believe me good will come

A while back I read Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You (because I kept coming across comments about how it had profoundly influenced Gandhi and, by extension, Martin Luther King, Jr.). The book was long and rambling, but it had some great, stinging passages – a few of which sprang to mind as I was watching The Bourne Ultimatum. The movie touches on issues such as torture, assassination, extraordinary rendition, covert surveillance, “following orders“, and the basic question of whether the end justifies the means (“You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette”, “it became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it“, etc.).

[A] man, otherwise sensible and good-hearted, simply because he is given a badge or a uniform to wear, and told that he is a guard or customs officer, is ready to fire on people, and neither he nor those around him regard him as to blame for it, but, on the contrary, would regard him as to blame if he did not fire. To say nothing of judges and juries who condemn men to death, and soldiers who kill men by thousands without the slightest scruple merely because it has been instilled into them that they are not simply men, but jurors, judges, generals, and soldiers.
 This strange and abnormal condition of men under state organization is usually expressed in the following words: “As a man, I pity him; but as guard, judge, general, governor, tzar, or soldier, it is my duty to kill or torture him.” Just as though there were some positions conferred and recognized, which would exonerate us from the obligations laid on each of us by the fact of our common humanity. – Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life, XII

The fourth method [in which governments enslave men] consists in selecting from all the men who have been stupefied and enslaved by the three former methods a certain number, exposing them to special and intensified means of stupefaction and brutalization, and so making them into a passive instrument for carrying out all the cruelties and brutalities needed by the government. This result is attained by taking them at the youthful age when men have not had time to form clear and definite principles of morals, and removing them from all natural and human conditions of life, home, family and kindred, and useful labor. They are shut up together in barracks, dressed in special clothes, and worked upon by cries, drums, music, and shining objects to go through certain daily actions invented for this purpose, and by this means are brought into an hypnotic condition in which they cease to be men and become mere senseless machines, submissive to the hypnotizer. These physically vigorous young men (in these days of universal conscription, all young men), hypnotized, armed with murderous weapons, always obedient to the governing authorities and ready for any act of violence at their command, constitute the fourth and principal method of enslaving men. – Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life, VIII.

Lisa’s post has generated a bunch of comments about private charity, trade, economics, etc. – which interest me since that’s essentially what I’m studying at the moment. It’s great how everyone on the internet is an expert (a criticism that can be applied to me as often as it is applied to anyone else…). Here’s my two cents (for stan :P):

(one of Polyp’s Big Bad World cartoons - “borrowed” from the latest issue of the New Internationalist)

An interesting 1994 American Enterprise Institute interview with Dick Cheney has surfaced on YouTube (I saw it on The Daily Show’s ‘Even Dick Don’t Know Dick’ segment). Cheney is discussing the first Gulf War, and states that an actual occupation of Iraq would result in a “quagmire”…

You can watch it here. And here’s the transcript:

Interviewer: Do you think the US, or UN forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

Cheney: No.

Interviewer: Why not?

Cheney: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a US occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

*cough*

“Sixteen hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base.” (President Harry Truman, Address to the Nation, August 6, 1945.) The atomic bomb was dropped on the “base”, Truman said, because “we wished in the first attack to avoid as much as possible the killing of civilians.” At least 95 percent of the 100,000 killed immediately at Hiroshima were civilians.
(James Carroll, “Bombing With Blindfolds On”, Boston Globe, 6 November, 2001.)

“Over a fourteen-month period ending in April 1970, Operation MENU conducted 3,630 B-52 raids on Cambodia, dropping 110,000 tons of bombs….Fearing a public outcry over what most people would take as blows against rather than for peace, the decision was made to keep the raids entirely secret from Congress and the American public.” (Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990, New York, 1991, p. 238.)

“Again and again, the mantra of ’surgical strikes against military targets’ was repeated by journalists, even though Pentagon briefers acknowledged that they were aiming at civilian roads, bridges, and public utilities vital to the survival of the civilian population….Journalists and pundits were rightfully outraged when Baghdad advertised its violations of the Geneva Protocols by parading prisoners of war on TV. They failed to object, however, when the United States proved its own violations by showing footage of laser-guided bombs destroying hydroelectric dams (forbidden as targets under Protocol I, Article 56).” (Jim Naureckas, “Gulf War Coverage: The Worst Censorship Was at Home”, in Jim Naureckas and Janine Jackson (eds.), The FAIR Reader: An EXTRA! Review of Press & Politics in the ’90s, Boulder, Colorado, 1996, p. 37.)

“In ‘Re-Building America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century’, a report prepared by an impressive cross-section of the neo-conservative elite including Paul Wolfowitz, and issued by The Project for a New American Century in September 2000, the authors remarked that the kind of sweeping changes they are proposing may take some time unless some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbour, were to occur. 11th September 2001 was the even they were waiting for. Condoleeza Rice urged her colleagues the next morning that ways be found to ‘capitalize on these opportunities’, while Donald Rumsfeld urged immediate invasion of Iraq.” (Aijaz Ahmad, ‘Imperialism of Our Time’, Socialist Register 2004, p. 60.)

Fairfax Media: [New Zealand] Prime Minister Helen Clark has ignored diplomatic pressure from China over meeting the Dalai Lama but does not believe it will have any repercussions.

Miss Clark met with the exiled Tibetan leader in a lounge at Brisbane Airport this morning before a flight to Sydney, which they both were on.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters earlier said the meeting was purely by chance, but Miss Clark told reporters in Sydney that she had known for “some days” the two would be travelling together - though no pre-arranged meeting had been set up.

“One doesn’t know whether people are going to be in the lounge, what time other people boarded…”

This way Helen Clark can frame the meeting as pure coincidence [which will please the paranoid Chinese government, whom New Zealand is bending over backwards for in an effort to secure a free trade agreement] or as a deliberate decision [which will please those who think the Chinese government shouldn’t tell everyone else what to do].

The most interesting sentence from the article:

Miss Clark was travelling business class while the Dalai Lama was in economy.

If you have enough time to come and check out my blog then you have time to do the following: 

Control Arms - Add your name (and face) to an online petition demanding a global Arms Trade Treaty.

Control Arms - With one click you can send a message to the Foreign Ministers in South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Turkey and Jordan, urging them to support a strong Arms Trade Treaty.
 
Fair Trade Coffee - Send an email to Starbucks asking them to treat Ethiopian coffee farmers fairly.
 
Workers’ Rights - Send a protest message to 12 big sportswear brands, urging them to support workers’ rights.

Darfur - Online petition calling for UN Peacekeepers to be sent to Darfur [the situation in Sudan/Darfur is very complicated. There are good arguments for and against UN intervention. You might want to do some research before you decide whether or not to join this petition]. 

Big Noise - Add your name to the global Big Noise petition, calling for decision makers to Make Trade Fair. 
 
Fair Trade - [For New Zealand readers] Find out where you can buy Fair Trade products.

Poverty.com - Some information and action you can take.

[this post was updated 10 June 2007 in case anyone has followed up on my sister's talk tonight...]

This is the world laid out according to land area. [Worldmapper]

This is the world laid out with each country’s GDP (basically how rich the country is) in proportion. [Worldmapper]

What’s missing? The part of the world that the rest of us have forgotten about becomes very prominent if we change the focus:

HIV Prevalence (2003) - all ten territories with the highest prevalence of HIV are in Central and Southeastern Africa. [Worldmapper]

Malaria Deaths (2003) - in 2003, 92% of malaria cases and 94% of malarial deaths were recorded as being in African territories. [Worldmapper]

Infant Mortality 2002 (babies who die during the first year of their life) - in 22 territories the rate is over 1 infant death for every 10 live births. All of these 22 territories are in Africa. [Worldmapper]

War Deaths (2002) - people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo suffered 26% of all war deaths in 2002. [Worldmapper]

Undernourishment in 2000 - of all the people living in Central Africa, over 60% are undernourished. [Worldmapper]

These are only a few of the maps from the Worldmapper site. It’s run by a bunch of guys from the University of Sheffield and the University of Michigan.

It’s a cool idea, even if it is a bit limiting to only measure factors at a country-wide level. Check out the link to a cool video on Dave’s blog to see what I’m trying to say [here's the direct link to the video].

[this post was updated 10 June 2007 in case anyone has followed up on my sister's talk tonight...]

On The Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart was speaking about Tony Blair standing down and how this is the end of the political partnership between Bush and Blair:

“So there we have it, the end of an era.
I’m sorry, I misspoke – the end of a whole series of blundering errors.”

1 billion people live without safe drinking water and 2.6 billion people have no basic sanitation. Oxfam

At any given time, nearly half of all people in the developing world are suffering from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits. UN

The 3 richest men in the world are wealthier than the 48 poorest countries combined (that’s 3 people having more money than 600 million people…) [This statistic is from 1998, but I'm sure a similar situation applies today] WDM & here

The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4% of global exports.
If Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America each increased their share of world exports by just 1%, the resulting gains could lift 128 million people out of poverty. Oxfam

Nearly 1 billion people can’t read or write [presumably those are people of reading/writing age]. UNICEF

When reading statistics that talk of millions or billions of people, I find it helps to remember that each one of those people is someone just like me - someone’s child/mother/father; someone with hopes and dreams for the future; someone who feels pain and hunger exactly the same as everyone else, etc.

New Zealand’s life expectancy in 2005: 80
Sierra Leone’s Life expectancy in 2005: 39 WHO

New Zealand’s infant mortality rate (number of babies per 1,000 births who die before the age of 5) in 2005: 6
Sierra Leone’s infant mortality rate in 2005: 283 WHO

Average income for working age adults in New Zealand in 2005: $26,464
Average income for working age adults in Timor-Leste (East Timor) in 2005: $352
Average income for working age adults in Burundi in 2005: $107 IMF

World military expenditure in 2005 was over $1 trillion (that’s $1,000 billion). The USA spent $522 billion. The UN estimates that around $50 billion would be enough for basic education and healthcare, adequate food and safe water for all of the world’s people. SPIRI

From 1998 to 2001, the USA, the UK, and France earned more from arms sales to developing countries than they gave in aid. Control Arms

The 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council are the USA, UK, France, Russia, and China. Together, they are responsible for 88% of reported conventional arms exports. Control Arms

At any one time, more than 300,000 children (under-18) around the world are actively fighting as soldiers with government armed forces or armed political groups. Amnesty International

75% of the estimated 700,000-2.7 million people who die of malaria each year are African children. CDC

12% of the world’s population uses 85% of its water. source

The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. This is the same amount used when you flush the toilet. Oxfam

8,000 people die of AIDS every day. AIDS has already killed 25 million people. 15 million children have been orphaned by AIDS. Oxfam & Oxfam

Africa is home to about 66% of the 40 million people in the world infected with HIV. In 2005, nine out of ten Africans in need of AIDS medicines were still not receiving them. Because of AIDS many African countries now have a lower life expectancy than they did in 1960. BBC & Oxfam

…and so on.

Check out Global Issues - a great site with heaps of information.

To help change the present world situation, visit some of the sites listed in my sidebar under ‘CONSCIENCE…’.

Every decision you make in this life is a political one.

Now that I have seen
I am responsible