Fifteenth Peace Essay Contest another success

By SHELLY SCRIBNER

The Merced-Somoto Sister City committee is planning to send a delegation to Somoto, Nicaragua next summer. We would like to send people in the medical field.

We are also now selling premium coffee grown around our sister city. The coffee helps us fund 7 college and 7 high school students from the Somoto area so they can finish their education. The organic coffee, roasted for us in Emeryville, California, is fair trade which means the farmers get a fair price for the coffee. It sells for $5.00 for 1/2 pound and $10.00 for one pound.

—Myrtle Osner

The United States is considering the deployment of a national missile defense (NMD) system intended to shoot down long-range missiles attacking the U.S.

Will this system work?

The answer is no.

The chief difficulty in developing missile defenses is not in getting a system of complex hardware to work as intended, although that is a daunting task. The key problem is that the defense has to work against an enemy that is aware of the system and deliberately trying to foil it. Even if the planned technology worked perfectly (a big if), the attacker could defeat the system by taking relatively simple steps, called countermeasures, that would confuse or overwhelm the defense.

Countermeasures require technology that is much simpler than the technology needed for the defense. This inherent asymmetry means an attacker would have an advantage, despite the overwhelming technological edge the United States has over any potential attacker such as North Korea.

These are the conclusions of a year-long study organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the MIT Security Studies Program. Study participants included eleven physicists and engineers, seven of whom have served as senior consultants to the Defense Department. The study report discusses the architecture of the planned missile defense system in detail and gives an overview of the types of countermeasures an attacker might use to foil this defense. We found that readily available countermeasures would defeat the fully deployed NMD system.

For example, a country that decided to deliver biological weapons by ballistic missile could divide the lethal agent into l00 or more small bombs, known as "bomblets," as a way of dispersing the agent over the target. This would overwhelm the defense, which would deplete its supply of interceptors before it ran out of warheads to shoot at.

Editor’s Note: The article discusses in detail several other technical countermeasures that we will not copy here. The authors stress that these countermeasures had been conceived of practically as early as ballistic missiles themselves.)

The NMD system, as currently planned, cannot be modified to address these problems ….How is it possible that this problem is being ignored?

The Pentagon says it must walk before it can run, and has divided the missile defense problem into two parts: getting the system to work against missiles without realistic countermeasures, and then hoping to get it to work against missiles with countermeasures. Our study shows that the planned defense will never be able to run ....This situation is not unlike someone deciding to build a bridge to the moon. But instead of assessing the feasibility of the full project before moving forward, they decide to start building the on-ramps, since that's the part they know how to do.

The reality is that any country capable of building a long-range missile would also have the capability to build countermeasures able to penetrate the planned defense.

—excerpted and submitted by Myrtle Osner

For more information visit the UCS website.

(From Inform, published by Fourth Freedom Forum, Goshen, Indiana.)

Ana Anba is a twenty-seven year old Iraqi mother, "glassy-eyed, exhausted, on the verge of tears. For eleven days she has been at the bedside of her nine-year old son, Ali. He is listless, barely conscious. Ana has purchased thousands of dinars of medicine since he became ill months ago with a respiratory infection. There's been no improvement. She wonders now if the medicine she bought on the black market was outdated. Or perhaps it was not what he really needed.

"We tell her we hope her story will help awaken parents and families in the United States. 'When?' she asks with sharp insistence. The interpreter tries to gloss over her obvious anger. 'She is frustrated and tired from six years of sanctions.'

"Ana interrupts sharply. 'In America, would women want this for their children?' Then she turns to Ali and whispers softly, 'It is for the children that we ask an end to the suffering, not for us.'"

Founder of Voices in the Wilderness and nominee for the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize, Kathy Kelly relayed stories like this one* in her late November talk at the College Avenue Congregational Church in Modesto. She had just returned from the latest of many trips to Iraq weighed down with indelible images that etch a human face on hard-to-believe UNICEF statistics: over 500,000 children have died from the economic sanctions, around 4,000 more die each month, 150 each day.

Voices in the Wilderness does in Iraq what Witness for Peace did in Central America: they help Americans understand the consequences of US policy on the victims. They tell us what the mainstream media generally isn't courageous enough to put into headlines. Over the past four years, thirty-seven Voices teams of Americans and others have defied U.S. law and UN sanctions to deliver medical goods directly to people in Iraq. While there they see the harsh plight of the Iraqi people, and they return home to tell their stories, as Kelly did here in Modesto. They will not be kept quiet. And people, like those in Modesto, are beginning to awaken.

Kelly recounts an act of civil disobedience against U.S. law in front of the Children's Hospital in front of the Saddam Medical Center in Baghdad. To the London film crew capturing the event, she announced:

"Inside this hospital is a little boy named Bishar. He suffers from leukemia and arrived here yesterday because he's gone out of remission. I believe I'm carrying, in my briefcase, medicines that could save his life, a cytotoxin called vincristin and a third-generation antibiotic. My government says that if I give Bishar these medicines, I'm committing a crime. I can tell you that I don't believe what I'm about to do is wrongful. Rather, the economic sanctions themselves are criminal, constituting one of the most egregious instances of child abuse in the entire world."

"It's unthinkable what we are doing," Kelly told her Modesto audience. "As a nation we do not engage in child abuse. But this is child abuse."

For "crimes" like this, the U.S. government has threatened Kelly and other Voices members with 12 years in prison, a $1 million fine, and a $250,000 administrative penalty. But these threats only make them cry out more passionately.

Kelly and Voices are undaunted. Along with the Middle East Children's Alliance, Voices in the Wilderness sponsored the "Remembering Omran" bus tour that spent three late October days in Modesto on its mission through many cities up to Canada to awaken attention to the disastrous effect of the sanctions. Voices is now organizing a similar bus trip for spring on the east coast.

In 1996 Leslie Stahl went to Iraq for 60 Minutes. On the program that aired May 12, 1996, she asked Madeleine Albright, then US ambassador to the UN, to explain US policy in the context of the devastation she had seen among the children of Iraq. Albright responded: " I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."

In January 1997 at the Senate confirmation hearings of Albright for secretary of state, Kelly and other Voices activists protested. Albright stressed her commitment to universal human rights, but regarding Iraq she affirmed her readiness to maintain a tough policy. Kelly stood up and spoke out: "Ms. Albright, over a half a million Iraqi children have died because of US/UN sanctions. In May, 1996, you told 60 Minutes that this was an acceptable price to pay in order to maintain US interests in the region. Are you prepared to withdraw that statement?"

As she was being ushered out, Kelly continued calling out, "These children are helpless victims. Ms. Albright, you could do so much good."

Now, nearly four years later, thousands more have died and Saddam Hussein remains solidly in power. The policy hasn't worked and its moral and legal bankruptcy is patent for all to see. A number of countries have recently started flying into Baghdad in defiance of the sanctions, but it is not likely that Albright or the next President will change this policy unless widespread pressure arises from us.

Kelly pleads for all concerned people to move from compassion into action. "Inform your friends, write letters to the editor, write your political leaders."

ACTION: Congressman Gary Condit may be persuaded to act against this policy. Write him at 920 16th St., Suite C, Modesto, CA 95354 or call him: locally, 527-1914, or in Washington, (202) 225-6131. Also write a letter to the Bee.

By OSCAR ARDANS

Oscar Ardans, a long time Modesto resident just returned from five weeks in Khmelnitsky, Modesto’s Ukranian sister city, as a member of the Modesto Friendship Committee delegation. He took part in a cultural exchange in which he taught English to ninth, tenth, and eleventh form students there. He also took part in programs at several other schools around the city, including visits to the Border Guard Academy (customs), the Institute of Government and Law (something like an MBA program for civil servants), and the Padillya Technical University (where they have an "American Club").

A mere 14 years after peace-loving Modesto residents offered a hand of friendship to strangers in a land 8,000 miles away, our sister city Khmelnitsky, Ukraine is experiencing serious economic uncertainties. Now independent from Russia after many centuries, Ukraine has gone through an almost complete de-industrialization since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. When government orders stopped coming, factories shut down, partly because their managers didn’t know how to find new markets, partly because their products were of poor quality and/or too expensive. After a period of low production, many factories started selling their equipment in the West for scrap. In the place of the industrial economy of old has arisen a service economy where many people are forced to buy and sell products from abroad in the many street markets one finds all over Khmelnitsky. Salaries are extremely low by western standards: an experienced English teacher can expect $30.00 per month! Many people barter or sell services to eke out a living. One former English teacher there gives private lessons to supplement his $18.00 per month pension.

On the other hand, Ukraine is going through a cultural renaissance: there has been a re-birth in the use of the Ukrainian language in almost all transactions, public or private, instead of Russian, the old lingua franca of the Russian and Soviet empires. The Orthodox faith, practiced by the majority of religious people, has been separated into two distinct branches: Russian and Ukrainian. Many Ukrainians argue that their "restored" belief is more in keeping with the original Orthodox Church which came to Kiev after Muslims captured Byzantium. They claim that the Russian branch became an arm of Russian imperialism.

There is an expectation of excellence in all of the many schools visited. Students stand when teachers enter the room, and there is little of the horseplay one might encounter in an American high school. Because of their well educated citizenry, Ukraine has a serious negative brain drain: people are finding work in other parts of Europe. However, this leads to currency inflow from family members abroad, a short-term benefit.

A bloated bureaucracy in Khmelnitsky still employs a large segment of the population, albeit at low wages. The City Tax Office, for example, is a 12-story building housing over 430 employees, including 120 armed police for a city only slightly larger than Modesto. Despite the bureaucracy a large number of people have utter contempt for the government and a deep distrust for politicians. Tax evasion is a large part of everybody’s life. Many people talk about Lazarenko, the minister who made off with millions of dollars and now sits in an American jail fighting extradition. Ukrainians see him as a symptom of the government's rottenness, rather than as an individual criminal.

Ukraine enters the new century ill equipped for the changes brought about by independence and a transition to a market economy. Lack of funding leaves centralized services such as central heat and hot water in disrepair. The hospitals are seriously underfunded: the town’s general hospital has a per-patient daily budget of $2.40! Patients must provide their own clothing and blankets and bring their medications with them to keep at bedside. The Modesto Friendship Committee delegation took several suitcases packed with gauze, bandages, rubber gloves and other supplies, which were gratefully accepted by the hospital staff. (The Friendship Committee is considering raising funds to buy pajamas for them.) Some entrepreneurs, such as Ivan Bukhal, the former mayor, are trying to create some industrial enterprises to produce goods for sale in the West. Bukhal bought an abandoned factory, installed some modern machinery and now makes plastic extruded products, which he sells in Hungary, Poland and Germany. Such entrepreneurs are up against a national government which imposes a tax of 60 percent on profits, making it difficult to compete against firms in Poland’s "development zones" which are exempt from taxes on goods for sale abroad. Oil and gas for heating are scarce. Petroleum products must be purchased from Russia, whose pipeline from Caucasus-region oil fields passes through Ukraine on its way to markets in western Europe. (The long pipeline has been illegally tapped at many points.)

By VASU MURTY

Gandhi once noted that "the only people who don’t see Christ and his teachings as nonviolent are Christians." From history, however, we learn that the earliest Christians were vegetarians as well as pacifists. For example, Clemens Prudentius, the first Christian hymn writer, in one of his hymns exhorts his fellow Christians not to pollute their hands and hearts by the slaughter of innocent cows and sheep, and points to the variety of nourishing and pleasant foods obtainable without blood-shedding.

Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, said: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." (Matthew 5:9) Professor G.J. Heering in The Fall of Christianity, notes that "...the gospel condemns war...We have primarily to recognize, however hard it may be to do so, that the waging of war has no place in the moral and spiritual teachings of Jesus."

Hippolytus, second century Christian father and historian, who wrote what he considered the apostolic tradition and so the authentic Christian teaching, maintained that when he applied for admission to the Christian fellowship, a soldier must refuse to kill, even if he were commanded by his superiors to do so, and also must not take an oath.

Justin Martyr, the principal apologist of the early church (AD 150) wrote that: "Christians seek no earthly realm, but a heavenly, and that this will be a realm of peace. The prophecy of Isaiah—that swords shall be beaten into plowshares and spears to pruning hooks—begins to find fulfillment in the missions of Christians. For we refrain from the making of war on our enemies, but gladly go to death for Christ’s sake. Christians are warriors of a different world, peaceful fighters. For Caesar’s soldiers possess nothing which they can lose more precious than their life, while our love goes out to that eternal life which God will give."

Origen, the great Christian father of the second century, and a vegetarian, would hear nothing of earthly military service: he regarded it as completely forbidden: "We Christians no longer take up sword against nation, nor do we learn war any more, having become children of peace for the sake of Jesus who is our leader. We do not serve as soldiers under the Emperor, even though he requires it.

"Persons who possess authority to kill, or soldiers, should not kill at all, even when it is commanded of them. Every one who receives a distinctive leading position, or a magisterial power, and does not clothe himself in the weaponlessness of which is becoming to the gospel, should be separated from the flock."

Although the son of a military officer, the early Christian father Tertullian (AD 200) was a vegetarian opposed to militarism and violence. The question Tertullian faced was not whether a Christian may be a soldier, but whether a soldier may even be allowed within the church. He answered "No." The soldier who becomes a Christian ought to leave the army.

"One soul cannot be true to two lords — God and Caesar. How shall a Christian man wage war; nay, how shall he even be a soldier in peace time, without the sword, which the Lord has taken away?--for in disarming Peter he ungirded every soldier."

The great church father Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, denounced war and wrote: "The whole earth is drenched in adversaries’ blood, and if murder is committed, privately it is a crime, but if it happens with State authority, courage is the name for it: not the goodness of the cause, but the greatness of the cruelty makes the abominations blameless." Attacking even capital punishment, Cyprian wrote: "Christians are not allowed to kill, it is not permitted to guiltless to put even the guilty to death."

The Christian writer Lactantius of Bithinia wrote: "When God prohibits killing, He not only forbids us to commit brigandage, which is not allowed even by public laws, but he warns us not to do even those things which are legal among men. And so it will not be lawful for a just man to serve as a soldier for justice itself is his military service, nor to accuse anyone of a capital offense, because it makes no difference whether they kill with a sword or with a word, since killing itself is forbidden."

In her 1991 essay, "The Bible and Peace and War," Ursula King asks, "how are we to explain that Jesus, the founder of Christianity, is often called ‘the Prince of Peace’ and yet Western civilization so deeply shaped by the Christian story which is clearly pacifist in origin and essence, has become so militaristic from an early stage in its history?"

King quotes Christian pacifist John Ferguson from War and Peace in the World’s Religions, "The historic association of the Christian faith with nations of commercial enterprise, imperialistic expansion and technological advancement has meant that Christian peoples, although their faith is one of the most pacifistic in its origins, have a record of military activity second to none."

According to King, "In the early Church, pacifism was the dominant position up to the reign of Constantine, when Christianity became a state religion. Until then no Christian author approved of Christian participation in battle, whereas in AD 314 the Council of Arles decreed that Christians who gave up their arms in time of peace should be excommunicated."

In Theology and Social Structure, Robin Gill has written: "The situation of the pre-Constantine church appears all the more remarkable when it is realized that no major Christian church or denomination has been consistently pacifist since Constantine. Indeed, Christian pacifism has been largely confined to a small group of sects, such as the Quakers, Anabaptists, Mennonites, Brethren and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Further, pacifists within the churches, as distinct from sects, have in times of war been barely tolerated by their fellow Christians."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that in today’s world the choice is either nonviolence or nonexistence.