I've blogged several times about the Haven Coalition, the abortion-access network I belonged to in New York City (founded by a Canadian!). My most recent post about Haven is here.
The seeds of Haven continue to germinate, this time across the Atlantic. My friend Mara Clarke, a former Haven volunteer and coordinator who now lives in London, has formed the Abortion Support Network to assist Irish women who must travel to England in order to terminate a pregnancy.
It takes an amazing about of drive, tenacity, and commitment, not to mention truckloads of organizational skills, to create an organization like this on one's own. Mara deserves more congratulations and thanks for creating ASN than I can express.
Here's a little side note that is so very gratifying to me personally. Another friend of mine, R, has also relocated to London. R and I originally met doing pro-choice activism in Brooklyn, now more than 20 years ago. I introduced Mara and R by email... and R is now an ASN volunteer host!
An organization like ASN is a shining example of "the personal is political," and of living out one's beliefs through action. I interviewed Mara about ASN; here's what she had to say.
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LK: What made you decide to start the Abortion Support Network? Was there an "ah-ha" moment?
MC: I had been living in London for a few years, and was drifting professionally. Last Christmas I was having drinks with a friend that I'd met while volunteering for a pro-choice campaigning organisation and she said to me, "Mara, you need to do what you're passionate about. And you're passionate about abortion." I'm not sure if I'd have put it quite that way, but it's true that the most meaningful work I'd done to date was with Haven Coalition in New York (which you've written about previously).
I've never been an impassioned campaigner, but something about the simplicity of practical support appeals to me. Here is a woman who needs help. Let's help her. It's a way to make an actual difference in the lives of women who are caught in the crosshairs of an emotional political battle over abortion rights.
LK: What is the law regarding abortion in Ireland currently?
MC: In the Republic of Ireland, abortion is illegal except to save a woman's life or where there is a real and substantial risk of suicide.
I am angry at any country that criminalises abortion, but I am outraged at the situation in Northern Ireland. Despite being a part of the United Kingdom (which legalised abortion in 1967), abortion is illegal except to preserve a woman's life or in circumstances of extreme risk to mental or physical health.
Also, in 1990 it became legal for organisations in the Republic of Ireland to give women information about family planning and to have pre- and post-abortion counselling but not to make referrals. (As far as I know there hasn't been any restriction on giving information in Northern Ireland in recent history). And of course the majority of organisations in Ireland advertising "abortion services" or "crisis pregnancies" are anti-abortion agencies, many of which are heavily subsidised by conservative churches and other religious institutions.
LK: What will the Abortion Support Network do?
MC: Currently we are a network of London based volunteers who provide housing to women living in Ireland who need a place to stay the night before, during or after an abortion. We hope to expand to other areas of England where women are travelling – Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool – wherever we can find and train up a network of volunteers. Hosts are responsible for meeting a woman (and her partner, family member or friend if she brings one) at the clinic or at an agreed upon location between the airport and the host’s home, feeding her dinner, and ensuring she gets to the clinic or to the airport in the morning.
But the majority of the women who come to England don't need an overnight stay as they can take an early flight, have counselling and the procedure (if they haven't already had counselling via phone or at a local family planning organisation), and fly back early the same evening.
What these women really need is money. Travel and procedure costs that can run from £400 to £1500 or more (I've seen numbers as high as £4,000) depending on how pregnant they are, which is a prohibitive amount of money to many women. Even if women can save a bit on costs by going to a clinic outside of London, or stay overnight with one of our hosts and save with a cheaper overnight flight, the procedure is still quite expensive.
The Abortion Support Network has just begun fundraising. Our goal is to give grants to help women offset the costs of transport and procedure by December 2009.
LK: How will Irish women in need find out about ASN?
MC: While in the process of getting up and running, I did a lot of outreach to organisations in the UK, Ireland and Northern Ireland that serve these women, including the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas), Marie Stopes, Marie Stopes Reproductive Choices in Dublin, the Family Planning Association (FPA) in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, as well as to Voice for Choice (a coalition of pro-choice organisations and abortion providers) and campaigning organisations such as Abortion Rights, Alliance for Choice and the Make it Safe, Keep it Legal campaign.
I've also been to Dublin for a reproductive justice conference and there met a number of people involved in more grassroots activism. We are also about to outreach to a number of women's organisations in Ireland and Irish organisations based in England. I can state with absolute certainty that we will have no trouble dispersing any money we raise. The reality is that many more women will approach us than we will be able to help.
LK: Are there any other groups helping abortion seekers from Ireland?
MC: Yes and no. There are the family planning agencies that can provide counselling and a number of organisations campaigning for law reform. I have heard anecdotally that a few of these organisations, as well as women's centres, have been known to find funds for abortion seekers when approached, but have not been able to find any organisation officially providing funds to women travelling from Ireland for abortions.
There used to be a group called the Irish Women's Abortion Support Group (IWASG) that provided housing and enormous amounts of funding. Their work, along with a political and social history of Ireland, abortion, sexual politics, and activism, is documented in a book called Ireland's Hidden Diaspora: the 'abortion trail' and the making of a London-Irish underground, 1980-2000.
Ann Rossiter, the author of the book, has been an invaluable resource and sounding board in setting up ASN, including spreading the word to the activists she knows in England, Ireland and Northern Ireland. The group disbanded in 2000, largely due to a combination of the internet, newly established low-cost airlines, and the removal of the requirement that women stay overnight after having an abortion. However, women are still coming, and even before the global recession I am sure the need, which perhaps lessened in 2000, is still in evidence.
LK: Is there evidence that Irish women now travel abroad to obtain abortions? Do women obtain illegal abortions, that you know of?
MC: Yes. According to the Department of Health, in 2007 there were at least 1,343 women from Northern Ireland and at least 4,696 from the Republic who gave an Irish address at an abortion clinic in the UK. This does not include the women who travel to places like the Netherlands and Brussels, where abortions can be less expensive, or women who give false addresses. Since the passage of the 1967 Abortion Act, more than 150,000 Irish women have come to the UK to have an abortion. Pro-choice campaigners believe these numbers under-representative of the actual number of women travelling. It's also important to note that since 1967, at least five women from Northern Ireland have died from unsafe abortion practices whereas in Britain there have been none.
Women are absolutely seeking and obtaining illegal abortions. They are buying the Early Medical Abortion pill (RU486, which works up to 9 weeks into a pregnancy) from websites (some more reputable than others). I have heard anecdotes about the same kinds of "DIY abortions" that used to take place in the bad old days – taking poison, drinking to excess, falling down flights of stairs. While I have not heard specifically about illegal abortion providers – back alley or otherwise – I don't doubt that they exist.
Also, for many women, given the secrecy many of them have to shroud their abortion in, raising money is a huge issue. I've been told that some women are forced to go to corrupt money lenders to get the necessary funds to travel to England or elsewhere.
LK: Is there a political movement to legalize abortion in Ireland?
MC: Yes. There are several organisations campaigning for law reform, including The Safe and Legal (in Ireland) campaign, Abortion Rights, Alliance for Choice, and the fpa's Time for Change campaign.
There have also been a few high profile legal cases about abortion, including the A, B and C case currently before the European Court. And recently Martin Salter, MP and Diane Abbot, MP have both brought forward Early Day Motions to legalise abortion in Northern Ireland. [Some links here and here.] However, with devolution looming in Northern Ireland and the stranglehold of the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland, I'm not sure how much hope for success there is.
LK: Are there indications that attitudes are changing?
MC: I am not an expert on Irish attitudes but I have witnessed a few interesting things that, according to people who have been involved in this issue for decades, are showing a shift. First of all, when Ann Rossiter launched her book in Ireland last spring, there was an event held at a Waterstone's bookstore in Dublin. That might not seem like a big deal – but the fact that a large, well known bookstore (akin to a Barnes & Noble in NYC, not sure of the Canadian equivalent) [L: Chapters] hosted this event in the middle of the city is pretty incredible.
It shows that abortion might be – at least a little bit – escaping from where it's been swept under the rug in Ireland. Incredibly, the book was chosen as the Book of the Day by the Irish Times. Neither of these things would have happened 20 or even 10 years ago. Also, I recently went to a Reproductive Justice conference hosted by the ifpa. It was quite well attended by a broad-aged spectrum of activists and feminists, which bodes well for the movement.
LK: What are the obstacles and challenges to creating a network of this kind? I know it's a long list!
MC: I could type in my to-do list but it would be longer than the rest of the answers put together! There are the usual obstacles – finding volunteers, outreaching to referring agencies, meeting people, registering domains, finding the time to write web copy, figuring out the right timing and strategy for fundraising and media outreach. But there are additional challenges as well. I'm neither British nor Irish, and have limited knowledge of British/Irish feminist/abortion history. I'm just someone who thinks it's disgusting that women have to travel to get abortions and want to help make the process more humane and easier to accomplish, and this has caused a few raised eyebrows. Unlike the US, where the National Network of Abortion Funds has more than 104 abortion funds and practical support networks (full disclosure – ASN is one of NNAF's three international funds), with the exception of IWASG there is less of a history of this kind of work here.
My favourite obstacle so far has been that when registering ASN as a company limited by guarantee (the easiest thing for an organisation to become, and a placeholder until we become a charity or non profit), I had to get approval from the Secretary of State to use "abortion" in the company name. There have been other administrative difficulties as well – many of which are caused by my ignorance as a non-native.
However, ASN is made up of an amazing group of volunteers. I have the help and support of a number of people who are passionate about this issue and the willingness to help with fundraising, PR and other organisational needs in addition to hosting. I've also had great response from clinics, family planning organisations and women's groups, and have also been able to get guidance and assistance from organisations like NNAF in the US and the Women's Resource Centre in London.
LK: Is there an active anti-choice movement in the UK? Do you fear disruptive opposition, or even violence?
MC: Yes, there is. In addition to rogue "Crisis Pregnancy Centres" where women are led to believe they will be given information on all of their choices but are instead fed misinformation about abortion and pressured to continue with their pregnancies or look into adoption, there are several active and vocal anti-choice organisations and MPs. While there is not the same level of virulence and violence that I saw and experienced in the US (yes, even in New York City), there is still cause for concern over having our home address published on websites, or having an organisation start a letter writing campaign against us as individuals. On the upside, I live in a part of London that is like a small village. I know most of my neighbours and none of them would take kindly to any protesters who decided to camp outside my flat.
LK: What do you need most right now? How can people help?
MC: Money. The Abortion Support Network is run by unpaid volunteers and our only overheads are phone bills, the domain registration (and defensive registrations), travel to meet referring agencies, the cost of becoming a business and ultimately a charity. But these costs are relatively small, and I am currently covering them personally. Unless a donor specifically asks for money to go towards operating costs, any monies donated to ASN will go directly to a woman to help pay for her travel and her abortion. If we can get 200 people to donate £5 per month, it will enable us to make £100 grants to 10 women each month. That might not seem like much, but that's 10 more women than are currently receiving financial assistance. Also, our plan is to evaluate individual cases. If there is a woman in dire straits, we will do everything we can to help her. Anyone interested in donating should go to www.abortionsupport.org.uk/donate to set up a standing order or to make a donation using PayPal. No gift is too big or too small!
There are non-monetary ways people can help as well. Bloggers and other people with a web presence can link to us at www.abortionsupport.org.uk, or forward this blog post to people who might be interested in donating or supporting us in other ways. People can email me at info-at-abortionsupport.org.uk and ask to be put on our mailing list or join our Facebook Group by going to:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=226244675256&ref=ts
or by searching for "Abortion Support Network" on Facebook. Those who live in London can contact us about hosting, and we are also seeking volunteers able to help with accounting, admin, fundraising, legal advice, and PR/marketing/social media.
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11.08.2009
stupak, hyde, war, and typically useless democrats (updated)
The US House of Representatives manages to pass some type of health care reform bill, but women can go to hell. Please note that 64 Democrats think this is peachy.
The Stupak Amendment means that no funds coming out of the health care reform bill can be used for abortion.
Since 1976 - got that? 1976! - the Hyde Amendment has prohibited federal funds from being used to pay for abortion. Look how many states still pick up the slack. Bring your magnifying glass.
Just two reasons why Roe is already meaningless. And yet another reason why the Democrats are meaningless, too. Glenn Greenwald explains:
What does one issue have to do with another? Everything. Allison Kilkenny:
From Taylor Marsh at HuffPo:
A year ago, I tried to keep my cynicism to myself while my US friends were jubilant and hopeful. Now I am grateful that I had no hope, because today I'd be crushed.
Postscript. I didn't write this earlier, because it seemed too obvious to include, but one should never assume.
The opposition to and exclusion of coverage of contraceptives is a big - 72-point, blinking neon, honking horns big - clue to what the anti-choice movement is all about. Because obviously - honking big obviously - if protecting those wee cell-blobs from destruction was a major concern, then preventing the wee blobs from ever existing would be a major priority.
So if you're anti-abortion, why oppose contraceptive use? Because contraceptives give women the freedom to have sex without consequences. The same freedom that men have always enjoyed. Contraceptives give women control over our bodies. The same freedom... You get the point.
Access to reliable, affordable birth control, and safe, legal, affordable abortion, is the sine qua non of women's freedom.
And to those people, women's freedom is the root of all evil.
The Stupak Amendment means that no funds coming out of the health care reform bill can be used for abortion.
Since 1976 - got that? 1976! - the Hyde Amendment has prohibited federal funds from being used to pay for abortion. Look how many states still pick up the slack. Bring your magnifying glass.
Just two reasons why Roe is already meaningless. And yet another reason why the Democrats are meaningless, too. Glenn Greenwald explains:
Dianne Feinstein is a fairly typical Democratic Senator from a solidly blue state. In 2002, she voted to authorize the attack on Iraq. Throughout the Bush years, she repeatedly stood with the GOP to fund the war without the conditions and timetables sought by some of her fellow Democrats. Using her position on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, she was the key Democrat who twice voted to legalize Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program -- first with the Protect America Act (which Obama opposed) and then with the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which also immunized lawbreaking telecoms. She led the Senate effort to confirm Gen. Michael Hayden as CIA Director even after he had been caught presiding over the illegal surveillance program (confirmation which Obama opposed), and she then joined with Chuck Schumer to single-handedly assure Michael Mukasey's confirmation as Attorney General even after he refused to answer basic questions about torture and indefinite detention of U.S. citizens (confirmation which Obama also opposed). In 2006, she proudly described herself as the "main Democratic sponsor" of a Constitutional amendment to criminalize flag burning. Just this past week, she used her position as Chair of the Intelligence Committee to gut virtually every proposed reform to the Patriot Act.
Feinstein isn't merely a typical (though particularly destructive) Democratic Senator, but also a very typical Washington insider, as her substantial personal wealth is tied directly to the very National Security State policies she relentlessly works in the Senate to expand.
What does one issue have to do with another? Everything. Allison Kilkenny:
Many of the Democrats who voted in favor of the Stupak amendment will surely boast they did so because they are the sentinels of human life. Of course, these Democrats are only concerned with protecting certain types of life.
In preparation for such pharisaic claims, I compared the list of 64 Democrats with the roll call for HJ Res 114, the bill that authorized the United States Armed Forces to invade Iraq.
19 of the Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment also authorized the United States to invade Iraq (one representative, Ortiz, chose not to vote, which in a time of war, is just as bad as voting "aye.")
The so-called Democratic representatives that voted in favor of the Iraq invasion and for the Stupak amendment are: Robert Berry (AR), Mike Ross (AR), Sanford Bishop (GA), Baron Hill (IN), Stephen Lynch (MA), Collin Peterson (MN), Gene Taylor (MS), Ike Skelton (MO), Bob Etheridge (NC), Mike McIntyre (NC), Earl Pomeroy (ND), Paul Kanjorski (PA), John Murtha (PA), Tim Holden (PA), John Spratt (SC), John Tanner (TN), Jim Matheson (UT), Bart Gordon (TN) (voted "aye" on Stupak and "nay" on final bill,) and Solomon Ortiz (TX) (didn't vote in Iraq authorization roll call).
All of these representatives are male, and with the exception of Sanford Bishop and Solomon Ortiz, they're white, and ten are from southern states. None of them are poor. This is the kind of unrepresentative, elite club that gets to vote on sending our soldiers to possibly die after killing many innocent people in distance lands, and this Rich Boys' Club also occasionally votes to steal rights from poor women.
What's even sadder is that southern states have historically high rates of unplanned pregnancies, which makes the need for women's health alternatives, including contraception (also not terribly popular in religious areas of the south) and abortion, all the more great. The Stupak amendment only ensures that poor, desperate girls will have to resort to terrible measures in order to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
Meanwhile, the Iraq authorization has resulted in the deaths of anywhere between hundreds of thousands and a million Iraqi civilians in addition to 4,000 US troops without counting the deaths of US allies.
These 19 Democrats voted in favor of a horrific, pointless war based on a lie, and have now voted to suppress the rights of poor women. This means they would rather authorize the US military to bomb, maim, and murder innocent civilians than allow a woman to make a personal decision about her own body.
From Taylor Marsh at HuffPo:
The first female Speaker of the House makes history by passing a health care bill that not only doesn't have a robust public option, but also sells out women's civil rights. The Republicans acted reprehensibly today, heckling women lawmakers like the chamber was a frat house. Think Progress has that story. But in the end the Stupak amendment passed, 240 yeas, 194 nays, 1 present, with the names of Dems who voted for it totaling 64; the health care bill passing 220 yeas, 215 nays. Now it's up to the Senate and the conference, because if the Stupak amendment is in the final bill it will be a setback of monumental proportions for women.
But let's be honest. It was Pres. Obama who opened the door to sell us out when he decided to put the Hyde Amendment in the budget, something Bill Clinton never did. But Mr. Obama didn't stop there. During the stimulus fight, at the first sign of displeasure, our president personally asked that contraceptives be taken out. Now the president seems ready to finish the job, with Democrats in the House helping him do it. [Go here for links.]
A year ago, I tried to keep my cynicism to myself while my US friends were jubilant and hopeful. Now I am grateful that I had no hope, because today I'd be crushed.
Postscript. I didn't write this earlier, because it seemed too obvious to include, but one should never assume.
The opposition to and exclusion of coverage of contraceptives is a big - 72-point, blinking neon, honking horns big - clue to what the anti-choice movement is all about. Because obviously - honking big obviously - if protecting those wee cell-blobs from destruction was a major concern, then preventing the wee blobs from ever existing would be a major priority.
So if you're anti-abortion, why oppose contraceptive use? Because contraceptives give women the freedom to have sex without consequences. The same freedom that men have always enjoyed. Contraceptives give women control over our bodies. The same freedom... You get the point.
Access to reliable, affordable birth control, and safe, legal, affordable abortion, is the sine qua non of women's freedom.
And to those people, women's freedom is the root of all evil.
website launched to support bill c-440: let them stay!
Go here for information about how you can support Bill C-440, to allow Iraq War resisters to stay in Canada.
11.06.2009
a few quick thoughts on the fort hood shooting
I haven't written about the terrible recent events in Fort Hood for two reasons. One, I am insanely busy. And two, I am both so saddened by and so numb to violent events in my country of origin that I barely have a response. Here are three quick thoughts and one excellent link.
The United States is addicted to violence. It trains its citizenry to use violence, and gives them ample access to weaponry, then feigns surprise at the results.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a very serious condition. Veterans with PTSD have killed their wives and their families and their neighbours before. It's a terrible thing, but not a new thing. One way to reduce the effects of PTSD on society, guaranteed to work, would be to stop sending people to war.
And finally, none of us should be surprised by the racist response to the event, as United States is an incredibly racist society. But we should all speak out against it.
Fort Hood Shootings: Don't Let Racism Hide Truth by RedBedHead. Thanks to Michelle for posting on Facebook.
The United States is addicted to violence. It trains its citizenry to use violence, and gives them ample access to weaponry, then feigns surprise at the results.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a very serious condition. Veterans with PTSD have killed their wives and their families and their neighbours before. It's a terrible thing, but not a new thing. One way to reduce the effects of PTSD on society, guaranteed to work, would be to stop sending people to war.
And finally, none of us should be surprised by the racist response to the event, as United States is an incredibly racist society. But we should all speak out against it.
Fort Hood Shootings: Don't Let Racism Hide Truth by RedBedHead. Thanks to Michelle for posting on Facebook.
truth to power: tactics in hard times
On a cold March night in southwestern Virginia in 2003, one week prior to the United States invasion of Iraq, I filed into a packed auditorium of 2,000 students, including the entire corps of Virginia Tech military cadets dressed in white pants, white gloves, and navy blue hats. Tim Russert, host of Meet the Press, a weekly news magazine that airs on U.S. network television, was to speak on the topic of the impending U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. A professor at this university at the time, I was in the midst of conducting research for a Web site that had been launched on September 11, 2002, entitled, "Critical Media Literacy in Times of War." For over a year, my team of talented graduate students and I had been immersed in an examination of how and what different news sources were reporting on the effect of sanctions, civilian casualties, and number of persons reported at war protests in relationship to recent events in Afghanistan and Iraq. I was steeped in international press coverage related to Bush's threatened war, and as the talk progressed, it became evident that Russert was omitting central arguments against the preemptive attacks that had been widely published in most �international and some domestic news media in early 2003. Describing his talk as an "objective evaluation" of the bipartisan views represented in news media, Russert concluded his speech by saying that, given journalism's objective work reporting the facts, Bush's proposed invasion was justified and warranted.
I was first to the microphone for the question and answer period. As Russert spoke, I had written down carefully worded remarks identifying key facts reported in respected news sources that he had neglected to mention. Outlining these omitted arguments, I asked Russert if he read any international news sources and suggested that he seemed extremely partisan in his selection of news coverage and consequent appraisal of the situation. His face turning red, Russert shouted that I had no right to claim to be a professor given my misreading of the facts. Cheering on Russert's cowardly attack, the audience began hissing and booing at me when I attempted a reply, and I was forced to retreat to my seat, genuinely afraid. As I left the auditorium, I feared I would be accosted, and was grateful for the few people who thanked me on my way out.
It was at that moment that I realized the potency of the active silencing of dissent, and how distorted myths of journalistic objectivity could be used to justify something as devastating as the bombing of a nation and its people. Of course, my experience was not unusual — this was during a post-9/11 period in the United States when academics deemed "unpatriotic" were being "blacklisted" by such right-wing organizations as CampusWatch.
. . . .
Less than a year later, in early 2004, Tim Russert grilled George W. Bush on Meet the Press. When I read that Russert accused Bush of misleading the public and congress with stories about weapons of mass destruction (WMD), I felt a familiar anger — the anger at the number of politically powerful people who have adopted a revisionist story of their views on Bush's preemptive invasion. Just one of the many turncoats. And this about-face of opinion — from supporting invasion to opposing the war — was enacted by so many politicians, in so many media outlets, and through the "evidence" of public opinion polls that one is simply left in a twilight zone of desperation. Who has the power to define reality?
. . . .
My exchange with Tim Russert is emblematic of how the media functions in terms of truth and power. The auditorium is a public sphere; Mr. Russert, paid to stand at the podium with his hand on the microphone, epitomizes the power of media. The professor plays the role of merely one citizen, whose "opinions" (not facts) cannot possibly be right. (Where was Colbert's "truthiness" in 2003?) And playing the part of media aptly, Russert would never admit in that public sphere that he was possibly wrong for excluding internationally recognized, credible arguments that countered his view. When public perception of the facts changes, and it is safe for dominant media to take a more dissenting position, media tend not to accept responsibility for harm already done. There are rare exceptions: both the New York Times and National Public Radio in February 2003 had to correct their underreporting of the number of antiwar protestors at demonstrations around the world on February 15, which in fact comprised the largest international antiwar movement in history. In 2005, the New York Times offered a feeble mea culpa for their role in disseminating false information about WMD.
As I travel and speak internationally, people frequently ask, "Is there a public in the United States that disagrees with the Bush Administration's policies? If there is, we don't see it reported here [in Canada, France, England, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium]." Even progressive scholars do not seem to dig farther than headline bytes to recognize the fact of the largest international anti-war movement in history.
Megan Boler, from the introduction to Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times
Some wmtc/JoS readers may remember an old post of mine, in which I unintentionally caused offense, never dreaming that there were Tim Russert fans in our midst.
what i'm watching: waltz with bashir
We watched the excellent movie "Waltz with Bashir" last night. If you have not seen it, please do. Although most peace activists I know have seen it, I don't know if it reached wider audiences.
In the specific sense, Waltz with Bashir is about the 1982 Lebanon War and the massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Phalangists, supported and enabled by Israeli government and troops. But in a much broader and more profound sense, the movie is about war, and memory, and as one character says, "the consequences of our fear". It's about the price soldiers pay when they commit - or aid in the commission of - atrocities, the piece of themselves that is lost. It could have been about any of the many examples of a powerful invading army destroying a weaker population. It could be about any war.
I don't want to give too many details, as the unfolding of the movie is very powerful and compelling. Just a few notes.
In two separate incidents that echo each other, men are brought to their memories by incidents of cruelty to animals. In the midst of unspeakable violence against humans, these incidents haunt them. The animals are emblematic of innocent suffering. The terrible violence done to them reaches the soldiers in a way that the human suffering does not. It's not that the soldiers don't care about human suffering. It's more that witnessing the animals' suffering allows them to feel, allows them to not be soldiers or automatons, but to be human.
If there's a more tragic, more terrible irony in the world than Israeli Jews acting like Nazis - and North American Jews supporting their actions - I have not seen it. For this to exist only a few generations removed from Treblinka and Auschwitz is stunning.
There's a thread of Jewish culture that feels shame and self-loathing over the Holocaust, that imagines the world asking, "Why did European Jews allow this to happen to them?" and "Why were the Jews passively led to slaughter, why didn't they fight back?" Never mind the untold stories of resistance, never mind the gradual process by which the victims' means of fighting back were stripped away. This isn't about facts. It's about the guilt, shame and self-blame that is intrinsic to victimhood.
This perception of the Holocaust Jew as passively accepting victimhood ties into the stereotype of the Jewish male as the antithesis of macho. Think of the stereotype of the Jewish accountant, the uber-geek, the man who is all brains and no brawn, all intellect and no muscle. For many Jewish people, the cry of "Never Again" is not about humanity's collective responsibility to prevent genocide. It means "never again will Jews be victims". And for some, that means Jews will be the strong ones. The real men. The aggressors. That in the new version of world events, others will grovel. Jews will wear the jackboots.
For many Jewish people, this is part of the strange legacy of the Holocaust.
I'm not implying that Israel's aggression and imperialism can be fully explained in these terms. This is not an answer. But I do think it's a theme.
My final thought about this movie is about war resisters - not only the men and in women in Canada who I write about all the time, the people who refused to participate in the slaughter in Iraq, but military resisters of all wars at all times.
Military resisters are the very vanguard of human social and moral evolution. They are the people who say no to war with their bodies and souls. It is my privilege and my honour - perhaps my duty - to support them.
In the specific sense, Waltz with Bashir is about the 1982 Lebanon War and the massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Phalangists, supported and enabled by Israeli government and troops. But in a much broader and more profound sense, the movie is about war, and memory, and as one character says, "the consequences of our fear". It's about the price soldiers pay when they commit - or aid in the commission of - atrocities, the piece of themselves that is lost. It could have been about any of the many examples of a powerful invading army destroying a weaker population. It could be about any war.
I don't want to give too many details, as the unfolding of the movie is very powerful and compelling. Just a few notes.
There's a thread of Jewish culture that feels shame and self-loathing over the Holocaust, that imagines the world asking, "Why did European Jews allow this to happen to them?" and "Why were the Jews passively led to slaughter, why didn't they fight back?" Never mind the untold stories of resistance, never mind the gradual process by which the victims' means of fighting back were stripped away. This isn't about facts. It's about the guilt, shame and self-blame that is intrinsic to victimhood.
This perception of the Holocaust Jew as passively accepting victimhood ties into the stereotype of the Jewish male as the antithesis of macho. Think of the stereotype of the Jewish accountant, the uber-geek, the man who is all brains and no brawn, all intellect and no muscle. For many Jewish people, the cry of "Never Again" is not about humanity's collective responsibility to prevent genocide. It means "never again will Jews be victims". And for some, that means Jews will be the strong ones. The real men. The aggressors. That in the new version of world events, others will grovel. Jews will wear the jackboots.
For many Jewish people, this is part of the strange legacy of the Holocaust.
I'm not implying that Israel's aggression and imperialism can be fully explained in these terms. This is not an answer. But I do think it's a theme.
Military resisters are the very vanguard of human social and moral evolution. They are the people who say no to war with their bodies and souls. It is my privilege and my honour - perhaps my duty - to support them.
11.05.2009
oldest known artefact of the americas unearthed
In your face, Clovis Culture! Paisley Cave is way older than you!
Read more.
Archaeologists claim to have found the oldest known artefact in the Americas, a scraper-like tool in an Oregon cave that dates back 14,230 years.
The tool shows that people were living in North America well before the widespread Clovis culture of 12,900 to 12,400 years ago, says archaeologist Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon in Eugene.
Studies of sediment and radiocarbon dating showed the bone's age. Jenkins presented the finding late last month in a lecture at the University of Oregon.
His team found the tool in a rock shelter overlooking a lake in south-central Oregon, one of a series of caves near the town of Paisley.
Kevin Smith, the team member who uncovered the artefact, remembers the discovery. "We had bumped into a lot of extinct horse, bison and camel bone – then I heard and felt the familiar ring and feel when trowel hits bone," says Smith, now a master's student at California State University, Los Angeles. "I switched to a brush. Soon this huge bone emerged, then I saw the serrated edge. I stepped back and said: 'Hey everybody — we got something here.'" ...
Read more.
but some immigrants are more equal than others
Several people have sent me this item from different sources. It's very disturbing that in "the land of immigrants," a young country where every person not purely Native American is the descendant of immigrants, the ugly face of nativism still lurks.
This is an old theme in the US, as old as the US itself, where the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants declare themselves "real Americans" and the rest less-thans. But just because it's not new doesn't mean we should accept it.
Note Rovell's preface "as it turns out". Is she saying she didn't know where Keflezighi trained before declaring him "not quite us"? That's highly unlikely. The New York Road Runners Club, which organizes the Marathon, has a very professional media department. It's safe to assume Rovell received the same facts as the rest of the sports media.
The ThinkProgress story quoted above mentions researchers quoted in the New York Times noting "undercurrents of nationalism and racism that are not often voiced" in sports. That's true, but it's not enough to chalk this up to sports culture. The cultures of sport reflect and often magnify the values of the larger society. Rovell's bigotry doesn't come out of nowhere. It's American to the core.
This is an old theme in the US, as old as the US itself, where the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants declare themselves "real Americans" and the rest less-thans. But just because it's not new doesn't mean we should accept it.
On Sunday, U.S. media outlets reported that for the first time in 27 years, an American had won the New York City Marathon. Meb Keflezighi was born in Eritrea, "growing up in a hut with no electricity." He and his family moved to Italy when he was 10 years old, and came to the United States two years later. Keflezighi "began running in junior high in San Diego, then went on to star at UCLA." He said he it was with "big honor and pride" that he wore the USA jersey while running in the marathon.
. . . .
However, CNBC Sports Business Reporter Darren Rovell doesn't think Keflezighi deserves all this praise because when his mother gave birth to him, she wasn't in the U.S. Rovell wrote a column yesterday saying that Keflezighi's victory wasn't "as good as it sounds" because Keflezighi is an immigrant, and this fact "takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies":
Given our disappointing results, embracing Keflezighi is understandable. But Keflezighi’s country of origin is Eritrea, a small country in Africa. He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country.
Nothing against Keflezighi, but he's like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.
Around noon today, Rovell posted a "convoluted sort-of apology" clarifying yesterday’s piece, writing, "Let me be clear: Meb Keflezighi is an American and any suggestion otherwise is wrong." He now granted Keflezighi’s win legitimacy only because the runner was "brought up through the American system":
I said that Keflezighi’s win, the first by an American since 1982, wasn’t as big as it was being made out to be because there was a difference between being an American-born product and being an American citizen. Frankly I didn’t account for the fact that virtually all of Keflezighi’s running experience came as a US citizen. I never said he didn’t deserve to be called American. [...]
It turns out, Keflezighi moved to the United States in time to develop at every level in America. So Meb is in fact an American trained athlete and an American citizen and he should be celebrated as the American winner of the NYC Marathon. That makes a difference and makes him different from the "ringer" I accused him of being. Meb didn’t deserve that comparison and I apologize for that.
Note Rovell's preface "as it turns out". Is she saying she didn't know where Keflezighi trained before declaring him "not quite us"? That's highly unlikely. The New York Road Runners Club, which organizes the Marathon, has a very professional media department. It's safe to assume Rovell received the same facts as the rest of the sports media.
The ThinkProgress story quoted above mentions researchers quoted in the New York Times noting "undercurrents of nationalism and racism that are not often voiced" in sports. That's true, but it's not enough to chalk this up to sports culture. The cultures of sport reflect and often magnify the values of the larger society. Rovell's bigotry doesn't come out of nowhere. It's American to the core.
11.04.2009
tomorrow, november 5: students of ontario, unite
From the Student Union of the University of Toronto:
Over the past year, about 1.3 million people in Ontario have been living in poverty, and access to basic social rights and services such as health care, housing, education, childcare, and a living wage are severely compromised. The Canadian Federation of Students is organizing a provincial campaign for a "Poverty Free Ontario". This year is a critical year to lobby as the province is currently revising all of its funding policies to institute a new multi-year agreement for funding schemes to post-secondary education.
Join thousands of demonstrators on a historic Day of Action this Thursday, November 5.
The UofT St. George feeder march will start at 1:00 p.m. at the lobby of Sidney Smith at 100 St. George St. The keynote speakers is Lee Maracle, a long time aboriginal activist and
faculty member at the University of Toronto.
We will head together towards a major convergence point at Convocation hall around 2:30 p.m. where we will be meeting thousands of students from UTM, Scarborough, York and Ryerson will be converging with our contingent.
Together we will march towards the Ministry of Education at 900 Bay street to deliver our message to the Minister of Education, John Milloy. Subsequently, we will be meeting our allies from the labour movement to march up to Queen's park and deliver a historic statement to premier Dalton McGuinty to put education and public services on the top of the provincial budgetary priorities.
The future of the province is in your hands! Come out to the Day of Action!
Over the past year, about 1.3 million people in Ontario have been living in poverty, and access to basic social rights and services such as health care, housing, education, childcare, and a living wage are severely compromised. The Canadian Federation of Students is organizing a provincial campaign for a "Poverty Free Ontario". This year is a critical year to lobby as the province is currently revising all of its funding policies to institute a new multi-year agreement for funding schemes to post-secondary education.
Join thousands of demonstrators on a historic Day of Action this Thursday, November 5.
The UofT St. George feeder march will start at 1:00 p.m. at the lobby of Sidney Smith at 100 St. George St. The keynote speakers is Lee Maracle, a long time aboriginal activist and
faculty member at the University of Toronto.
We will head together towards a major convergence point at Convocation hall around 2:30 p.m. where we will be meeting thousands of students from UTM, Scarborough, York and Ryerson will be converging with our contingent.
Together we will march towards the Ministry of Education at 900 Bay street to deliver our message to the Minister of Education, John Milloy. Subsequently, we will be meeting our allies from the labour movement to march up to Queen's park and deliver a historic statement to premier Dalton McGuinty to put education and public services on the top of the provincial budgetary priorities.
The future of the province is in your hands! Come out to the Day of Action!
maine goes in the wrong direction
What bad news from Maine.
Don't lose hope, egalitarian USians. There are always setbacks. You will get there. The only question is when. "How long? Not long."
Don't lose hope, egalitarian USians. There are always setbacks. You will get there. The only question is when. "How long? Not long."
11.03.2009
canada, who is standing at your door?
There's a stranger
And he's standing at your door.
Might be your best friend,
Might be your brother,
You may never know.
Van Morrison, "Irish Heartbeat"
on internet parasites
You all know how I feel about the massive proliferation of advertising in our world, cluttering our view, crowding out real discourse, polluting every aspect of modern life. I do realize advertising serves a purpose, especially on the internet, where we all expect everything to materialize for our use at no cost. But the ubiquity of advertising in our lives depresses me, and oppresses me.
And if it's one thing I hate more than advertising, it's when people exploit other people's creativity for their own profit and give nothing in return. When Toyota or Honda uses a song in an ad, they have to ask permission, and they have to pay for it. If someone uses my blog to sell ads - and only to sell ads - they should ask, too. And if I say yes, they should give me something in return - something more than a link.
I wish bloggers didn't sell ad space on their own blogs; I'd like to see blogs, as a medium, be completely advertising-free. I have many reasons for that, which I won't get into here. However, I fully recognize the right of every blogger to conduct her blog as she sees fit.
But no one should use material from someone else's blog for commercial gain without the blogger's permission, and without a revenue-sharing arrangement. No one pays us for blogging. But no one should profit from our blogging, either, unless they share that profit with us.
There are several sites out there purporting to be blog "directories". Here's how they work. A guy compiles a number of blog feeds and puts them all on a page. He sells as much advertising as he possibly can. He pockets the cash. What do the bloggers get? Zippo. Directory Guy claims he's offering a service to bloggers. But what he's actually doing is selling ads around content that he poached.
Many bloggers may agree with Directory Guy. They may believe that anyone who shares their work is doing them a favour by bringing their blog traffic. They may never have written professionally, and perhaps being paid for their efforts is the furthest thing from their minds. But that doesn't mean they're not being exploited.
If a non-commercial site such as Common Dreams or Progressive Bloggers shares your posts, they are providing a service for both readers and bloggers. But if, for example, Salon or Rolling Stone or The New York Times wants to use your work, that's a business arrangement, and you should be paid (and retain your rights to the material). There's a difference between a free, non-commercial site and a profit-making venture.
I write for free, and I write for pay, depending on the situation. If someone else is profiting from my writing, they should be sharing some of that with me. And if Directory Guy needs "content" for his revenue-generating website, because he has no ideas and no ability to write anything of his own, then he should: one, ask permission to use my material, and two, compensate me for my efforts.
And if it's one thing I hate more than advertising, it's when people exploit other people's creativity for their own profit and give nothing in return. When Toyota or Honda uses a song in an ad, they have to ask permission, and they have to pay for it. If someone uses my blog to sell ads - and only to sell ads - they should ask, too. And if I say yes, they should give me something in return - something more than a link.
I wish bloggers didn't sell ad space on their own blogs; I'd like to see blogs, as a medium, be completely advertising-free. I have many reasons for that, which I won't get into here. However, I fully recognize the right of every blogger to conduct her blog as she sees fit.
But no one should use material from someone else's blog for commercial gain without the blogger's permission, and without a revenue-sharing arrangement. No one pays us for blogging. But no one should profit from our blogging, either, unless they share that profit with us.
There are several sites out there purporting to be blog "directories". Here's how they work. A guy compiles a number of blog feeds and puts them all on a page. He sells as much advertising as he possibly can. He pockets the cash. What do the bloggers get? Zippo. Directory Guy claims he's offering a service to bloggers. But what he's actually doing is selling ads around content that he poached.
Many bloggers may agree with Directory Guy. They may believe that anyone who shares their work is doing them a favour by bringing their blog traffic. They may never have written professionally, and perhaps being paid for their efforts is the furthest thing from their minds. But that doesn't mean they're not being exploited.
If a non-commercial site such as Common Dreams or Progressive Bloggers shares your posts, they are providing a service for both readers and bloggers. But if, for example, Salon or Rolling Stone or The New York Times wants to use your work, that's a business arrangement, and you should be paid (and retain your rights to the material). There's a difference between a free, non-commercial site and a profit-making venture.
I write for free, and I write for pay, depending on the situation. If someone else is profiting from my writing, they should be sharing some of that with me. And if Directory Guy needs "content" for his revenue-generating website, because he has no ideas and no ability to write anything of his own, then he should: one, ask permission to use my material, and two, compensate me for my efforts.
11.02.2009
conscience behind bars: visit to a jailed war resister, long version
This is the full conversation I had with two friends from the War Resisters Support Campaign. He talked in preparation for my story at The Mark, "Conscience Behind Bars":
When they crossed the border at Lewiston, the US border guard asked where they were going. They said, "Fayetteville," to which he replied, "Fayette-Nam"...
LK: Did Cliff already know you were coming?
JG: No. We were so afraid that something might happen, that we wouldn’t make it, and we didn’t want to disappoint him.
Sunday morning they leave the Day’s Inn in Virginia.
JG: It’s a few hours drive to Camp Lejeune. We were there before noon. Visiting hours started at noon.
CB: We went to the local Burger King to get a coffee and steel our nerves.
LK: Camp Lejeune is in North Carolina, right? And it’s huge?
JG: Huge. It’s actually [referring to brochure] 153,439 acres, which includes 26,000 acres of water.
LK: So you must pass through some kind of gates long before you get where you’re going.
JG: You drive through the property. Because at one point I thought I saw a lot of young men playing football in the distance. Then I thought, uh-oh, that’s not football. That’s soldiers doing their thing.
LK: It was some kind of military formations or drill.
JG: Then you begin to see stores advertising military cuts, name tapes. Everything in the stores is directed to support military. Military balls.
LK: Balls?
CB: Dances. There were spas advertising pre-military-ball specials.
LK: Ah, like going to the prom.
CB: Exactly.
JG: The other thing about Camp Lejeune is it’s been heavily polluted. The military covered that up for a couple of decades. Men began getting breast cancer. They even found a small stockpile of Strontium-90. There’s a website set up by citizens who are trying to let everybody know, to reach people who were stationed there. A woman named Laura Jones, who lives in Ohio, is suing the government. She has lymphoma.
[See: The TCE Blog and The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten]
LK: So it was a toxic waste dump site?
JG: They were drinking contaminated water, bathing in it.
LK: Support our troops.
JG: We knew this before we went. You know this is what you’re going into.
LK: It’s underlying everything. So it’s about a 11:45 on Sunday as you’re passing through the gates.
CB: Visiting hours are 12 til 3, so we were advised [by other people who visited there] to get there before 12.
LK: And you still haven’t contacted Cliff.
CB: Nope.
LK: So what did you have to do to get in?
JG: That was very straightforward. You have to check your car, you give your registration and get a pass for your car.
CB: We were told to bring the insurance, the car registration and ID. That’s all we had to do. They asked who was sponsoring us to go visit them. We said, nobody, we’re going to the brig. They said, okay, and we asked, where’s the brig, and the woman said, "I have no idea." [laughs] The camp is that that big.
JG: Then we had to go through another checkpoint. And that soldier – he was very young, the soldiers are all so young – he directed us to the brig.
So Camp Lejeune is huge, and we’re going down a main thoroughfare, and then you turn off, you pass storage sites for trucks, and garages and such.
LK: The back lots.
JG: Right. Then you turn a corner, and there is the brig, easily re recognized because it has barred windows – narrow windows that are barred, and red brick, barbed wire around the back.
LK: How big a building is it?
CB: It’s a four-storey building. It houses 280 inmates.
JG: And they have a logo.
LK: The brig has its own logo?
JG: Prison bars with a key in a great big circle with various symbols.
CB: It’s really unbelievable.
JG: Then we had to check in again.
CB: We could see a guy at a desk writing things down, and everybody in line, so we just got in line.
JG: It was sad. Because you see people waiting in line with the kids, and the babies. You wonder how many miles they’ve traveled.
CB: There were a lot of license plates from far away. And it was a long weekend there, I guess it was Columbus Day, so maybe more people than usual might have been able to come. I’m not sure. When we got there, there were maybe 15 people in front of us, and it was steady behind us, people kept coming. A steady stream of people coming to visit.
JG: We couldn’t take anything in. Michelle had to take some things back to the car.
CB: We had to take our wallets back to the car.
LK: Wallets, why? So you couldn’t give inmates anything, I guess.
CB: Yes.
LK: I remember from when [another campaigner] visited [deported war resister] Robin [Long] in the brig, he couldn’t take notes. Was that the case, you had to be completely empty handed?
CB: It didn’t even occur to us to bring pen and paper, but other people did have little tiny pieces of paper and pencil stubs.
JG: But I think it would have been inappropriate for us.
CB: It wouldn’t have been as good a visit.
LK: So the line moves up, and what happens?
JG: They take your passport and your car keys, and they wand you.
LK: Then at that point do they say who you’re there to visit?
CB: Yes. And I found the whole process very low-tech, very manual. They had little post-it notes. We said, “Cliff Cornell,” and the next people would say, “Joe Smith” or whoever, and they’d write the names down on post-it notes, and when they had three or four post-it notes, they would hand them through a little window to someone else. It seemed really odd to me that they didn’t have a more elaborate system.
JG: That was the spot where we couldn’t see through the glass. There was this glass where they were asking questions. Very dark, like a tinted car window.
CB: Both Michelle and I, as soon as we got into the line and starting going through the process, a real anger... a really strong anger. That this is what we were going to – that this is what our government had done to Cliff. It was very strong. We were very tense, too, because we didn’t really know...
JG: Because you don’t know what to expect.
LK: You mean, seeing this is what happened, because he couldn’t stay in Canada.
CB: I was so angry. Almost overwhelming.
JG: This big door unlocks, and you go through a passageway.
CB: And you don’t know where you’re going. Everybody else seemed to know where they were going. We tried to walk into this little room that looked like your classic image of visiting a prisoner – chairs on one side with a glass partition. But they told us, no no no, don’t go in there, go this way.
So we were looking and we could see prisoners down a hall, and then finally people told us, you come in here. And we went into a cafeteria. That’s where you visit.
They ask you, who are you here to see? We said Cliff Cornell, and they see how many of you there are, and look around for a spot that can seat everyone. It’s cafeteria tables. So visits were going on.
They were tables that would seat six, so if your party was 3 and someone else’s was 2, you might be at the same table with a little space in between.
JG: I don’t remember this part. I was blanking out, I was so anxious. But I do remember feeling a huge relief that we were actually going to be sitting with Cliff. It was actually going to happen.
CB: Remember you read the rules? Before we went in, there was a big list of rules, and we saw, oh my god, you can hug them. We couldn’t believe it, because we had heard a lot of stories about some places were inmates aren’t allowed any physical contact with visitors.
LK: So they brough Cliff out, and had they told him who was visiting?
JG: Oh no, he was in shock.
CB: He was in shock. I wasn’t looking that way, because it felt kind of rude – if you were looking that way, you were staring at people who were already visiting, who had come in before you. But Michelle was watching, and she said his face went from disbelief to a big giant smile, an ear-to-ear grin.
JG: He gave us each a huge hug. When he sat down at our table, his face was red, and he was in tears.
CB: He couldn’t believe it. And I think we couldn’t believe it either.
JG: Just to see Cliff, in the flesh, it was so...at that point it was so rewarding.
LK: Was he wearing a prison uniform?
JG: Orange. Orange jumpsuit.
LK: Orange jumpsuit? Oh boy. That’s awful. So after Cliff sits down and you all calm down a bit, what happened?
CB: We started saying, oh my god, I can’t believe you’re here, you look okay...
JG: And he did, he looked okay. It was that kind of relief, that he was here, in front of us. Then we talked about what it’s like there.
It’s harsh. The place is set up for people doing 30 to 90 days. So they make it tough, so people learn their lesson and don’t misbehave again.
LK: So it’s meant to be a short-term, intense experience.
JG: Right, get your punishment and get out.
LK: But for Cliff it’s not short-term.
JG: And again, the guards that are guarding us during this are all Cliff’s age. Very young men guarding very young men. It’s bizarre.
LK: How long as Cliff been there?
CB: He was sentenced at the end of April. It took ten days or so until they actually got him to Camp Lejeune.
LK: So it’s coming on six months.
CB: We started out talking about the drive down...
JG: And it was his birthday on Friday, so that was opportune.
CB: We didn’t know that, but we were making jokes like, of course that’s why we came down, to celebrate your birthday, telling him everyone wishes him a happy birthday.
JG: Then we began asking him what it was like. Forty people to a barracks, so there’s no privacy. No time alone at all. Cliff does have a job reconditioning fire extinguishers. There aren’t many fire extinguishers to be reconditioned, but he tries to stretch it out as long as possible, because that’s his only time by himself.
LK: What else does he do? How does he spend his time?
JG: It’s very boring. They’re allowed outside for one hour a day. They have the opportunity to do something extra-curricular, supposedly educational. Although we know Cliff doesn’t have a drug or alcohol problem, he has joined AA, which seems to be a good thing. It gives him a chance to speak, to hear other people’s stories.
LK: He goes to the meetings for community?
CB: Maybe. We don’t know what the choices were. One choice was a group for sexual offenders. We spent a long time talking about did he know why he was sent to Camp Lejeune, because nobody can understand why he got placed there.
He thinks it’s because it’s harsher, that it was part of throwing the book at him. He got a longer sentence than all the other people who are in there. Everyone else there is in for three months or four months. People who deserted who were gone for eight years, or people who were charged with desertion and a whole bunch of other charges, got much, much shorter sentences. So he thinks it’s all part of the package.
JG: People who were in for sexual assault, attempted murder – they got a few months.
CB: It’s just crazy. Cliff got 12 months.
JG: His fellow inmates, when they hear his sentence, they say, you got screwed.
LK: And what does he attribute this to?
CB: To speaking out against the war.
LK: Did coming to Canada contribute to it, do you think?
CB: It’s hard to say. We don’t know.
JG: Coming to Canada may have contributed to his lengthy sentence, but the thought of returning to Gabriola Island is the very thing that’s getting him through. All Cliff wants is to return to Canada.
LK: So Cliff is serving time with people who were convicted of violent crimes?
CB: Yes.
JG: Not only violent crimes. There are other deserters there, too.
LK: But they’re serving shorter sentences.
CB: Yes. Three months, four months. His is three or four times as long.
LK: And he’s not even at a facility set up for long-term incarceration.
CB: One of things that really struck us was the frustrations, the continual frustrations. They make rules and then they change them. It used to be that if you got books sent to you, when you were done, you could pass them on to somebody. Now you’re not allowed to do that. You can’t even donate your books to the library. You either have to throw the book out, or mail it someone on the outside, paying with your own money.
There’s all this stuff about "trafficking". If you have an extra postage stamp, and a fellow inmate needs a stamp, you can’t give him one, because that’s trafficking.
LK: They’re interrupting community-building all the time. All the places where bonds could be formed – by passing a book along or helping someone out with a stamp – they’re cutting it off. Because what other reason could there be for not letting people share books?
JG: And why else would you share a book?
LK: And they have to control everything about you while you’re there.
CB: And threatening people with more time. You accumulate days off your sentence for good behaviour, so it’s a continual threat that if you do anything wrong, you can lose those days.
JG: So with this time off for good behaviour, Cliff could be out in February. But it’s at their whim. You’re absolutely powerless.
LK: So not only can’t you share the book, you can’t say, I don’t care, I’m sharing the book anyway, because you could end up with six months more time.
JG: Exactly.
LK: The consequences are too serious. This reminds me of what other resisters have told me about the pressure, while in Iraq, to not speak up about the human rights abuses they saw every day. All the pressure, the threats, coercion that keep people from speaking out, because the consequences are so dire. Besides being beaten up, they threaten to cut off your money to your family, to extend your tour.
JG: It’s not only them. The prisoners have wives, kids, families, Cliff has Jim and Annie [his adoptive parents]. The consequences are not only for them, the consequences are for the whole family.
LK: And for many people, that’s even worse, a stronger threat.
CB: Absolutely.
LK: It’s mind-blowing that you can’t pass a book along.
CB: And it was all like that. All the rules around what you can get, how you can get it. If you don’t clean your foot locker properly, if you talk when you’re not supposed to talk – and you’re not supposed to talk most of the time. You’re almost never allowed to talk.
LK: So he’s allowed outside one hour a day. What is the outside like, like a pen?
CB: Yes. Barbed wire and all.
JG: On the weekends, they only get two meals, as opposed to three. They can’t smoke, so you’re in nicotine withdrawal. So when you first go in, the shock, and to also be in withdrawal, it must be just awful.
LK: Can families bring food while they’re there? Any gifts?
CB: No. One woman had her husband’s sweatpants. The guards told her she couldn’t bring it in. She said, he asked for these, he’s supposed to have them. They said, you have to come back during the week and process it the right way.
JG: And remembering, getting to Camp Lejeune to have something processed is not an easy process!
LK: Sure, if she has kids, or a job, or if she doesn’t live nearby.
CB: Here’s another thing that’s more than a daily frustration. Janet mentioned there are 40 people to a barracks. You’re classified by your sentence. You can be moved to less restrictive conditions, where there are 20 or 24 people instead of 40.
There’s the highest level of how many people in a barracks, then two levels lower. Cliff was supposed to be moved several weeks ago. When the day came and he asked about it, they told him there was a mix-up with your paperwork. All this time you were supposed to be at a different level, so we’re going to leave you where you are.
JG: And you don’t know what this “paperwork mix-up” is. And it’s only about moving someone, so it must be a very simple procedure.
LK: It’s just messing with you. They can decide not to move you.
JG: The level of frustration is very great. Cliff said he is just keeping his head down, trying to get through it. But I could see how with so much frustration, you might just flip. Then you’d lose everything and have to start all over.
LK: So he has to find self-control, because the consequences are so harsh. But even if he’s perfect, and he does everything right, they can still punish you. And underlying all this is the question: What did Cliff do? What was his crime?
JG: He followed the law. He followed the law of United Nations. He followed his conscience.
LK: He did what we’re all hoping soldiers will do. He can’t say, “I was following orders” – he did the right thing and refused illegal orders. And that’s why he’s there.
CB: That’s why I had such that overwhelming sense of anger. The US military and how they run their brigs, and all that kind of stuff, I don’t think there’s anything surprising about that. It’s shocking to see it with your own eyes, but to me it’s not surprising.
What’s shocking is that our government would participate in putting people who’ve done the right thing into that position. And that after Robin, and after Cliff, they’re still moving ahead to try to do the same to other people. It’s unbelievable. It’s outrageous.
And they know it, too. Their spokespeople say, ‘There would never be persecution in Obama’s America,’ but they know exactly what they’re sending people back to, and they’re choosing to do it.
JG: When we were there, a fellow from the Chapel Hill [North Carolina] Quakers joined us, and two people from Veterans from Peace. [Two of them have visited Cliff before, one of whom visits regularly.]
CB: There are people who have been visiting him, and it’s been really, really important. He also gets a lot of mail, which is great. He’s considered a celebrity, because he gets so much mail.
But they [the other peace activists] talked a lot about Cliff’s mental state, and depressed he was early on, how worried about him everyone was. And how much better he’s doing now.
JG: They were really scared for him.
LK: Because he was so depressed?
JG: Yes. It was serious. It was very hard. But he’s midway through now. He’s able to look to the future. And he’s got his survival skills figured out.
CB: Cliff wants to come back to Gabriola. Not right away – he’s going to stay with his family in Arkansas for a while, maybe do a little bit of speaking. But he does want to get back to Gabriola. That’s home to him. He’s got a very supportive community. But it’s going to take a fair amount of work to make that happen.
JG: To think, here’s this guy who did the right thing, who could be on Gabriola Island with a community, and a job, sitting in this prison. It’s appalling! No, it’s worse than that. It’s unbelievable.
LK: It’s surreal.
CB: That’s what Janet kept saying while we were there, that it’s surreal.
JG: You feel like you’re in a bad play or something. And it’s so contained. You go into this place, and you leave, but he’s still there. We felt so badly leaving him. It was horrible.
LK: How long were you there?
CB: Visiting hours were 12:00 to 3:00, and we stayed the whole time. Then it suddenly ended. We weren’t paying attention to the time, then all of a sudden Cliff said, it’s over now. I looked around and everyone was saying their goodbyes.
JG: I’m glad it was quick like that. I think it would have been a mess if we had known.
CB: Oh yeah, it would have been worse otherwise.
JG: It’s like going into another country. You get out of those gates, and back into the free world. It was like we were behind the Iron Curtain or something.
CB: It was a relief to get off the base.
JG: After visiting hours, the prisoners were all strip-searched. Even though no one could take anything in, and you’re sitting in a small room with guards all around you.
CB: You’re being watched the whole time.
LK: So then what did you do?
JG: We got out, got our keys, our stuff, then we talked to Curt [the Quaker visitor] for a while, which was a relief, because he does visit Cliff regularly. He seemed like a really caring guy, and now we feel like we have a contact to Curt. Don’t you feel it’s a relief?
CB: Oh yes, I do. At first my overwhelming feeling was relief, to see him, to see he’s okay. Even though you know how difficult it is, and how hard it is for him to go through, it was just good to see him, to see he is coping. And he kept saying, ‘I’m a survivor.’
It was his 29th birthday, and he said, I really could write a book, 29 years and never a dull moment. [laughs]
JG: Except on Gabriola Island! [laughs] But I really admire the guy so much. And I realize the bonds, how deep it is, how much we in this campaign truly love each other.
CB: It’s really true.
JG: I think I didn’t let myself think about having to leave him there, until a couple of days after. I’ve been trying to write about it, and I couldn’t. I just felt so bad, but didn’t know why. Now I realize: it’s because I feel so bad to think that here’s there and we’re out here. Having to leave him there. That’s what was at the root of my sadness.
[The three friends had rented a place on the beach, and went there to relax and regroup.]
CB: We knew we had to do something. We could walk and look at the waves, and look at the birds. But even that was hard, because you’re not that many miles away, and you know that Cliff is still there. But we needed to do something.
JG: Just to have a few hours to realize, there are birds, and there’s a sun in the sky – and it will be there for Cliff, too.
On Thanksgiving weekend, Michelle Robidoux, Christine Beckermann, and Janet Goodfellow packed up Michelle’s little red Hyundai and headed out of Toronto before dawn. They crossed the border at Lewiston and continued south, through the autumn colours of Pennsylvania, past the traffic snarling around Washington D.C. The three Canadian women, friends and colleagues of mine from the War Resisters Support Campaign, were on their way to Camp Lejeune, a sprawling U.S. Marine Corps complex outside Fayetteville, North Carolina. Our friend Clifford Cornell is imprisoned there.
When they crossed the border at Lewiston, the US border guard asked where they were going. They said, "Fayetteville," to which he replied, "Fayette-Nam"...
LK: Did Cliff already know you were coming?
JG: No. We were so afraid that something might happen, that we wouldn’t make it, and we didn’t want to disappoint him.
Sunday morning they leave the Day’s Inn in Virginia.
JG: It’s a few hours drive to Camp Lejeune. We were there before noon. Visiting hours started at noon.
CB: We went to the local Burger King to get a coffee and steel our nerves.
LK: Camp Lejeune is in North Carolina, right? And it’s huge?
JG: Huge. It’s actually [referring to brochure] 153,439 acres, which includes 26,000 acres of water.
LK: So you must pass through some kind of gates long before you get where you’re going.
JG: You drive through the property. Because at one point I thought I saw a lot of young men playing football in the distance. Then I thought, uh-oh, that’s not football. That’s soldiers doing their thing.
LK: It was some kind of military formations or drill.
JG: Then you begin to see stores advertising military cuts, name tapes. Everything in the stores is directed to support military. Military balls.
LK: Balls?
CB: Dances. There were spas advertising pre-military-ball specials.
LK: Ah, like going to the prom.
CB: Exactly.
JG: The other thing about Camp Lejeune is it’s been heavily polluted. The military covered that up for a couple of decades. Men began getting breast cancer. They even found a small stockpile of Strontium-90. There’s a website set up by citizens who are trying to let everybody know, to reach people who were stationed there. A woman named Laura Jones, who lives in Ohio, is suing the government. She has lymphoma.
[See: The TCE Blog and The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten]
LK: So it was a toxic waste dump site?
JG: They were drinking contaminated water, bathing in it.
LK: Support our troops.
JG: We knew this before we went. You know this is what you’re going into.
LK: It’s underlying everything. So it’s about a 11:45 on Sunday as you’re passing through the gates.
CB: Visiting hours are 12 til 3, so we were advised [by other people who visited there] to get there before 12.
LK: And you still haven’t contacted Cliff.
CB: Nope.
LK: So what did you have to do to get in?
JG: That was very straightforward. You have to check your car, you give your registration and get a pass for your car.
CB: We were told to bring the insurance, the car registration and ID. That’s all we had to do. They asked who was sponsoring us to go visit them. We said, nobody, we’re going to the brig. They said, okay, and we asked, where’s the brig, and the woman said, "I have no idea." [laughs] The camp is that that big.
JG: Then we had to go through another checkpoint. And that soldier – he was very young, the soldiers are all so young – he directed us to the brig.
So Camp Lejeune is huge, and we’re going down a main thoroughfare, and then you turn off, you pass storage sites for trucks, and garages and such.
LK: The back lots.
JG: Right. Then you turn a corner, and there is the brig, easily re recognized because it has barred windows – narrow windows that are barred, and red brick, barbed wire around the back.
LK: How big a building is it?
CB: It’s a four-storey building. It houses 280 inmates.
JG: And they have a logo.
LK: The brig has its own logo?
JG: Prison bars with a key in a great big circle with various symbols.
CB: It’s really unbelievable.
JG: Then we had to check in again.
CB: We could see a guy at a desk writing things down, and everybody in line, so we just got in line.
JG: It was sad. Because you see people waiting in line with the kids, and the babies. You wonder how many miles they’ve traveled.
CB: There were a lot of license plates from far away. And it was a long weekend there, I guess it was Columbus Day, so maybe more people than usual might have been able to come. I’m not sure. When we got there, there were maybe 15 people in front of us, and it was steady behind us, people kept coming. A steady stream of people coming to visit.
JG: We couldn’t take anything in. Michelle had to take some things back to the car.
CB: We had to take our wallets back to the car.
LK: Wallets, why? So you couldn’t give inmates anything, I guess.
CB: Yes.
LK: I remember from when [another campaigner] visited [deported war resister] Robin [Long] in the brig, he couldn’t take notes. Was that the case, you had to be completely empty handed?
CB: It didn’t even occur to us to bring pen and paper, but other people did have little tiny pieces of paper and pencil stubs.
JG: But I think it would have been inappropriate for us.
CB: It wouldn’t have been as good a visit.
LK: So the line moves up, and what happens?
JG: They take your passport and your car keys, and they wand you.
LK: Then at that point do they say who you’re there to visit?
CB: Yes. And I found the whole process very low-tech, very manual. They had little post-it notes. We said, “Cliff Cornell,” and the next people would say, “Joe Smith” or whoever, and they’d write the names down on post-it notes, and when they had three or four post-it notes, they would hand them through a little window to someone else. It seemed really odd to me that they didn’t have a more elaborate system.
JG: That was the spot where we couldn’t see through the glass. There was this glass where they were asking questions. Very dark, like a tinted car window.
CB: Both Michelle and I, as soon as we got into the line and starting going through the process, a real anger... a really strong anger. That this is what we were going to – that this is what our government had done to Cliff. It was very strong. We were very tense, too, because we didn’t really know...
JG: Because you don’t know what to expect.
LK: You mean, seeing this is what happened, because he couldn’t stay in Canada.
CB: I was so angry. Almost overwhelming.
JG: This big door unlocks, and you go through a passageway.
CB: And you don’t know where you’re going. Everybody else seemed to know where they were going. We tried to walk into this little room that looked like your classic image of visiting a prisoner – chairs on one side with a glass partition. But they told us, no no no, don’t go in there, go this way.
So we were looking and we could see prisoners down a hall, and then finally people told us, you come in here. And we went into a cafeteria. That’s where you visit.
They ask you, who are you here to see? We said Cliff Cornell, and they see how many of you there are, and look around for a spot that can seat everyone. It’s cafeteria tables. So visits were going on.
They were tables that would seat six, so if your party was 3 and someone else’s was 2, you might be at the same table with a little space in between.
JG: I don’t remember this part. I was blanking out, I was so anxious. But I do remember feeling a huge relief that we were actually going to be sitting with Cliff. It was actually going to happen.
CB: Remember you read the rules? Before we went in, there was a big list of rules, and we saw, oh my god, you can hug them. We couldn’t believe it, because we had heard a lot of stories about some places were inmates aren’t allowed any physical contact with visitors.
LK: So they brough Cliff out, and had they told him who was visiting?
JG: Oh no, he was in shock.
CB: He was in shock. I wasn’t looking that way, because it felt kind of rude – if you were looking that way, you were staring at people who were already visiting, who had come in before you. But Michelle was watching, and she said his face went from disbelief to a big giant smile, an ear-to-ear grin.
JG: He gave us each a huge hug. When he sat down at our table, his face was red, and he was in tears.
CB: He couldn’t believe it. And I think we couldn’t believe it either.
JG: Just to see Cliff, in the flesh, it was so...at that point it was so rewarding.
LK: Was he wearing a prison uniform?
JG: Orange. Orange jumpsuit.
LK: Orange jumpsuit? Oh boy. That’s awful. So after Cliff sits down and you all calm down a bit, what happened?
CB: We started saying, oh my god, I can’t believe you’re here, you look okay...
JG: And he did, he looked okay. It was that kind of relief, that he was here, in front of us. Then we talked about what it’s like there.
It’s harsh. The place is set up for people doing 30 to 90 days. So they make it tough, so people learn their lesson and don’t misbehave again.
LK: So it’s meant to be a short-term, intense experience.
JG: Right, get your punishment and get out.
LK: But for Cliff it’s not short-term.
JG: And again, the guards that are guarding us during this are all Cliff’s age. Very young men guarding very young men. It’s bizarre.
LK: How long as Cliff been there?
CB: He was sentenced at the end of April. It took ten days or so until they actually got him to Camp Lejeune.
LK: So it’s coming on six months.
CB: We started out talking about the drive down...
JG: And it was his birthday on Friday, so that was opportune.
CB: We didn’t know that, but we were making jokes like, of course that’s why we came down, to celebrate your birthday, telling him everyone wishes him a happy birthday.
JG: Then we began asking him what it was like. Forty people to a barracks, so there’s no privacy. No time alone at all. Cliff does have a job reconditioning fire extinguishers. There aren’t many fire extinguishers to be reconditioned, but he tries to stretch it out as long as possible, because that’s his only time by himself.
LK: What else does he do? How does he spend his time?
JG: It’s very boring. They’re allowed outside for one hour a day. They have the opportunity to do something extra-curricular, supposedly educational. Although we know Cliff doesn’t have a drug or alcohol problem, he has joined AA, which seems to be a good thing. It gives him a chance to speak, to hear other people’s stories.
LK: He goes to the meetings for community?
CB: Maybe. We don’t know what the choices were. One choice was a group for sexual offenders. We spent a long time talking about did he know why he was sent to Camp Lejeune, because nobody can understand why he got placed there.
He thinks it’s because it’s harsher, that it was part of throwing the book at him. He got a longer sentence than all the other people who are in there. Everyone else there is in for three months or four months. People who deserted who were gone for eight years, or people who were charged with desertion and a whole bunch of other charges, got much, much shorter sentences. So he thinks it’s all part of the package.
JG: People who were in for sexual assault, attempted murder – they got a few months.
CB: It’s just crazy. Cliff got 12 months.
JG: His fellow inmates, when they hear his sentence, they say, you got screwed.
LK: And what does he attribute this to?
CB: To speaking out against the war.
LK: Did coming to Canada contribute to it, do you think?
CB: It’s hard to say. We don’t know.
JG: Coming to Canada may have contributed to his lengthy sentence, but the thought of returning to Gabriola Island is the very thing that’s getting him through. All Cliff wants is to return to Canada.
LK: So Cliff is serving time with people who were convicted of violent crimes?
CB: Yes.
JG: Not only violent crimes. There are other deserters there, too.
LK: But they’re serving shorter sentences.
CB: Yes. Three months, four months. His is three or four times as long.
LK: And he’s not even at a facility set up for long-term incarceration.
CB: One of things that really struck us was the frustrations, the continual frustrations. They make rules and then they change them. It used to be that if you got books sent to you, when you were done, you could pass them on to somebody. Now you’re not allowed to do that. You can’t even donate your books to the library. You either have to throw the book out, or mail it someone on the outside, paying with your own money.
There’s all this stuff about "trafficking". If you have an extra postage stamp, and a fellow inmate needs a stamp, you can’t give him one, because that’s trafficking.
LK: They’re interrupting community-building all the time. All the places where bonds could be formed – by passing a book along or helping someone out with a stamp – they’re cutting it off. Because what other reason could there be for not letting people share books?
JG: And why else would you share a book?
LK: And they have to control everything about you while you’re there.
CB: And threatening people with more time. You accumulate days off your sentence for good behaviour, so it’s a continual threat that if you do anything wrong, you can lose those days.
JG: So with this time off for good behaviour, Cliff could be out in February. But it’s at their whim. You’re absolutely powerless.
LK: So not only can’t you share the book, you can’t say, I don’t care, I’m sharing the book anyway, because you could end up with six months more time.
JG: Exactly.
LK: The consequences are too serious. This reminds me of what other resisters have told me about the pressure, while in Iraq, to not speak up about the human rights abuses they saw every day. All the pressure, the threats, coercion that keep people from speaking out, because the consequences are so dire. Besides being beaten up, they threaten to cut off your money to your family, to extend your tour.
JG: It’s not only them. The prisoners have wives, kids, families, Cliff has Jim and Annie [his adoptive parents]. The consequences are not only for them, the consequences are for the whole family.
LK: And for many people, that’s even worse, a stronger threat.
CB: Absolutely.
LK: It’s mind-blowing that you can’t pass a book along.
CB: And it was all like that. All the rules around what you can get, how you can get it. If you don’t clean your foot locker properly, if you talk when you’re not supposed to talk – and you’re not supposed to talk most of the time. You’re almost never allowed to talk.
LK: So he’s allowed outside one hour a day. What is the outside like, like a pen?
CB: Yes. Barbed wire and all.
JG: On the weekends, they only get two meals, as opposed to three. They can’t smoke, so you’re in nicotine withdrawal. So when you first go in, the shock, and to also be in withdrawal, it must be just awful.
LK: Can families bring food while they’re there? Any gifts?
CB: No. One woman had her husband’s sweatpants. The guards told her she couldn’t bring it in. She said, he asked for these, he’s supposed to have them. They said, you have to come back during the week and process it the right way.
JG: And remembering, getting to Camp Lejeune to have something processed is not an easy process!
LK: Sure, if she has kids, or a job, or if she doesn’t live nearby.
CB: Here’s another thing that’s more than a daily frustration. Janet mentioned there are 40 people to a barracks. You’re classified by your sentence. You can be moved to less restrictive conditions, where there are 20 or 24 people instead of 40.
There’s the highest level of how many people in a barracks, then two levels lower. Cliff was supposed to be moved several weeks ago. When the day came and he asked about it, they told him there was a mix-up with your paperwork. All this time you were supposed to be at a different level, so we’re going to leave you where you are.
JG: And you don’t know what this “paperwork mix-up” is. And it’s only about moving someone, so it must be a very simple procedure.
LK: It’s just messing with you. They can decide not to move you.
JG: The level of frustration is very great. Cliff said he is just keeping his head down, trying to get through it. But I could see how with so much frustration, you might just flip. Then you’d lose everything and have to start all over.
LK: So he has to find self-control, because the consequences are so harsh. But even if he’s perfect, and he does everything right, they can still punish you. And underlying all this is the question: What did Cliff do? What was his crime?
JG: He followed the law. He followed the law of United Nations. He followed his conscience.
LK: He did what we’re all hoping soldiers will do. He can’t say, “I was following orders” – he did the right thing and refused illegal orders. And that’s why he’s there.
CB: That’s why I had such that overwhelming sense of anger. The US military and how they run their brigs, and all that kind of stuff, I don’t think there’s anything surprising about that. It’s shocking to see it with your own eyes, but to me it’s not surprising.
What’s shocking is that our government would participate in putting people who’ve done the right thing into that position. And that after Robin, and after Cliff, they’re still moving ahead to try to do the same to other people. It’s unbelievable. It’s outrageous.
And they know it, too. Their spokespeople say, ‘There would never be persecution in Obama’s America,’ but they know exactly what they’re sending people back to, and they’re choosing to do it.
JG: When we were there, a fellow from the Chapel Hill [North Carolina] Quakers joined us, and two people from Veterans from Peace. [Two of them have visited Cliff before, one of whom visits regularly.]
CB: There are people who have been visiting him, and it’s been really, really important. He also gets a lot of mail, which is great. He’s considered a celebrity, because he gets so much mail.
But they [the other peace activists] talked a lot about Cliff’s mental state, and depressed he was early on, how worried about him everyone was. And how much better he’s doing now.
JG: They were really scared for him.
LK: Because he was so depressed?
JG: Yes. It was serious. It was very hard. But he’s midway through now. He’s able to look to the future. And he’s got his survival skills figured out.
CB: Cliff wants to come back to Gabriola. Not right away – he’s going to stay with his family in Arkansas for a while, maybe do a little bit of speaking. But he does want to get back to Gabriola. That’s home to him. He’s got a very supportive community. But it’s going to take a fair amount of work to make that happen.
JG: To think, here’s this guy who did the right thing, who could be on Gabriola Island with a community, and a job, sitting in this prison. It’s appalling! No, it’s worse than that. It’s unbelievable.
LK: It’s surreal.
CB: That’s what Janet kept saying while we were there, that it’s surreal.
JG: You feel like you’re in a bad play or something. And it’s so contained. You go into this place, and you leave, but he’s still there. We felt so badly leaving him. It was horrible.
LK: How long were you there?
CB: Visiting hours were 12:00 to 3:00, and we stayed the whole time. Then it suddenly ended. We weren’t paying attention to the time, then all of a sudden Cliff said, it’s over now. I looked around and everyone was saying their goodbyes.
JG: I’m glad it was quick like that. I think it would have been a mess if we had known.
CB: Oh yeah, it would have been worse otherwise.
JG: It’s like going into another country. You get out of those gates, and back into the free world. It was like we were behind the Iron Curtain or something.
CB: It was a relief to get off the base.
JG: After visiting hours, the prisoners were all strip-searched. Even though no one could take anything in, and you’re sitting in a small room with guards all around you.
CB: You’re being watched the whole time.
LK: So then what did you do?
JG: We got out, got our keys, our stuff, then we talked to Curt [the Quaker visitor] for a while, which was a relief, because he does visit Cliff regularly. He seemed like a really caring guy, and now we feel like we have a contact to Curt. Don’t you feel it’s a relief?
CB: Oh yes, I do. At first my overwhelming feeling was relief, to see him, to see he’s okay. Even though you know how difficult it is, and how hard it is for him to go through, it was just good to see him, to see he is coping. And he kept saying, ‘I’m a survivor.’
It was his 29th birthday, and he said, I really could write a book, 29 years and never a dull moment. [laughs]
JG: Except on Gabriola Island! [laughs] But I really admire the guy so much. And I realize the bonds, how deep it is, how much we in this campaign truly love each other.
CB: It’s really true.
JG: I think I didn’t let myself think about having to leave him there, until a couple of days after. I’ve been trying to write about it, and I couldn’t. I just felt so bad, but didn’t know why. Now I realize: it’s because I feel so bad to think that here’s there and we’re out here. Having to leave him there. That’s what was at the root of my sadness.
[The three friends had rented a place on the beach, and went there to relax and regroup.]
CB: We knew we had to do something. We could walk and look at the waves, and look at the birds. But even that was hard, because you’re not that many miles away, and you know that Cliff is still there. But we needed to do something.
JG: Just to have a few hours to realize, there are birds, and there’s a sun in the sky – and it will be there for Cliff, too.
two-tier creep
I don't worry about H1N1, and I can wait until every last high-risk person in Canada has been vaccinated before I even think about getting injected. But the news that patients at private clinics had access to vaccines while the general public did not is much more disturbing than the risk of influenza.
Flu and flu-panic will pass. Privatization, queue-jumping and a two-tiered system could kill us.
Flu and flu-panic will pass. Privatization, queue-jumping and a two-tiered system could kill us.
avoiding the gay agenda gets tougher every day
Human Rights Campaign releases an annual "corporate equality index", which rates large US employers on their GLBT workplace policies. Apparently, despite the theocrat-bigots' seeming death grip on so many state legislatures, equality marches on in the corporate world.
Of course corporate equality cannot substitute for legal and constitutional rights, but it shouldn't be underestimated, either. Workplace desegregation probably did more to break down racial and ethnic bigotry than any single change in the US. And those adults that now work in normally integrated workplaces raise families, and the lessons they learn continue. The same is true for workplaces where people don't have to pretend their same-sex partners are roommates or worry about being fired for being gay, where they can access all the benefits that their non-gay colleagues can.
Of course, some people are still trying to swim against the tide of freedom, by attempting boycotts of companies that don't discriminate against GLBT employees, and that actively market to a gay consumers. Ed Brayton from Science Blogs looks at how these boycotts are going, and notices it's gonna be mighty slim pickin's for them holy rollin' shoppers. An excerpt:
It's an excellent piece, really worth reading.
Many thanks to James for sending. I have some lengthy posts coming up... eventually.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation's eighth annual Corporate Equality Index shows an unprecedented 305 major U.S. businesses earned the top rating of 100 percent, up from 260 last year - despite the economic downturn. Detailed information on each employer rated is included in the report and on our employer database under "Employers with Corporate Equality Index rating."
Of course corporate equality cannot substitute for legal and constitutional rights, but it shouldn't be underestimated, either. Workplace desegregation probably did more to break down racial and ethnic bigotry than any single change in the US. And those adults that now work in normally integrated workplaces raise families, and the lessons they learn continue. The same is true for workplaces where people don't have to pretend their same-sex partners are roommates or worry about being fired for being gay, where they can access all the benefits that their non-gay colleagues can.
Of course, some people are still trying to swim against the tide of freedom, by attempting boycotts of companies that don't discriminate against GLBT employees, and that actively market to a gay consumers. Ed Brayton from Science Blogs looks at how these boycotts are going, and notices it's gonna be mighty slim pickin's for them holy rollin' shoppers. An excerpt:
You can't fly on American Airlines or US Airways, both of which scored a perfect 100. You might also want to avoid United, Southwest, Delta, Northwest, Continental and JetBlue; all scored above 80. In fact, you can't even fly on Sarah Palin's Alaska Airlines, who got a perfect score this year. Who can you fly? Well, you could try Nepal Airlines, the faith-based airline that sacrifices goats to appease God. On second thought, that won't work either. Nepal Airlines has two planes, both of them made by Boeing; Boeing got a perfect 100 too. Go Greyhound!
In fact, you might want to start boycotting the military too. Most of the major defense contractors scored very well. Honeywell, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman all scored a perfect 100. Lockheed got an 85. Who would have guessed that our good ol' red-blooded and (presumably) straight American fighting men are using weapons that advance the gay agenda? If you don't ask, we won't tell.
Shopping could be a problem too. You can't shop at Abercrombie and Fitch, The Gap, JC Penney's, Macy's, or Nordstroms. Can't wear Levis jeans or Nike shoes. And even that staple of middle American fashion, LL Bean, scored a 79. Ah well, there's always K-Mart. And in a pinch, you can always wear a plain white sheet.
Then again, it's going to be difficult to get to the mall anyway since cars are pretty much out entirely. Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Toyota, Subaru and Volkswagon all scored a perfect 100. You could try Volvo, but that's a Swedish company and you know how those morally bankrupt Scandinavians like to treat gay people like human beings. It may be horse and buggy time.
Finances are gonna be damn near impossible. Want to find a hetero-normative mortgage? Good luck. Bank of America, Citigroup, Countrywide, JP Morgan Chase, Fannie Mae, Indy Mac, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo all scored 100. Need a morally upstanding credit card? Avoid American Express, Mastercard and Visa; all got perfect scores. Can't do Discover either, since they're owned by Morgan Stanley and damn if they didn't get a 100 as well.
Banking in general is gonna be a real problem for the Righteous, and you might as well give up on any thought of investing your money or saving for retirement. ...
It's an excellent piece, really worth reading.
Many thanks to James for sending. I have some lengthy posts coming up... eventually.
11.01.2009
"we are an occupying power and our presence will only fuel insurgency"
Two days ago, Matthew Hoh became the first State Department official to resign over the US's war in Afghanistan. He's an informed and articulate spokesperson on behalf of getting out.
Hear what Matthew Hoh has to say: Blip TV, or PBS's NewsHour Online.
I highly recommend watching the whole thing.
Hear what Matthew Hoh has to say: Blip TV, or PBS's NewsHour Online.
I highly recommend watching the whole thing.
10.31.2009
halloween social experiment (without results)
We performed a little social experiment tonight, but we have no idea how it turned out.
Our neighbourhood is always very busy on Halloween. In fact, we saw the house for the first time on Halloween 2006, and seeing all the groups of kids traipsing from house to house in costumes gave us a good feeling about the neighbourhood.
We had to work tonight, but we didn't want to be unavailable for the kids, and we also didn't want the doorbell ringing all night, bothering the dogs. So we did Halloween in absentia. We left the light on, taped over the doorbell, put a bucket of candy on the doorstep, and taped this sign to the door.
But unfortunately, we had no way to videotape or otherwise spy on the proceedings.
When I came home tonight, all the candy was gone. That's not unusual. But how did it go? Did someone tip the whole bucket into their trick-or-treat bag? Did each child take just one or two candies? Most of the kids are escorted by parents, so I'm thinking everyone was well behaved. And the kids around here are so sweet and polite. I'd bet even the groups of teenagers would only take a few (although I could see them joking about taking all of it... then not doing it).
I think there was probably a fair distribution. Still, it would have been fun to watch.
Our neighbourhood is always very busy on Halloween. In fact, we saw the house for the first time on Halloween 2006, and seeing all the groups of kids traipsing from house to house in costumes gave us a good feeling about the neighbourhood.
We had to work tonight, but we didn't want to be unavailable for the kids, and we also didn't want the doorbell ringing all night, bothering the dogs. So we did Halloween in absentia. We left the light on, taped over the doorbell, put a bucket of candy on the doorstep, and taped this sign to the door.
But unfortunately, we had no way to videotape or otherwise spy on the proceedings.
When I came home tonight, all the candy was gone. That's not unusual. But how did it go? Did someone tip the whole bucket into their trick-or-treat bag? Did each child take just one or two candies? Most of the kids are escorted by parents, so I'm thinking everyone was well behaved. And the kids around here are so sweet and polite. I'd bet even the groups of teenagers would only take a few (although I could see them joking about taking all of it... then not doing it).
I think there was probably a fair distribution. Still, it would have been fun to watch.
a tale of two newscasts
Watch these two interviews with Afghan MP Malalai Joya, one from CNN in the US, one from CNN International.
A Tale of Two CNNs
This goes a long way in explaining much of the ignorance of the US population regarding their own government's policies. I'm not saying it excuses it. And I understand that other sources are available to all of us now - but we have to know there's a need for the sources, and have the time and motivation to look for them, and have some support for other worldviews, and... a lot of things that many people don't have.
But in any event, this is what passes for hard-hitting international news in that country. In between episodes of WTWWA and flying balloon boys.
Many thanks to DeanG for sending.
Also, reminder: Malalai Joya will be speaking in Toronto on November 18.
A Tale of Two CNNs
This goes a long way in explaining much of the ignorance of the US population regarding their own government's policies. I'm not saying it excuses it. And I understand that other sources are available to all of us now - but we have to know there's a need for the sources, and have the time and motivation to look for them, and have some support for other worldviews, and... a lot of things that many people don't have.
But in any event, this is what passes for hard-hitting international news in that country. In between episodes of WTWWA and flying balloon boys.
Many thanks to DeanG for sending.
Also, reminder: Malalai Joya will be speaking in Toronto on November 18.
november 5 day of action for a poverty-free ontario
If you're a student in Ontario, I hope you're already aware of this important action, but just in case...
On Thursday, November 5, Ontario students of all ages and levels will take to the streets and campuses, calling for a poverty-free province. This diverse coalition of concerned citizens is asking for:
Reduced Tuition Fees
Affordable Child Care
Public Housing
A Living Wage
Quality Public Health Care
Employment Equity
Raise in Social Assistance Rates
Fair Employment Insurance Rates
At the University of Toronto, the schedule is:
11:30 a.m. - free pancake breakfast outside Sid Smith [these organizers are smart!]
1:00 p.m. - meet up & rally at Sidney Smith Hall
2:00 p.m. - city-wide convergence and march, starting at Con Hall
4:00 p.m. - mass rally at Queen's Park
Turnout is expected to be massive. Be there!
Facebook group here.
On Thursday, November 5, Ontario students of all ages and levels will take to the streets and campuses, calling for a poverty-free province. This diverse coalition of concerned citizens is asking for:
At the University of Toronto, the schedule is:
11:30 a.m. - free pancake breakfast outside Sid Smith [these organizers are smart!]
1:00 p.m. - meet up & rally at Sidney Smith Hall
2:00 p.m. - city-wide convergence and march, starting at Con Hall
4:00 p.m. - mass rally at Queen's Park
Turnout is expected to be massive. Be there!
Facebook group here.
"i'm a soldier, what's it going to look like if i can't get things straight in my head?"
Another good story on PTSD. This one, from The New York Times, focuses on female soldiers.
Read more here.
For Vivienne Pacquette, being a combat veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder means avoiding phone calls to her sons, dinner out with her husband and therapy sessions that make her talk about seeing the reds and whites of her friends' insides after a mortar attack in 2004.
As with other women in her position, hiding seems to make sense. Post-traumatic stress disorder distorts personalities: some veterans who have it fight in their sleep; others feel paranoid around children. And as women return to a society unfamiliar with their wartime roles, they often choose isolation over embarrassment.
Many spend months or years as virtual shut-ins, missing the camaraderie of Iraq or Afghanistan, while racked with guilt over who they have become.
"After all, I'm a soldier, I'm an NCO, I'm a problem solver," said Mrs. Pacquette, 52, a retired noncommissioned officer who served two tours in Iraq and more than 20 years in the Army. "What's it going to look like if I can't get things straight in my head?"
Never before has this country seen so many women paralyzed by the psychological scars of combat. As of June 2008, 19,084 female veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan had received diagnoses of mental disorders from the Department of Veterans Affairs, including 8,454 women with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress — and this number does not include troops still enlisted, or those who have never used the V.A. system.
Their mental anguish, from mortar attacks, the deaths of friends, or traumas that are harder to categorize, is a result of a historic shift. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has quietly sidestepped regulations that bar women from jobs in ground combat. With commanders needing resources in wars without front lines, women have found themselves fighting on dusty roads and darkened outposts in ways that were never imagined by their parents or publicly authorized by Congress. And they have distinguished themselves in the field.
Psychologically, it seems, they are emerging as equals. Officials with the Department of Defense said that initial studies of male and female veterans with similar time outside the relative security of bases in Iraq showed that mental health issues arose in roughly the same proportion for members of each sex, though research continues.
"Female soldiers are actually handling and dealing with the stress of combat as well as male soldiers are," said Col. Carl Castro, director of the Military Operational Research Program at the Department of Defense. "When I look at the data, I see nothing to counter that point."
And yet, experts and veterans say, the circumstances of military life and the way women are received when they return home have created differences in how they cope. A man, for instance, may come home and drink to oblivion with his war buddies while a woman — often after having been the only woman in her unit — is more likely to suffer alone.
Some psychiatrists say that women do better in therapy because they are more comfortable talking through their emotions, but it typically takes years for them to seek help. In interviews, female veterans with post-traumatic stress said they did not always feel their problems were justified, or would be treated as valid by a military system that defines combat as an all-male activity.
"Some of the issues come up because they're not given the combat title even though they may be out on patrol standing next to the men," said Patricia Resick, director of the Women's Health Sciences Division at the National Center for P.T.S.D., a wing of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
While more men over all suffer from the disorder because they are a majority of those deployed, Dr. Resick added, "people underestimate what these women have been through."
Indeed, at home, after completing important jobs in war, women with the disorder often smack up against old-fashioned ignorance: male veterans and friends who do not recognize them as "real soldiers"; husbands who have little patience with their avoidance of intimacy; and a society that expects them to be feminine nurturers, not the nurtured.
Read more here.
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