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The Boston Globe, Friday, July 5, 2003, A11
This was President Bush's challenge to those who wish to fight America. Did Bush really just suggest that people attack us? The role of the president of the United States, as leader of the "first" world, is to be the ultimate listener, diplomat and peacemaker. Rather, Bush has embraced his bully inner voice: If you have any issue with what America has done, does or will do, we will blow you out of the sand.
In Brazil, a clogged, open-air discharge channel from Sao Paulo has been flooding the town of Pirapora do Bom Jesus with harmful gas emitting foam for a month. This has just made news because the toxic river levels rose high enough to block bridges. Maybe no one attempted to fix the problem because Pirapora is poor and Sao Paulo is an industrial center. Maybe we Americans don't care because Brazil is on another continent and we've never been there and don't have family there. But the problem may now go away with this tiniest bit of news coverage because Sao Paulo may be embarrassed enough to unclog the drain. However, toxic waste will still be produced. It will still be discharged in open channels into environmentally sensitive areas by unenvironmentally sensitive means. Poor (and underrepresented) people will still be victim to those with power. What would you do if your local chemical company drained their waste onto the street by your home. Would you do anything?
Despite the Israeli government's illusory attempt at peace, Palestine continues to be occupied and settled; Palestinians continue to be harassed and slaughtered. Here in self-righteous America, we have done almost nothing, hardly even rising from our comfortable couches to protest. Never mind even attempting to effect real change, we passively support the genocide of a distant, unfamiliar people. For the real and revealing story, read Rachel Corrie's This Happens Every Day as printed in Harper's June 2003. I highly recommend that you do. Can't find it, I'll mail you a photocopy.
Equine encephalitis and West Nile fever are spread by mosquitoes and kill 50 percent and 15 percent, respectively, of those they infect. There is much talk about mosquito monitoring and increased pesticide use, but little discussion of why new and old diseases are making insurrections into previously impossible habitats. Through the overuse of herbicides and pesticides and the displacement of native habitat, we have eliminated the natural systems that keep our world in balance. These things are all clearly interconnected: when we adulterate a landscape beyond its ability to balance, things shift. When we clear a landscape to plant corn or a suburban development, the native plants dwindle. Because those native plants support native birds that eat native insects, the new, contrived "balanced" ecosystem will include fewer animals that eat mosquitoes to keep the mosquito population in check, fewer nonhuman animals for mosquitoes to eat, more mosquitoes and more humans. Add to this equation that the same asphalt-covered sprawl creates surprising new heat pockets and the context of our global warming, then mosquitoes and viruses can survive in entirely new latitudes.
Unbelievably, this was not even a headline -- despite this surprising recurrence of blatantly unethical military behavior. It is extraordinarily clear, through our national and international laws, that this is inappropriate military action. As Americans, we pride ourselves on the principle of protecting innocent lives. Our rules of engagement unequivocally state that at no time may soldiers fire upon civilians. Even if a hidden attacker emerges from a crowd of innocent people, ethics dictate that our soldiers withdraw to protect civilians. Our rules place the civilian life before our own soldiers' lives. You may not like this sentiment if you have a child, sibling or spouse fighting overseas, but it is an essential code of conduct that prevents our actions from becoming atrocities. I remember reading a report about a similar incident on April 28 in Fallujah, Iraq: Soldiers fired into a crowd of protestors after someone thought he saw a gun. In that one-sided shootout, many bystanders, nowhere near the crowd, were shot. While I no longer remember the details of what newspaper I read and what news program I watched, I do remember what matters: a man standing in his driveway behind a gate in his garden was shot and disabled in the crossfire. His brother ran out of the house to carry him to safety, but he was killed by another bullet. The man's youngest brother then came to the rescue, but he was shot in the head. The man's family members inside the house were injured, too. * By the end, 15 people were confirmed dead and 75 injured**. I watched a soldier state on television that it was "us or them," oblivious to the to the meaning of what he had just participated in. These people in Iraq were protesting the occupation of their town, especially their children's school. They were asking to go about their lives without oppression. To think -- even for an instant -- that these people deserved it because it is war, that we were saving them, that they were ungrateful, or that our lives are worth more, is to give up your humanity.
*While I could not track down the initial reports that I saw, I found an account of the incident in the Human Rights Watch's publication Violent Response: The U.S. Army in Al-Falluja. Muthanna al-'Ani and his family's story can be found in chapter IV: April 28 School Protest and Shooting online at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraqfalluja/
**PBS "Online News Hour," www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/shooting_04-29-03.html
"[T]he goal today is to make a drug that will let the world's affluent eat all they want and never gain weight."
Karmel, Miriam. A Drug for All Reasons. Utne, July/August
2003, NO. 118, p17.
In a world where there are well over 820 million malnourished, it seems absolutely absurd -- even criminal -- that one could conceive to do this. We could easily give up those extra calories and literally save the world, but we'd rather subvert nature. I heard of a bumper sticker today: "The American way: death before inconvenience." Yes, let's have our cake and eat it, too. (oh, and seconds...)
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These items were simply plucked from my daily reading and every day I come across equally inciting information; there is so much more to talk about than these few bits here now. The sky is falling, indeed.
I wake up every day to a choice: Do I roll over and let world spin on as it does, or do I sit up, speaking out my small voice of dissent?
I choose to stand up. I choose to face our cultural responsibility to protect all that is precious and beautiful in this world. Yes, this world will continue to spin whether I wake or not. Those in power will continue to suppress the weak. Plants will still grow toward the sun. People will still exhaust the resources of their local habitat.
However, we are in the midst of an environmental crisis. Potable water is in short supply for many of the world. In most of the United States, rationing has become common. The shortsighted abuse of aquifers permanently salinates drinking water, while industrial pollution makes much of what remains questionable at best. Even one of the public wells in my clean, small-town New Hampshire is contaminated by Mtbe and arsenic. The realities of global warming are recognized by most of the industrialized world but the United States. (Go ahead, ask why not).
While we may be able to ignore the idea, we are far from immune to the consequences. To name just a few: Weather extremes that increase disastrous storms and alter arable farmland productivity; changed infectious disease patterns; rising sea levels and temperatures as glaciers melt, killing off major parts of the food chain that dramatically impact our own food supply (just look at global fish stocks). Suburban sprawl is eating away at our unadulterated land, leaving us with seas of heat trapping asphalt; health administrators recommend we stay indoors on hot days because our air has become polluted to the point of harm; we are being feed mass amounts of genetically engineered food with no knowledge of the potential harm; and biologists believe we are in the midst of a mass extinction caused by our impact on the global ecosystem.
In this age of political correctness, when appearances have become everything, superficiality reigns. As long as our politicians say the right thing, we don't look beneath the surface. As long as stocks are strong, we don't look at corporate accounting. As long as the pollution is not in my back yard, it doesn't matter. As a public, we have become afraid to challenge, to say anything that might offend another. While on some level this cultural diplomacy is good, we have moved far away from critical discourse to a distant corner of hypocrisy: if something stinks, we are unable to say so for fear. Is it fear of offending someone, of being challenged or of being asked to make an effort and take responsibility?
I don't know either, but it is time to end this stalemate. It is time to stand up for what one believes. It is time to speak out. It is time to challenge power structure, corporations and governments that are not operating in the public interest. We must demand accountability. We must speak out for critical thinking, honest dialogue, and transparency of government. The time for subtlety has passed; our children need a safe and healthy world to thrive in like the one we have had. The stakes are that high.
Wake-up.ws is a call to arms. My work (this website and eco-art) is a small cog in a growing movement of an awakened population. It is imperative that we speak, act and assemble, that we reverse this trend before there is nothing left to save. Question the source of all information you hear and read. Question the motivation of the speaker. Think critically. Join us.
For ideas, suggestions and actions, check here.