Monday 24 November 2014

Gender inequality is a man's problem

Joan Chittister      Nov. 4, 2014         From Where I Stand      National Catholic Reporter

The headlines are confusing. The questions they raise are even more so. For instance, we "empowered" women, right? After more than 2,000 years, the Western world finally woke up, in our time, to the astounding recognition that women, too, were human. Almost.

 By 1922, most English-speaking countries, including the United States, finally allowed women to vote for political leaders. The struggle was a fierce one, and churchmen and politicians alike considered that breakdown in society to be simply the beginning of the decline. As Cardinal James Gibbons is said to have reflected, "Imagine what will happen to society when women start hanging around polling places."

And sure enough, the floodgates of immorality swung open: It wasn't long before women were allowed to own property, to work outside the home, to drive cars, to keep their own money, to get an education, to enter into legal contracts, to become "professionals" -- at first, teachers and nurses, but eventually doctors and lawyers and now bankers and engineers, astronauts and college presidents. You would think, with a record like that, that women had really arrived at a point of full adulthood, independence, moral agency and personal freedom. Yet there is another set of headlines, more powerful, more telling than the first, that expose the lie of it all.

 This set of headlines -- women groped here, kidnapped there, murdered everywhere, disappeared forever, remind a woman always not to assume that she can walk down a city street in the United States and expect to get home safely, in one piece, alive. These stories remind her that however much she achieves, does, saves, earns, manages, or assumes to be her human right, her life is really not her own. It is at the eternal mercy of fraternity boys, football teams, stalkers, prowlers, sex addicts, women-hunters, and rampant testosterone.

 This set of headlines talks about the domestic abuse of wives and mothers and so-called "honor killings" or pornographic humiliation women are subject to even now, even here in the United States, if she violates a man's unwritten code for a woman. Regardless of all that talk about "equality." It is only when men stand up as a class and confront other men on the subject that women can begin to hope for violence-free lives.

 Men must face other men. Men must tell the male judges and male parliaments and male police departments and male servicemen and male coaches and male sports teams and male rap music and male CEOs of everything that they will no longer be silent. That they will no longer look the other direction when wife-beaters and rapists and stalkers and trash-talkers find some excuse for it in male hormones or female "provocations."

Then the dirty jokes will cease to be funny; the locker-room talk will stop being acceptable; the language you must "never use in front of your mother" will not be acceptable anywhere, including in front of other men. It all has something to do with the way fathers train their sons and conduct their own lives for them to model. It has something to do with the way coaches train their teams. It touches, too, on the way courts and colleges deal with the only crime on the books that is not really treated as a crime until it's too late -- for both the woman and the man involved.

No, this is not a woman's problem. This is not about the equality of a woman. This is about our definition of a man. This has something to do with what we really believe about the rationality, self-control and spiritual quality of men. From where I stand, for men to take it for granted that men simply "do these things" is the greatest male insult of them all. Maybe that's why football commissioners and Army generals and college presidents are failing so badly where women are concerned.

 But here's the news flash of the day: Just as I was finishing this column, the local paper on Oct. 3 announced that dozens of men in a small adjoining town will "
Walk a Mile in Her Shoes" -- in high heels -- to show support for women dealing with domestic abuse.

 Finally. Now if men here -- men in clubs, men in parishes, men in administrative positions, men in religious ministry, men in locker rooms and bars and schools and on army bases -- will only do the same, maybe someday, women will be able to walk our streets alone, too. [Abridged]

http://ncronline.org/blogs/where-i-stand/gender-inequality-mans-problem

US drone strikes – the facts on the ground: 41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed

Spencer Ackerman in New York                Guardian/UK                          24 Nov. 2014

The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a village
in Pakistan called Damadola. Later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida’s leader, this time in Bajaur. 8 years later, Zawahiri is still alive. 76 children and 29 adults, according to reports, are not.

Qari Hussain was a deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group aligned with al-Quaida. The drones first came for Hussain years before, on 29 January 2008. Then they came on 23 June 2009, 15 January 2010, 2 October 2010 and 7 October 2010. Finally, on 15 October 2010, Hellfire missiles fired from a Predator or Reaper drone killed Hussain,
the Pakistani Taliban later confirmed. For the death of a man whom practically no American can name, the US killed 128 people, 13 of them children, none of whom it meant to harm.

A new analysis of the data available to the public about drone strikes, conducted by the human-rights group Reprieve, indicates that even when operators target specific individuals – the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls “targeted killing” – they kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times. Attempts to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people, as of 24 November.


“Drone strikes have been sold to the American public on the claim that they’re ‘precise’. But they are only as precise as the intelligence that feeds them. There is nothing precise about intelligence that results in the deaths of 28 unknown people, including women and children, for every ‘bad guy’ the US goes after,” said Reprieve’s Jennifer Gibson, who spearheaded the group’s study.

Some 24 men specifically targeted in Pakistan resulted in the death of 874 people. All were reported in the press as “killed” on multiple occasions, meaning that numerous strikes were aimed at each of them. The vast majority of those strikes were unsuccessful. An estimated 142 children were killed in the course of pursuing those 24 men, only six of whom died in the course of drone strikes that killed their intended targets.

An analytically conservative Council on Foreign Relations tally assesses that 500 drone strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan have killed
3,674 people. As well, the data is agnostic on the validity of the named targets struck on multiple occasions being marked for death in the first place.

Like all weapons, drones will inevitably miss their targets given enough chances. But the secrecy surrounding them obscures how often misses occur and the reasons for them. Even for the 33 named targets whom the drones eventually killed – successes, by the logic of the drone strikes – another 947 people died in the process.

There are myriad problems with analyzing data from US drone strikes. Those strikes occur under a blanket of official secrecy, which means analysts must rely on local media reporting about their aftermath, with all the attendant problems besetting journalism in dangerous or denied places. Anonymous leaks to media organizations, typically citing an unnamed American, Yemeni or Pakistani official, are the only acknowledgements that the strikes actually occur, or target a particular individual.

Without the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command declassifying more information on the strikes, unofficial and imprecise information is all that is available, complicating efforts to independently verify or refute administration assurances about the impact of the drones. 

A Reprieve team investigating on the ground in Pakistan turned up what it believes to be a confirmed case of mistaken identity. Someone with the same name as a terror suspect on the Obama administration’s “kill list” was killed on the third attempt by US drones. His brother was captured, interrogated and encouraged to “tell the Americans what they want to hear”: that they had in fact killed the right person. Reprieve has withheld identifying details of the family in question, making the story impossible to independently verify.

“President Obama needs to be straight with the American people about the human cost of this programme. If even his government doesn’t know who is filling the body bags every time a strike goes wrong, his claims that this is a precise programme look like nonsense, and the risk that it is in fact making us less safe looks all too real,” Gibson said. [Abridged]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147 

Monday 17 November 2014

Progressive Critique

 by Ian Harris                          Otago Daily Times                         November 14, 2014 

Every social, political and religious movement should be open to periodic self-critique. That can be uncomfortable, but the impulse towards a clear-eyed self-awareness is a sign of health, and every such movement is the better for it.

The Labour Party is in the throes of this soul-searching. The neo-liberal economic fundamentalists currently in the ascendant are not. Pope Francis has pitched his bishops into a review of the settled Catholic stance on homosexuality and remarried divorcees – and, not surprisingly, is meeting resistance. And at the other end of the spectrum, signs are that some within the Progressive Christianity movement are wondering whether their cause is quite the full package after all.

One such is Canadian Bruce Sanguin, a United Church minister, who brings a distinctive perspective to the movement he is part of. He calls it “evolutionary Christian spirituality”, in which “everything and everybody is involved in a sacred, evolutionary process – including the Christian faith”.

Reflecting on progressive audiences he has addressed in Canada and Australia, Sanguin notes that progressives generally are ageing. They have awakened to the limits of traditional Christianity, he says, “but they are still juiced by the whole modernist and postmodernist deconstruction project”. (Modernism homes in on reason, science and logic, while postmodernism blurs all the edges.)

That poses some challenges to progressive Christianity, Sanguin says. He sees five:

● The movement barely resonates with young people.
“Younger people aren’t as fascinated by all this fuss over scholarly accounts of what Jesus did and didn’t say,” he says. “They are looking for inspiration, and hear a lot of information. Many migrate to more conservative denominations who still think that Jesus is a big deal, and are increasingly integrating the justice dimension once owned by liberal Christianity.”

● Progressive Christianity seems stuck in a reactive phase – it’s against biblical literalism, homophobia, and the theology that Jesus died to atone for the sins of the world. With the movement under fire from religious conservatives, this reaction is understandable. “I suspect, though, that the way forward is to stop defending and start transcending.”

● There’s a lot of unnecessary wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Christian tradition. Progressives emphasise what they take issue with – “but our need to be relevant and to differentiate from ‘them’ often leaves us with little more to offer than secular humanism.”
Sanguin adds: “I’ve felt for some time that the reduction of Christianity, or any religion, to values and virtues is not actually progressive. It’s the modernist project. We espouse taking the Bible seriously, not literally – so why not apply this to traditional doctrine? Let’s be curious, not dismissive.” During a high Lutheran service he attended, he admits that sometimes he had to “swallow hard and plug my ears”. Despite that, he was also surprised by hidden layers of meaning within the liturgy.  “Over the last couple of thousand years some pretty intelligent souls got some things right,” he says. “In an evolutionary paradigm, the principle is to transcend and include.”

● Progressives run the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Sanguin says there is no religious feeling without some sense of providence or divine activity in the world. This does not require belief in a deity who intervenes directly in any given situation. If, however, progressives rule out any notion of providence they are left without any felt sense of grace – that overflowing generosity of spirit that renews and transforms. “In an evolutionary paradigm, there is a felt sense that the Whole is moving in a biased (not predetermined) trajectory toward an increase in beauty, truth and goodness.”

● The practice of progressive Christianity “pretty much comes down to justice”. While this is a strength of the movement, progressives must acknowledge that evangelical churches, many with a younger membership, have often become more radical in applying it. “If we progressives don’t have practices to help us to evolve our hearts and minds – to ‘have the mind that was in Christ Jesus’ – even our justice work will be part of the problem.”

So where to from there? Sanguin suggests that progressives need to evolve their “spiritual intelligence”, and points to rich resources within the Christian heritage, including the contribution of Christian mystics.

Clearly, the mystics’ experience cannot be lifted out of their cultural setting centuries ago and superimposed upon our own. It needs to be rethought and re-expressed in the context of our western secular culture and worldview, including new knowledge about human consciousness. But Sanguin has given some useful pointers to work on.
 

Modern War: A True Global Health Emergency

A unique historical moment to look at global health, with a special look at Iraq after more than twenty years of war

By
Claudia Lefko                    Common Dreams                  November 10, 2014

War destroys countless lives immediately, but it also destroys health systems and key social structures, turning societies once able to nurture health and save lives, into societies stripped of that ability. "It's basic and obvious, hidden in plain sight," writes Lefko.

One of the most serious problems Iraqis have been living with as a result of war and western imperialism is the disatrous decline of health and health care capacity. It has become one of those long-standing crisis that are so familiar they've become ordinary, like poverty and food insecurity. These situations, lives lived in these circumstances, become normalized—"normal" in the public view and public discourse. Even, it may seem, normal to the people directly affected. But the situation in Iraq is not normal, there is very little about life in Baghdad in the last decades that can be seen as normal.

One aspect of the health crisis is the ever-increasing cancer rate in Iraq. It has become the norm; normal is not newsworthy. Newsworthy events—ongoing violence and sectarian struggles—push cancer and health out of the headlines and out of the news altogether. And so the crisis is missing from the media and generally speaking, missing from the agenda of activists and international health organizations.

Enter ISIS and Ebola, putting health and Iraq and crisis back into the news, creating a unique opportunity to look at Iraq and Iraqis beyond the headline-grabbing topics of war and western imperialism to one that concerns daily life and impacts the very future of life in that country and in every country suffering from a natural disaster such as an epidemic or from human-made disasters such as war: health.

For some years now, prominent doctors, medical organizations and institutions such as Partners in Health (PIH) have been talking about the critical importance of "life on the ground" factors that influence health. And even more importantly, they have been initiating and implementing projects based on a holistic, human rights approach and encouraging others to do the same. PIH has been promoting support for international covenants that guarantee health as a human right, understanding that the health of individuals and communities is directly impacted by other guaranteed rights: adequate housing, education, food, social security, decent work, and "the right to the highest standard of physical and mental health."

In the background of the Ebola crisis, quietly day by day, the US and others are bombing in Iraq and Syria; no one is talking about how this will impact health or the health care system in those countries. In the case of Iraq, the question is how it will further exacerbate the already disastrous and ever-deteriorating health situation that has been developing over the last twenty four years, since the First Gulf War and UN Sanctions in 1990.

The country once had the best medical care in the Middle East. It was a modern country, with modern facilities and infrastructure. Social and economic policies supported other aspects of life that contributed to a healthy population: free and mandatory education through university, affordable housing, ample food availability and high employment, guaranteed by government subsidized jobs. Most, if not all of this is long gone. It shouldn't surprise anyone. As the famous poster said, back in the 60s, War is not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things. Another obvious truth gathering dust in closets all over the USA.

Ebola is a serious disease that demands our best attentions at this moment. But, war is also a serious disease that has been taking a toll on millions of people. In places too numerous and painful to list... Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to name a few. It also demands our best attentions. "...the present global health crisis is not primarily one of disease, but of governance," writes global health consultant Ilona Kickbush.

I am heartened by the critical work of these medical professionals and organizations. It gives us, as activists and agitated citizens, a powerful platform to stand on. Collectively, this is an important moment. In the aftermath of the huge climate change actions across the globe, we have an opportunity to create new alliances, with new possibilities. Our job is to find, maintain and maximize the connections that will aggregate our struggles in support of healthy people living on a healthy planet.

[Abridged]
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/10/modern-war-true-global-health-emergency 

One My Lai a Month

by Robert C. Koehler                          Common Dreams                      Oct. 23, 2014

 “When somebody asks, ‘Why do you do it to a gook, why do you do this to people?’ your answer is, ‘So what, they’re just gooks, they’re not people. It doesn’t make any difference what you do to them; they’re not human.’

 “And this thing is built into you,” Cpl. John Geymann testified almost 44 years ago at the Winter Soldier Investigation, held in Detroit, which was sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. “It’s thrust into your head from the moment you wake up in boot camp to the moment you wake up when you’re a civilian.”

The cornerstone of war is dehumanization. This was the lesson of Nam, from Operation Ranch Hand (the dumping of 18 million gallons of herbicides, including Agent Orange, on the jungles of Vietnam) to My Lai to the use of napalm to the bombing of Cambodia. And the Winter Soldier Investigation began making the dehumanization process a matter of public knowledge.

It was a stunning and groundbreaking moment in the history of war. Yet — guess what? — the three-day hearing, in which 109 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians testified about the reality of American operations in Vietnam, doesn’t show up on the “interactive timeline” of the Department of Defense-sponsored website commemorating, as per President Obama’s proclamation, the 50-year anniversary of the war.

This is no surprise, of course. The awkwardly unstated, cowardly point of the site, as well as the presidential proclamation — “they pushed through jungles and rice paddies, heat and monsoon, fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans” — is to “nice-ify” the ghastly war, wipe off the slime, return public consciousness to a state of unquestioning adoration of all U.S. military operations and banish “Vietnam Syndrome” from the national identity.

So what if somewhere between 2 and 3 million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians were killed in it, along with 58,000 American soldiers (with, by some measures, a far greater number of vets committing suicide afterward)? A bad war is nothing but trouble for those who want to wage the next one. It took a generation before the military-industrial economy was able to launch the war on terror, which itself no longer has massive public support. Maybe restoring Vietnam to a state of false glory is part of a larger plan to make the American public proud of all its wars and, thus, more compliant about the idea of permanent war.

The Vietnam War Commemoration website is generating serious pushback, such as the Veterans for Peace “full disclosure” campaign; and a petition demanding that the tidal wave of protests against the war in the ’60s and ’70s be included as part of the war’s legacy. I agree, of course, but hasten to add that there’s far more at stake here than the accuracy of the historical record. As long-time journalist and Middle East scholar Phyllis Bennis told the New York Times, “You can’t separate this effort to justify the terrible wars of 50 years ago from the terrible wars of today.” I repeat: The cornerstone of every war is the dehumanization, a terrifying process with long-lasting and infinitely unfolding consequences. And the Vietnam War was the first in which the full horror of this process, stripped of all glory and pseudo-necessity, reached significant public awareness.

The website’s effort to undo this awareness is pathetic. In an early version, for instance, the My Lai massacre was dismissed as an “incident.” Public objection forced the website to bite the bullet and acknowledge, in its March 16, 1968 listing: “American Division kills hundreds of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.” Ho hum. It was still a good war, right? My Lai was just an aberration. But as the vets’ Winter Soldier testimony and numerous books and articles make horrifically clear, My Lai was not an aberration but situation normal: “They’re just gooks, they’re not people.”

As Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson pointed out in a 2006 article in the Los Angeles Times (“Civilian Killings Went Unpunished”), based on the examination of declassified Army files: “Abuses were not confined to a few rogue units, a Times review of the files found. They were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam.” The documents substantiated 320 incidents of torture, abuse or mass murder of Vietnamese civilians, with many hundreds more reported but not substantiated, they wrote.

This much is clear: American soldiers were pressured from above, trained and ordered, to treat the “enemy” – including civilians, including children – as subhuman. All the carnage that followed was predictable. And as the morally injured vets home from Iraq and Afghanistan keep letting us know, it’s still the way we go to war.

[Abridged] http://commonwonders.com/world/one-my-lai-a-month/

For a Moment, the World Embraces the Cuba Model – and Slaps the Empire

Glen Ford                 Black Agenda Report           Common Dreams        Nov. 2, 2014

This week, the nations of the world – with two savage exceptions – instructed their emissaries at the UN General Assembly to tell the world’s self-designated “indispensable” country to end its 54-year-long trade embargo against Cuba. The virtually unanimous global rebuke to the American superpower tells us that it is Cuba, not the U.S. that is the truly “exceptional” nation on the planet. It was the 23rd time that the UN has rejected the embargo.

Despite having suffered cumulative economic damages of more than $1 trillion at U.S. hands over the last half-century, the island nation of 11 million people has made itself a medical superpower that shares its life-saving resources with the world. No country or combination of nations and NGOs comes close to the speed, size and quality of Cuba’s response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. With 461 doctors, nurses and other health professionals either already on site or soon to be sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Cuba sets the standard for international first-response. The Cuban contingent of medical professionals providing direct treatment to sick people outnumbers that of all individual countries and private organizations, including the Red Cross.

Doctors Without Borders is second to Cuba in terms of health professionals. But the French NGO is a swiftly revolving door, churning doctors and nurses in and out every six weeks because of the extreme work and safety conditions. Cuba’s health brigades are different. Every volunteer is expected to remain on duty in the Ebola zone for six months. Moreover, if any of the Cubans contract Ebola or any other disease, they will be treated at the hospitals where they work, alongside their African patients, rather than sent home. (One Cuban died of cerebral malaria, in Guinea, last Sunday.)

In sheer numbers, the Cuban medical posture in Africa is surpassed in scope only by the armed presence of AFRICOM, the U.S. military command, which has relationships with every country on the continent except Eritrea, Zimbabwe and Sudan. The governments of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone collaborate militarily with AFRICOM, but the heavily-armed Americans were of no use when Ebola hit. Indeed, the Euro-American legacy in Africa that starved public health systems, is the root reason Liberia and Guinea have only one doctor for every 100,000 people, and Sierra Leone has just two.

When the call went out, 15,000 Cubans competed for the honor to battle Ebola in Africa. As reported in The Guardian, doctors like Leonardo Fernandez were eager to fulfill their moral and professional mission. “We know that we are fighting against something that we don’t totally understand,” he said. “We know what can happen. We know we’re going to a hostile environment. But it is our duty. That’s how we’ve been educated.”

For the United States, military adventure and the imperative to seize other countries’ natural resources or strangle their economies, are defining national characteristics – in complete contrast to Cuba. The U.S. embargo of its island neighbor is among the world’s longest-running morality plays, with Washington as villain. On this issue, the world’s biggest economic and military power could neither buy nor bully a single ally other than the Zionist state.

Cuba’s neighbors in CARICOM, the Caribbean Economic Community, were represented by Saint Kitts and Nevis, whose ambassador pointed to Cuban-built hospitals and clinics throughout the region; the hundreds of Cuban doctors that have provided the only medical services available to many of Haiti’s poor before, during and after the catastrophic earthquake of 2010; and the thousands of Caribbean students that have benefited from free university education in Cuba.

Cuba’s exemplary conduct in the world has made the yearly UN vote on the U.S. embargo a singular opportunity for all the world body’s members, except one, to chastise the superpower that seeks full spectrum domination of the planet. It is the rarest of occasions, a time of virtual global unanimity on an evil in which the Empire is currently engaged. Once a year, the world – in both effect and intent – salutes the Cuban model. For a moment, humanity’s potential to organize itself for the common good illuminates the global forum.

This year, the model glows brightly in the darkness of microbial pestilence. When 15,000 Cuban health care workers do not hesitate to step into the Ebola pit, the New Man and Woman may already exist – and there is hope for the rest of us. [Abridged]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/02/moment-world-embraces-cuba-model-and-slaps-empire

Monday 10 November 2014

Choose Your Model: Police or Military Forces

Arthur Palmer             9 November, 2014

NZ is generally regarded as a reasonably successful functioning democracy, in which there is widespread acceptance of the body of laws that governs us, with only minor disagreement. Improvements here and there are regularly proposed, debated and sometimes added to the whole body of law and custom, and no one suggests that this process should cease. The only proviso is that all must be done peaceably in an orderly fashion. Any attempt to suppress debate by force is frowned on and, if serious, dealt with by police.

We have become accustomed to seeing our Police Force operate without a show of weaponry, although we know that weapons are there in the background, and can be called upon if the legal authority is challenged by force. But this happens rarely, and when it does there is a strong public reaction condemning the offender. Usually this is someone lacking a sense of solidarity with the society in which he lives – it is normally a male in such cases. Often there is a mental health disability involved. If excessive force from a weapon is called into play by the Police, this will be questioned, and an inquiry may follow. But it is rare for our Police Force to be censured. We pride ourselves that respect for their authority is such that this will win the day.

There is a fundamental difference between the rationale for the Police Force and that for the Armed Forces of the Defence Dept. The police have the responsibility of keeping order in a society that has trained and appointed them to see that all our social activities are conducted peaceably, without hindrance to other members going about their lawful business. The police are there to lubricate and assist the process. 

The Armed Forces, on the other hand, have only ceremonial duties to perform in NZ, apart from training in the arts of war. It is presumed that this is important in a world where other nations or groups may see us as unfriendly rivals. Past history, so we are told, warns us that we must be strong to repel attack, and also strong to honour our international obligations to allies. If these should involve us in actual warfare, then we will certainly not be assisting in much progressive activity beyond our shores. Our object will be to inflict sufficient damage to enemy life and their society’s infrastructure to bring about a conclusion in our favour. This is what our armed forces have been trained to do when diplomacy fails to resolve an issue to our satisfaction.

It must be enormously frustrating to spend long years in learning and refining the skills associated with one’s career, yet rarely have the chance to demonstrate how effective these are in real life situations. This is the case with the peacetime soldier and bomber pilot, submariner and weapons designer, military strategist and armaments manufacturer. Their future is likely to be quite humdrum unless there is a call for these skills to be given the opportunity to show what they can accomplish. This is by no means an unimportant factor.

The Police Force in NZ works in a different climate of expectation. We look to them to keep our interactions flowing smoothly, and to defuse potentially explosive and damaging activities before our society is disrupted by unwelcome strife and loss. Creative and educational work is encouraged and given protection by law, while impediments are identified, eliminated or discouraged. So long as our police work along these lines they are honoured and their prestige remains high. This can be a satisfying occupation, where skills are recognised and given space to show what more they can do.

Over centuries of time we have learnt to refine and develop further this skill of using civilians to control and assist the activities of our society, with few confrontations that we have been unable to find answers for. We have even learnt to apologise publicly for committing past injustices that were still causing pain among Maori, e.g. Tuhoe, in the Urewera and elsewhere, and Samoans who suffered when NZ was responsible for their welfare 90 years ago.

Now we stand in need of this patient and humble approach on a much larger stage. A number of commentators who are familiar with the areas of conflict in the Middle East have spoken strongly against the present assumption that the West’s military domination can put things right. The evidence is increasing to show that these strong-arm methods are creating and strengthening the most extreme groups, loosely attached to the Muslim camp. Yet these are the only methods we have prepared our nations to use in these circumstances.

Already both sides in this drama are preparing for a long contest, in which power to inflict death and destruction is seen as the deciding factor. Looking for causes, studying quietly-effective ways to meet human needs and hopes – this is at a minimum in world affairs. Unless the model changes we face a long period of disaster for many millions of people.

Modern War: A True Global Health Emergency

A unique historical moment to look at global health, with a special look at Iraq after more than twenty years of war

By Claudia Lefko                          Common Dreams                      November 10, 2014

War destroys countless lives immediately, but it also destroys health systems and key social structures, turning societies once able to nurture health and save lives, into societies stripped of that ability. "It's basic and obvious, hidden in plain sight," writes Lefko. 

One of the most serious problems Iraqis have been living with as a result of war and western imperialism is the disatrous decline of health and health care capacity. It has become one of those long-standing crisis that are so familiar they've become ordinary, like poverty and food insecurity. These situations, lives lived in these circumstances, become normalized—"normal" in the public view and public discourse. Even, it may seem, normal to the people directly affected. But the situation in Iraq is not normal, there is very little about life in Baghdad in the last decades that can be seen as normal.

One aspect of the health crisis is the ever-increasing cancer rate in Iraq. It has become the norm; normal is not newsworthy. Newsworthy events—ongoing violence and sectarian struggles—push cancer and health out of the headlines and out of the news altogether. And so the crisis is missing from the media and generally speaking, missing from the agenda of activists and international health organizations.

Enter ISIS and Ebola, putting health and Iraq and crisis back into the news, creating a unique opportunity to look at Iraq and Iraqis beyond the headline-grabbing topics of war and western imperialism to one that concerns daily life and impacts the very future of life in that country and in every country suffering from a natural disaster such as an epidemic or from human-made disasters such as war: health.

For some years now, prominent doctors, medical organizations and institutions such as Partners in Health (PIH) have been talking about the critical importance of "life on the ground" factors that influence health. And even more importantly, they have been initiating and implementing projects based on a holistic, human rights approach and encouraging others to do the same. PIH has been promoting support for international covenants that guarantee health as a human right, understanding that the health of individuals and communities is directly impacted by other guaranteed rights: adequate housing, education, food, social security, decent work, and "the right to the highest standard of physical and mental health."

In the background of the Ebola crisis, quietly day by day, the US and others are bombing in Iraq and Syria; no one is talking about how this will impact health or the health care system in those countries. In the case of Iraq, the question is how it will further exacerbate the already disastrous and ever-deteriorating health situation that has been developing over the last twenty four years, since the First Gulf War and UN Sanctions in 1990.

The country once had the best medical care in the Middle East. It was a modern country, with modern facilities and infrastructure. Social and economic policies supported other aspects of life that contributed to a healthy population: free and mandatory education through university, affordable housing, ample food availability and high employment, guaranteed by government subsidized jobs. Most, if not all of this is long gone. It shouldn't surprise anyone. As the famous poster said, back in the 60s, War is not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things. Another obvious truth gathering dust in closets all over the USA.

Ebola is a serious disease that demands our best attentions at this moment. But, war is also a serious disease that has been taking a toll on millions of people. In places too numerous and painful to list... Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to name a few. It also demands our best attentions. "...the present global health crisis is not primarily one of disease, but of governance," writes global health consultant Ilona Kickbush.

I am heartened by the critical work of these medical professionals and organizations. It gives us, as activists and agitated citizens, a powerful platform to stand on. Collectively, this is an important moment. In the aftermath of the huge climate change actions across the globe, we have an opportunity to create new alliances, with new possibilities. Our job is to find, maintain and maximize the connections that will aggregate our struggles in support of healthy people living on a healthy planet.

[Abridged] http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/10/modern-war-true-global-health-emergency

Is ISIS Coming?

By Uri Avnery                             Gush Shalom                     Nov 10, 2014 

IF ISIS had approached the borders of Israel this week, nobody in the country would have noticed. Israel was riveted to a court-room drama. There, in the Jerusalem Court, former PM Ehud Olmert faced his erstwhile secretary, Shula Zaken. No one could take his or her eyes off them. It was the stuff soap operas are made of.

SHULA WAS a 17-year old Jerusalem girl when she first met Ehud. He was a fledgling advocate, she was a new secretary in the same office. Since then, for more than 40 years, Shula was the shadow of Ehud, a fiercely loyal secretary who followed her ambitious boss from station to station - mayor of Jerusalem, then Minister of Trade, and finally Prime Minister. She was his closest associate, his confidante, everything.

And then it all blew up. Olmert was accused of several big corruption affairs and was forced to resign. For years now he has been a fixture in the court rooms and TV court reports. Shula Zaken, now a 57-year old matron, is his co-defendant. She supported him through thick and thin, until in his testimony he put all the blame on her. Shula was sent to prison for 11 months. Ehud was (again) acquitted. That was the turning point. It appeared that for years the devout secretary had recorded her boss's private conversations with her. According to her, because she could not live without being able to listen to his voice at any time. Others saw in it as a kind of life insurance.

And indeed, this week, after Shula made a deal with the prosecution, the court listened to a whole stack of recordings, which may well send Olmert to prison for many years. The drama between the two was irresistible. It headed the news, pushing almost everything else off the table. Few dealt with the real importance of the affair.

The recordings showed an all-pervading atmosphere of corruption at the highest level of government. Large bribes moved around as a matter of course. The relationship between the tycoons and the prime minister was so intimate, that the leader could request any tycoon by phone to transfer tens of thousands of dollars to his secretary to pay for his personal life in luxury and then for her silence.

It seems that the same symbiosis between top politicians and the "wealthy" (the American synonym for stinking rich) prevails in the US. In this respect, too, the similarity between the two countries is growing. We have indeed common values - the values of the tiny group of plutocrats who employ the top politicians in both countries.

WHILE EVERYBODY stares at the court scenes, who is there to watch what is happening beyond our borders?
Some 2400 years ago, the Gauls were about to mount a night time surprise attack on Rome. The city was saved by the geese of a temple on Capitol Hill, which raised such a ruckus that the inhabitants woke up in time. We have no temple and no geese to warn us, only some intelligence agencies with a consistent record of failure.

ISIS is far away. We have enemies galore, who are much nearer: Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas, "the Palestinians", "the Arabs", Hizbollah, and -somewhere beyond - "the Bomb" (a.k.a. Iran). To my mind, none of these are an existential danger for us. ISIS is. As I have said before, ISIS ("the Islamic State") poses no military danger. The present and former generals who shape Israel's policy can only smile when this “danger” is mentioned. A few tens of thousands of lightly armed fighters against the huge Israeli military establishment? Ridiculous. 

As indeed it is. In military terms. Israelis, like Americans, are practical people. They don't appreciate the power of ideas. They think like Stalin who, when warned of the Pope, asked: "How many divisions does he have?"
It is ideas that change the world. Like those of the legendary Moses. Of Jesus of Nazareth. Of Muhammad. Of Karl Marx. How many divisions did Lenin have, when he crossed Germany in the sealed train?

ISIS has an idea that can sweep the region: to do what Muhammad did, to restore the Caliphate which ruled from Spain to India, to wipe away the artificial borders that divide the Islamic world, to drive away the pitiful and corrupt Arab rulers, to destroy the infidels (including us). For millions upon millions of young Muslims in their impotent and impoverished failed states, this is an idea that straightens their back and swells their breast.

Ideas cannot be detected by spy drones. They cannot be blown out of existence by heavy bombers. The American conviction that you can solve historical problems by bombing from the air is a primitive illusion.

IT IS an old Israeli complaint that whenever something goes wrong in our region, Israel is always blamed. Take Sabra and Shatila. As our then Chief of Staff exclaimed: "Goyim kill goyim and the Jews are blamed."

Once more. ISIS has nothing to do with us. It is a purely Islamic affair. Yet many people blame Israel.
However, this time the blame is not without reason. Israel considers itself an island in the region, the famous "villa in the jungle". But that is wishful thinking. Israel is located in the middle of the region, and whether we accept it or not, everything that we do or do not do has a huge impact on all the countries around us.

ISIS' astonishing successes are a direct outcome of the general frustration and humiliation felt by a new Arab generation faced with our military superiority. The oppression of the Palestinians is felt by everyone in the Arab world. IF ISRAEL did not exist, ISIS would have had to invent it.

Indeed, somebody with a taste for conspiracy theories could well arrive at the conviction that Binyamin Netanyahu and his minions are secret ISIS agents. Is there any other reasonable explanation for their doings? It is one of the main tenets of ISIS that the struggle against Israel is a religious war, at the center of which is the Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem.

For months now, a group of Jewish zealots has been kicking up a storm in Jerusalem by advocating the building of the Third Jewish Temple on the sites of the two Islamic shrines - the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque. This group is tolerated and even promoted by the police and the government, and makes news daily.

The Noble Sanctuary (or "Temple Mount") is one of the most sensitive spots in the world. Who in his right mind would upset the status quo and allow Jews to pray there, turning the political conflict into a religious one, just as ISIS desires? These days, violent protests in annexed East Jerusalem are daily occurrences. The government has just passed a law that allows stone-throwing Palestinian teenagers to be imprisoned for nine years. That's not a typo: years, not months.

The recent Gaza war has stirred sentiments throughout the Arab world. The human and material losses suffered by the Palestinian population remain immense, as does the rage throughout the region. Who gains? ISIS.
And so forth. A constant stream of deeds and misdeeds designed to upset the Palestinians, all Arabs and the entire Muslim world. Food for ISIS propaganda.

WHY, FOR God's sake, are our politicians doing this? Because they are just politicians. Their sole interest is in winning the next elections, which may come sooner than the law requires. Keeping the Arabs down is popular. And the traditional contempt for all things Arab is blinding them to the serious dangers ahead.

ISIS may be the beginning of a new era in our region. A new era necessitates a re-evaluation of reality. Yesterday's enemies may become today's friends and tomorrow's allies. And vice versa.

If ISIS is now the paramount existential danger for us, we must reassess our policies comprehensively. Take the Arab Peace Initiative. For years now it has been lying around, like a discarded sandwich paper. It says that the entire Arab world is ready to recognize Israel and establish normal relations with it, in return for the end of the occupation and a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Our government has not even responded. The occupation and the settlements are more important. Does this make sense?

Peace with Palestine on the basis of the pan-Arab initiative would take much of the wind out of ISIS' sails. If ISIS is now our main enemy, yesteryear's enemies become potential allies. Even the abominable Bashar al-Assad. Definitely Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas. Israel must reconsider its attitude to all of them.

ONLY AN Israel that makes peace with Palestine can join a new regional alignment to face ISIS, before it engulfs the entire region. This is a matter of survival. A great Israeli statesman would recognize the historic challenge and the historic opportunity - and seize it. Unfortunately, there is no great Israeli statesman in sight. Only the little Netanyahus, who are now riveted to the story of Ehud and Shula.

[Abbreviated] http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1415375647/

Monday 3 November 2014

For a Moment, the World Embraces the Cuba Model – and Slaps the Empire

 Glen Ford                                   Black Agenda Report                  November 02, 2014

This week, the nations of the world – with two savage exceptions – instructed their emissaries at the UN General Assembly to tell the world’s self-designated “indispensable” country to end its 54-year-long trade embargo against Cuba. The virtually unanimous global rebuke to the American superpower tells us that it is Cuba, not the U.S. that is the truly “exceptional” nation on the planet. It was the 23rd time that the UN has rejected the embargo.

Despite having suffered cumulative economic damages of more than $1 trillion at U.S. hands over the last half-century, the island nation of 11 million people has made itself a medical superpower that shares its life-saving resources with the world. No country or combination of nations and NGOs comes close to the speed, size and quality of Cuba’s response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. With 461 doctors, nurses and other health professionals either already on site or soon to be sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Cuba sets the standard for international first-response. The Cuban contingent of medical professionals providing direct treatment to sick people outnumbers that of all individual countries and private organizations, including the Red Cross.

Doctors Without Borders is second to Cuba in terms of health professionals. But the French NGO is a swiftly revolving door, churning doctors and nurses in and out every six weeks because of the extreme work and safety conditions. Cuba’s health brigades are different. Every volunteer is expected to remain on duty in the Ebola zone for six months. Moreover, if any of the Cubans contract Ebola or any other disease, they will be treated at the hospitals where they work, alongside their African patients, rather than sent home. (One Cuban died of cerebral malaria, in Guinea, last Sunday.)

In sheer numbers, the Cuban medical posture in Africa is surpassed in scope only by the armed presence of AFRICOM, the U.S. military command, which has relationships with every country on the continent except Eritrea, Zimbabwe and Sudan. The governments of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone collaborate militarily with AFRICOM, but the heavily-armed Americans were of no use when Ebola hit. Indeed, the Euro-American legacy in Africa that starved public health systems, is the root reason Liberia and Guinea have only one doctor for every 100,000 people, and Sierra Leone has just two.

When the call went out, 15,000 Cubans competed for the honor to battle Ebola in Africa. As reported in The Guardian, doctors like Leonardo Fernandez were eager to fulfill their moral and professional mission. “We know that we are fighting against something that we don’t totally understand,” he said. “We know what can happen. We know we’re going to a hostile environment. But it is our duty. That’s how we’ve been educated.”

For the United States, military adventure and the imperative to seize other countries’ natural resources or strangle their economies, are defining national characteristics – in complete contrast to Cuba. The U.S. embargo of its island neighbor is among the world’s longest-running morality plays, with Washington as villain. On this issue, the world’s biggest economic and military power could neither buy nor bully a single ally other than the Zionist state.

Cuba’s neighbors in CARICOM, the Caribbean Economic Community, were represented by Saint Kitts and Nevis, whose ambassador pointed to Cuban-built hospitals and clinics throughout the region; the hundreds of Cuban doctors that have provided the only medical services available to many of Haiti’s poor before, during and after the catastrophic earthquake of 2010; and the thousands of Caribbean students that have benefited from free university education in Cuba.

Cuba’s exemplary conduct in the world has made the yearly UN vote on the U.S. embargo a singular opportunity for all the world body’s members, except one, to chastise the superpower that seeks full spectrum domination of the planet. It is the rarest of occasions, a time of virtual global unanimity on an evil in which the Empire is currently engaged. Once a year, the world – in both effect and intent – salutes the Cuban model. For a moment, humanity’s potential to organize itself for the common good illuminates the global forum.

This year, the model glows brightly in the darkness of microbial pestilence. When 15,000 Cuban health care workers do not hesitate to step into the Ebola pit, the New Man and Woman may already exist – and there is hope for the rest of us. [Abridged]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/02/moment-world-embraces-cuba-model-and-slaps-empire