STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS
Working For Peace, Justice, and A Sustainable Environment
A Modesto Peace/Life Center Publication
Peace & Justice
Friday, August 6, Hiroshima Day, will mark the 59th anniversary of the bombs dropped on Japan. Modesto Peace Life Center's traditional commeration includes a potluck supper at Tuolumne Regional Park at 6:30 p.m., followed by reading the classic Sadako and the Thousand Cranes. Then, as dusk falls, we go to the river with our candles and float flower petals down the river, symbolically mourning the great loss to the world on that day 59 years ago.
ACTION: Join us. Bring food to share and your own table service.
You may also wish to attend the rally in Livermore August 8 (see below). The Modesto Peace Life Center will help sponsor both events. Organize a carpool!
Recently, everywhere you look school budgets are cut, libraries closed and social programs gutted — yet, against a major deficit and budget crunch, funding for nuclear weapons continues to rise. For example, in the bay area city of Livermore two schools will close, while at the same time funding for nuclear weapons increases at the nearby Livermore nuclear weapons lab!
On Sunday, August 8, to mark the 59th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there will be a major rally demanding "Books not Bombs". The action, at one of the primary facilities for nuclear weapons in the world, will be part of an international series of actions from August 6-12 that oppose U.S. nuclear policy and demand the abolition of nuclear weapons.
The "Books Not Bombs" rally will begin at 1 p.m. at Jackson Elementary School in Livermore, Ca. The rally will be followed by an action and march to Livermore nuclear weapons lab. This year we are demanding:
the abolition of nuclear weapons
the demilitarization of education
an end to a war economy which funds bombs over school books for our children.
Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab has long been a site of non-violent resistance to nuclear weapons which have become the ultimate symbol and enforcement mechanism for U.S. Empire. A nuclear armed nation rules by threat of annihilation. The U.S. has brandished its nuclear arms fire-power for decades while simultaneously demanding that other nations disarm. Billions of dollars have been, and continue to be spent by the U.S. in the invasion of Iraq, shrouded by claims that we sought to eliminate hidden weapons of mass destruction.
WMD's were not found in Iraq.
Meanwhile, right here in the Bay Area, University of California scientists are developing new and modified nuclear weapons at Livermore Lab, one of the "brains" behind the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. The Livermore facility and the Los Alamos weapons laboratory are the primary American institutions which together have designed every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal. The University of California, an establishment of higher learning, manages both.
Currently at Livermore Lab, 28 million dollars has been requested in FY 2005 for design work on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, (a "bunker busting" bomb). If built this bomb could burrow into the ground and could inevitably disperse radioactive dirt and debris over several square miles of the surrounding environment.
In addition to the development of new and modified nuclear weapons, a major ramp-up of WMD activities is proposed at Livermore Lab. In essence, their ten-year plan, if unchanged, will create the infrastructure for a whole new generation of nuclear weapons. This plan, coupled with the broader "U.S. Nuclear Posture Review" could increase our nation's capacity to manufacture an extensive arsenal of advanced, new weapons. To this end, a highly criticized proposal released by the Department of Energy reveals plans to double the limit for plutonium stored on the Livermore site to 3,300 pounds (enough for at least 300 nuclear bombs) and create new technologies to manufacture plutonium pits, the core of a nuclear bomb.
Stopping the infrastructure that enables the creation of new and modified nuclear weapons in Livermore is essential to prevent rampant global proliferation!
ACTION: Join with thousands around the world to say "NO" to nuclear weapons and U.S. nuclear policy. For information contact Tara at (925) 443-7148 : tara@trivalleycares.org and/or: www.trivalleycares.org
This letter was received in reply to a letter sent to Representative Dennis Cardoza by Modesto Peace Life Center boardmember, James Costello.
Dear Mr. Costello:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the development of low-yield, "bunker buster" nuclear weapons. I appreciate hearing your views on this important issue.
In May 2003, the House of Representatives approved a $400 billion defense budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2004 that authorized continued research on low-yield nuclear weapons and removed a ten-year-old ban on research into new nuclear weapons programs. While I supported passage of the FY2004 Defense bill, I strongly oppose the testing and development of new nuclear weapons. You will be interested to know that during floor consideration of the Defense bill, I voted for an amendment that would have moved funds for research on nuclear bunker buster weapons to conventional weapons, as well as a measure that would have required the President to notify Congress if he intended to resume nuclear testing. Regrettably, these amendments were not adopted by the House.
Like you, I strongly oppose the development of nuclear weapons. I believe using low-yield nuclear devices would undermine efforts to curtail the spread of nuclear weapons by dangerous regimes around the globe. Additionally, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that a nuclear device can be used as a weapon without creating global fallout. I am also not aware of any problems facing our nuclear weapons stockpile that suggest a need to resume underground nuclear testing. While I appreciate the concern that some countries may try to bury materials for weapons of mass destruction in deep bunkers, I believe conventional weapons can be developed for the same purpose. Additionally, I am concerned that the removal of the ban on nuclear weapons would jeopardize many, if not all of the carefully crafted arms controls agreements that our nation has supported for many years. Please be assured that I will continue to monitor this situation carefully, and will keep your views in mind when I have the opportunity to vote on related legislation.
Thank you for taking the time to inform me of your views. If I may be of any further assistance on this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Dennis Cardoza
Member of Congress
The First Tyrant
One day, long ago, at the dawn of time-
a male made a terrible discovery:
Perhaps it was just a suggestion, partly in jest,
but with a certain smirk and a slight sneer, just so,
that one poor male was a coward, or disloyal-
and they might therefore turn upon him with ridicule and contempt.
This they did.And from this all tyranny came to be.
For that male had discovered how he might make a group of males turn against
one of its own,and in their overwhelming strength,
beat him-or kill him, terminating forever his genes of integrity and
independence.And perhaps, on that same day,
this man, the first tyrant, saw also that
with such fear, each member could be made to
serve the tyrant's preferences,
always to face outward, rather than face the tyrant,
and would attack and kill others rather than face the punitive wrath of his
fellows.So with this knowledge,
the foundation was laid for the future of war,
the beginnings of the hierarchy of violence were established.Oh1 But one day, an even more terrible discovery this tyrant made:
That he could somehow commission each of six or seven or so males to invest
yet another group with the fear of punishment
and so to command these, and these might in turn extend once again the
terror, so finally there came to be a great hoard, and the size of the hoard
was almost unlimited.Thus the hierarchy of violence was invented,
and seeing the pattern, it was not difficult for other tyrants to create
around themselves, a swarm of obedient males.So it is, the great irony of the male,
that his wonderful courage in the face of simple and natural dangers, yet so
fearful of his own group,
normal and desirable as this might be,
in pursuit of game or in opposing a predator,
should be harnessed easily by the tyrant,
to serve the tyrant's preference for power and conquest,
his only constraint another such hierarchy.
So it is, to this day, the armies clash by night-- James MacQueen
By NOAM BEN ZE'EV
Edited from a longer article published in Ha'aretz Israel, May 10, 2004
Full article found here at The Dialogue Project
RAMALLAH - "I know that it is hard for you to believe your eyes, but what you see before you here, on the stage - is reality," said Daniel Barenboim, and in the tense silence that prevailed in the small, crowded concert hall in Ramallah on Friday, his emotional remarks sounded like a prophecy that was being fulfilled. On the stage, with glistening eyes, sat the performers of the Palestine Youth Orchestra, the first of its sort in Palestinian history. And when Barenboim, the greatest conductor of his generation, waved his hand, they raised their instruments, ready to produce the first symphonic chord in their homeland, and the audience held its breath.
And in that frozen moment, an identical situation was recollected: In that same part of the world, 70 years ago, the greatest conductor of his day—Arturo Toscanini—stood in a small, crowded hall in Tel Aviv, facing an orchestra that had just been founded: The Land of Israel orchestra, which was Known in English as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. He raised his hand, and a small, isolated audience hungry for culture, glued to radio sets, also held its breath. International recognition was what it desired more than anything, in 1936, and the orchestra under Toscanini’s baton, which eventually became the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, symbolized the beginning of its independence. Barenhoim, for whom the Israel Philharmonic served as his musical home since childhood, sharply lowered his hands, and the opening notes of Bizet’s “Carmen” sounded in the space.
"A person who is determined to do something constructive with his life needs to come to terms with the fact that not everyone is going to love him," said Barenboim in a series of conversations, press conferences and interviews he held in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority during the past week, after arriving here for several concerts and the Wolf Prize ceremony at the Knesset, which was held yesterday. "In Israel, there are a lot of people who are very grateful for my activities, but apparently there are also a lot of people who are hostile toward me because of this; and I have no problem with that."
"There's one piece of land here, call it what you will - the land of Israel or Palestine, and until 1948, everyone who lived here was a Palestinian, but since then, we Jews have had a new destiny. We won independence, and some of the responsibility for finding a solution lies on our shoulders."
When asked to explain why so many people disagree with this opinion, he replies: "We haven't managed to digest this sharp transition, from a majority that was ruled over for 2,000 years to a majority that is ruling over another people - and this within only 19 years. We haven't developed the ability to grasp that there are people who have a historical story that is different from ours. People who also live here and do not understand what the justification is for a state exclusively for Jews. I'm arguing that the time has come - but this time in reverse: In the past we said that `the time has come' to stand on our own two feet and achieve our independence. Now `the time has come' here too: to recognize our neighbors as equals and to end the conflict with them, in the realization that there is no military way of doing this."
Barenboim does not believe that his opinions are based on the fact that he lives far from the region.
"You don't need to travel far in order to oppose the occupation and the control over another people," he says. "There are a lot of people who are living here in Israel who see this no less than I do. Israel was not intended to be a colonialist nation, and the Jewish settlements in the territories are like a cancer in the body of the process. And acts like the separation wall testify to a profound lack of understanding of the essence of the conflict. We already have one Wailing Wall here, and now a double wailing wall is being created, over which they will weep on both sides. I can't make this wall tumble down, even if I were to enlist 300 musicians, but I shall do everything I can so that culture and music seep through every crack in it."
Therefore, music is a practical political step, he says. "Everyone has to act in his own field according to his ability, and in my field I can do projects in music and music education. My way is music, and as a musician, I fight against two things; against loud noise, but also against silence."
Last August, during his fifth visit to Ramallah, Barenboim announced a bold plan: the founding of an infrastructure for musical and multi-disciplinary education in all the Palestinian Authority territories and the founding of a youth orchestra within five years. His partners in this plan are the Palestinian National Conservatory, which opened in 1993, the long-established Friends' School, branches of which were opened in Ramallah and other Palestinian cities in the 19th century by the Quaker movement, and the Barenboim-Said Cultural Foundation, which was established last year in Andalusia by Barenboim and his friend, Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, who passed away a month later. The plan's annual budget is 100,000 euro, all of it funded by the foundation.
The pace that Barenboim set for fulfilling the plan looks rather ambitious, but "we're ahead of the timetable," he says. "Five teachers have already come from Berlin to live in Ramallah and are teaching string instruments and wind instruments - also in the schools in the refugee camps like al Amari. The children's thirst is tremendous, and it is amazing how quickly the interest is growing among them and how much talent there is there. At the concert, you will be able to hear something of this progress, but this isn't going to be an official inauguration of the orchestra, just an initial exposure of its nucleus."
On Friday afternoon, the busy streets around the Friends' School in Ramallah, where the concert was held, went silent. Nearby Manara Square and the surrounding busy neighborhoods were taking their Sabbath rest, and unusual figures appeared in the area: teenagers dressed in black and white clothes, carrying in their hands and on their backs musical instruments in their cases - violins, a cello, a trumpet, woodwind instruments. They gathered in the school's circular courtyard for a final rehearsal. An hour later, the courtyard filled with an excited audience of young people and adults, musicians and well-known figures from the Ramallah social and political scene - and a mass of reporters and cameramen, nearly all of them foreign.
In a short speech, Barenboim dedicated the concert to the memory of Said, and voiced their joint philosophy: "music allows the individual to reflect his innermost being outward, and thus to influence others," he told the audience. "With music, a person cannot shut himself in - not inside himself and not inside his country." Subsequently he added: "I am not prepared to express criticism of the Israeli government here," as a buzz passed through the audience, "even though I certainly could have won applause if I were to do this. No, here I want to express my commitment to social justice, to the war on ignorance and to the aspiration to recognize the existence of the other."
News Coverage:
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah--from This Week in Palestine, also in The Jerusalem Times
Daniel Barenboim - Playing Politics--Norman Lebrecht in La Scena Musicale
Daniel Barenboim: Israel's future depends on Palestinian state--Ha'aretz
The role of civil society in the Middle East--from Bitter Lemons, May 13, 2004 edition
By DAN ONORATO
Edited slightly from a talk given at the Stanislaus Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship on June 13, 2004.
Because we live in a country with an administration so unabashedly imperial, I thought of other empires in history. My mind went to Rome and one of my favorite pieces of literature, Vergil's Aeneid, about the founding of Rome by Aeneas. Aeneas escaped from Troy amid the flames of the defeated city, and then, like Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey, he was destined to many adventures before he would fulfill his destiny. My favorite story in the Aeneid is the love affair between Dido, Queen of Carthage in north Africa, and Aeneas. Their love is deep and passionate, a union of soul mates, until Aeneas is reminded that his destiny is to create a new Troy in the West. The tension is heart rending. Will Aeneas give in to the pleasure and personal joy of this wonderful love, or will he sacrifice his personal solace and needs to do what he knows is right? Aeneas embodies "pietas," a devotion to duty that rips him away from personal gain and summons him to fulfill his responsibility in the larger scheme of history. Heart heavy, he leaves Dido to serve the future. In short, however reluctantly, Aeneas reconnects with what counts most and reorders his priorities.
In a country darkened by the abuses of empire and the blinders of our obsession with security, it is urgent that we reconnect with what counts most and reorder our priorities. It's a fitting theme for a Sunday fellowship gathering since the word "religion" comes from the Latin word "religare," to reconnect, to bring human affairs back into a correct order with the divine. In the Greek world view, the greatest sin was hubris, not knowing your proper place in the universe. The opposite of hubris was the well-known adage printed above the entrance to Apollo's shrine at Delphi: "Know Yourself." Know where you sit in the universe. Know your rightful place. For a long time perhaps, but especially so for the last three years under the Bush administration, America has lost sight of where it sits in the universe. It fails to see itself as one nation among many, it prides itself as number one over all, and it chooses to use its power to impose its will rather than serve the common good. It has broken the first and most important commandment of the Hebrew tradition: I the Lord am your God; do not have other gods besides me.
America has many false gods, but its principal idolatry lies in its pursuit of absolute power (empire) and its obsession over security. The threat to our and others' security is real. But our response to that threat has been blinding. Instead of addressing the central question about who hates us and why, and collaborating with the rest of the world to apprehend real and would be perpetrators, our government has pulled out its pistols and unleashed the full might of its military power in two wars, neither of which has achieved its objectives. Power in itself is not evil; it can be used for great good, as America has sometimes used it in the past. But it becomes evil when a government spurns international opinion and sees its policies as divinely illumined and ordained, as though American rule were the manifestation of God's will for all of humanity. Power becomes evil when it foregoes the path of reason and is exercised predominantly through armed force. The twin idols become evil when they absorb such an exorbitant amount of attention and funding that we either ignore or are unable to address so many other pressing needs, both here and abroad.
Imperial pretensions are obvious in the war against Iraq, a war to assert American hegemony in the Middle East, a war America pursued against the will of the most of the world. This war is illegal and immoral, and much of the damage is probably irreversible. In world opinion we have lost our right to claim the moral high-ground, because we have assumed the behavior of a rogue state. According to the Charter of the UN, which the US helped start, a nation can wage war only in its self-defense and only under the authority of the UN Security Council. As I read the facts, the President and leading members of his Cabinet knowingly and repeatedly distorted the truth in their zeal to carry out the war. The weapons of mass destruction they claimed posed an imminent threat to the U.S. and the world turned out to be non-existent, yet the administration used its so-called doctrine of pre-emptive war to justify its invasion. Church leaders worldwide as well as millions of people in the streets around the globe denounced the war as immoral, but the almost universal pleas and chants could not penetrate an administration whose messianic world view divided the world into good guys and bad guys: if countries were not for us, they were against us. A zealous and over-confident administration regarded all who disagreed with it as inimical to America's righteous war against terrorism. In my view, the administration's lies that led to war and the loss of so many lives, both American and Iraqi, constitute an impeachable crime.
The administration's pattern of deception and evasion of truth is transparent in the current scandal over U.S. war crimes in Abu Graib and other prisons in Iraq. The recent Newsweek expose of the Department of Justice memo justifying methods of torture, long condemned by the Geneva Conventions, reveals the hubris and the contradictory stance of the administration: in the name of building freedom and democracy and fighting terror, the Pentagon justifies disregard for the principles of international law. The American prison guards directly responsible for the inhumane treatment of their Iraqi captives should not be the only ones held accountable. The claim of not knowing about the reports of three reputable human rights organizations is a case either of lying or culpable negligence. Secretary Rumsfeld ought to resign and a full and impartial investigation about the administration's treatment of prisoners in the war on terror, wherever they are held, should take place.
The peace dividend following the fall of the Soviet Union and the millennial hope for a more peaceful and just world have not materialized. Instead we have a unipolar world with the US asserting its dominance and power because it has no rival. The Bush administration has defied the rest of the world. It withdrew the US signature of agreement with the World Court's authority because nobody, it held, not even an international court, has the right to hold U.S. officials or soldiers accountable. Such arrogance epitomizes Lord Acton's dictum: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
The major justification for this assertion of American power is that we and the world are threatened by terrorists who must be defeated. But the War on Terror threatens to bring us George Orwell's world of 1984, characterized by perpetual warfare in which all is sacrificed - truth, history, civil rights, and the enlivening bonds of human community and solidarity - all is sacrificed in the endless and ever-elusive campaign to end terror. America has initiated two wars in three years. If the Iraq war had not turned so disastrous, the Bush administration might be pursuing a further war against Iran or North Korea. This country now spends more on the military than the next 17 nations combined. It is squandering billions on a Missile Defense Program whose viability has yet to be demonstrated, and whose real goal is U.S. dominance in space. The administration is pursuing a new line of ever-more-destructive nuclear weapons that it threatens to use offensively if necessary. Domestically, civil rights and free speech are threatened, and policies of secrecy are making access to information more difficult and accountability for wrongdoing more rare. Because we overvalue security, an environment of fear has made us easily manipulated and compliant. Our preoccupation with security has made us less secure. This new Cold War greatly benefits the military-industrial complex but robs our society of the funds and the will to reinvigorate our educational system, to provide job training for the unemployed, to offer affordable housing and health care for all, and to preserve and restore our endangered environment.
It is clear we need a period of national introspection to rethink and reorder our priorities. Each of us could suggest changes that should be part of this redirection. Here are a few of my suggestions:
We as a nation must face the question we have avoided up to now about why people around the world resent or hate America. This means looking squarely at the patterns of self-interest in our foreign policy over the last at least 60 years. It means recognizing our ethnocentrism and dispelling the myths we wrap our national self-image in. It means committing ourselves to work more effectively with other wealthy countries to help meet the dire needs of poor countries, so that desperation, hatred, and revenge are diminished and opportunity for a better life becomes more widespread.
As individuals and as a society, we need to restore our sense of the common good and our responsibility as citizens and human beings to serve and sometimes to sacrifice for the larger good of all. A Me-First society or person is spiritually impoverished and psychologically sad and lonely. In Einstein's terms, we need to widen our circle of compassion in concerted, intelligent action.
We must redirect this country away from arrogant unilateralism back to generous cooperation with the UN and the international community. We should renounce the "doctrine" of pre-emptive war, and while we start withdrawing our troops from Iraq, we need to work with the UN to restore Iraq's civil society, rebuild infrastructure, and assure the civil and human rights of all. For a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, we need to work more honestly toward that end between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
We need to take seriously the reality that our democracy is in trouble and that we, as citizens, have to be far more vigilant and involved. Big money is clogging the heart of America and major surgery is needed. Major media reform is also needed. TV news journalists and the press have become the lapdog to power; we must pressure them to embrace their true role as watchdogs. A bold and persistent exposure of power, both in government and business, is vital to restoring our endangered democracy.
I end with a simple plea: that we consider thoughtfully the world our children face, and in light of all the needs, we fire up our capacity for outrage and channel our anger into a renewed and tenacious commitment to work for a better world.
Dan Onorato is a Professor of Literature and Language Arts at the Modesto Junior College and a Modesto Peace Life Center boardmember.
By CINDY LITMAN
