Marine’s Girl has a new post up. Read it. In case you haven’t been reading her before now, just know that she’s one heck of a feisty woman who lives with her son, Danny, in Michigan, while her fabulous boyfriend, who’s a Marine, is in Iraq. She’s having a tough battle with cancer, and indeed hasn’t posted much in recent weeks because of the effects of the disease and her medications. She’s been trying to get a discharge for her guy, so he can come back and help look after her.
So the latest post is the text of a long “ICQ” exchange they had….
Please support this conscientious objector
I got yet another email today from my friend Chuck Fager, who runs Quaker House in that hotbed of the US military culture, Fayetteville, NC. He’s asking for our help. Mainly, but not only, letter-writing.
Here’s what he writes:
- Dear Friends–
Once again, we ask for your help in supporting a military Conscientious Objector, who is in jail for sticking to his beliefs.
The GI in question is a Marine, Joel Klimkewicz. He’s been in the brig at Camp Lejeune, NC since mid-December. He’s serving seven months for refusing an order to pick up a weapon. He’s also being given a Bad Conduct Discharge, one of the military’s worst punishments, usually reserved for serious felonies.
Continue reading “Please support this conscientious objector”
On the bookshelf
These past few days I’ve been transitioning back into working on my
“Violence and its Legacies” project, a.k.a. my book about Africa, and my
reading’s been starting to reflect that. (Okay, apart from my near-mandatory
lunch-time read of the WaPo “Style” section.)
First up here on my bookshelf, actually, something that has very little to
do with Africa. It’s
Loving Without Giving In; Christian Responses to Terrorism & Tyranny
by Ron Mock. Ron is a really nice person, a sharp thinker and a clear
writer, who is also an Evangelical Quaker. That’s a slightly “different”
bunch of Quakers from my lot… Let’s just say “his” lot defines themselves
as specifically Christian Evangelicals. Ron was a member of our International
Quaker Working Party on Israel and Palestine, and I really came to like him,
and admire his drafting skills while we were working together there.
So his book attempts to give a “Christian pacifist” take on how Americans
should respond to the challenge of terrorism, in particular. It’s really
great that he’s published the book– especially because he writes it, as
far as I can see, from entirely within an Evangelical Christian viewpoint.
He takes Christian scripture very seriously; tries to reconcile the
differences between the writings of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament;
and lays out very clearly the different ways that different kinds of Christians
look at war-and-peace issues before plumping firmly for a Christian pacifist
worldview.
But mainly what I like about the book is the clarity and simplicity of his
exposition, and the deep psychological truth that I see in most of what he
writes. He writes, for example, about the corrosive effect that a deep-seated
sense of grievance has on the person who holds it, as well as on society
in general. He writes about how hatred can lead people to dehumanize
their enemies. And he pleads, throughout, for people experiencing a
sense to vulnerability to continue to try to see “that of God” (as Quakers
say) even in the people whom they fear the most.
Second up, a tome from the U.N. University called
The UN Role in Promoting Democracy; Between ideals and Reality
, edited by Edward Newman and Roland Rich. This one looks really interesting.
It has some weighty theoretical chapters, which I’m still getting through.
But then, it has case studies: Namibia, Cambodia, Kosovo, East Timor,
and Afghanistan. Shameless empiricist that I am, I can’t wait to get
to the case studies. Maybe I’ll skip one or two of the theoretical
chapters…
And finally, for now, a book that I’m quite enthralled by,
My Neighbor, My Enemy; Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Atrocity
, edited by Eric Stover and Harvey M. Weinstein. (That’s not Harvey
Weinstein, half-owner of Miramax.)
This book is the fruit of a broad, multi-year project run out of UC Berkeley’s
Human Rights Center in which researchers looked at the effects on community
mental health and attitudes of various steps taken to deal with the aftermath
of atrocities in rwanda and former Yugoslavia. Well, my project is
looking (in a slightly different way) at exactly that same issue in Rwanda–
but comparing it not with former Yugoslavia but with two other cases in southern
Africa: South Africa and Mozambique…
Palestinian elections: pix from Ramallah Friends School
The Quakers have had two schools in Ramallah since the 1870s or so. There used to be one for the boys and one for the girls. But now one is used as an upper school and one as a lower school. Countless thousands of Palestinians– Muslims, Christians (but very few Quakers)– are graduates of the Ramallah Friends School. There is a small meeting (congregation) of Palestinian Quakers that grew up over the decades, around the school.
Anyway, I was cruising around the BBC site just now and found a lovely little photo essay from election day yesterday. It was all shot in RFS!
If you just want to see what a ballot paper looked like, go to image # 3 there.
Palestine/Israel: the work begins
So Abu Mazen won the Palestinian election No surprise whatsoever there. The turnout was down significantly from the last election, in 1996. (Actually, on the AP story I was reading, it said that Election Commission chief Hanna Nassir refused to release a final turnout figure.
Abbas obtained 62.32 percent of votes cast, streets ahead of his nearest rival Mustafa Barghuti, who won 19.8 percent.
And today, the Sharon-Peres version of a “unity government” in Israel just got sworn in, by 58 votes to 56 in the 120-member Knesset.
The government is committed to a platform mandating implementation of Sharon’s year-old “disengagement” plan, that is, the complete or near-complete withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantling of four so-called “illegal” outposts in the northern West Bank.
Sharon had declared that he would treat today Knesset vote on the new government as a “confidence” vote, i.e., if 61 members voted against it he would resign. As it was, 13 Likud members voted against him and he was saved only by the last-minute decision of some small leftist parties to support him.
But what if Sharon had– like Abbas– gone to the general citizenry to test their support of his approach? The latest “Peace Index” survey of Israeli public opinion, put out by the Steinmetz Center at Tel Aviv University, reports that as of Dec 27-28,
Sistani speaks to the Sunnis
On Friday, I wrote here that, ” I would love to see [Sistani] or someone high up on the UIA list that he helped form making a really dramatic move to reach out to the Sunnis.” Yesterday, it seems that a “source close to Sistani”– and also, one dearly hopes, one expressly authorized by him– was trying to do just that.
As reported and translated by Juan Cole today, this Sistanist source told al-Hayat yesterday that,
- “The representation of our Sunni brethren in the coming government must be effective, regardless of the results of the elections.”
I believe that the source may well have been using al-Hayat as a way to communicate with many Iraqi Sunni figures inside and outside the country. Hayat is Saudi owned, and is widely read throughout the Middle East.
I’m sure that Sistani has numerous other ways of communicating his point of view with selected Iraqi Sunni leaders as well. But to reach a broad array of Sunnis, inside and outside the country, using al-Hayat would be a sensible choice.
In what the Sistanist “source” (un-named) told al-Hayat, he also attempted a vigorous defense of Sistani’s argument that the elections should not, at this point, be any further delayed beyond the presently scheduled Jan. 30 date. (This could also be a communication with Muqtada Sadr and others within the Shiite community who have started to argue openly for boycott or postponement.)
However, the source indicated that Sistani might yet change his mind on the no-postponement issue. In Cole’s version:
- ” … If Sistani became convinced that there was a likelihood of widespread fraud in the elections, he would not hesitate to urge that they be boycotted. But for the moment, he said, the alternative to elections seems to be chaos… ”
Juan’s translation of the article has a few elisions and what seem to me to be questionable renditions of the original. For example, in the immediately preceding quote, according to the Hayat original, the source was saying (HC version):
- ” … and the Marjaiyah [the Shiite source of authority] could at any time issue a fatwa to boycott the elections in the event that it becomes convinced that they will see widespread [election] fraud. And the alternative to elections, as we see it, is chaos… ”
I also went back to the original to try to gain a clearer idea of exactly what message it might have been that Sistani was trying to send to the Sunnis, and I came up with this translation, again slightly and, I think, non-trivially different from Juan’s rendering of this section:
JWN poetry corner– # 1
I read this in The New Yorker, and was moved by it:
- Now, when the waters are pressing mightily
- by Yehuda Amichai
Now, when the waters are pressing mightily
on the walls of the dams,
now, when the white storks, returning,
are transformed in the middle of the firmament
into fleets of jet planes,
we will feel again how strong are the ribs
and how vigorous is the warm air in the lungs
and how much daring is needed to love on the exposed plain,
when the great dangers are arched above,
and how much love is required
to fill all the empty vessels
and the watches that stopped telling time,
and how much breath,
a whirlwind of breath,
to sing the small song of spring.
- Translated from the Hebrew by Leon Wieseltier.
Palestinian election memorabilia
Bill the spouse is just back from Jerusalem. Yesterday he was in Hebron and Ramallah. He brought back some interesting Palestinian election materials. Like this, which is from a T-shirt:
That says: “On the path of Yasser Arafat”. I’m afraid the part of it above– which says simply “Vote for Abu Mazen”– for some reason didn’t scan.
Then we have this bumper sticker:
It says: “For the sake of bringing down the racist separation wall– Let us vote for– Doctor Mustafa Barghouthi.”
Mustafa Barghouthi, in case you’d forgotten, is not the same as Marwan Barghouthi. the “radical” inside Fateh who decided not to run. Mustafa is a generally leftist physician who’s the long-time head of the Medical Relief Committees in the occupied territories. He’s a wonderfully smart and sincere guy who’s a good organizer.
Finally, this flier:
The “new order” for Afghanistan’s children
I received a horribly disturbing email feed today from the IWPR, which has been doing some great reporting from Afghanistan. This report is titled, LIVES SHATTERED BY SEXUAL ABUSE; Authorities say that incidents of young boys being kidnapped and abused by commanders may actually be increasing, and it was reported by Wahidullah Noori from Mazar-e-Sharif.
I’ll copy the whole text in beneath this, because it deserves very wide exposure.
After reading the email I went over to the Afghanistan section of the IWPR website to find a URL for this story, but it’s not there yet– (Ooops, it just went up there. Look here.) What I found there as well, from last week, was this story, on a disturbingly similar theme:
- Daughters Sold to Settle Debts
Poppy growers say the government’s anti-drug program is forcing them to surrender their children to drug dealers.
By Haytullah Gaheez in Jalalabad
I am almost beyond words.
Both pieces are very solidly reported and include some heart-rending interviews with some of the youngsters involved. In both cases, the reporters tried to get some reaction to their reporting, and some generally relevant policy statements, from local authorities and other opinion-makers in the cities they were reporting from.
Gaheez’s story begins like this:
Continue reading “The “new order” for Afghanistan’s children”
Voting under the gun, revisited
Commenter “b” posted the following thought-provoking comment onto Tuesday’s
post
here about the situation of holding elections “under the gun” of an occupying
army:
One point about Palestinian elections this coming Sunday. Many Palestinians
have been actually calling for such elections for a long time, knowing full
well they would be held under occupation. But having no elections had allowed
a corrupted political system to become entrenched. Those who favor elections
now — municipal, presidential and legislative — see this as a chance to
at least begin to put in place institutions that are responsive to those who
live under the occupation. It’s not a perfect setting for elections, but
compared to Iraq there will be a very large international presence, the actual
vote will probably be conducted by quite high standards of honesty, and there
are at least two plausible candidates who represent different positions on
key issues. So, for me, the clincher is that many Palestinians seem to want
the elections even in these circumstance, and the alternative right now is
not free elections free of occuaption, but no elections at all.
I agree with “b” on all his (or her) points, including: his (or her) empirical observation
that many– indeed, I would even say “nearly all”– Palestinians have been
calling for such elections for a long time, and for the reasons that “b” gives; the
judgment that though the setting of the vote is far from perfect, its actual
technical modalities will be pretty good; and the judgment that the important
thing is that this election is what “many”– or even “nearly all”– Palestinians seem
to want.
So that led me to ask the same kinds of questions about the Iraqi elections
later this month. In particular:
1. How actually democratic are the technical modalities for
these elections? and2. How strong is the proportion of Iraqis that seem to want them to proceed
even if the setting is very far from perfect and the modalities also imperfect?
As I’ve noted in other posts on JWN on both the elections in Afghanistan
in October and the upcoming ones in Iraq (notably
here
), what needs to be developed is a category of elections that are judged
by members of the relevant national constituency to be “fair enough”,
rather than technically absolutely perfect elections.
The “fair enough” criterion is really important in a situation of recent
or ongoing conflict, since it forecloses the possibility of ex-post-facto
challenges to the outcome. Such challenges can be absorbed and
handled in, for example, the US in 2000, or Ukraine more recently, because
these countries have relatively stable national communities that are not
on the point of bursting (back) into deadly civil conflict. Where you
have countries that lack that kind of stability, contestation over the legitimacy
of an upcoming or recent election can exacerbate the existing tensions and
plunge a country back into civil war.