Public i Contact

Dan Brown’s recent bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, propelled a controversial
religious organization called Opus Dei
into the public eye. One character in the
novel, Silas, is an Opus Dei “monk” who
wears a robe and kills people who appear
to threaten his mission. Even people who
are not supporters of Opus Dei have
heavily criticized The Da Vinci Code for
its factual errors. Andrew Greeley, an
author and a priest, says, “”I am hardly a
defender of Opus Dei, but I cannot imagine
them setting a killer loose in a struggle
against a group it considers dangero
u s .” Opus Dei doe s n’t have mon k s
either, and its members wear ordinary
clothing. In Urbana, there’s an Opus Dei
center, Lincoln Green Foundation, which
houses male professionals and students.
What is Opus Dei? In short, it’s an
organization within the Catholic Church
that “encourages Christians of all social
classes to live con s i s ten t ly with thei r
faith, in the middle of the ordinary circ
u m s t a n ces of t h eir live s , e s pec i a lly
through the sanctification of their work.”
( Opus Dei web s i te) John Gu eg u en , a
retired professor who lives at Lincoln
Green , wri te s , “Soon – to – be – Saint Jo s emaria
realized what he and his followers
were up against in carrying out the apostolate
of Opus Dei. That work consists of
nothing other than getting through to
men and women, both single and married,
living and working in the normal
circumstances of life in this world, that
they will miss the whole point of their
Christian faith if they don’t devote themselves
to the pursuit of heroic sanctity
right where they are by making full use of
t h eir work and family life .”
( h t t p : / / w w w. cdop. or g / c a t h o l i c _ p o s t
/post_10_6_02 /wisi.cfm) Opus Dei is a
pers onal prel a tu re of the Ca t h o l i c
Church, in other words, a special jurisdiction
in the Church not linked to a territory.
The current prelate of Opus Dei is
Bishop Javier Echevarría.
John All en , Na ti onal Ca t h o l i c
Reporter’s Vatican correspondent, says,
“My observation is that the people of
Opus Dei are generally well meaning,
amiable conservatives,often very competent
at what they do, who harbor a rather
traditionalist vision of the church and
the culture. It’s not my cup of tea, but
there is certainly room for it under the
Catholic big tent.”When I visited Lincoln
Green Fo u n d a ti on and met wi t h
Gueguen and another Opus Dei member,
I was inclined to agree with Allen. Both
men seemed to be sincere and likeable
individuals. Opus Dei consists of members
categorized as numeraries, numera
ry assoc i a te s , su pernu m era ri e s , a n d
numerary auxiliaries (formerly known as
nu m era ry serva n t s ) . Nu m era ries are
edu c a ted profe s s i onals who com m i t
themselves to celibacy, poverty, and obedience
and usually live in an Opus Dei
center and turn over their salaries to the
group. Numerary associates are similar
to numeraries, except that they are not
able to live in the residences. Supernum
era ries are marri ed and unmarri ed
members with a lower level of availability,
and numerary auxiliaries are women,
usually less educated, whose professional
work is cleaning the centers. There are
also cooperators, who are not members,
but provide support to Opus Dei. One of
the best-known Opus Dei cooperators in
the U.S. is Anton Scalia, a Supreme Court
justice.
Why the controversy then? To understand
the organization and its critics, it
helps to know a little about the Opus
Dei’s background. Opus Dei was founded
around the time of the Spanish Civil
War in Madrid by a priest named Jose
Maria (later Josemaria) Escrivá. At the
time Escrivá decided to enter the priesthood,
this was a reasonable career path
for a bright, ambitious young man. He
decided that he did not want to be an
ordinary diocesan priest, and in 1928, he
got the idea (which he believed came
from God) to begin what is now known
as Opus Dei . Du r ing the war, s om e
Catholic cl er gy were pers ec uted and
killed. Escrivá and his followers went into
h i d i n g. These early ex peri en ces rei nforced
the fundamental idea that the
Church was under assault from enemies
and needed to be defended. In The Forge,
Escrivá writes, “”Nowadays our Mother
the Church is being attacked in the social
field and by the governments of nations.
That is why God is sending his children
— is sending you! — to struggle, and to
spread the truth in those areas.”
E s c rivá was decl a red a saint by the
Catholic Chu rch in 2002 and is revered
by Opus Dei mem bers , who of ten refer
to him as the “ Fa t h er.” E s c rivá himsel f
was a com p l ex and occ a s i on a lly paradoxical
man. For ex a m p l e , his stance on
wom en seems con trad i ctory. In an intervi
ew, he said, “All the bapti zed , m en and
wom en alike , s h a re equ a lly in the dign ity,
f reedom and re s pon s i bi l i ty of t h e
ch i l d ren of G od .” Yet , he en co u ra ges ac ademic
pursuits by sayi n g, “Th ere is no
excuse for those who could be sch o l a rs
and are not,” but later note s , “ … wom en
n eed n’t be sch o l a rs : i t’s en o u gh for them
to be pru den t .” Ad d ressing an audien ce
in Sao Pa u l o, he advi s ed wom en , “ Do
yo u rs el f u p, l ook pret ty and, as the ye a rs
go by, decora te the façade even more , a s
t h ey do with old bu i l d i n gs . He’ ll be so
gra teful to yo u .”
Maria del Carmen Tapia, a former
Opus Dei member, found Escrivá less
than charming. After spending eighteen
years as a numerary, she was forced out
and later wrote a book about her experien
ce s : Beyond the Th re s h o l d . E s c riv á
a pp a ren t ly had some difficulty wi t h
a n ger managem en t , and according to
Carmen’s account, he accused her of sexual
miscon du ct , s ayi n g, “You are a
wicked woman! A lost woman! Mary
Magdalen was a sinner, but you? You are
a seductress with all your immorality and
indecency! You are a seductress! I know
everyt h i n g. EV E RYTHING! EV E N
A BOUT THE
V E N E Z U E L A N
N E G RO! You are
a bom i n a bl e . YO U
HAVE A WEAKNESS
FOR BLACKS! Firs t
with one and then with
the other. LEAVE MY
PRIESTS ALONE! DO
YOU HEAR? LEAV E
THEM A LONE! In
pe ace . Don’t med dl e
with them! Yo u’re
wicked! Wicked! Indecent!
Come on, look at
the business of t h e
Negro! And don’t ask
me for my bl e s s i n g
because I don’t intend
to give it to yo u ! ”
Opus Dei claims to
be a purely rel i gi o u s
or ga n i z a ti on , but soc i o l ogist Joa n
E s tru ch disputes this in his book Sa i n t s
and Sch em ers : “ No rel i gious insti tuti on is
ever ‘p u rely rel i gi o u s’ : f rom the mom en t
it becomes an insti tuti on and has to begi n
to ad d ress the qu e s ti on of tra n s m i t ting its
con ten t , every insti tuti on becomes a playing
field for va rious forces and intere s t s
( s oc i a l , econ om i c , and po l i ti c a l ) .”Mon ey
and ex p a n s i on were major con cerns in
Opus Dei ’s early days and mem bers
became intere s ted in business and govern
m en t . At the end of the war, E s c riv á
h ad establ i s h ed a working rel a ti on s h i p
with Fra n c i s co Fra n co, S p a i n’s caudill o,
and Opus Dei mem bers served in Fra nco’s
govern m en t . Du ring this ti m e , Op u s
Dei ex p a n ded into other co u n tri e s ,
i n cluding Chile and Ar gen ti n a .
The approach to rel i gi on is high ly
orthodox.Masses are in Latin, and members
regularly meet with a spiritual director
and confess sins to a priest. Many
American Catholics refer to this sacrament
as “reconciliation”, but Opus Dei
seems to prefer the term “penance.” One
of the most con troversial practi ces is
“corporal mortification,” a religious tradition
practiced in the past by Catholic
religious orders and numerous saints.
Corporal morti f i c a ti on gen era lly take s
the form of small sacrifices like giving up
dessert at a meal. However, numeraries
use a cilice, a small barbed chain worn
around the leg, and a discipline, a small
rope whip. According to the members I
interviewed, Silas’s grotesque self-flagellation
in The DaVinci Code does not repre
s ent re a l i ty. Al t h o u gh Escrivá was
known for whipping himself until the
b a t h room walls were spattered wi t h
blood, numeraries are discouraged from
breaking the skin. Members believe that
the practi ce purifies the soul and
reminds them of Je su s’ su f fering and
de a t h . V l adimir Fel z m a n n , a form er
numerary, disagrees. In an interview with
City of Secrets author John Follain, he
says, “…creating suffering for yourself
artificially is pointless. It doesn’t achieve
spirituality; it’s a form of arrogance.”
In Latin America, Opus Dei’s orthodoxy
conflicts with Liberation Theology,
a controversial approach to Catholic theology
that focuses on Jesus as a bringer of
ju s ti ce and bel i eves that the Gospel s
demand a preferen tial opti on for the
poor. One of the best-known proponents
of L i bera ti on Th eo l ogy was Oscar
Romero, a Salvadoran archbishop who
said in 1978, “When the Church hears the
c ry of the oppre s s ed it cannot but
denounce the social structures that give
rise to and perpetuate the misery from
which the cry arises.” In 1980, Salvadoran
police intelligence agents shot Romero
t h ro u gh the heart as he said mass.
( Decl a s s i f i ed US doc u m ents later
reve a l ed that Sa lvadoran Army Ma j or
Roberto D’Aubuisson. a graduate of the
US School of the Americas, had ordered
the assassination.) Romero, like Escrivá,
believed that his relationship with his foll
owers tra n s cen ded de a t h . However,
Romero was keenly interested in social
justice, whereas Escrivá was more concerned
with personal sanctity. Romero
said,“And if they kill me, I will rise again
in the Salvadoran people.” Escrivá wrote
to his followers: “I will pass away, and
those who come afterwards will look at
you with envy as if you were a relic.”
(Cronica, 1971)
The current Salvadoran Archbishop,
Opus Dei’s Fernando Sáenz Lacalle, has a
friendlier relationship with the Salvadoran
government and maintains that liberation
theology no longer has any place
in his country. In 1997, Sáenz Lacalle,
who also serves as military bishop, was
promoted to the rank of Brigadier General
in the Salvadoran Army. Augusto
Pinochet, former dictator of Chile had an
abysmal human rights record, and some
Opus Dei members served in his cabinet.
This cooperation may reflect the idea
that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.”
Pinochet and other Latin American dictators
were strong opponents of commun
i s m , wh i ch Opus Dei con s i dered a
m a j or threat to the Catholic Chu rch .
Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, Archbishop
of Lima, was the first member of Opus
Dei to be named a cardinal. A Vatican
website praises him for his efforts against
the “Maoist” guerillas, but Cipriani has
also come under fire for his relationship
with form er Peruvian pre s i dent Fu j im
ori ’s aut h ori t a rian regi m e . Th e s e
a ll i a n ces have ra i s ed qu e s ti ons abo ut
whether Opus Dei members are concerned
about human rights abuses. At Cipriani’s first mass as a cardinal, protesters chanted,
“Christ is justice, not complicity.”
In the United States, much of the controversy surrounding
Opus Dei centers on its approach to recruiting.
Opus Dei creates nonprofit foundations, often with
names related to the location, and establishes centers
near top universities. For example,Opus Dei operates as
the “Lincoln Green Foundation” in Urbana and as
“Menlough Study Center” in Menlo Park, CA.Members
may be involved in Catholic or secular student organizations
which provide opportunities for interaction
with potential recruits. For example, Opus Dei members
in Urbana have been involved in the Graduate Discussion
Group, a registered student organization at the
u n ivers i ty. Opus Dei has a “tri ckle down” p a s tora l
approach and is concerned with reaching future leaders.
It also operates secondary schools, an all-women’s college
of hospitality, and supplementary education programs
in inner- c i ty are a s . Pro s elytizing is heavi ly
emphasized; numerary John Gueguen says, “No member
of Opus Dei will be welcome in heaven unless he is
well-accompanied!” Recruitment is based on an “apostolate
of friendship,” described by Escrivá as “friendship
with a divine meaning.” Escrivá claims that God’s standard
of holiness consists of three points: “holy intransigence,
holy coercion, and holy shamelessness.” Some of
the group’s critics find this alarming.
Escrivá defends this “holy coercion” in Cronica, saying,
“…If our Lord wanted to force strangers to come to
his banquet, how much more will he want you to use a
holy coercion with those who are your brothers…this
most beautiful coercion of charity far from taking away
your brother’s freedom,will delicately help him to use it
well.” However, some former members disagree, comparing
Opus Dei to a cult. Some of the most outspoken
critics are Tammy and Dianne DiNicola, who run the
Opus Dei Awareness Network (http://www.odan.org),
which was mentioned in The DaVinci Code. Some campus
priests have also become concerned. Russell Roide,
S.J, the director of Stanford’s campus ministry from
1984 – 1992, eventually banned the group from campus,
calling it “deceptive.” When I contacted Fr. Roide, he
referred me to the ODAN website. At Princeton, the
chaplain dismissed Opus Dei priest C. John McCloskey
after students circulated petitions and wrote letters
about upsetting experiences with him. The Opus Dei
members I talked with in Urbana seemed more reasonable
than the embattled Fr. McCloskey, and stated that
members were never pressured to join and were free to
leave at any time.
After leaving Princeton, Fr. McCloskey became the
director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington,
DC.His ministry appears to have a special concern
for the spiritual needs of the wealthy. In an essay, he
writes, “But the rich, powerful, and influential have a
special responsibility to try to struggle with these particular
challenges, since they run a greater risk of the loss
of their souls, in light of the gifts that have been
bestowed upon them for God’s glory and service to others.
Rodney Stark…points out that—contrary to conventional
wisdom and historical analysis—in the first
several centuries of Christianity, the Gospel was most
successfully preached not to the poor and the outcasts,
but rather to the prosperous middle classes and educated
upper classes in the cities.” (http://us.catholic.net
/ r cc / Per i o d i c a l s / Igpr e s s / 2 0 0 1 – 0 1 / e s s ay. h t m l )
McCloskey made news headlines for converting several
high profile people to Catholicism, including Kansas
Senator Sam Brownback and former Tyco lawyer Mark
Belnick.McCloskey is also a prolific author whose writi
n gs are fe a tu red on his web s i te http : / / w w w. f rm ccloskey.
com. In his essay “2030: Looking Backwards,” a
p i ece that bri n gs to mind Ma r ga ret At wood ’s Th e
Ha n d m a i d ’s Ta l e , he spec u l a tes abo ut a “rel a tively
bloodless conflict” that allowed Christians to “live in
states that recognize the natural law and divine Revelation,
the right of free practice of religion, and laws on
marriage, family, and life that reflect the primacy of our
Fa i t h .” ( h t tp:// www. c a t h o l i c i ty. com /mccl o s key / a rticles/
2030.html)
Author and reporter Robert Hutchison is concerned
that messages of fear and intolerance may increase
worldwide violence. In his 1997 book Their Kingdom
Com e , he de s c ri bes incre a s i n gly stra i n ed rel a ti on s
between Christianity and Islam. Some of McCloskey’s
writing dovetails with Hutchison’s thesis, and it appears
that Islam may be replacing communism as the perceived
enemy of the Catholic Church. In his 1997 review
of “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
World Order,” McCloskey writes, “Islam has on several
occasions in past centuries almost conquered the Christian
West through a combination of aggressive and
coercive proselytism and bloody jihads. John Paul II
wants to make sure that it does not happen again. He
wants to make sure that the ‘civilization of love and
truth’ that he desires and foresees is allowed to develop
and flourish without external threat, be it from Islam,
the decadent modernWest, or China.” In 2002, after the
September 11 attacks, McCloskey addressed a graduating
class at St. Thomas Aquinas College, saying, “At the
present moment, the world’s only superpower is under
attack. We all are living in a country during a time of
war with an enemy that has been an enemy of Christendom
for centuries.At the same time, we are under attack
from within, from moral decay, from a mistaken notion
of man, and from a slide into a high-tech barbarism,
which attempts to manipulate the very origins of life.”
( h t tp : / / w w w. t h om a s a qu i n a s . edu / n ews / n ews l e t ter /
2002/summer/mccloskey.htm)
Opus Dei appears to be a group of committed, idealistic
people who sincerely believe that right is on their
side. Many organizations could also be described this
w ay – for ex a m p l e , radical activists (e.g. , We a t h er
Underground), and many others. Although the ideals
may be different, these groups also have some things in
common. Each is comprised of individuals who interact
in ways that may or may not be healthy. There is some
risk of groupthink, defined by psychologist Irving Janis
as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they
are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the
members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation
to realistically appraise alternative courses of
action.” Such groups are also capable of great good,
since members are willing to sacrifice and work hard to
bring about the social change that they believe is needed.
Opus Dei has existed for less than a century, and its
members have done both admirable and worrisome
things. Like other religious organizations, Opus Dei
continues to evolve. However, it is impossible to predict
what exactly it will become.

Scott Edwards’ contribution to the Public i of August
2004 V4#6 on the relevance of the 2004 American presidential
election for the humanitarian crises in postcolonial
Sudan raises the need to, once again, expose the ahistorical
assumptions underlying a persistent American creed for
intervening in Third World countries.
To be clear, my aim is not to detract but indeed contribute
to the urgent need for American subjects and citizens
to negotiate a mutually acceptable image of imperial
America. To this end, I am concerned with the way in
which an ahistorical image of the Third World is once
again creeping back into the debate on imperial America’s
national purpose and the liberal left’s self-assumed global
mission to save an assumed undemocratic Third World.
To simplify, the arti cle is prem i s ed on the libera l
assumption that while Americans are not the global cop on
an imperial beat, as the neo-conservatives would have it,
they must unite to resume their once glorious role as the
global humanitarians, social workers, peace brokers and
rescue heroes for the sake of saving a genocidal Sudan.
With the retreat of the post 9-11 “they hate our freedoms”
rhetoric of the freedom-loving and war-mongering neoconservatives,
it seems that the liberal self-representation
of i m perial Am erica as the harbi n ger of econ om i c
progress, democracy and human uplift is in ascendance.
To be brief, my point is that from the situated perspective
of an Africanist long subjected and opposed to first
European colonial and nowAmerican imperial power, it is
not the purpose of Third World countries to mirror and
help solve the ‘identity’ and sociopolitical problems of a
polarizing, post cold-war and post 9-11 imperial America
– be they democracy-loving and guilt-driven neo-liberals
or freedom-loving and war-mongering neo-conservatives.
The oppressed and exploited people of the Third World
need neither neo-liberal nor neo-conservative missionaries.
Instead, given imperial America’s long and complex
political, economic and cultural involvement in the underdevelopment
of the Third World, especially after WW2, it
is probably more urgent to reflect on what imperial America
should not do in the Third World. To be sure, while I
am not certain what imperial America can do for the Third
World, I am convinced by historical evidence that there are
a number of things imperial America has been doing to
ThirdWorld countries that it should stop doing. Indeed, a
recent historical precedent for this proposition, clearly
worth reemphasizing, was the seismic shift in domestic
reappraisals of America’s missionary self-image as the vanguard
of modernit y after its disastrous 1960s invasion of
Vietnam and Indochina policy. In this turbulent phase, a
range of subordinate social and cultural counter-movements
cogently exposed the hidden side of imperial America
as grounded in the violence of racism, sexism, ecocide
and genocide and dehumanizing in its basic values. However,
as Edwards’s essay demonstrates, it is not yet safe to
assume that the old optimism and self-confidence of
republican America’s founding creed and sense of global
mission has been disturbed even among a college-educated
u pper- m i d dl e – cl a s s . Nevert h el e s s , as evi den ced by the
strenuous resistance of a re-conquered Iraqi people, imperial
America’s continuously shifting sense of a global mission,
even under the banner of humanitarian relief and liberal
democracy, is not uncontested in the Third World.
So how does America matter for the ThirdWorld? To be
clear, American experience is very important to the development
of Third World societies. However, its salience is
not as a liberal lead to follow. Instead, its lessons are best
illustrated when considered as the most modernized historical
theatre in which the social-political upheavals and
contradictions wrought by a neo-liberal capitalist trajectory
to modernity has developed furthest. More directly, it’s
the territory where the social, cultural, political and economic
costs and benefits of a colonial and now imperial
capitalist transformation to modernity are most visible, to
be either embraced, avoided or rejected.
So, by way of a conclusion, the American experience is
most significant to the Third World when Americans, as a
poly-vocal and asymmetric nation of conquered native
peoples, freed slaves, migrant workers and immigrant settler-
citizens work out for themselves their many different
and often contradictory self-perceptions without the need
for a rhetoric of transatlantic rescue missions to postcolonial
African countries, often the products of imperial
America’s foreign policy.
kensalo@uiuc.edu
Third World legal scholar at UIUC

“It must be a very interesting time in
the States at the moment,” remarked our
server at dinner, “with November coming
up.”My wife Catharine and I were enjoying
a rare night out without children in her
hometown of Wivenhoe, population about
6 , 0 0 0 , just out s i de Co l ch e s ter in Essex ,
E n gl a n d . The most frequ ent su bj ect of
conversation with natives during this trip, I had already
noticed, had shifted from the small talk of previous visits to
the ongoing war in Iraq and the world-famous lunacy of
George W. Bush.
Now in this tiny village in the suburban Southeast, the
twenty-something waiter who attended the local high school
and worked at Gatwick Airport before coming home to
Wivenhoe furrowed his brow as we left the restaurant and
told me, “I just hope the monkey gets out.”
There was much snickering when we arrived in Britain
over the latest terror alert in the US, based on three and fouryear-
old evidence. But the press and the public seemed to
treat the matter as par for the course rather than a shocking
scandal. The phrase “July surprise” is unknown in the UK,
but millions seemed to notice the convenient timing of the
latest Orange Alert.
After all, the complete washout of every single justification
for war with Iraq has received much more open attention
in the UK than in the US. The incessant lies of the “war
on terror”, the power grabbing, the backroom wheeling and
dealing, the nepotistic contracts, all appear in Britain as obvious
if harsh facts, not as conspiracy theory.What still puzzles
many people in the British Isles, however, is continued American
support for the war, even at ever decreasing levels.
Why, they kept asking me, but why? What about the fact
that there were no weapons of mass destruction, no connections
with al-Qaeda, and what about Abu Ghraib?
The UK is certainly no stranger to terrorism. There have
been no trashcans in British train station for many years (the
IRA used to put bombs in them). The famously unarmed
police are now supplemented in the London area by elite
squads of Kevlar goons with submachine guns. And fully
80% of crime prevention budgets now go to the ubiquitous
(yet apparently ineffective) surveillance cameras. Still there is
widespread dismay and disgust even in Britain over America.
s reaction to a single day of terrorism, albeit a particularly
nasty one.
“What’s amazing to me,” confessed a Brighton resident
named Roger over a few pints, “is that Bush and Cheney and
Rumsfeld and that lot have managed such a complete turnaround
since 11 September.” Roger was shaking his head,
smiling ruefully. “I mean America had the support or sympathy
of every country in the world, even the Arab countries.
But in two short years they’ve managed a complete reversal.”
“Now,” Roger says, “almost the whole world is against
them, and I think, here at least, there’s a real sense of being
against Bush and company and not against the American
people.”
The United Kingdom is by most accounts the United
States’ closest ally, not counting our client states in Central
America where we train the police and choose the presidents.
So close in fact is the alliance that a major public debate in
Britain at the moment seems to be whether Prime Minister
Tony Blair should be called the US “poodle” or whether that
designation lets him off the hook for his own lies, his own
chickenhawk foreign policy and his bloodless social policy.
Some of the mainstream press in the UK, where there is
no First Amendment but also no pretense of media “neutrality”,
have made their position clear in the matter: “Blair is a
coward,” proclaims one headline from last year’s Mirror.
The arti cle then explains that “bl ood on his hands” is an
ex pre s s i on coi n ed “to de s c ri be impecc a ble po l i ticians wh o, a t
a safe distance , order the mass killing of ord i n a ry
peop l e … e s pec i a llyto thosemodern po l i tical leaderswho have
h ad no pers onal ex peri en ce of w a r, l i ke Geor geW Bu s h , wh o
m a n a ged not to serve in Vi etn a m , and the ef fete Tony Bl a i r.”
This gives some clue as to the opinion of the British public
regarding their government’s alliance with the US. And
many people I talked to expressed dismay that the Blair government
joined the US war on Iraq in complete disregard to
public opinion. “Undemocratic” is the word I heard them
use. This may sound strange to American ears.After all, they
have a queen. But Britons have fought long and hard for their
rights, too – rights they now see evaporating along with ours.
In fact most of the people I talked to in England insisted
that, although “there may have been some initial support in
the States for the invasion of Iraq, in England there never
was.” Such conversations are by their nature anecdotal, but
they are not meaningless. Polls of British opinion dispute the
claim as stated, strictly speaking, but they still show little support
for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
“There has been little change in opinion about the war in
Iraq,” found a Pew global attitudes survey conducted in February
and March 2004, “except in Great Britain, where support
for the decision to go to war has plummeted from 61%
last May to 43% in the current survey.”
“ In con tra s t ,” the Pew report says ,“60% of Am ericans conti
nue to back the war. Am ong the coa l i ti on of the ‘u nwi ll i n g,’
l a r ge majori ties in Germ a ny, Fra n ce and Russia sti ll bel i eve
t h eir co u n tries made the ri ght dec i s i on in not taking part in
the war.Moreover, t h ere is broad agreem ent in nearlyall of t h e
co u n tries su rveyed – the U. S . being a notable excepti on ‘ that
thewar in Iraq hu rt , ra t h er than hel ped , the war on terrori s m .”
A BBC poll around the same time found similar results,
and further details in the BBC poll may also shed some light
on the meaning of the numbers. Ranking the various partners
in the war from 1 to 10 by performance, respondents in
the BBC poll gave British military forces the highest mark of
the survey: 8.3 – in contrast to an abysmal 4.9 for Blair and
4.3 for Bush. The British populace seems to share with the
American a sympathy, or at least a reluctance, not to “support
the troops,” the everyday grunts who are sent to do the dirty
work, however wrong the war itself and however deceitful the
politicians who planned it. In the same poll, 42% of British
respondents said they trust Blair less now than before the
w a r, while on ly 4% trust him more . On the so-call ed
“weapons of mass destruction,” 22% said Blair lied outright
while 40% said he exaggerated, leaving a negligible number
who still believe. And 55% said that they believe the war in
Iraq has not helped Britain’s longterm security.
But what this means for the Blair government’s prospects
is unclear. The electoral alternative is the Conservative Party,
the hated Tories, who under Margaret Thatcher (and, P.S.,
John Major) plundered the social equity accumulated over
generations. Still, Blair and the so-called New Labour – akin
to Clinton’s rightwing Democratic Leadership Council in the
US – can hardly rest on their laurels.
In ad d i ti on to the high – profile defecti ons of Bl a i r ’s Ca bi n et
m i n i s ters over the last two ye a rs , the Labour Pa rty has reportedly
lost fully half its mem bership since the war with Ira q ,
n owdown to 190,000 to t a l . Cert a i n ly no one has to be a member
to vo te Labo u r, but su ch a prec i p i tous drop speaks stron gly
to the disaffecti on and disgust among the party faithful.
The third-party Liberal Democrats are almost certain to
take up some of the slack, and local elections have already
seen spotty losses for all the major parties in contests against
the Independent Working Class Association and other marginal
groups.
So Blair could face a steep uphill climb according to
almost every observer, perhaps including Blair himself. Earlier
in the year Blair reportedly considered stepping down, but
his closest aides talked him out of it.
Last year, in the lead-up to invasion, hundreds of thousands
protested in New York, San Francisco and other US
cities. In London protesters numbered over one million, out
of a national population around only 60 million, apparently
including many who had never demonstrated against anything
in their lives – not even, though they were old enough
and did oppose it,Vietnam.
Pro-war officials in the UK tend to blame the left-leaning
media for public opposition to the war. But why the average
Brit would give more credence to anti-war journalism than to
its pro-war counterparts in The London Times, for example,
they do not explain.The notion that people might be reacting
to the facts presented is apparently unthinkable.
British ire erupted again mid-August when the supposedly
quiet town of Basra near Kuwait exploded and a British
soldier was killed. One. UK forces have lost a handful in Iraq,
in contrast to a near-thousand US troops killed. Yet British
outrage over each death is palpable. The family of the most
recently deceased stalked away from a meeting with Blair’s
staff blaming the Prime Minister personally for their son’s
death. And the press covered it.
Around the same time another British soldier, recently
back from Iraq, killed himself with automobile exhaust. Major newspaper reports detailed the soldier’s opposition to the war in Iraq, the changes
in his personality that seemed to result from his time in Iraq, and his family’s belief that
the war was to blame. Some headlines even passed along their demand:Was his death a
final act of protest?
Contrast the US media’s treatment (or non-treatment) of the Peaceful Tomorrows
group of family members of those killed in the September 11 terrorist attack.When family
members marched betweenWashington DC and NewYork City, opposing war, carrying
signs that read, “Not in our name,” The New York Times reported simply that they
were “mourning” and cropped their protest signs out of the accompanying photo.
“Why is the American media so conservative?” asked Maggie, a neighbor of my inlaws,
in an impromptu curbside chat. “Is it because of the corporate ownership?”
Her husband Dave chimed in: “We have Rupert Murdoch, but we know where he’s
coming from.”
“Yes,” admitted Maggie, “here you can read The Guardian or The Independent, even
The Times, and, OK, you might not agree with them, and, yes, it’s biased, but you know
where you stand with them, and at least there’s some real facts there, and you can argue.”
“But the American press, from our perspective here,”Dave added,“seems so glitzy and
– sorry, but, superficial.”
Here, then, is another unthinkable question: What would happen if the US media
were less superficial and reported more facts, dropped the pretense of neutrality and
openly disagreed on current issues? The answer is left to the reader’s imagination with
one historical note; that is, the irony that what the Founding Fathers envisioned for
American democracy, with all its flaws, is perhaps now more closely approximated in the
UK.

    “Breaking Out of Activist Ghettos since 2001,”
the RACE collective is sure to turn quite a few heads within activist
communities across the world. RACE is “a collective of people of
color with revolutionary anti-authoritarian politics. [They] seek to
raise critical questions about race, gender, class, sexuality, age, culture,
and anture and explore how these issues intersect with various
struggles against authority and capital.” Their new zine, simply
entitled “RACE: Revolutionary Anti-Authoritarians of Color,” does
just that. In issue No. 1, you’ll find everything from moving
poetry to an amazing article on race, anarchy, and
punk rock; from a critique of whiteness within social
movements to excerpts from Lorenzo Komboa Ervin’s
“Anarchism and the Black Revolution.”
One of my favorite articles in RACE is a narrative of
anti-authortarian hip hop culture by “Otto Nomous.” In
hir article, Otto Nomous focuses on the attributes of
both the punk rock scenes and underground hip hop
scenes in Los Angeles and Oakland. Though the author
finds some similarities between the two, s/he noticed that
“while being full of politically conscious people, [the underground
hip hop scene] didn’t have a thriving network of disseminating
information or low-cost do-it-yourself projects.” This became the
impetus for the beginnings of Arise, a monthly open mic event
whose proceeds benefit the RACE collective. The creation of such a
political and uplifting venue has transformed the underground hip
hop scene in the Bay area into “a place where a new revolutionary
culture is born.” It is also an inspiring testament to the power of
organizing one’s community in the spirit of creativity and radical
change.
Also featured in RACE is an article by and a biography of
Lorenzo Komboa Ervin. Born in Chattanooga, TN, in 1947, Ervin
took a very active role in the Civil Rights Movement, joining the
NAACP when he was 12, taking part in the sit-in protests against
racial discrimination in 1960, and being court-marshalled for
being an anti-Vietnam war organizer while serving 2 years in the
U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. In the excerpt from his book,
Ervin illustrates why he’s a Black revolutionary, an anti-imperialist,
an anti-racist, a Liberatarian Socialist, an anarcho-syndicalist,
and an anarchist. His powerful words will inspire the
reader to take action. Especially in times like these, it is
encouraging to learn from activists who not only have
fought and won some of the freedoms we enjoy today,
but who continue to fight until ALL peoples are free.
If your interests lie more within the realm of poetry, you
will be blown away by the political prose of El Compay
Nando and Solidad diCosta. “Our New War” mourns
for the state of the world: “This nation color codes its
slaughters / so the cells of sons and daughters / still
remember trails of tears and / homestead harlems, even
as their / mind’s eyes wave at red, white and / blue fighter planes as
they go by — / ‘bye-bye’.” And “Siglo Veintiuno” celebrates our
dream for freedom, “!Pero éste! Año Cero, será nuestro!” (But this
Year Zero will be ours!). Needless to say, I couldn’t put this zine
down, and I venture to say that you’ll also want to read this one
from cover to cover.
For more information on the RACE collective, check out:
http://passionbomb.com/race, and come by the IMC library, find a
comfortable seat, and be prepared to be mesmerized by this amazing
zine. RACE can be found in the “political zines” section of the
IMC zine library.

      
 in 2000, again in 2001 with
Dennis Halliday, and also in 2003 with
Voices in the Wilderness; she is one of the
founders and coordinators of Voices in
the Wilderness, a Chicago-based campaign
since 1996 to end the United
Nations sanctions against Iraq; she was a
member of the Iraq Peace Team, spending
October 2002 through April 2003
(except for a break of several weeks in
January 2003) in Iraq, and was therefore
present when the American bombs started
falling in Baghdad in March of 2003;
she has traveled to
Haiti, Bosnia, and
Jenin on the occupied
West Bank, and she
was part of a peace
team located on the
Iraq-Saudi border
during the 1991 Gulf
War; and she has spoken
in Champaign-
Urbana on many occasions.
What is clear
when seeing her speak,
conversing with her in
interviews, and in listening
to others sing
nothing but praises
about her is that she
embodies – and puts a
face to – activism.
I had the pleasure
and honor of speaking with Kelly on February
24th to discuss her work as well as
some of the fundamental questions in
our current world when it comes to peace
and justice. Through anecdotes and evidence
of her commitment to pacifism
and especially the plight of children
worldwide, we gain a picture of world
politics and social activism that is devastatingly
real, yet persistently hopeful.
HOGTIED AND ABUSED AT FORT BENNING
Kelly’s treatment upon her most
recent arrest and her impending sentence
indeed punctuate a lifetime of peaceful
protest and leave a question mark lingering
over the state of civil liberties in this
country. She will serve a 90-day term in
federal prison this spring, probably starting
in late March, for trespassing onto
military property at Fort Benning, Georgia
to protest the School of the Americas
(SOA, now WHISC) last fall. Each year
thousands of nonviolent protesters gather
at the gates of Ft. Benning and ask that
the SOA be shut down. Names of the
murdered Latin American innocents are
read in a funeral procession, after each of
which the word presenté is spoken in
solemn remembrance of the hundreds of
thousands murdered by SOA graduates.
This is not the first year Kelly has participated
in actions at Ft. Benning. In
1990, she did a water-only fast for 28
days, an action she says was “commensurate
with the crimes being committed” in
Latin America and in the Middle East,
where people lack basic necessities and
live in constant fear. Late at night, soldiers
would come to the gate and talk
with Kelly and the other protesters, asking
questions about where El Salvador
was, or why they might be sent to protect
a small country like Kuwait.
Kelly sees the annual protest at Ft.
Benning as an opportune place to participate
in nonviolent resistance, because
there is predictability in the consequences
for “crossing the line,” or stepping
beyond the (literal) strip of white
paint marking the beginning of military
property. In the past, arrests have been
made and widespread citations for trespassing
issued. The arrests in 2003, however,
make Kelly part of the SOA 28, a
group harshly prosecuted for their
actions on November 23rd, when some
14,000 people gathered at Ft. Benning,
now facing a police
force funded by the
federal defense budget
and a military engaging
in trans-Atlantic
training with the U.K.
on how to deal with
large groups of protesters.
While normally,
Kelly says, white,
middle-class, educated
peace activists are
treated with kid gloves,
those arrested this time
suffered the kind of
brutal treatment by
authorities more typically
seen when cops
confront urban people
of color.
Kelly was pushed to
the floor and called “fucker” by four
angst-filled soldiers who held her on the
ground by kneeling on her back. In her
words, she was “hogtied,” with her wrists
and ankles cuffed and chained together,
and dragged around the jail. She claims,
in a widely-distributed editorial entitled
Hogtied and Abused at Fort Benning,
“We now live in a country where Homeland
Security funds pay for exercises
which train military and police units to
control and intimidate crowds, detainees,
and arrestees using threat and force.”
Kelly now faces 90-plus days in federal
prison, with another month possibly
tacked on for a different direct action in
Wisconsin; she has chosen to self-report
when it comes time for her incarceration,
spending her remaining weeks on speaking
tours and doing interviews such as
this one.
U.N. SANCTIONS AND THE AMERICAN WAR
ON IRAQ
Kelly, perhaps best known for her
work in Iraq, spoke at a rally at the U of I
as well as the Champaign Public Library
in September 2003 at a “Town Meeting”
regarding on the War on Iraq. She retold
her experience of “A-Day” in Baghdad,
the third day of War during which the
U.S. dropped 1000 bombs on the city,
costing $1 million apiece; that’s one billion
dollars worth of murder and
destruction in one day in a war that continues,
with the U.S. spending $4 billion
each month to finance its occupation of
Iraq.What would Kelly have done with a
billion dollars to spend in 24 hours in
Baghdad? “Lift the economic sanctions,”
she says, “so people could go to work and
have purchasing power and strengthen
their own infrastructures, including education,
social services, and communication,”
so they could realize their collective
potential.
As a result of 12 years of sanctions,
Iraq was left with a starving, oppressed,
and dying citizenry, whose story Kelly
worked tirelessly to bring to the attention
of American media.With Voices, she was
instrumental in making the anti-sanctions
campaign into a national conversation
here in the U.S. But mainstream
media repeatedly refused to cover the
story, much less dare walk into a hospital
or school in Iraq. It is estimated that tens
of thousands of Iraqis died each month –
many of them children and elderly people,
from malnourishment and diseases
caused by unsanitary water and living
conditions – during the sanctions period
between the Gulf War and War on Iraq.
Some estimate 1 million deaths attributable
to the sanctions – half of them children.
Moreover, the sanctions only
worked to strengthen Hussein’s regime,
making him richer and giving his Baathist
regime more power and leverage while
sacrificing an impoverished citizenry.
After September 11th, 2001, as the
War against Terrorism began in
Afghanistan and the Iraq War was sold to
the American public via falsified claims
of weapons of mass destruction, Voices
decided to change its agenda from antisanctions
to anti-war, launching a new
project called the Iraq Peace Team that
has sent approximately 150 “ordinary”
people to Iraq so that they could return
home to tell their neighbors and friends
about what they witnessed. In late summer
and fall of 2002, members of the
Iraq Peace Team visited hospitals and
schools, bannered electric facilities,
bridges, and other infrastructural sites,
and experienced the terror of war for
themselves. Upon returning to the U.S.,
the volunteers toured widely, sharing
experiences and reiterating that Iraqis are
just like us, that they need the same
resources and depend on the same facilities
as we do.
In March, the bombs started falling.
Housed in the Al Fanar hotel in Baghdad,
Kelly saw the city transformed almost
instantly into a “deserted ghost town.”
People who had only hours before
roamed streets and visited markets were
afraid to go anywhere. As she puts it, the
constant barrage of “earsplitting blasts
and sickening thuds” on A-Day signaled
“a defeat before it was even spoken of as a
victory.” An ironic victory indeed, as the
occupation continues with daily attacks
and slayings, sewage seeping into hospitals,
and an infant mortality rate that has
doubled in less than one year, according
to the most recent reports. Kelly calls the
sanctions and War on Iraq the “most
egregious instance of child abuse on the
planet.” While prior to 1990 obesity was
the number-one killer of children in Iraq,
since then there has been a five-fold
increase in cancer and massive deaths
due to malnutrition and poor sanitation,
and to the sanctions as well as U.S.
bombings throughout the decade that
used arms tipped with depleted uranium.
“Democracy is based on information,”
she says, yet mainstream media
refused to report on the consequences of
the sanctions in the 1990s, and the
beloved journalistic embeds were overwhelmingly
hawkish during the Iraq
War and months leading up to it. For
example, corporate media was quick to
report that Colin Powell’s speech before
the U.N. in February of 2003 cinched the
cause, and we know now that his fancy
visually-enhanced presentation relied on
false evidence. And while the Peace Team
relentlessly invited journalists into hospitals
and schools during the sanctions
and prior to the war, America refused to
listen. During the GulfWar of 1991, Kelly joined a group
of pacifists who stationed themselves along the Iraq-
Saudi border, hoping to bring attention to the violence
of war, with little result. But hope was not lost.
By 2001 the peace movement was renewed, educated,
and highly aware of the situation in the Middle East
and Iraq. Kelly is proud that although we didn’t stop
the war, “the international movement came closer
than ever,” and “should be heartened.” We need to
keep telling people about this war, to “refuse to be
fearbound and further bamboozled.”
A COMMITMENT TO PEACEFUL LIVING
Local librarian and community member Carol
Inskeep has known Kelly for 20 years. They worked
together at a Catholic Worker house on the north
side of Chicago that served as a soup kitchen, drop-in
center for women, house of hospitality, and alternative
school.What impresses Inskeep most about Kelly
is that she “lives her life by her deep convictions;” she
is compelled to speak out against injustice and in the
name of peace in any manner possible, including illegal
acts of civil disobedience, yet “she is personally
modest and warm, and she has a wonderful sense of
humor.”
“Don’t make a virtue out of necessity,” Kelly told
me when I asked her how she prevents herself from
the despair that would succumb most of us if we
were to devote our lives as she has to peace, nonviolence,
and simplicity. She is truly happy–happy to
always be thinking about and finding ways to build a
better world, happy to see fresh voices and renewed
commitments to peace and justice, happy to live
without the burden of corporations, institutions, and
taxes (she refuses “war taxes,” and thus does not own
a car or home nor earn an annual salary – the IRS
serves, in other words, as her “spiritual director”).
“The grass doesn’t look greener elsewhere,” she says,
and she looks forward to a world where people stop
racing around and keeping up with the demands of a
consumer society.
The burden of consumerism in America is especially
poignant for young people who don’t feel loved
or accepted unless they have the right things. To
Kelly, this is a form of terrorism, the inescapable pollution
and waste that we are creating every day with
our shopping, consumption, transportation, and
pollution. To her, peace begins with a change in selfperception,
a recognition that what is best for the
future begins with taking care of ourselves and our
environment right now, working toward sustainability
and resisting the “terrific antagonism of having to
acquire goods at the lowest possible prices.” She is
not a victim, but an advocate, a woman who, as she is
shuffled off to prison, says with optimism and sincerity
that this is an “extraordinarily opportune time to
make a change in human history.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
On the SOA/WHISC, see www.soaw.org; on Iraq,
see www.occupationwatch.org and www.vitw.org; on
the sanctions, see Amnesty International and Unicef;
on the Catholic Worker, see www.catholicworker.org.

      for “humanitarian
clowning.” This is an account of the trip.
*(the title is a reference to the movie Swimming to Cambodia,
made in 1987 by Spalding Gray, while he was working on the
movie, The Killing Fields. Swimming to Cambodia is really
worth seeing).
Thirty six hours to get to Cambodia from Washington,
D.C (four planes). I grumbled to the other clowns: “why do
we have to go so far in order to clown with suffering people?
Seems like the US is full of them, we can stay right here.”
Who are we? We are “humanitarian clowns” which means
we use the antics of clowning for purposes of change. Like
activists and medical practitioners, we
try to change the condition of suffering,
going to hospitals and orphanages as
well as checkpoints and refugee camps.
In the airport we arrive in full clown costume,
some accordions and fiddles, and
clown with the airline staff, waiting passengers,
and at the security stations
(NOT in the US, we’d be guillotined).
Pain? Boredom? Deadly serious power
over? Here we come. We try. I’m an
accordionist, a beginning clown.
On this trip, we were 13 people: 11
clowns (two from Italy) and two cameramen
from Chile (who couldn’t resist
clowning at times).
In the Phnom Peng airport, a French
journalist angrily said to our clown
group, “I don’t know how you Americans
have the nerve to come to Cambodia.Are
you aware the US bombed this country
for 180 days, night and day? That bombing
ruined the irrigation system that had
been so carefully set up here for centuries??!!”
I recognized in his voice a performance that I would have
done, too, if I were he: helpless anger, accusation, in confronting
the revolting innocence of the perpetrators. “Yup,
yessirree, we’re just a bunch of carefree americans going on a
tour of this here oriental country, heard it was cheap, women
are purty, gee did people die here, don’t know anything bout
that, lots of old feuds I guess, barbarians fighting barbarians,
I’m an american, I pay a lot for my ignorance, yup”.
So the French journalist was right to be mad. Right on,
brother.
Only in this case, I told him we WERE aware; we humble
clowns went to places to counteract the damage done by our
bullying country. He was mollified, almost friendly. I think
the sheer fact that Americans KNEW about the US bombing
in the 1970s was a relief to him.
When we finally arrived in Phnom Penh, the country took
my eyes: the streets wildly busy with motorbike travel (up to
six people on one bike), the people seeming small to me, slender,
graceful, and not pugnacious. A common Cambodian
greeting gesture: people put their hands together to their chest
in a prayerlike position, which looks like a gentle “At your service”
gesture.
How could one out of four people have been killed in this
country, mostly by Cambodians themselves (Khmer Rouge
soldiers), between 1970 and 1995?
Statistics I was told: in 2003, 60% of the population is
under age 24; and of that, 50% are under age 15, a consequence
of the terrible last 30 years of the country. 1 out of 4
people were killed in the time period between 1970-1995,
partly as a consequence of US foreign policies (excuseme, I
mean the foreign policies that the US people do not know
about but the men in power do) which killed between 300,000
to one and a half million people, and partly as a consequence
of the dictator Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. 24% of the
women can read; 36% of the men can read. There is 80%
poverty, with people living on 50 cents a day. Rachel Snyder,
our guide, said: “Women and children have no rights. There is
law, but no justice. Cambodia is riddled with corruption” (but
who will solvethis riddle, who?).
Beggars all over, some sliding on the ground when without
legs. The voices of beggars, of shop women in the market, trying
to get your attention (your 50 cents,
their food, their survival).
What if you were too shy to beg? To starve
from shyness.
(There is a story by Chekhov of a starving
father and son, and the father too
ashamed to beg, and starving son who on
a dare eats oysters fed him by rich men).
Financially, our trip was sponsored by the
actress Angelina Jolie, mother of an
adopted Cambodian child, refugee camp
visitor, and poster child for
UNHCR(United Nations High Commission
for Refugees).Organizationally, the
trip was sponsored by Patch Adams and
Wildman Adams of the Gesundheit!
Institute, who both did a huge amount of
detail work to bring 13 people to Cambodia,
and who had the vision for it.
On the first morning of our visit,we visited
the actual “killing fields” and the
prison camp where thousands of Cambodians
were murdered. I was grateful to
our guides Rachel and Paul for starting
the trip this way – showing us the traces
of suffering created by power over and violence. Though visiting
hospitals also puts us into contexts of suffering, illness is
quite another thing from avoidable humanly-caused misery.
And that we witnessed. A detail I can’t forget: we were shown
a tree against which babies were killed – in order to save precious
bullets, the Khmer Rouge battered the babies against
the tree until they died. “In order to save precious bullets.”
We visited children with AIDS (Cambodia has the highest
rate of AIDS in Asia), people who had been hurt by landmines,
children who had birth defects (some a result of the
chemicals used in warfare). We clowned in a huge school
(formerly a factory) for street children where they learn
trades. The organization that runs this school has three parts:
one part is out in the streets trying to help the children, the
second part is the running of the school, and third part is follow-
up work to keep the children in jobs and not going back
into the streets (they said this was the hardest part–-drugs,
despair, and poverty working more quickly than education).
We ate in a fine restaurant, run by street kids.
The strangest sight, the one my eyes won’t easily digest, was
our clowning at a school which is IN the city dump for the
children who scavenge there. As a huge number of kids spend
their lives in the city dump looking through the huge, thirty
feet high mounds of garbage for salvageable things to sell, this
French agency set up a school right there, IN the dump.When
our bus of clowns arrived, hundreds of smudged and seminaked
kids ran towards us. Normally I bend down, accordion
to my chest, to meet the eye level of the kids. In this place, I
was so overwhelmed by anger (hiding inside was grief), I
couldn’t meet the eyes of the children. I couldn’t look at any
one of them directly. In the background were the mountains
of garbage smoking with dust, with little figures on them (the
kids).Who is to take care?
Eating a nice dinner in a hotel, and the dinner’s cost is
$2.00.What is this? My stinginess gratified (wow, a bargain),
my brain kept thinking, What? What? What? Take care?
Maybe the garbage is taking care.
Who is to take care?
It’s tricky, this “humanitarian clowning”–-my impression
is so strong when I’m there, the desire to help so strong, and
then I come home, and Christmas in this country is brewing,
I get a stomach flu and other things happen, and there I am.
TV and newspapers smirk at me in their slick grind of producing
one more day of expensively calculated ignorance.
POLITICAL ANALYSIS/PARALYSIS
Why? Why did this happen to/in Cambodia? Why this
genocide?
The question “why” arises strongly if you’re thinking while
you’re in Cambodia. Or if you think about it afterwards. The
people seem especially unwarlike.
The explanations that people give you constantly bring up
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and very rarely the US or other
countries. I don’t trust the question “why.”
Why? (ahem,hmmm, errr, whoops, walked into my own
trap).
Herbert Brun was more interested in the results of the
question “when,” than in “why.” “Why” is answered by means
of “because,” “when” is answered in terms of specifying conditions
– not “why was there genocide,” but “when does genocide
happen?”
If it was Pol pot and the Khmer Rouge who killed all the
people, then under what conditions could this have happened?
When does genocide happen? Under which conditions?
The subject of a future article…

The February issue of the Public i
contained an error on page 5 in the
sidebar article entitled “How the
Prison-Industrial-Complex Threatens
Democracy in America.”The statement
containing the error reads, “1 in 32
americans and 1 in 3 blacks are incarcerated,”
and the corrected version
should read, “will be incarcerated in
some form in their lifetime.”

I wish that Peter Rohloff (in the February edition of Public i)
had chosen a different word, besides “boring,” to describe Dennis
Kucinich. Peace is boring; war is exciting. Conservation is
boring, flagrant disregard for our life support system is exciting.
In fact, King George II may be the worst head of state in
recent history (or ever, considering the mind-boggling power
he wields), but he certainly isn’t boring. I can understand
Peter’s desire for an African-American President. Such a president
would bring a sorely missed perspective to leadership of a
country plagued by the not-so-distant ghosts of slavery and
genocide. Al Sharpton has a winning way of speaking, and he is
certainly not boring. However, his platform is not well-defined.
He has yet to be specific on his views about many important
issues, such as trade agreements, agriculture, and energy policy.
Kucinich has specifically outlined thoughtful responses to these
and other pressing needs in our society. Kucinich has experience
working with Congress. He has experience saying “no” to
corporate America. Sharpton may do a credible job, but there is
no doubt that Kucinich is more than qualified for the position.
As for the reality of having to choose between Sharpton and
Kucinich – as any bubbie would tell you, “You should be so
lucky.”

    of Republican
state leaders in Carmi, IL, 15th district
U.S. House Rep. Tim Johnson criticized
his Democratic rivals for believing that
the government best knows how to distribute
the nation’s assets. Republicans,
he argued, believe in free enterprise and
rewarding people who succeed in the
face of risk. At the same time, however,
Johnson also cited the need to pass massive
new spending legislation, recommending
(among other things) using
Federal funds for work on the Wabash
River bridge in Mt. Caramel and spending
millions more on ethanol subsidies
contained in a national energy bill. In
fact, Mr. Johnson has proven quite supportive
of massive government spending,
voting most recently for an $820 billion
omnibus spending bill packed with
pet pork projects (my favorite being a
$225,000 swimming pool restoration in
Sparks, Nevada, included in the bill
because Rep. Jim Gibbons felt bad about
having put tadpoles in the pool’s
drainage system when he was a teenager
in the 1950s). Apparently in these particular
cases, Johnson has no problem
with the government distributing the
nation’s assets.
But why should we worry about such
behavior, especially when such projects
usually mean jobs and money for the
local economy, which sorely needs them?
Mr. Johnson will no doubt cite his ability
to secure such funds as a very valid reason
for his re-election come November.
But there’s a slight problem with this
argument, which all incumbents seem to
make this time of year. What he isn’t
telling you (and what will no doubt go
unmentioned during the campaign) is
that in order to get that money, he made
similar deals with most of the other
members of Congress, arranging for
them to take home millions of dollars
too. And you can bet your bottom dollar
that Johnson—who is a relatively
insignificant figure on Capitol Hill—has
brought home far less money than congressional
big wigs like House majority
leader Tom Delay (TX) or Senate appropriations
chairman Ted Stevens (AK).
When all the bills are tallied, the people
of East Central Illinois will end up
spending a lot more on their pork projects
than we will get back, money that
would be better spent on things like
intelligence gathering or paying down
the national debt.
This, however, is not the only flaw in
the incumbent argument. A second
major fallacy is the idea that the money
is actually coming back to “our” district.
While the individual work may be done
on that Wabash river bridge, there is
absolutely no guarantee that the firm
who wins the contract will be locally
owned or operated. Profits from such a
venture, like those obtained by
the large agri-business
farms that benefit from
the ethanol subsidy,
will go to large corporations
headquartered
in
Chicago, Texas,
or perhaps the
B a h a m a s
(which thus
enables them to
avoid paying
taxes). So not only
are American jobs
and tax revenues
rapidly being outsourced,
but so also is most
of the money the government spends
on economic stimulus packages.
The problem among politicians today
is not really a question of party or ideology,
though, but that their re-election is
so dependent on spending as much
money as possible, (and then spending
more). Currently, there is no political
incentive for elected officials to be fiscally
responsible, or even to put badly
needed programs like national health
insurance ahead of the somewhat less
urgent needs to build a rainforest in
Iowa ($50 million), to get inner-city kids
playing golf in Florida ($2 million) or to
store potatoes in Madison, Wisconsin
($270,000)—all of which the anti-government
spending legislator Tim Johnson
voted for in H.R. 2673. And unless
we find a way to make our voices heard
on the ridiculousness of such waste and
corruption, politicians will go on throwing
our and our children’s future down
the drain. But there is hope for the
future.
One of the most amazing developments
of the last ten years—the internet—
has revolutionized the way politics
works. Today, the acquisition and distribution
of information is more accessible
than it has ever been before. With just
the click of a mouse, one can instantly
access the records of a particular politician’s
statements on the floor of the
House or Senate (http://thomas.loc.gov),
compare their voting record to positions
advocated by major interest groups
(www.vis.org) or locate and search
through local newspaper archives. A
process that once took days is now
reduced to mere seconds. Additionally,
non partisan watchdog groups like Citizens
Against Government Waste
(www.cagw.org) sift
through lengthy and
often times difficult to
understand bills
(such as the $820
billion, 1,448
page omnibus
spending bill
that just passed
through Congress),
identifying
those pork
items your representative
probably
didn’t want you to find
out about. Other organizations,
like the more partisan
MoveOn.org, have proven to be particularly
effective at exposing corporate
and political corruption. What makes
these organizations so revolutionary is
not simply their ability to catalogue
political information, but the power they
possess to deliver it instantaneously to
mass numbers of potential voters. The
internet has removed the logistical veil
that has so long obscured the political
machinations ongoing in Washington,
placing in effect a giant poster above
every incumbent inscribed “Big Constituent
is Watching You.”
Yet the wondrous powers of the internet
do not stop there. Regardless of how
things turned out for former presidential
candidate Howard Dean, his campaign
revolutionized the practice of fundraising,
which had previously been limited
to wealthy individual donors and soft
money from special interest group Political
Action Committees or PACs. Dean’s
campaigned raised $50 million, largely
through individual contributions that
average only $77. To put that number in
perspective, Al Gore only raised $45 million
from individual donors during the
entire 2000 election, with the benefit of
being the party nominee and having a
unified Democratic party behind him
(Dean faced eight other democratic
opponents and didn’t win a single primary).
What Dean’s campaign has suddenly
revealed to longtime political
strategists is that there is a very large and
affluent group out there—Joe public—
who has the financial resources to compete
with the larger more organized special
interest groups. Thus the internet
has also reduced the financial divide
between ordinary people and their candidates,
to the extent that they are now
only an email or credit card donation
away. And that is great news for our
Democracy.
Finally, however, none of the
advances described above will ever be
able to fundamentally change Washington
and the way it operates, unless we
take action. Politicians will only get the
message if they feel their most precious
possession is in jeopardy—namely their
jobs. But here too, the internet is proving
to be a most useful tool. Through
internet chat rooms, web “blogs” and
organizations like Meetup.com, political
organization has become easier than
ever. One can connect with millions of
people, across a wide range of geographic
locations, with relatively little time,
effort or money. There is no reliance on
newspaper advertisements, no need to
find accommodations in which to hold
meetings, nor does one even need to find
a babysitter to watch the kids after a long
day of work. In short, the internet is
providing the power to mobilize ordinary
citizens for participation in the
Democratic process. And the more people
who become involved, the more difficult
it will be for special interest groups
to monopolize political resources.
With deference to Mr. Johnson, the
only way to stop government (or more
specifically the interest groups that run
it) from directing the nation’s assets is
for more of us to become involved in the
political process again. Luckily for us,
however, technology is daily making that
an ever more realizable phenomenon.