In Defense of Activism

The other day a friend told me I was "allowing" the political situation in the world to upset me. I had to meditate on that a bit because he seemed to be saying that being upset about thousands of unnecessary deaths, wasted tax-payer money and manipulation of information by the very people who are supposed to protect us, is something I should let go of--so as not to get upset.

While I understand the concept of taking responsibility for one's feelings, the implied judgment--that I would be more evolved or enlightened as a human being, if I were capable of denying/ignoring (or simply not caring about) the reality of the current situation--did not sit well with me.

It is true that if I didn't read the paper or watch Democracy Now or listen to alternative radio, I could be pretty care-free. In fact, it would be relatively easy. There is just one problem with that approach: it denies a fundamental belief I hold--we are all connected.

This is not to say that I believe all people should feel as I do. But after two years working as a news reporter/co-anchor in listener-sponsored radio (which I began just before the invasion of Iraq) my own life started to look pretty small. In fact, when I contemplated the reality of life for the average Iraqi, I began to see that having to choose between an expensive bottle of champagne or a dinner out were not exactly "big issues." So I shifted my focus to what really mattered. And for me, that meant spreading information that mainstream media wasn't reporting. It also meant devoting a fair amount of time and energy, every day, to keeping informed.

That isn't easy, by the way. If I count the time spent reading the paper, watching/listening to alternative media publications, interviewing people, etc., it's almost a full-time job--and that's just to keep on top of what's actually happening-- forget about doing anything with it.

So I do not mean to criticize or demean anybody who hasn't the time or energy for it. On the other hand, I have to admit to feeling a little hurt and insulted by the idea that I was being seen as somehow weak and/or unevolved because I "allow" myself to be passionate about what's happening in the world around me. And I can't help but wonder where that mentality comes from. What could motivate the idea that it is acceptable, even admirable, to turn off one's natural response to injustice, criminal activity, violence, abuse, lies?

I have given this a lot of thought, and I believe it has to do with the Eastern philosophical influence our Western culture has attempted to assimilate. We learn from yogis and gurus that the highest evolutionary state is that of total rejection of our physical bodies--sitting endlessly in the lotus position--unaware of everything but our breathing. We hear that the truly enlightened are always in a state of peace and harmony. But I have to ask, is this really progress?

I studied Western practical occultism for many years. Here's what I learned: we are in bodies for a reason. What our bodies do matters. As physical beings, we are stewards of this planet, and how we address that responsibility is key to both our physical and our spiritual well-being.

I also learned that the way we think is the ultimate determining factor in how our physical universe unfolds. So while I do understand the concept of "let go, let God," I also know in my heart that God/the Universe/Mother Nature gave me a mind and a heart and, therefore, I am committed to using them. A mind will see injustice and a heart, if not corrupt and/or atrophied from lack of use, will naturally wish to correct injustice.

My concern, I guess, is that our willingness to embrace Eastern philosophical traditions is having a negative effect on our ability to address actual problems. Training ourselves to feel good when serious problems are left unaddressed is not, I think, an evolved response. Telling ourselves to stop feeling bad about a situation when we haven't even taken the time to properly assess and address it, is not what I would call progress.

On the other hand, we can't all be activists, or can we? If activism means taking action when action appears necessary; then it has at its foundation the willingness to look at our world without rose-colored glasses, despite how painful that may be. In addition, it means being willing to experience whatever pain that causes, so that we can understand the full effect of the choices we make, and others (i.e., our elected representatives), make on our behalf. Yet how do we motivate ourselves to do that if we have already bought into the idea that we are not supposed to get upset--even when we see manipulation and abuse all around us?

Our biggest enemy, I think, is not Al Qaeda. It lurks within us. It is our apathy and our willingness to pretend that we live in a world where what we, as individuals, think and do does not matter; where we can justify isolating ourselves from the rest of the planet just as long as our own personal needs are met--even if in doing so we quietly sanction the abuse and even death of others.

Our biggest enemy is our failure to understand that no matter how small we are, we are part of something bigger--and our reluctance to be responsible for our part in that bigger thing.


--Laurie Fosner

Hypocrisy in Action

I've been wondering just what the Bush administration would do in the wake of the recent Palestinian elections. How to promote democracy as an ideal, yet reject it in its practical application, is the latest nuancing challenge facing our president.

Apparently, Israel wants to withhold $50M due the Palestinians from customs and tax revenue. They plan to starve the Palestinian economy until Hamas steps down, I guess. Jimmy Carter thinks that would amount to punishing the Palestinian people for their choice in governments, and he thinks that's wrong. He believes democracy requires that the Palestinian people choose their government officials, by election, even if the end result of said election is that the leadership of the United States and/or Israel are forced to work with people they don't like. As we might expect, President Bush does not see it the way Jimmy Carter does. He is siding with Israel and has given his Secretary of State the job of assisting them in applying sanctions that could lead to widespread poverty and devastation in the occupied territory.

Condi Rice has been hitting the trail in Europe for the purpose of touting the importance of refusing financial aid to the Palestinians. Her rationale: they are now being led by people who promote violence to solve problems; we can't work with terrorists. Meanwhile, the country we invaded to solve our own strange set of problems, including our addiction to oil is still steeped in so much violence that it is essentially experiencing a civil war.

And even as Iraq is struggling for the security and freedom we failed to provide to them, despite our self-proclaimed status as liberators, our President is using his yearly State of the Union address to scold us for our addiction to oil. It's the ultimate marriage of irony and hypocrisy that a Texas oil man is scolding Americans for being dependent on oil. In what alternative universe does the pusher have a right to lecture the addict?

But the biggest hypocrisy/irony (I'll have to invent a word for that: hypirony, perhaps?) is that the information we got from Bush's decision to by-pass the Geneva Conventions and allow torture--information that purportedly proved Saddam Hussein had WMDs--as well as the torture scandals at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and elsewhere, now show us quite clearly that the only way the Bush administration could have been so misled about their intelligence, was if they tortured people until those people told their torturers what they wanted to hear. In other words, if our interrogators followed known CIA interrogation methods that were tested over decades and proven to be effective, the Bush administration could not have gotten the information they wanted. That's why they changed the rules.

They had a plan. They needed evidence to support it. They tortured people until they got the evidence they needed. That's the way that game played out. For all the evidence to back up this assertion, just check out the http://www.democracynow.org/ website. They have several programs on this. In addition, LinkTV aired a special on Abu Ghraib that will provide as much information as any sane person can tolerate regarding all of the above.

The very program the administration says is protecting us from future terror attacks generated the misinformation that got us into an unnecessary war and has since caused violence against Muslims and non-Muslims alike to increase rather than subside.

I don't see how there can be any doubt that this was planned and executed to fill the needs of an elite group of people, mostly men, who deliberately manipulated information and evidence in order to support their desired outcome. This is nothing short of conspiracy. There is only one question left: At what point will the American people care enough to stop it?

Understanding George W. Bush

George W. Bush says he supports democracy. We are in Iraq now to "spread democracy." Yet Bush has made a habit of refusing to recognize other democratically elected governments. How can we explain this apparent contradiction?

What Bush appears to mean, when he says he supports democracy, is that he wishes to see his choice of leaders gain power through a process that bears a superficial resemblance to a democratic election. The fact that Bush's choice of leaders is not the people's choice doesn't seem to matter to Bush. He is behaving, increasingly, like a man who can't see the forest for the trees. He is so actively involved in all things superficial that he is, seemingly, incapable of recognizing substance. The concept of democracy is strong in his heart and mind, but the ability to comprehend its practical meaning is apparently beyond him. If it were not, he would have understood from the start that forced democracy is an oxymoron. I suppose this is a hazard of being raised in a bubble.

Now, the Bush administration is telling us that the wiretapping program Bush didn't want to explain to FISA is only being used to spy on "known suspects." I simply must ask: What's a "known suspect?" Has anybody asked Bush or Gonzales or Cheney to define that term? I'll tell you what I think it is: a known suspect is somebody they know they are suspicious of.

If you think I'm being sarcastic, think again. We already have all the evidence we need to prove that Bush's definition of democracy is not in the dictionary; and he has repeatedly demonstrated a failure to deal with reality, in favor of propagandizing his ideological fantasies (I refer to Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Drug Program, the budget). Somebody should start asking him to define his terms.

In fact, I have a long list of words Bush uses a little too loosely. Let's start with "enemy." Since we've already been told that whoever is not with him is against him, it appears that Bush believes that anybody who isn't 100% supportive of every one of his efforts is his "enemy." That would put anti-war activists in the enemy camp; along with environmentalists, abortion rights activists, animal rights activists, etc. Perhaps this explains why we're hearing reports about wiretapping of anti-war activists, environmentalists, abortion rights activists and animal rights groups.

We also know Bush is a big fan of guilt by association. If we put these two ideas together, "if you're not with us you're against us" and "if you're against us, you're with the enemy--Al Qaeda" the next logical conclusion is: Anybody who voices any dissent regarding any program Bush wants to promote is an enemy of the administration and an ally of Al Qaeda.

We'll then. Perhaps that's how members of the administration can justify telling the world that they are merely working to protect the United States from the enemy. It would also explain why they feel compelled to monitor peace activists and other socially conscious groups that aim to protect the planet from corporate abuse and environmental disaster. It's all very logical. It's also completely delusional.

The delusion is a little harder to comprehend than the logic, so here's a breakdown:

Bush's corporate base and the elite group of men running his administration view any checks on corporate power as unconstitutional. Their true God is the marketplace; therefore, any challenge to their ability to manipulate and profit from market conditions is, from their frighteningly narrow perspective, a sacrilege. They believe it is their right to take as much as they can and give as little as possible. What they can take depends on the law, not any sense of social conscience or morality. Hence, the laws must be written to give the maximum freedom to corporate interests. (Wow, this is easier than I thought--once you agree to a delusional set of basic premises, there is no limit to what you can justify!) What's more, this right to corporate power is the sort of right they will fight to defend to the death--even if that means sending somebody else's kids to war.

Bottom line: if they can get their fat hands on it, they own it. It's the imperialist mentality our founding fathers fought to escape. (It's a strange twist of fate, don't you think, that King George III was their nemesis and President George, the third, is ours?)

French Lessons

In the novel The Little Prince by the French writer St. Exupéry, a young boy meets a pilot in the Sahara Desert. The boy asks the pilot to draw him a sheep. The pilot provides several drawings to the prince, none of which are acceptable, for various reasons. One sheep is too old to suit the prince; another looks somewhat sickly. Finally, the pilot hands the prince a drawing of a box. Your sheep, he says to the prince, is inside this box.

The Danes should have taken a lesson from the French.

You want a picture of the prophet Mohammed? Here's your prophet.

Coretta Scott King's Last Words

At the funeral of Coretta Scott King, this week, four presidents were among the mourners. A touching and eloquent tribute was delivered by George W. Bush. His father didn't do too badly either. In fact, the only one more relaxed was, as expected, Bill Clinton. These three presidents did what people should do at a funeral: relying on a combination of eloquence, humor, respect and graciousness, they touted the admirable qualities of the deceased.

But when Jimmy Carter took the mic, we heard a different kind of tribute. Jimmy Carter used this moment to say what I believe Mrs. King would have wanted him to say. He reminded us that the very issues the Kings fought for (and against) are as relevant today as they were decades ago--he reminded us that our own government is even now doing to us what was done to the King family by the Johnson administration.

The Kings spoke out against the war in Vietnam and they suffered for it. At the direction of Edgar J. Hoover, the FBI taped the King's private conversations and fed the transcripts to President Johnson. In an attempt to break the will of the King family, the government even tried to break up the King's marriage, by sending tapes to Mrs. King that they hoped would make her distrustful of her husband. So it was neither inappropriate nor "political" of Jimmy Carter to have reminded us that we face, today, a wiretapping program put in place by the Bush administration that is so steeped in secrecy our own Congress can't tell us if it's legal or not. Jimmy Carter went straight to the heart of the entire King legacy: speak the truth--even when it's ugly.

While some are saying the death of Coretta Scott King is the end of an era in the civil rights movement, they cannot say the need to fight for civil rights has ended. Perhaps the only real difference is that we are all targets now--not just notable activists--all of us. If we have a computer and we practice our right to free speech, we are among the vulnerable. Should the surveillance programs the government refuses to discuss extend to the internet, which they apparently do, nobody is safe; and while we may not be curtailed from speaking, we can hardly call it "free" speech when the consequences of that speech may be the loss of privacy and the possible targeting for political smears or worse.

What's more, we are, once again, in a senseless war--one we cannot win. So for those Republicans who complain that Jimmy Carter was "in bad taste" to use a funeral for the purpose of reminding Americans that we are still fighting for the very rights and policies that the King family devoted their lives to, I say: what better place to do it? And what better tribute to Mrs. King than to have her passing be a forum for continuing the legacy of speaking the truth--even when it's ugly.

Mum's the Word

Yesterday, I watched the farce that was supposed to be a special hearing on the Bush administration's domestic spying program. A number of senators put on a good show, using fairly strong language to suggest that the current wiretapping program puts the president above the law and must be explained and/or curtailed. Despite their tough talk, however, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales got away with categorizing every single question about the program as an "operational issue" which he then refused to answer for "national security" reasons. The end result: we don't know a single thing about the program that we didn't know before.

When Senator Arlen Specter ended the hearings by saying he "hoped" that "at some point" his questions would be answered, it was as if to say: You know my concerns, now let's hope this all blows over. It was just one more anticlimactic episode in our nation's further decline into apathy and denial. The only thing more disappointing was hearing the same senator say it "wasn't necessary" for Alberto Gonzales to be sworn in before testifying. He might just as well have said that the entire process was an exercise in futility.

Despite the failure of the hearings to turn up anything to appease anyone who has thus far shown any concern, there was no call for a special prosecutor to look into the program. Nor did anybody insist that the program be terminated or sent to FISA for review, even though FISA was created to oversee just such a situation.

Lip service. That's what we got. That's all we got. And there is a good reason for that: the Democrats are helpless; they can't do anything. Republicans have all the cards: they have more representation in Congress, for one thing. They also have dirt on EVERYBODY--and they're not afraid to use it.

We are witnessing a conspiracy to manipulate at the highest governmental level. The combination of numerous well-orchestrated, illegal events (well documented too, for anybody who cares to look into it) that allowed George W. Bush to be proclaimed president in 2000 and 2004, combined with the re-districting scandal DeLay is at the center of (and which contributed to the current Republican power imbalance) mixed with the frighteningly effective propaganda machine Karl Rove has built; and then molded by an increasingly greedy, hypocritical, elitist mentality that is proud of their willingness to smear, lie and cheat to win, and you have a formidable enemy. This is why the Democrats can't do anything: they are overwhelmed on every front.

Osama bin Laden is not the man Americans should fear now--George W. Bush is the epicenter of the current evil spreading throughout the so-called civilized world. What's more, he has a carefully crafted 'out' for every possible contingency, one he will use each time he comes close to being held accountable: I didn't know.

It's a brilliant plan: Bush takes the word of his advisors, period. It's that whole loyalty thing he is so proud of. But it is not about loyalty; it's about culpability and how to avoid it. As long as Bush completely isolates himself and refuses to take in any information he doesn't want to be held accountable for, he can always say, "I trusted the people around me to tell me the truth. I was misled." It's a perfect set up.

That's why he's so cocky--he thinks he's untouchable. It's also why he's ignorant of so many things everybody else knows--like what was going on in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Bush doesn't read the paper or watch anything but sanctioned TV because he HAS to remain ignorant for the master plan to work. It's a "plausible deniability" failsafe and it must be maintained at all costs. He can't act quickly in the face of disaster because he needs three to four days to have the face of disaster brought to him--via videotape or a White House briefing. But first, somebody has to figure out what to brief him on and how to do it. Then the plan has to be implemented and some staged event acted out. By the time Bush is ready to say or do anything, it's several days later and several days too late to be effective.

The problem, as I see it, is that President Bush has a responsibility for being aware of reality by virtue of having been sworn in as the president. It doesn't matter who put him there; he took an oath and now being aware is part of his job. He's supposed to seek information and think about it and understand what's going on around him and then act on behalf of the people: that's us. So this master plan that requires that he NOT be fully aware, is actually a flawed plan--in spite of how well it appears to have worked for a small, select group of conservatives.

While Bush has delegated his responsibility for information gathering and assessing to others, (the center of this group being the Rumsfeld/Cheney cabal), he has also given them all the real decision-making power--power that should belong, at least partly, to the president. Yet, as it stands, should the cabal want Bush to ignore certain information, they just keep that information from him. Bush may be protected from culpability by the plausible deniability scenario, but he is also unable to harness the full power of the presidency. That is resting squarely in the hands of Rumsfeld and Cheney and whomever they are working with.

Based on everything we know about the problems we've had in Iraq (lack of proper equipment for the troops, failure to plan for the post-war occupation or even consider the potential civilian casualties that might result from a war, inability/unwillingness to protect Iraqi museums and ammo dumps from looters, etc.) it does appear as if these men do exactly what they want to do, regardless of the advice they receive from experts who know infinitely more than either of them. Here's the kicker though, and it is the key to how they are still getting away with it: they do what they want, even when they know it's not what the American people want; but at the same time, they say what we want to hear.

There is only one way to fight this kind of blatant deception: we must hold Bush accountable for the actions of his administration, not their rhetoric.

We have to stop basing what we do on what we hear and start fighting with the facts. We have to sidestep their trap of pulling us into semantic discussions and endless interpretive dialogues that end with the "agree to disagree" scenario. This is not about finding the best way to split up a pie--this is about civil rights violations, dead Americans/Iraqis, failure to provide the financial resources necessary to ensure a competitive educational system to our children and an unwillingness to finance nationwide healthcare, despite the obvious failure of private industry to meet the needs of the citizenry. It's about destroying our planet by short-sighted corporate deals that deplete topsoil and destroy the ozone. It's about ignoring information so a small select group of conservatives can control resources and hoard wealth while the rest of us pay for it--with our lives and our livelihoods.

Our soldiers are dying in Iraq so the administration can claim credit for democratizing the Middle East and make money off the rebuilding of a country we destroyed--meanwhile, all they've really done is remove one brutal dictator and replace him with a group of corrupt, incompetent men who have no support from large numbers of Iraqis and are distrusted for their relationship with the United States government. Iraq is in the middle of a civil war now and they still don't have the clean water, employment opportunities and security they need. The entire country has become a dangerous place and the very prison we used to call Saddam's Torture Chamber has become the site of our own Abu Ghraib torture scandal . . . and more Americans and Iraqis die, daily.

As for paying with our livelihoods, economists have attributed the massive lay-offs by companies like Ford and General Motors to the nationwide failure to control healthcare costs. Companies can't afford to pay pensions and insurance benefits anymore. Other civilized nations take their healthcare programs seriously and don't ask corporations to bear the expense. Not here. Here we don't want "big government" so we cut the only really necessary programs--programs low-income families can't pay for in the private market--like education and healthcare, and we give money to rich folks who are already able to pay privately for the best schools, doctors, etc. I guess the theory is that in a matter of time all the poor folks will just die off and the only ones who will be left will be elitists, like them. There's just one problem: we're all part of the same big thing.

Everything is connected. Everything affects something or someone else. People who don't understand this have no business running a government.

MoveOn.org is sponsoring a new TV ad. It equates Bush with Nixon, who was quoted as saying "If the president does it, it's not illegal." That appears to be the Bush administration's rationale for failing to follow the law regarding their wiretapping program. It also appears to be their excuse for holding detainees without cause and for allowing prisoners to be whisked away to Uzbekistan where they will, under torture, confess to anything we want them to confess to. (That's how we get our "evidence." In fact, that's how we all knew Saddam Hussein had WMDs.) Bush can't see how ANYTHING he does is wrong, illegal or immoral because he's the president.

(By the way, why does nobody ask where the wiretapping enthusiasts are getting the information that says the people they're spying on have Al Qaeda connections? They weren't exactly shooting for accuracy when they created the WMDs scare--why should we think they are any more capable of interpreting data now?)

In fact, according to numerous reports, the administration is spying on peace activists and environmental groups and the like. Perhaps that is why they didn't go to FISA--as was pointed out during the hearings--perhaps they knew that if they did, FISA would NOT have approved their requests. That possibility, alone, should make each one of us skeptical of the administration's continuous insistence that we simply take their word for the legality of the program.

Besides, how does that work when mum's the word? What, exactly, are we supposed to do with that?