Yearly Archives: 2003

A Vision for Johnny Cash

December 25, 2003
By

Cash sang a lot about jail
the long term kind without bail
Those paying for sins part theirs part ours
men and women at extremes
under the American dream
fermented and left out to go sour

But is not America
in itself a chimera?
What fools thought they could tame what God made
on the backs of Africans
and by theft of Indians
pretending men are equally made

Blood’s slippery foundation
built many a strong nation
only to see it fall after rise
America is not new
nor sins its powerful do
It won’t be the last corpse to breed flies

Power is a psychosis
All the world ought to know this
Pinochet Amin Seko and Bush
The most powerful men
are doing all that they can
Pushing all the buttons they can push

and on a much smaller scale
killing sprees by men on bail
while bystanders get an injection
Vengeance spreads like a disease
the pesticides in the trees
root in our hearts as an infection

but it’s time and time again
powerless women and men
receive discipline and punishment
It’s delivered as jail time
a career ladder to climb
either form equates shoes of cement

Seems Cash was a lucky man
Besides his millions of fans
he believed — was able — to speak truth
His religion did decree
That the truth shall set you free
and he took likelihood over proof

Not that religion is key
though wise is humility
salvation need not come after death
There are human qualities
That could save us — set us free
Humbly we learn secrets of the depths

Imagine how freedom feels
dancing out in sunlight squeals
using our true gifts working with friends
In this ancient place I walk
on a geologic clock
that’s just the means folks used to meet ends

You can think it in your head
or else use your gut instead
these things combined will tell you what’s right
and if we use all our skill
and if we use all our will
we can make societies work right

The jails will crumble and fall
and so we’ll end office stalls
No longer will we cower in fear
Dictators will be reduced
to harmless psychos cut loose
but we’ll welcome their antics with cheer

and a peace flame will be fired
commemorating desire
for ever flattened hierarchy
The poor will climb up higher
C E O s will be rehired
to build homes for guys in factories

Farmers will earn vacation
for having fed all nations
since the fertile crescent got big press
We’ll all dance in hopes of rain
as God takes control again
we’ll remember that gods do it best

With human diversity
and biodiversity
cooperation over control
Cash’s truth will prevail then
No more slaves human or hen
Smoke will clear — life will spring from this hole

To Natural History, Re: Population Ecology

October 12, 2003
By

Cheers to Katharine Milton (“Something to Howl About,” 10/03) for illuminating the importance of two critical facts about population ecology — that “prudent” parasites do not kill their hosts, and that population size fluctuates in response to the availability of food.

Jeers to Marc J. Cohen (“Crop Circles”, 10/03) and Laurence A. Marschall (Review, “Space, the Final Frontier?”, 10/03), who, in the very same issue as Milton’s piece, both overlook those important ideas and whose book reviews suffer as a result. Had they been aware of these ecological facts, surely they would have cut to the chase on their respective topics:

GM food may remain ethically ambiguous, but the simple fact is that, GM or organic or anywhere in between, it is the very act of increasing the volume of food production that increases the human population. Combined with the inegalitarian social structures that pervade our global society (and that are themselves related in part to population growth), this ensures that hunger will continue. GM food may not be the ultimate evil some make it out to be, but it can never solve hunger.

Technology for space travel may evolve, but, even if perfected, the simple fact is that colonizing space would require people en route to live in ecological balance within their spacecraft. If such knowledge were available, then it could instead be applied on Earth itself. Thus, space would not need to be used as a “safety valve for a planet threatened by pollution and overpopulation” — and thus the trip would not be necessary.

To Scientific American, Re: Contradictory Stance

September 17, 2003
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Your recent special issue on neuroscience (September 2003) shows, unsurprisingly and with few exceptions, a striking uniformtiy of voice and vision about the topic. The cover declares the issue to be about “Better Brains: How Neuroscience Will Enhance You” (emphasis added). The articles adopt your usual tone of inevitability and mostly-desirability, and the culmination is a piece (“Is Better Best?”) by a “noted ethicist” who “argues in favor of brain enhancement.” Despite a few nods, so little of the possible “improvement” is truly questioned.

Are these technological developments inevitable? Is “the essence of humanness to try to improve the world and oneself” as Arthur L. Caplan claims? Does every religion on the planet see “the improvement of oneself and one’s children as a moral obligation,” as Caplan also claims? Hardly. These questions are answered in the affirmative not by the laws of nature or by anthropological reality but by the culture of global civilization, a culture that is driving itself into the ground through its ceaseless pursuit of “development,” justified by its looking narcissistically (and falsely) at itself as the torch bearer of the very condition of humanity.

Nobody should be surprised to see these assumptions unquestioned in your publication, a publication that is more often than not about technology boosterism far more than science. Nobody should be surprised to find that an ethicist who makes such conclusion is the kind of ethicist who would become “noted” within our culture. And nobody should be surprised to hear the best conclusion to be the usual, ages-old rhetoric about making sure that improvements aren’t banned yet that access is also ensured for all. Sadly, the very pursuit of growth and development creates social structures in which it is impossible to grant access to all. This is the heart of civilization’s problems, and it makes all the rhetoric rather empty.

Mind you, I’m no Luddite. Like Caplan, “I see little wrong with trying to enhance and optimize our brains” — or in pursuing countless other technologies. The problem is that our culture puts faith in the idea of economic and technological improvement as the solution to all our problems, when so much of that very improvement yields the very causes of so many of our problems. The pursuit of improvement is not evil, but adopting its ceaseless pursuit as the very basis for organizing our societies ironically ensures that no fundamental improvements can ever occur. Further, putting faith in anything is hardly true to science.

It is a nice coincidence that this special issue, an extreme example of your publication’s touting of technology and improvement, includes the concluding part of Michael Shermer’s piece on the “noble savage” (“The Domesticated Savage”). Shermer has always struck me as an incredibly thoughtful and levelheaded guy. Yet here even he, one of the ultimate skeptics, falls prey to our culture’s pervading ideology. Instead of acknowledging that the human brain has evolved to best cope with relatively small social structures, he suggests that we must continually “expand the circle of whom we consider to be members of our in-group.” This may seem merely a comment in favor of expanding human rights, but it also smacks of globalization, world-statism and utopian (read impossible) brotherhood-of-man wishes — all ideals that, again, ironically subvert any possibility of good things for all people.

For three years, I’ve read your magazine from cover to cover. And in that time, I’ve found myself continually frustrated at your publication’s habit of speaking out of both ends of its mouth without even realizing it. The simple fact is that you can’t properly promote science the skeptical method as long as you insist on devoting so much effort to promoting science the overblown enterprise that is subservient to growth economics. If Scientific American were to take this idea seriously, the resulting content could change the world in ways that all the neuroscientists and nanotechnologists can’t even begin to imagine. As long as Scientific American doesn’t take this idea seriously, its contribution toward fundamentally “improving” the world — and toward the pursuit of genuine science itself — will remain hopelessly limited.

My subscription expires this coming December, and I believe I will let it lapse.

The Question is Why?

August 12, 2003
By

Leave it to the likes of Shell Oil and The Economist Magazine to pose this inanity: “Do we need nature?” This question was the topic of their annual essay writing contest this summer.

The question is one children are too clever to ask. “Daddy, do we need nature?” just doesn’t fit with the other big ones that give parents the shakes, like ‘where do babies come from?’ or ‘what happens when you die?’ Children’s questions, unlike those of oil executives and financial magazines, are about exploration, wondering how things work and why things are the way they are. Need is never an issue with children. If you ask a child if we need nature, you’ll likely receive a resounding “YEEEES” as a response. [Then again, you might get the same response if you ask if she needs the new Summer-time Barbie play-set.]

What children don’t know yet, and perhaps the top of the capitalist hierarchy has forgotten, is that a need can be defined only by an objective — there is no absolute, solitary need, and no need without want. One does not need to eat unless one wants to live.

Whether we need nature therefore depends on two deeper questions: 1. what do we want?, and 2. what the hell is nature anyway? Dangerous as it is to universalize human wants, Psychologist Abraham Maslow took a reasonable shot at it and came up with five big ones: 1. physiological goals — having the immediate physical means for survival such as food, water, shelter, and sleep; 2. security goals — feeling that the means of survival will be maintained; 3. social goals — having human relationships including friends, family, and community; 4. esteem goals — feeling valuable or important; and 5. self-actualization goals — feeling that one’s skills are being properly utilized and personal growth is being achieved with a positive impact.

As for defining the word nature, definitions range from the all-inclusive ‘material world and its phenomena’, to the more exclusive ‘primitive state of existence, untouched and uninfluenced by civilization or artificiality.’ Does nature include human beings among the material world, or are we a separate entity? This question has great impact on whether we need nature to meet our wants. If we are part of nature then surely we need it if we want to survive long enough to meet all those other lofty goals of safety, love, and esteem. On the other hand, if we are separate from nature, perhaps we can get by without it. Then again, perhaps it can be used to our advantage somehow. The latter, all too common perception of humanity as separate from nature, is a major threat to our species chances of meeting our ‘needs’.

Any definition of nature which assumes that humans stand above, or apart, from the rest of the material living world is delusional. There is a natural legal system that is as true and unforgiving as gravity, though more complex and unpredictable. It is the true invisible hand, but it has proven its own existence time and again.

Take an example of a law within this system: the more food a population has access to, the more that population will grow; if the population grows too fast eventually it will reach a point where food is scarce, and the population will fall again. This law applies as much to humans as to rabbits. However, assuming that we are above or separate from this natural law, we grow more food using new technologies in order to solve our global hunger problems.

Paradoxically, our political policies and actions allow vast quantities of food to be destroyed by farmers, distributors, retailers, and end users of food; and more than half of the people living in the political West actually suffer from an overabundance of food, as obesity sets its sites on becoming the world’s leading health concern.

The all-inclusive nature has distinct cause and effect rules of conduct. The decisions we make with regards to nature are crucial to not only our survival, but also our loftier needs. Any decision made with the aim of circumventing nature’s laws and controlling the situation ourselves, consciously or not, is doomed to failure, as the ‘green revolution’ of the 1970s aptly demonstrated. The more scientists tried to help poor farmers in ‘underdeveloped’ countries with pesticides, poisons, and other subtle manipulations, the worse the situation became — the pests grew bigger, badder, and more resilient — in short, they adapted. The green revolution took a shotgun approach, poisoning not only pests but also soil and water, which in turn poisoned fish and birds, which then poisoned their predators. Humans were ultimately poisoned by high levels of toxins throughout their environment, especially in the flesh of the animals they ate. Despite the abundant lessons in this massive experiment gone wrong, we still use many of the same pesticides today, and in many cases with the same shotgun approach. Furthermore, we are now doing similar experiments with genetically modified crops, using them abundantly around the world without yet achieving even a laboratory understanding of the potential results.

In the wake of this and other evidence that manipulating nature does not help us meet our needs, here are some child-like how-to questions Shell and the Economist might consider: If attempting to control nature is ill-advised, how can we make wiser political, social and economic decisions that meet human needs? Controlling and manipulating nature hasn’t seemed to work, so perhaps we should simply let nature take its course, and leave those whose needs aren’t met to fend for themselves. The problem with this approach is that it was humanity’s attempts to control nature that have left so many people’s needs unfulfilled, so continuing on our current path seems rather unjust, even unethical.

Surely we need programs. Of course all the programs designed to correct our societal ills and imbalances have either outright failed, had unintended consequences, or simply weren’t enough to solve the problems we had already created, and are still creating. Why, with our big brains, our adaptability, our innovation, can we not create programs that meet our needs and fulfill our goal of living well?

Author Daniel Quinn has compared social and political programs to sticks in a river designed to impede its flow, and has said that the river’s source is vision. Our current vision is one of dominion and control of nature as a means of meeting our needs, i.e. our wants. This vision isn’t working — how many of us can truly say we’re content with our world, that it meets our needs for love, community, security, esteem and self-actualization? So many of us don’t even have the basic means of physical health or survival.

So what kind of vision might allow for the kind of world that meets our needs? The answer is held in that complex and unpredictable web of life, in which no other species is damaging the planet or its own members to the extent that human beings are. In this web also live groups of people who still manage to meet their needs and live well, surviving mostly untouched by Western civilization. The members of these tribes possess all the same flaws as the rest of us, selfishness, anger, hate, jealousy; and yet they are not tearing each other apart with crimes, terrorist acts, extortion, or civil war. Am I saying we need to live exactly like them? No, but a shift in our cultural vision from one where humans either need or don’t need nature to one where humanity is part of nature would be a great start. Perhaps a side benefit would be that pedantic needs analyses on nature would transform themselves into awestruck, childlike how-and-why musings.

Perpetual Political Autopoiesis

July 10, 2003
By

I recently read a paper by John H. Little of Troy State University called ‘Autopoietic Social Systems And Self-Referential Government: How Unlikely Is Democracy?’.

It’s too bad the paper was so laden with complicated jargon, because from what I could follow it was quite an interesting topic: How Unlikely is Democracy? Is democracy possible? The debate is based on a systems point of view, borrowed by social scientists from biologists, and revolves around the issue of how closed government is versus how much influence voters can have on politicians.

This question reminded me of a recent meeting I had with Toronto’s Deputy Mayor Case Ootes, who also happens to be the elected City Councillor for my Ward of the City (Toronto-Danforth). Along with two other activists I met with Case to discuss the proposed pesticide by-law that would implement a ban on cosmetic pesticide use in Toronto over a one-year period. This was a controversial proposal that had City Councillors split.

The lawn care companies had lobbyists working overtime trying to kill the by-law, while environmental groups in the city had volunteers writing letters, attending Council meetings, making deputations and visiting people like Mr. Ootes. The lawn care lobby argued that the pesticide by-law would inhibit the freedom to have a beautiful lawn and hurt the economy through diminished pesticide sales. In an interesting piece of circular logic they also argued that a pesticide by-law was unenforceable.

The environmental lobby argued that the by-law would go a long way to improving the health of the city because pesticides are known to cause health problems in pets, children, and even the adults who spray them, and that switching to organic methods could in fact create economic opportunities for companies willing to help their clients make that change (as has happened in other Canadian municipalities that have implemented similar by-laws).

My cohorts and I had read an article, published in a large Toronto newspaper, written by Mr. Ootes arguing that the by-law was unenforceable and should therefore be stopped at the proposal stage. We entered the meeting prepared to argue that most by-laws, when coupled with public outreach to inform people of their existence and purpose, do not require intense enforcement to affect change in behaviour.

As it turned out, Ootes’ argument focused more on a lack of ‘facts’ and ‘proof’ that pesticides actually hurt human health. We countered that organizations ranging from Toronto Public Health to The Ontario College of Family Physicians had deemed the health risks of pesticides too great for household use. Ootes countered that the positions of organizations are merely opinions, and cannot be considered proof. I pointed out that a similar argument was once made about cigarettes, which have now been banned from most public spaces in Toronto. Ootes, in his own piece of circular logic, countered that cigarettes are a proven health hazard.

I tried coming at him from every angle I could think of. I pointed out that more labour intensive organic lawn care techniques would actually create jobs and help the economy. I mentioned the precautionary principle, which says that if something is likely, if not positively, going to cause harm it is better to avoid that something. I argued that there had been numerous studies linking pesticides to cancer, and that pesticides are designed to kill and are therefore likely dangerous for all living things. I gave examples of other campaigns that had successfully changed consumer behavior by coupling a by-law with a public education campaign. I pointed out that 50 other municipalities in Canada had successfully implemented similar by-laws with no apparent adverse economic impacts. I pointed out that advertisements used to encourage house wives to use DDT as a household cleaning product before scientists could prove how dangerous it was. My cohort handed him a petition signed by more than 200 of his constituents urging him to sign the by-law. She told him a recent poll indicated that an overwhelming majority of his constituents favored the by-law. Ootes stood firm, saying he refused to risk jobs or economic success unless he was convinced that pesticides were a real health threat, and he just didn’t believe that they were.

Any activist knows how hard it is to communicate with politicians, let alone actually influence them. Some systems thinkers might describe government as a closed system, in which case it is difficult if not impossible for it to be controlled externally, according to theories postulated by German Sociologist Niklas Luhmann in the early 90s. This theory seems to counter that of democracy, in which governance is conducted by representatives of the people, who have chosen said representatives. The people are supposed to control the politicians — we’re supposed to be the bosses. So why was Ootes so resistant to what we and the vast majority of his constituents were saying?

According to Ootes, “There are all kinds of polls, saying all kinds of things. But these are just opinions. I’m looking for facts.” The fact was that the vast majority of his constituents wanted him to vote in favor of the by-law. It seems though that, like so many politicians, Ootes is a master of maintaining the status quo.

According to systems thinkers, there are at least two distinct ways to think of a social system: as either an open system of action, or as a closed system of communication. In the former, actors (people) in the system are influenced by their external environment. In the latter, people shape their own version of reality and define their own boundaries of what actions are appropriate and acceptable using the communications they themselves develop. The system is closed because it defines its own boundaries, beyond which certain behaviours, messages, or actions are unacceptable. It is self perpetuating.

The problem that arises from this way of looking at a society is that we can’t be sure how effective communication is. Do people ever really understand each other? Did Ootes understand what I was trying to convey? Did I understand his counter-arguments? If human beings have such trouble sharing information and understanding one another, no wonder our democratically elected leaders break so many promises and do so many things counter to our wishes. Maybe we just don’t understand their promises. Maybe they don’t understand our wishes.

Perhaps, since democracy is such a failure, it is time we asserted ourselves as our own political representatives rather than relying on people who can’t understand our wishes, or as John H. Little put it, begin “expanding the boundary of the administrative subsystem to increase the numbers of people who are participants of that [political] system, rather than outside observers.”

On the other hand, Case Ootes strangely ended up voting in favour of the by-law in a 26-16 victory for the environmentalists, so maybe we just need to learn to be more forward in letting our elected representatives know what it is we want.

A Systemic Policeman’s Poem

July 5, 2003
By

I hate the man who appreciates the hatred
Can’t stand the one who tolerates them all
Least of all can I abide the ones
who set them up just to watch them fall

I love the woman who deals with my anger
I envy those she talks to in the hall
I ponder on those who think they own her
wonder why they bother at all

I oppose all who think they can plunder
control freaks who think they own it all
I’ll fight them till I’m six feet under
I’ll stand up until they force my fall

The seasons’ cycle is never-ending
She dances at our annual ball
She’s naked inside the meandering river
she’s seen a lot but she hasn’t seen it all

Her Jesus accepts things as they are
That doesn’t mean she never feels appalled
at the world’s complex web of lies
and the prisons of cubicle stalls

The world tends toward the complex
but if I had a crystal ball
I’d hide it away where it can’t be found
I’d surrender my illusions of control

I’d dispossess anything that you can name
and I’d skip randomly through my patrol

The Friends of Ishmael Society

June 12, 2003
By

The Friends of Ishmael Society is an organization focused on publicizing systems thinking through the works of Daniel Quinn. Mark S. Meritt serves as a board member.

Visit the Friends of Ishmael Society website.

Woolly Visions

April 20, 2003
By

Read the Woolly Visions .pdf.

Mosaic — Relaunched At Last!

April 6, 2003
By

At long last, with a new name (formerly Sostenuto, formerly permaCulture) that we think is going to stick this time, and with a new address to match, we’re proud to announce the launch of Mosaic: A Magazine of Arts, Sciences & Everything in Between.

You’ll always be able to find our current issue at http://www.mosaic.permaculture.net/common/current.htm. Visit now to check out Issue #1, Spring 2003 — you’ll discover new non-fiction, fiction, poetry, screenwriting and essays. We want to keep the site fresh and organic, with our own new postings and hopefully with reader feedback, so come back periodically to see how our individual issues may evolve over time. We’ll be sure to announce any completely new issues — these may be on a quarterly, semiannual, or other schedule to be determined. If any really significant changes happen to an already-announced issue, we’ll also announce that. Note that you’ll always be able to access our complete works at http://www.mosaic.permaculture.net/common/archives.htm (including our older material, logged there as Issue #0.)

We do want to apologize for the relaunch delay. We simply underestimated how long it would take to get to know each other, learn to work together, and then to work in general. Given that we’re all volunteering our time (and very busy otherwise!), and that to this day we all know each other almost exclusively via email, the delay isn’t too surprising. In the end, we decided that quality is more important than quantity, so we waited rather than rush anything online.

We’re excited to be finally up and running, and we hope you’ll like what you see. The site will continue to develop, and, though we’ve got our own plans, please feel free to let us know what you might like to see in terms of content, site functionality, etc. Thanks for your support.

The Mosaic Staff

Against the War or Support Our Troops — A View on the War in Iraq

April 4, 2003
By

Or .

This piece was included in Pieces of War: A Mosaic of Views on the War in Iraq, a special section that appeared in the first and only issue of Mosaic: A Magazine of Arts, Sciences & Everything in Between, which evolved into this website.

An increasing volume of media coverage paints a picture of American protesters who are either opposed to an Iraq war or who are in support of American troops who risk their lives for American ideals. This particular way of framing the issue–of either supporting troops or opposing the war–leads media consumers to believe that perhaps these two choices are mutually exclusive (in other words, that media consumers must choose one or the other, but not both). Upon closer examination, however, this rather simplistic view fails to adequately capture the complexities of the present situation.

A view that strays from this mainstream media dichotomy is this one: opposing the war and supporting our troops are two sides of the same coin. Avoiding military action supports our troops by keeping them alive, by not shattering American families and communities (as well as Iraqi families and communities) with the news that their sons and daughters and fathers and mothers have been killed, never to be returned to their parents, siblings, and children. What could provide greater evidence of supporting our troops than wanting to keep them safe and out of harm’s way? The other side of the dichotomy, opposing an unjust war, doesn’t really need justification, as nearly ever yone else in the world (except for a reported 65% of Americans) seems to know.

(As a side note, even the Bush administration itself seems unwilling or unable to really support our troops, except to sent them off to die to protect American oil interests.)

Very often how a question is asked determines how it can be reasonably answered. Nowhere is this more evident than in polls that claim staunch support for the war. One recent poll suggests that 65% of Americans support the war. One can only imagine how the questions were phrased so as to cast such seemingly widespread support; one thing is clear–something smells fishy.

Even with such overwhelming numbers that assert American support for this war, other polls cast a good deal of doubt over whether this 65% approval rating can really be taken seriously. One poll suggests that “an astonishing 51 percent of the [American] public believe that Iraqi President Saddam Hussies was responsible for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.” (Better sources suggest that ties between US government officials and Al Qaeda are much stronger than any between Hussein and Al Qaeda.)

These numbers taken together–65% support the war and 51% don’t know the difference between Al Qaeda and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein–point to some real problems. It would be too easy to say that Americans are just too ignorant to really be expected to know the difference between those responsible for 9/11 attacks and the Iraqi president. The reason it would be too easy to blame ignorant Americans–and the reason why Americans are not actually to blame (nor ignorant)–is because the confusion around these two seemingly distant entities (9/11 attackers and President Hussein) is a direct consequence of how Mr. Bush and his administration has framed the context of this war and how this context is reported to the general public. Blaming Americans for not knowing the facts is problematic precisely because Americans get their information from the media and from our leaders. In this case, blaming Americans for their lack of knowledge when the information is deliberately presented in a misleading fashion is like blaming school children for learning what they read in their textbooks.

Many Americans admit not knowing enough to make an educated decision. With unprecedented media coverage of all aspects of our leaders and the war, how can it be that Americans don’t know how they should feel about this war? How can it be that 51% of Americans don’t know the difference between those responsible for 9/11 attacks and the president of Iraq? One answer may be the relatively powerless role played by the media, such as scripted televised press conferences that aim to look spontaneous for televised viewers, although Mr. Bush himself admits that the conference was scripted. This powerless role essentially turns a “free press” into the PR agency for Mr. Bush and his administration. (This includes not only the White House Press Core, but also the “embedded” journalists moving with our troops.)

Whether to blame ignorant Americans or the American media is not the question I intend to put forth; such a simplistic question is no better than asking whether you oppose the war or support our troops. Framing questions such as these tends to ignore complicated interrelationships that actually cast some light on the issue. This is the important point: how a question is asked often determines how it can be answered.

The most striking example of how an issue is framed affects how we react to it is in the rhetoric of war. Antho ny B. Robinson

argues that declaring a war on terror after 9/11 actually increases the legitimacy of terrorists, instead of treating them as criminals and attempting to prosecute them by more traditional means. He writes:

To speak of war on terrorism assumes a unified and identifiable enemy who has declared war. Such a perception ups the ante tremendously and, ironically, gives the terrorist exactly what he wants, the dignity of war. To view terrorism as crime, rather than war, seems much closer to the reality of what has been experienced. There is no single, unified enemy. (Note the administration’s steady yet unconvincing efforts to tie Iraq to Al Qaeda.) Moreover, to describe terrorists as criminals not only has a de-escalating effect, it robs terrorists of the dignifying rhetoric or war, classifying them as merely criminals.

Robinson’s point is a powerful one–how we classify a thing often affects how we think about it. That is why “terrorism” refers to the actions of other people and groups, whereas “liberation” and “fighting for freedom and democracy” describes the actions of American leaders and military. When we look behind the words and actually see the actions, the patriotic labels tend to melt away, and the actions look strikingly similar. The rest of the world knows this, which is why the majority of the world condemns America’s actions.

While American leaders ignore the disfavor of the rest of the world, American investors are already being given advice about how best to profit from the war. The American military have the task of leveling Iraq, and American businesses have the task of rebuilding Iraq, to the tune of billions of dollars. The Bush administration expects Iraq to pay for much of the rebuilding with their oil resources. In other words, the American taxpayers will pay for all of the military might used to level the country, and then American taxpayers will only pay for part of the reconstruction that will be given to American corporations; the other part of reconstruction debt will be paid for in Iraqi oil. When Mr. Bush says that Iraqi oil is a resource that belongs to the Iraqi people, he really means that it belongs to us–that we can compel them to sell it to us in exchange for re-building all of the infrastructure that we just finished knocking down.

When you think about Americans’ addition to oil, this entire scenario sounds like a pretty good deal–for us. We Americans go in and ruin a country’s infrastructure, depose their leader, install a US-friendly leader, and then take their oil as payment in return for fixing the infrastructure we just finished tearing down. In terms of addictions, ours to oil is a pretty serious one. Instead of a needle being slipped slowly into a warm vein, we slip a slightly larger needle (actually a gas nozzle) into the willing artery that leads directly to our automobiles’ fuel tanks. Iraq’s “oil-for-food program allows Iraq to sell unlimited quantities of oil on condition that the proceeds are spent on food, medicine and other humanitarian goods, and war reparations.” Between the war reparations that are financed by oil ( which may never be paid off) and the oil-for-food program, Americans should enjoy low fuel prices for years to come. Our addiction will be well-fed, thanks to Mr. Bush and his administration.

Many Americans feel like there is nothing they can do. Mr. Bush has made it clear that he prefers to “respectfully disagree” with his constituents and the world, instead of listening to them. But there is something that you can do, and it doesn’t require writing a single letter to a congressperson, voting, or changing your lifestyle. If you can do only a few simple things during this war, do these: talk, think, and ask questions.

Talk about the war with friends, family, and co-workers. Ask questions and start a dialog. Ask people if they know that there is no relationship between the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein. If they think there is a connection, ask them why they think there is a relation, and what evidence they base their opinions on. Try to understand. Ask difficult questions. Read between the lines. (If Bush had hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction that he could present to the UN, don’t you think he would have in order to garner UN support prior to an invasion? What possible reason would Bush have for not sharing hard evidence with the UN and gaining their support?)

Think about Castro’s reaction to Bush’s speech to understand the perspective that some other cultures share. Or think about Robin son’s article and then ask yourself why we have a war at all. Ask your friends why, if we feel we need a war, we don’t declare a war on joblessness, or a war on hunger, or a war on lack of education, or a war on lack of adequate health care in the richest nation in the world. Ask your friends why there haven’t been enormous investment in research and development for alternative fuels that would lessen our addiction to foreign oil.

Ask questions that should have been asked after 9/11: What have we done so as to make such enemies for ourselves in the world? And what can we do to make these enemies our friends, so that we don’t have to fear them? (Hint: attacking them doesn’t count as a constructive answer.) What should our role in the world be? Should we be the police of the world when we can’t even take care of our own hungry, sick, and unemployed?

Think about about what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II. Learn about the internment camps, the racism, the stolen property and abandoned businesses and homes, and the No-No boys asked to pledge their allegiance to the United States while they and their families were help prisoner behind barbed wire fences in the country of their birth.

And when people ask you if you are against the war or if you support our troops, answer yes. To both questions.

Note Some of the links in this article may have been changed or removed from their respective sources.

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