“The greatest purveyor of violence
in the world today [is] my own
government. ...[F]or the sake of the hundreds of thousands
trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"So long as the superstition exists
that unjust laws are meant to be
obeyed, so long will slavery exist."
--Gandhi
Basra, Iraq. March 22, 2003 Man carries body of small girl
killed during the siege of Basra. Photo:
Amr Nabil, AP
"We need to humanize the reality of this terrible conflict.
When they say today that there's a massive bombardment, what
they mean is that in a country in which 50% of the people
are 15 or younger, what we are really doing is murdering children.
We can't give up the plea for sanity." --Frieda
Engel, 84, Seniors for Peace
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can take is to speak up
•
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House and your representatives in Congress
•
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•
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out of office!
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Do you know enough to justify going
to war with Iraq?
1. Q: What percentage of the world's population does
the U.S. have?
A: Less than 6%
2. Q: What percentage of the world's wealth does the
U.S. have?
A: 50%
3. Q: Which country has the largest oil reserves?
A: Saudi Arabia
4. Q: Which country has the second largest oil reserves?
A: Iraq
5. Q: How much is spent on military budgets a year
worldwide?
A: $900+ billion
6. Q: How much of this is spent by the U.S.?
A: 50%
7. Q: What percent of US military spending would ensure
the essentials
of
life to everyone in the world, according the UN?
A: 10% (that's about$40
billion, the amount of funding initially requested
to
fund our retaliatory attack on Afghanistan).
8. Q: How many people have died in wars since World
War II?
A: 86 million
9. Q: How long has Iraq had chemical and biological
weapons?
A: Since the early 1980's.
10. Q: Did Iraq develop these chemical & biological weapons
on their own?
A: No, the materials
and technology were supplied by the US
government,
along with Britain and private corporations.
11. Q: Did the US government condemn the Iraqi use of gas warfare
against
Iran?
A: No
12. Q: How many people did Saddam Hussein kill using gas in the
Kurdish
town
of Halabja in 1988?
A: 5,000
13. Q: How many western countries condemned this action at the
time?
A: 0
14. Q: How many gallons of agent Orange did America use in Vietnam?
A: 17million.
15. Q: Are there any proven links between Iraq and September 11th
terrorist
attack?
A: No
16. Q: What is the estimated number of civilian casualties in
the Gulf War?
A: 35,000
17. Q: How many casualties did the Iraqi military inflict on the
western
forces
during the Gulf War ?
A: 148 combat-related
deaths -- Source Many
thousands more --untallied-- developed Gulf War
syndrome
from exposure to the depleted-uranium of U.S. bombs.
18. Q: How many retreating Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by
U.S. tanks
with
ploughs mounted on the front?
A: 6,000
19. Q: How many tons of depleted uranium were left in Iraq and
Kuwait after
the
Gulf War?
A: 40 tons
20. Q: What according to the UN was the increase in cancer rates
in Iraq
between
1991 and 1994?
A: 700%
21. Q: How much of Iraq's military capacity did America claim
it had
destroyed
in 1991? A: 80%
22. Q: Is there any proof that Iraq plans to use its weapons for
anything
other
than deterrence and self defense?
A: No
23. Q: Does Iraq present more of a threat to world peace now than
10 years
ago?
A: No
24. Q: How many civilian deaths has the Pentagon predicted in
the event of
an
attack on Iraq in 2002/3?
A: 10,000
25. Q: What percentage of these will be children?
A: Over 50%
26. Q: How many years has the U.S. engaged in air strikes on Iraq?
A: 11years
27. Q: Was the U.S and the UK at war with Iraq between December
1998
and
September 1999?
A: No
28. Q: How many pounds of explosives were dropped on Iraq between
December1998
and September 1999?
A: 20 million
29. Q: How many years ago was UN Resolution 661 introduced, imposing
strict
sanctions on Iraq's imports and exports?
A: 12 years
30. Q: What was the child death rate in Iraq in 1989 (per 1,000
births)?
A: 38
31. Q: What was the estimated child death rate in Iraq in 1999
(per 1,000
births)?
A: 131 (that's an increase
of345%)
32. Q: How many Iraqis are estimated to have died by October 1999
as a
result
of UN sanctions?
A: 1.5 million
33. Q: How many Iraqi children are estimated to have died due
to sanctions
since
1997?
A: 750,000
34. Q: Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq?
A: No
35. Q: How many inspections were there in November and December
1998?
A:300
36. Q: How many of these inspections had problems?
A: 5
37. Q: Were the weapons inspectors allowed entry to the Ba'ath
Party HQ?
A: Yes
38. Q: Who said that by December 1998, "Iraq had in fact,
been disarmed to
a
level unprecedented in modern history."
A: Scott Ritter, UNSCOM
chief.
39. Q: In 1998 how much of Iraq's post 1991 capacity to develop
weapons
of
mass destruction did the UN weapons inspectors claim to have
discovered
and dismantled?
A: 90%
40. Q: Is Iraq willing to allow the weapons inspectors back in
?
A:Yes
41. Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992?
A: Over 65
42. Q: How many UN resolutions on Israel did America veto between
1972
and
1990?
A: 30+
44. Q: How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons?
A: 8
45. Q: How many nuclear warheads has Iraq got?
A: 0
46. Q: How many nuclear warheads has US got?
A: over 10,000
47. Q: Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons?
A: the US
48. Q: How many nuclear warheads does Israel have?
A: Over 400
50. Q: Who said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become
silent about
things
that matter"?
A: Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.
Ramsey Clark, former
U.S. Attorney General during the Johnson Administration, has drafted
articles of impeachment setting forth high crimes and misdemeanors
by President Bush and other civil officers of his administration.
I want my representative
in the U.S. House of Representatives to vote to impeach President
George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney,
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General
John D. Ashcroft for high crimes and misdemeanors, and to have
the case prosecuted and tried in the U.S. Senate.
by Michael Anne Conley VisionHopePeace@aol.com
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA, Earth
March 9, 2003 -- When I was a very young woman, after being "dumped"
by a boyfriend, my mother offered some wisdom that remains today.
She invited me to consider that as bad as it is to suffer at the
hands of another, it is
far, far worse to be the one who makes the suffering happen.
As a therapist, I have been reminded of this lesson over the
years by Vietnam
veteran clients, whose suffering makes it clear that the horrors
of violence
are not just visited upon the victims. The wounds are at least
as deep and
often more difficult to heal in those who are the perpetrators.
In Vietnam,
this was true for the many young men who took actions while swept
up in the
dynamics of battle that normally they would abhor. In my work,
I know all too well the cost to them, their loved ones and others
who have paid a price for their unresolved guilt and grief.
Please join me in supporting a path out of our current world
dilemma. This
alternative to war is presented by Sojourners, a Christian group
whose
mission "is to proclaim and practice the biblical call to
integrate spiritual
renewal and social justice."
Their solution, developed by a group of U.S. church leaders,
offers concrete
actions, not the least of them a way for American soldiers to
be the source
of salvation rather than slaughter.
This is a form of freedom that we cannot in good conscience withhold.
We must remember that our citizens in the military largely come
into service
not out of desire for aggression, but in search of economic and
educational
opportunity. We owe them our allegiance and our refusal to burden
them with
the role of perpetrators.
Although the Sojourner solution specifically relates to the current
world
situation, it embodies an attitude that is necessary if the human
family is
to end our history of domination and the violence that accompanies
it -- in
order to build a future where partnership is the norm for human
relationship.
Please go to Sojourner's website and join their petition. Then
send their
message out -- not just to those with whom you agree, but those
with whom you have differences. Let us join forces in a creative
solution that works for
all.
An Alternative to War for Defeating Saddam
Hussein
A Religious Initiative
It is the eleventh hour, and the world is poised on the edge
of war. Church
leaders have consistently warned of the unpredictable and potentially
disastrous consequences of war: massive civilian casualties, a
precedent for
preemptive war, further destabilization of the Middle East, and
the fueling
of more terrorism.
Yet the failure to effectively disarm Saddam Hussein and his
brutal regime
could also have potentially catastrophic consequences. The potential
nexus
between weapons of mass destruction and terrorism is the leading
security
issue in the world today. This is the moral dilemma: a decision
between the
terrible nature of that threat and the terrible nature of war
as a solution.
The world is desperate for a "third way" between war
and ineffectual
responses - an alternative to war as the way to defeat Saddam
Hussein. If we
are to find an effective response to Saddam instead of a full-scale
military
assault against Iraq, that "instead" must be strong
enough to be a serious
alternative to war.
In November 2002, the U.N. Security Council decided that Iraq
was in
"material breach" of previous resolutions but gave Iraq
"a final chance to
comply with its disarmament obligations." Since then, the
threat of military
force has been decisive in getting inspectors back into Iraq,
putting
pressure on Saddam finally to comply, and in building an international
consensus for the disarmament of Iraq. The Security Council also
"warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a
result of its continued
violations of its obligations" if it did not comply.
Yet those "serious consequences" need not be war against
the people of Iraq.
The consequences should mean further and more serious actions
against Saddam Hussein and his regime, rather than a devastating
attack on the people of Iraq.
On February 18, 2003, a delegation of U.S. church leaders, accompanied
by colleagues from the United Kingdom and the worldwide Anglican
Communion, met with Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Secretary
of State for International Development, Clare Short, to discuss
alternatives to war. The following elements of a "third way"
- an alternative to war - were developed from those discussions
and subsequent conversations among the U.S. delegation.
1. Remove Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party from power.
The Bush administration and the antiwar movement are agreed on
one thing -
Saddam Hussein is a brutal and dangerous dictator. Virtually nobody
has
sympathy for him, either in the West or in the Arab world, but
everyone has
great sympathy for the Iraqi people who have already suffered
greatly from
war, a decade of sanctions, and the corrupt and violent regime
of Saddam
Hussein. So let's separate Saddam from the Iraqi people. Target
him, but
protect them.
As urged by Human Rights Watch and others, the U.N. Security
Council should establish an international tribunal to indict Saddam
and his top officials
for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indicting Saddam would
send a
clear signal to the world that he has no future. It would set
into motion
both internal and external forces that might remove him from power.
It would
make it clear that no solution to this conflict will include Saddam
or his
supporters staying in power. Morton Halperin pointed out, "As
we have seen in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, such tribunals can discredit
and even destroy criminal regimes." Focusing on Saddam and
not the Iraqi people would clearly
demonstrate that the United States' sole interest is in changing
his regime
and disarming his weapons rather than in harming the Iraqi people.
It would
cause world opinion to coalesce against Saddam's regime rather
than against a U.S.-led war, as is now happening.
2. Enforce coercive disarmament.
a. Military enforcement. Removing Saddam must be coupled with
greatly
intensified inspections to fully enforce all U.N. Security Council
resolutions that relate to Iraq since the 1991 Gulf war. Inspections
have
shown progress - the agreement by Iraq to destroy its Al Samoud-2
missiles is significant. But rather than simply increasing the
number of inspectors,
inspections must be conducted more aggressively and on a much
broader scale. The existing U.S. military deployment should be
restructured as a
multinational force with a U.N. mandate to support and enforce
inspections.
The force would accompany inspectors to conduct extremely intrusive
inspections, be authorized to enter any site, retaliate against
any
interference, and destroy any weapons of mass destruction that
it found. A
more coercive inspections regimen should also include the unrestricted
use of
spy planes and expanded no-fly and no-drive zones.
b. Strengthen the arms embargo. The current system for preventing
Iraq from
acquiring prohibited weapons must be strengthened by a more effective
monitoring system and the installation of advanced detection technology
on
Iraq's borders. At present there is no international monitoring
of commercial
crossings into Iraq from Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and other neighboring
states.
The use of advanced monitoring and scanning technology along with
sanctions
assistance missions on the borders would significantly improve
the capability
to monitor borders and prevent illegal arms shipments.
3. Foster a democratic Iraq.
The United Nations should begin immediately to plan for a post-Saddam
Iraq,
administered temporarily by the U.N. and backed by an international
armed
force, rather than a U.S. military occupation. An American viceroy
in an
occupied Iraq is the wrong solution. A true democratic opposition
must be
identified and developed, rather than simply identifying forces
who would
contribute to a U.S. invasion. An internationally directed post-Saddam
administration could assist Iraqis in initiating a constitutional
process
leading to democratic elections.
4. Organize a massive humanitarian effort now for the people
of Iraq.
The 1991 Gulf war, the following decade of sanctions, and the
corrupt regime
of Saddam Hussein have caused immense suffering for the people
of Iraq. In
recent days, U.N. humanitarian agencies have begun evacuating
personnel in
light of an impending war. Rather than waiting until after a war,
U.N. and
nongovernmental relief agencies should significantly expand efforts
now to
provide food, medical supplies, and other humanitarian assistance
to the
people of Iraq. Focusing on the suffering of the Iraqi people,
and
immediately trying to relieve it, will further help to protect
them from
being the unintended targets of war. It also helps to further
isolate Saddam
Hussein from the Iraqi people by contrasting the world's humanitarian
concern
with Saddam's indifference toward his own people. Humanitarian
aid deliveries must be protected, if necessary, by a U.N. force
under Security Council mandate.
5. Recommit to a "Roadmap to Peace" in the Middle East.
The road to peace in the Middle East leads not through Baghdad,
but through
Jerusalem. The United States, United Kingdom, and other European
Union
nations must address a root cause of Middle East conflict by committing
to a
peace plan resulting in a two-state solution to the conflict between
Israel
and Palestine. It should guarantee a Palestinian state by 2005
while
guaranteeing the safety and security of Israel. This would show
the clear
political and moral link between the deeply rooted and unresolved
Middle East crisis and the larger war on terrorism, including
the Iraq issue.
6. Reinvigorate and sustain the "war against terrorism."
The international campaign against terrorism has succeeded in
identifying and
apprehending suspects, freezing financial assets, and isolating
terror
networks - most recently with the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
But it is in danger of being disrupted, both by acrimony and by
lack of attention, as
the world focuses on the impending conflict with Iraq. Most significant,
a
war against Iraq will fuel anti-American animosity in the Arab
world, where
cooperation in the war on terror is most needed.
It is five minutes before midnight, as Martin Luther King Jr.
might have put
it. Unless an alternative to war is found, a military conflagration
soon will
be unleashed. A morally rooted and pragmatically minded initiative,
broadly
supported by people of faith and people of good will, might help
to achieve a
historic breakthrough and set a precedent for decisive and effective
international action in the many crises we face in the post-September
11
world.
This plan is supported by the members of the U.S. religious delegation
that
met with Prime Minister Blair on February 18, 2003: Jim Wallis,
Executive
Director and Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners; John Bryson Chane,
Episcopal
Bishop of Washington, D.C.; Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk
of the
Presbyterian Church USA; Melvin Talbert, Ecumenical Officer of
the United
Methodist Council of Bishops; and Dan Weiss, Immediate Past General
Secretary of the American Baptist Churches in the USA.
For more information, contact: Helena R. Henderson, Director
of
Communications, 202-328-8842 x223, hhenderson@sojo.net
----------
The Vision of Hope series is intended to remind us of our true
essence, to
bring hope for peace as well as calls for action. The series shares
stories,
myths and prophecy, specifically about women creating peace. More
importantly, this series calls for the rising up of the feminine
principle
within people of all genders to create peace for the human family
and all of
life on earth. Information about any actions you take, or know
of by others,
are eagerly welcomed. They are being compiled, and will be shared
as well.
Send your stories to: VisionHopePeace@aol.com.
This is also the email address for requests to receive previous
and future chapters in the Vision of Hope series.
It is planned to eventually have a website for the whole series,
and for the
time being, some chapters are available on the web:
Chapter 3: The Palestinian Woman's Dream (4/02), is not yet available
on the
web. If you are interested in receiving it, please make a request
to VisionHopePeace@aol.com.
The Vision of Hope series is produced by Michael Anne Conley,
an integrative health educator, licensed marriage and family therapist,
and writer. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area.
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Can you imagine what life would be
like if everything weren’t always getting more crowded, dirtier
and poorer every day with the threat of war and ecological collapse
hanging over our heads? The root cause of our global impoverishment
is growth. Growth both the economic kind and the population kind,
makes every ecological and social problem worse and more unmanageable.
Growth may bring vast wealth to a few, for a limited amount of
time, but the legacy of growth is topsoil loss, over-fished oceans,
deforestation, global warming, species extinction, pollution,
disease, starvation and war. The world needs a strategy to stop
growing and start living sustainably. We now have 6 billion people
and may grow to twice that number in the next few generations
if we don’t do something. Growth not only needs to be stopped,
it needs to be reversed, for a time at least. Some ecologists
think that two billion is a reasonable number for the Earth to
support in perpetuity.
The good news is that we could humanely
reach an optimum global population of two billion in only three
generations. Looking back, when my parents were born, there were
only two billion people in the world. If every woman on earth
today had no more than one child, the number of people of reproductive
age would halve in the next generation. In another two generations,
we could achieve our goal of two billion. Think of what a bright
new day it would be for those two billion people and the other
species they share the planet with. There would be enough of everything,
including clean air, clean water and wilderness. War would become
a thing of the past and the human war against nature would end.
If we had the will, we women could put
the brakes on growth by simply stopping up our wombs for a while.
With the planet headed toward ecological collapse, someone’s
got to take charge. Could women do it? The only precedent I can
think of is a literary one: the classical Greek comedy Lysistrata,
by Aristophanes. Lysistrata whose name means “she who disbands
armies” organizes Athenian and Spartan women in a sex strike
in order to force their men to abandon the war between the two
city-states. The women are tired of losing sons and husbands.
Lysistrata’s bold plan works because the men, befuddled by
horniness and tripping over erections, give in and decide they
prefer to make love, not war. The play ends in a celebration of
pan-Hellenism with Athenians and Spartans singing of their common
battles against the Persians who are “numberless as the sand
on the shores.”
By 300 BC, when Lysistrata was written,
Greece had supported a civilization with an intensive agriculture
and high population density for more than a thousand years. Greek
soils were thin and eroded easily. The land was not as productive
as it once was, and the cities were overcrowded. Athens and Sparta
made peace several times during the Classical period, but war
always broke out again because the underlying causes were never
addressed. Lysistrata may have been based on an actual revolt
by Athenian women against these debilitating Peloponnesian wars.
If Lysistrata had been a real person, what
would she have had to do, to end war permanently? First, she would
have had to convince Greek women to continue their reproductive
strike long enough to reduce population pressure on the crowded
and ecologically depleted peninsula. Then a new era of plenty
might have encouraged Athens and Sparta to live in peace. Ultimately,
to really end war, a Lysistrata would have needed to organize
the enemy Persian women in a sex strike as well.
The Lysistrata strategy then, requires
women to take control of the means of reproduction in order to
reduce population to ecologically sustainable levels. Surprisingly,
the Lysistrata strategy is not a new idea. We know that hunter-gatherers
practiced population limitation as an important part of their
overall survival strategy for thousands of years. It was only
when agriculture opened up the possibility of food storage during
lean times that populations could afford to grow.
Once we learned how to grow, it seems we
can’t learn to stop. It’s like eating potato chips.
You can’t eat just one and it’s awfully hard to stop
before you’ve consumed the whole bag. The Lysistrata strategy
challenges us to stop at just one --one child that is.
What I’m calling “the potato
chip factor,” really is related to food. Studies of modern
hunter gatherers like the !Kung people of the Kalahari, show that
the average woman bears four children. Only two survive to reproduce,
keeping numbers stable. A long period of nursing serves to suppress
ovulation so that pregnancies are spaced by four to five years.
Called lactational amenorrhea, this is the critical factor in
keeping birth rates down, but it exists only under certain conditions:
nursing must be constant and regular, and a woman’s body
fat percentage must be low. When agricultural grains are substituted
for grubs, leaves and nuts, body fat increases and natural contraception
is destroyed.
Intensive, grain-based agriculture had
another effect besides increasing women’s body fat; it also
gave an incentive to produce large families. More hands to thresh
and sow meant more grain produced and the ability to feed more
mouths.
As populations grew, unavoidably there
was more conflict between tribes. Metallurgy and the horse provided
formidable war machinery. Military technology combined with large-scale
food production, storage, and redistribution systems allowed the
first expansionist empires of the Near East to form. With agriculture
as sower and war as reaper, humanity was now locked into the patriarchal
large family system.
Civilizations formalized their new survival
strategy in the first written codes of law. Gerda Lerner, in her
book, The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) has analyzed four of these
codes: the Codex Hammurabi, Middle Assyrian law, Hittite laws
and biblical law. She found that up to fifty percent of these
laws concerned the reproductive and sexual behavior of women.
Under Middle Assyrian Law, for example, abortion was a capital
crime punished by a stake through the heart of the offending woman.
So much for reproductive choice.
Everywhere in the pre-modern world, women’s
reproductive function was the foundation of politics because a
man was powerful in proportion to the number of kin he could rally
to his cause. But outside the empires, in small-scale, tribal
societies, this political power took a completely different shape.
Maximizing the number of offspring was not the always the best
strategy, because as a couple’s progeny increased, the balance
of power in the community could shift and kinsmen would begin
to feel threatened.
Because population limitation in tribal
societies was so critical, there was also a lack of privacy in
family life: sex and babies were everybody’s business. With
the coming of big agriculture and the military state, inhibitions
on family size were loosened. Family life became a private affair,
under the control of the father who was the only family member
answerable to the state as a citizen.
Conflict between the private and public
spheres was a prominent subject in Greek drama of the classical
period. One of the themes of Lysistrata is the men’s denial
of women’s right to an opinion on political matters like
war. Lysistrata must point out to them that women make a contribution
to war --their sons-- and so have the right to a say in the matter.
Aristophanes used the device of inverting the established order
(putting women in charge) to dip into the domestic sphere for
feminine values to apply to the problem of war. In the end though,
the spheres remain separate and the problem of war in real life
remains unsolved.
The Greeks, like every other civilization
of the time, were locked into the large family system. Not to
produce cannon fodder would lead to their downfall. Through their
literature, though, we know that they valued the egalitarianism
of a small-scale society. Aristotle was among the first to advocate
limiting population. He advised abortion for parents with too
many children, writing in Politics that "... neglect of an
effective birth control policy is a never failing source of poverty
which in turn is the parent of revolution and crime." Democracy
itself is a holdover from small-scale, tribal society, not a hallmark
of civilization at all. Ultimately, Greek democracy was devoured
by internal warfare that weakened its ability to fight off conquerors
from outside. Within 200 years of Aristophanes, the Greeks were
nothing but a backwater Roman colony.
Our modern form of civilization has been
advanced by people who lift their ideals from Greek rationalism
and democracy and who hope for an end to war and injustice. These
hopes have been based on a projected end to scarcity brought about
by technology. Modern progressives often take the position that
overpopulation will end only after development is brought to the
world and poverty is ended.
What most progressives don’t seem
to realize is that overpopulation among the poor is strategically
beneficial to the wealthy classes. The French term, proletariat,
literally means “breeders.” Marvin Harris and Eric B.
Ross provide enlightenment on this issue in their important history
of population regulation: Death, Sex and Fertility, Population
Regulation in Preindustrial and Developing Societies (1987). They
use the fabled Irish potato famine to illustrate the impact of
economic exploitation on population growth. Contrary to myth,
the potato was an established food crop in Ireland long before
the famine of the 1840’s and did not by itself cause the
Irish population boom.
Landlords who wanted to switch from cattle
grazing to grain production, which required a larger work force,
brought about the Irish population boom. Landlords manipulated
population growth through the tax structure. They encouraged peasants
to marry earlier by allowing them to grow potatoes tax-free in
order to feed their large families. But after only a few decades,
landlords switched back to grazing to cash in on the market for
meat to supply English colonial armies. At the very height of
the famine, shiploads of Irish grain and meat were delivered to
England’s shores while English politicians and men of letters
blamed the profligacy of the starving Irish.
Modernity has seen the final shift of political
power from kinship relations to the bureaucratic control of large
populations of workers. The corporate state profits from a surplus
of people and has every reason to encourage breeding among the
masses. Otherwise how will wages be kept so low? Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn was an American labor radical and an early proponent of
family planning who articulated this relationship back before
1920: “The large family system rivets the chains of slavery
upon labor more securely. It crushes the parents, starves the
children, and provides cheap fodder for machines and cannons.”
In our day, capitalism finds its cheap
labor among the masses of the third world, so there’s no
immediate threat to the system by stabilizing population in the
so-called first world. But as women step out of enforced motherhood
and into other societal roles, the backlash against reproductive
choice is coming from a different segment of the patriarchal power
structure. As Susan Faludi pointed out in Backlash (1991), the
leaders of the anti-abortion movement are often working class
white men whose relatively privileged place in society has recently
evaporated. Without the little woman under their thumb, they have
no basis for self esteem.
In the United States, fundamentalist terrorists
have robbed women of their choices. Abortion and family planning
services are ever more scarce. The US is the fastest growing industrialized
nation in the world and only one-third of that growth comes from
immigration. We also have one of the highest teenage pregnancy
rates in the world. Here in my rural Oregon community, where the
problem is particularly acute, almost 30% of the female high school
students are pregnant or already mothers. Teenagers are less likely
to use contraceptives effectively, but for a teenager in my community
to obtain an abortion she would have to travel between 75 and
200 miles, depending on which clinics were open. And the fundamentalist
right has managed to stigmatize abortion to the extent that most
of these teens would not even consider it. Conception happens,
and even for responsible adults, abortion will always be a necessary
option.
Ginette Paris, in her provocative book,
The Sacrament of Abortion (1992), gets to the heart of the matter:
“Men have the right to kill and destroy, and when the massacre
is called a war they are paid to do it and honored for their actions.
War is sanctified, even blessed by our religious leaders. But
let a woman decide to abort a fetus that doesn’t even have
the neurological apparatus to register suffering, and people are
shocked. What’s really shocking is that a woman has the power
to make a moral judgment that involves a choice of life or death.
That power has been reserved for men.”
In the less developed world, women need
more than just attitude changes to give them choices. The 1994
UN Population Conference in Cairo reached a consensus on what
is required: Women need basics such as food, clean water, health
care and access to contraceptives and abortion. The Cairo Conference
concluded that providing better reproductive care worldwide would
cost $17 billion annually, which is less than the world currently
spends each week on armaments. Again, we must follow the example
of Lysistrata who knew that a sex strike alone wouldn’t be
enough --she had her women seize the treasury of Athens as well.
But if the stakes in these matters of sex
and war were high before, they are even higher now. In 1970, Stephanie
Mills, in her speech as college valedictorian, declared that she
would refrain from bringing any children into the world since
overpopulation was threatening global ecological collapse. Since
1970, a few more women have made such public declarations, and
an unknown number have privately decided to forego or limit childbearing
out of ecological considerations. But, there has been no large-scale,
public “procreation strike.” The reasons for this, I
believe, are partly found in the public/private dichotomy that
is an integral part of patriarchy. It is not socially acceptable
to interfere in the reproductive decisions of families, even by
verbal persuasion. Even the pro-choice movement defends abortion
by using the right to privacy. But given the threat to biodiversity
and ecological integrity that is posed by our increasing population,
a truly pro-life movement is desperately needed to beat the drum
for voluntary limits on reproduction.
We must imagine a world without runaway
growth, where war cannot exist because there is enough for all.
We must seize the treasury and make full reproductive health services
available to every woman in the world. We as women must think
globally and act as locally as our own bodies, recognizing that
we own the means of reproduction and that we must choose small
families in this time of resource shrinkage. That is the message
that the postmodern Lysistrata needs to take to the women of the
polity.
By supporting the mainstream American corporate
economy, you are supporting the war in Iraq. If you oppose the
war, please use every ounce of your economic clout to stop it.
Every dollar has power. Think carefully about what you do with
each and every one.
Basic rule 1: Don’t buy it!
Consumer spending drives the economy, so if you really don’t
need it – don’t buy it! Postpone major purchases as
long as possible.
Basic rule 2:
If you have to buy, then buy from private parties or small, local
(and preferably progressive) retailers and outlets. If items you
need are not available from a progressive local retailer, make
an extra effort to buy used instead of new.
Basic rule 3: In cases where local/used
options are not available or too costly, opt for products and
services from corporations that are foreign-owned rather than
American-owned. But if Tony Blair actively joins the war effort,
shun British companies as well.
Basic rule 4:
Repair or refurbish durable goods rather than buying new. If it
doesn’t make sense (on smaller items) to pay somebody else
to fix it, try fixing it yourself before discarding. Upgrade your
old computers rather than buying new. You might learn something
and you’ve got nothing to lose.
Note: This document is meant NOT for the
radical fringe, but for the millions of mainstream Americans who
oppose the war. Obviously, you can go much further than this and
drop out of the American economy almost entirely. But with that
said, here are some specific tips for the rest of us.
Financial
Withdraw all of your money from, and close
all accounts with, large banks and banking conglomerates. Shift
your money to small local or regional banks (check to make sure
they aren’t really part of a larger conglomerate) or, even
better, to a local credit union. Credit unions are member-owned
financial cooperatives, and often all you have to do is live or
work in a certain area to qualify for membership.
If you have any money in the stock market
(e.g. mutual funds), put it all in ONLY companies or funds with
a proven track record of social responsibility. Otherwise, sell
and put your money in a local bank or credit union, or invest
directly in local businesses. Stuff it under the mattress if you
have to! (A better investment than the Bush market.)
If you must continue to use credit cards,
pay your balance every month. Most profit comes from interest
and late fees – the merchant’s portion mainly covers
operating expenses. If you have a card issued by MBNA, get rid
of it; this particular issuer was the #1 contributor to the Bush
campaign.
Telecommunications
If you’re using one of the ‘Big
Four, (MCI, AT&T, Sprint or Qwest) for your Long Distance
(LD) service, you are certainly paying much more that you have
to and you are supporting big unwieldy companies with questionable
moral/financial records. Consider the options in the next paragraph.
As for Internet access, dump AOL (Time/Warner) or any other media/telecom
giants. Go with a local ISP, even if it costs a bit more.
Regarding lower cost LD calling, you can
purchase from a smaller, but high quality network provider, and
deal with a local agent. I recommend two programs. The best choice
depends on whether the majority of calls are within the state
of residence or whether the majority are out of state calls. If
the majority of your +1 Long Distance dialing is outside of the
state in which you live, then the program that will bring you
the best saving at $.039/minute anytime for interstate calls,
billed in six second increments can be subscribed to here: http://www.onlineld.com/waterdance
The intrastate rate within CA is $.0485 per minute, but varies
from state to state. Type in your phone number at the above site
to check what your intrastate rate would be and to see if you
qualify. This program is limited to customers of former Bell companies
such as SBC, Verizon etc. There are cheaper ways to make LD calls,
but with generally lower quality and with the need to call an
intermediate number to access a digital device that will convert
your voice call to what is called voice over internet protocol
(VOIP). Most folks prefer to just pick up their phone and dial
a number directly.
If the majority of your calls are within
the state in which you live, then print out the attached form
for 1Com service and fax it to the number indicated. The 1Com
rate for intrastate calling in CA is $.035 per minute and $.049
interstate. The rate for OR is $.08/min. I can quote rates for
any other states for which someone might be interested. 1Com calls
are also billed in six-second increments. For anyone making internatio
