Security Detail

Every now and then a detail in the news strikes home in an unintended way. The other day I was listening to an interview on NPR about the Drafting Committee for the new Iraqi consitution, about how the Sunni participants who had decided to join were being integrated into the constitutional process, and the various implications this had for the future of Iraqi politics. But the fact that stunned me was a side remark by the reporter in Iraq that part of the integration process for the new constitution drafters was assigning them, like all the other constitution committee members, and all the cabinet members of the Iraqi government....not "a" security guard, not even half a dozen security guards: NO! each and every drafter of the new democratic charter of government for the new Iraqi democracy has FIFTEEN security guards!
And most likely we the US taxpayer are funding these guards, even while hospitals go unrepaired, humvees go un-armored, and VA services at home are cut. Did the drafters of the South African constitution have 15 guards each? Did the writers of the Nicaraguan constitution under the Sandinistas, a constitution also written in a country at war, have 15 guards each? I will look into it, but I am pretty confident they did not. Certainly the drafters of the US constitution did not walk around Philadelphia surrounded by circles of security on their way to the City Tavern after a hard day's work at Carpenter Hall.

This does not augur well for any hope that might still be out there for a successful and accepted new government.

I am reminded of a similar moment of bleak realization when the Paris Peace talks began in 1968 to end the Vietnam war. After the jubilation of students and anti-war people dancing in the streets of Boston when President Johnson announced the talks, shortly afterwards there was an article in Time magazine about the US delegation to the negotiations. The delegation had rented a large house in Paris, rented on a THREE YEAR lease. My heart sank and I lost any hope of a quick end to the war.

peacewoman 1213

A Day in the Life of the War at Home

The word from inside the downtown Philadelphia hotel is that the staff at the hotel
fitness center saw Donald Rumsfeld heading by,on his way to the World Affairs Council luncheon, and "he looks pretty good". The protesters outside, on the other hand, look cold and wet in the drizzly day, our WILPF and "Counting the Cost/Ending the War" posters curling at the edges. However, most of the passersby take the leaflets, and most hurry on with a friendly word "keep it up" "glad you're here". Of course there was the man who angrily said, "what's the matter, you don't like airconditioning?" an imperialist assumption so oblique it took us several chilly minutes to figure out what he meant. TV news at night showed "Rummy" speaking to the crowd, assuring them that he absolutely did not give orders to shoot down the small plane that intruded on DC airspace. No question and no answer about whether he approved the torture policies at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.

Two hours later, a few miles and a world away in the poorest section of Philadelphia's poorest section, several of the protesters reunite in the small house
"taken over" by welfare activists to house a homeless family, hoping at least to support a peaceful Memorial Day weekend and a roof over their heads. Luis and Ana and Ana's children, worn down from weeks camping in their old car, had turned to activists for help when all the doors of the official system were closed. Luis came back in February from Iraq, returned from the front lines of Secretary Rumsfeld's war, returned with seizures, stress, exhaustion, memories of lost friends, and an end to the 19 years of military service he used to be proud of. The cost of the war is here as well as in the streets of Iraq.

Is there life after the Pope?

Now that all the tv, papers, and every other wave and band of media
have done almost nothing but cover the Pope-life, death, funeral, travels,
languages, energy, disease, household, ad infinitum- for nearly 2 weeks,
how can there be anything left to say? So, just a few short thoughts I
haven't seen so far-

First of all, how wonderful that the world actually has at least two weeks, maybe more, to get along WITH NO POPE (the popeless world). The world, and even
the Catholic Church, seems to keep spinning. Just a thought.

Secondly, the reams of coverage have failed to bring up my personal indelible image
of John Paul II (frequently called J2P2 by nuns and priests of the independent or liberated persuasion). My instant recall image of the late Pope comes from his visit
to Nicaragua in the mid-1980s. The poor and beseiged country turned itself upside down and invested millions of scarce dollars in security and pomp for the
visitor and his entourage. Probably a third or more of the national population came to see the Pope and experience Mass with the masses under hours of hot sun, many bussed in at national expense using fuel that could have gone to rural water pumps or electricity for health centers or schools. But the image that still shocks me and
epitomizes my impression comes from the Pope's arrival at Managua airport-
being greeted by the then Sandinista cabinet, which included two priests,
Miguel d'Escoto and Ernesto Cardenal, leaders and tremendously admired religious figures of liberation theology and the practical dedication to better lives for the poor, men who were profoundly Christian in their lives. The Pope passed by the line of kneeling cabinet ministers and instead of accepting the humble ring-kissing by
white-haired Cardenal, he pulled his hand away and made rebuking gestures-rejecting and humiliating one of the most distinguished literary and political figures the Church has offered to Latin America in the past 5 centuries. Within the year, the Pope had ruled that no priests could serve in governments-not only depriving Nicaragua of its foreign minister and minister of Culture, but also the US Congress of Father Drinan, another distinguished advocate for human rights and justice.

My other recollection of life with the Pope in the world and roaming at large is that
every time he traveled, freguently emphasizing his "defense of life", there would be a death toll from his appearances-one hundred here, a dozen there-people who died from the crush, the heat, accidents of travel. Was he ever hesitant or concerning about unleashing this process on his visits?

Lastly, am I the only "American" who found it "Un-American" to see my elected leaders
of my once democratic nation traveling to Rome to kneel at the coffin of a religious
leader? Once upon a time we had intense debate in the US about whether kneeling to foreign powers, or even doffing hats to them, was compatible with representing a free people. Our people are much more free today than they were at the time of those arguments, but our leaders seem to have gone in the opposite direction.

peacewoman1213

The Past Is Not Over...It's Not Even the Past

One of the joys of listening to "classic rock" music on the car radio is the occasional experience of having a direct pipeline to the past- I listen to the Rolling Stones or Otis Redding and the intervening decades vanish, restoring me to 1967 again.

Sometimes, however, I can get the same time travel effect by reading the newspaper, for the opposite of joy. Today's Philadelphia Inquirer has two items tucked away on page four in the mini-news blips, either one of which would accomplish deja vu all over again. First, two inches of very short lines reports that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has fulfilled the Reagan policy and restored US military aid to Guatemala. The current president of Guatemala has informed Rumsfeld that the Guatemalan military has been "reformed" and Rumsfeld has assured us all that the US will "monitor" its actions. I suppose it would be pointless to ask how stupid does Rumsfeld think we are? How worn down are we? How many decades of opposing US military support to the massacres and tortures of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, the destruction of hundreds of villages, and the daily grinding oppression of millions?

The same column of little items from minor far-away places that don't "belong" on the front page informs us that Gen Augusto Pinochet has regained his immunity from prosecution for the 1974 assassination of Chilean General Carlos Prat. Thirty-one years of impunity continue.

When does the past get to be the past?

peacewoman1213

Embarrassed at the UN

Although you might not know it from most newspapers, and certainly not from TV, this is the
second week of a major global gathering of women, "Beijing Plus 10" at the United Nations in NY. Thousands of women from around the world have come to NY for the 2 week session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (known to the attenders as the CSW). This happens every year but this year happens to be the 10th year since the 4th World Conference of Women held in Beijing in 1995.

At that amazing and transformative gathering, the governments of the world, US included, agreed on a list of goals for women's equality and well-being, known as the
Beijing Plan for Action. The Plan includes items like aiming to have at least 50% of all women in all countries educated at least to elementary school level, improving health and maternal death rates, nutritional status, etc. You would like to think that this would not be controversial, even in the current political situation. You would be wrong, however.... Whereas most of the world's 191+ countries send their best and brightest and most respected delegates to this meeting (Saudi Arabia and Sudan aside), the US has sent a delegation of undistinguished and lower-ranking officials and appointees who have spent most of the past 10 days infuriating the international delegates and the US women's organizations at the meetings.

Even while women all over the world, including the US, face serious issues of life and equality, our delegation stands up at the UN and rants about sex education and condoms (against both) and of course against abortion and any kind of women's health that could be labeled "reproductive health services" even to care for victims of rape. US lead delegate Ellen Saurbrey finally conceded that the US would not insist on an anti-abortion amendment to the global Beijing platform, but then gave an excruciating speech to the world about the US obsession with abstinence-only sex education and abstinence-only HIV-AIDS prevention. There were reports that global delegates actually booed Ms Saurbrey at one point, an amazing breech of diplomatic behaviour.

It is bad enough that this is the country that could not agree on the Equal Rights Amendment, is still one of the very limited number of countries that will not ratify the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women/CEDAW (again, our old friends Sudan and Saudi Arabia are among the few fellow hold-outs), but to expend so much public energy pressuring, posturing, and attempting to bribe the countries of the world to go backwards on the goals for women we supported 10 years ago is a bitter humiliation for those of us who would like to think that women are moving forward and should be able to count on freedom and equality. There are more women in parliament in Rwanda, the country still recovering from genocide, than there are in the US Congress or any state legislature in the US.

On the plus side of the CSW experience, it is wonderful to see the UN become, however briefly, a community of the world's women. Even with genuine debates on policy and priorities, there is an
exhilarating delight in meeting and hearing and seeing so many diverse and impressive women
and learning of their struggles and their successess. It also is striking to realize how essential a role the UN and UN documents such as the Beijing Plan for Action play in almost all parts of the world except the US. We the women of the US, indeed we the people, would have a lot to gain if we could break through the anti-UN isolationist curtain to enjoy our share of the rights the international community has established. Although we have given the UN a small bit of Manhattan and our reluctantly paid dues, what we have to gain potentially is much greater if we could be willing to think of ourselves as part of the global community-not the City on the Hill. Women in the US, at least, would be much better off if we would aim for the nineteenth century suffrage standard, "our rights and nothing less: our rights and nothing more".

peacewoman1213

Cuba, que linda es Cuba...

Atlantic City has just opened up a whole shopping center of
pseudo-Havana, Disneyland Cuba....what does this mean? At the very moment when the Bush administration has essentially cut off ALL travel to the actual, real, Cuba...suddenly the sanitized, commercialized decor version seems to be a sure-fire popular draw for visitors and gamblers taking a few minutes away from the slots. For the past year, the US law has even prohibited Cuban-americans from going to Cuba to see relatives
(mothers are ok, aunts and cousins are not) and even humanitarian projects such as the Cuban-american group in California that collects wheelchairs for Cubans who need them are not allowed to ship the aid or visit the projects they work with. Yet fake palm trees and plastic images of "old Havana" are now the cool background for getting drunk or buying more unnecessary pairs of jeans (made in
Indonesia, Malaysia, and other non-unionized locations). Unlike President Bush, and unlike the vast majority of day-trip visitors to the Atlantic City version of Havana, I actually remember pre-revolutionary Havana, AND the same city after the revolution. My memories of "old" Havana, though, include some features that Atlantic-City-Havana leaves out-I remember beggars wandering the streets and climbing the stairs of
apartment buildings to knock on doors to ask for food. I remember the streets of Havana filling with floods and sewage when it rained because there was no public health agency to repair
the infrastructure. I remember that all the public schools ran on half day sessions because of underfunding and overcrowding. I remember the large US military establishment in Havana, there to train and support the dictator Batista, an establishment so accepted that the US army even had its own amusement park for the children of US troops, along with separate schools and stores for the US military. Cuba today, the real Cuba, has schools and healthcare and-yes- nightclubs, musicians, and dancing-all part of a real and complex country that exists for its own sake, not to be our decorative motif-of-the-week.

Peacewoman 1213

Bracing for the State of the Union

Woke up today and the bleak awareness set in that tonight there will be two or more hours of Bush idolatry on the part of our representatives
and the media (most of them, anyway) with fawning, handshakes, and
round after round of applause. The "balanced" afterview programs on tv
will range from center-right wimpy to far-right gloating. Given the very real concerns that we can have about human security, both in the US and
in all the world, the use of this address as a political spin/ad is
indeed an "expense of spirit in a waste of shame" for the country. Human
security, in a real sense, would have us DOING something about
global warming, global poisoning, global drought, global disarmament,
and at our national level, something real about education, health,
transportation, housing....The administration declared today that the
next budget will completely eliminate funding for AMTRAK, making
us completely dependent on oil-fueled car transportation and
massively subsidized air travel. Philadelphia, the city which is now running all public libraries on half-days and no weekend hours,
recently held a celebration of the public schools that had met the
standard of "adequate" progress for 2 years, as measured by
a small flotilla of standardized tests--this distinguished, historic
(and Democratic) city has 42! schools out of 220 that achieved the level
of "adequate" for two years running. Why is our commitment to the future not a security issue?

peacewoman1213