomatic solution and has agreed to let United Nations weapon inspectors back in.
U.S. officials said that they were about to attack Saturday night, Nov. 14, when Hussein agreed to the inspections. One Pentagon official is quoted as saying “It was almost as if he knew,” which is a ridiculous statement considering that rumors of an imminent attack were circling the internet and news sites all weekend. Of course Hussein knew, we all did.
This should be cause for rejoicing. Blood won’t have to be shed, diplomacy (notably France and Russia’s) have saved the day again, and the U.N. teams can go back to work.
But U.S. administration officials are upset. They wanted a war. They’re double-guessing their timing, wishing they had bombed him earlier this week. They’re implying that they might bomb Baghdad anyway. They’re whining that now they have to once again work with the U.N. and with Iraqi officials.
Why is the Administration so upset? It’s because they have no real policy in the Gulf. Earlier this week they admitted that they didn’t know what they would do after the attack. Here they were sending warships and personnel into the Gulf and they had no long- or mid-term vision for what these people were going to do after the first hundred cruise missiles went off. U.S. policy is once more stuck in the same muddle its been in since mid-1991.
Clinton wishes Hussein would just disappear. That his military would launch a coup and drive him from power. That a cruise missile would hit and kill him. They wish that Iraqi military know-how would disappear. But none of this is likely to happen. In the real world, high-tech U.S. missiles can’t do very much. The real world requires diplomacy, negotiating with people you don’t trust, de-escalating rhetoric. These are skills that the Clinton Administration needs to develop.
It is time for the U.S. to stop whining when diplomacy works. And it is time for a U.S. to develop a realistic policy for building a lasting peace in the Gulf.
President Clinton Overturns Assassination Ban
November 14, 1998
Today’s Times has an article that the Clinton Administration really was trying to kill Osama bin Laden in August’s cruise missile attack against Afghanistan. This flat-out contradicts months of assurances that this was not a U.S. goal.
But even more worrisome is that Presidential lawyers have concluded that this sort of political assassination attempt doesn’t fall under the 1975 Executive Order banning political murder. The same President who says sex isn’t sex is now saying that assassination isn’t assassination. He’s once again splitting legal hairs and lying to the American people when caught.
Who Clinton sleeps with is his business.
But who he tries to assassinate is the business of all of us. And it’s our business when he breaks U.S. law to do so. And our business when his Administration goes on a concerted, coordinated campaign to lie about a military mission’s goals. The bombings ratcheted up the anti‑U.S. anger in the world. It violated the sovereignty of two nations. It cost over a hundred million dollars. The United States is a democracy and the people need to be involved in making such far-reaching decisions. We need to be fully informed.
The President must be held accountable to U.S. law. And he must be told that creative legal definitions aren’t acceptable in a democracy.