|
Healing Our World:
Weekly Comment
By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
National Security
or National Smoke Screen?
In
a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations
and irritations,
America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason
or else those who
confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will
gain the popular ascendancy
with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.
But,
in today's world, freedom can be lost without a shot being fired, by ballots
as well as bullets.
The success of our leadership is dependent upon respect for our mission
in the world as well as our
missiles--on a clearer recognition of the virtues of freedom as well as
the evils of tyranny.
Remarks prepared for an address at the Trade Mart in Dallas, Texas – but never delivered - by President
John F. Kennedy on the day of his assassination on November 22, 1963.
While unemployment
rages around the United States and thousands of families wonder if this year’s Thanksgiving
feast will be their last for a while, oil, timber, mining, and real estate
interests are having a bountiful harvest.
 U.S.
military training mission in Mubarak Military City, Egypt (photo courtesy
US Department of Defense)
Under the guise of protecting
the national security, the Bush administration has been quietly reversing
environmental policies, making legal settlements, and creating regulations
that will rob our children of their future.
His
actions have included pushing for taxpayer dollars to build roads for
timber companies in our national forests, reversing the phaseout of snowmobiles
in our national parks, and making it easier for mining companies to rape
our public lands of their gold, copper, and zinc.
Bush
has even stopped the reintroduction of the Grizzly Bear in the northwest
and made it easier for developers to pave over wetlands.
Philip
Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, told the “New York
Times” on November 18, 2001,
“The most difficult situation we face is that the attention of the media
is almost exclusively on Afghanistan and anthrax.”
The
administration has renewed its demands that the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge be opened to oil drilling, even though the US Department of Energy’s
Energy Information Administration (DOE/EIA), has computed that the Arctic
wilderness might deliver 104 million barrels per year, far less than the
339 million barrels of oil (1999 figures) per year that the US exports.
 The
true colors of the US (courtesy The
Media Foundation)
These actions have followed
the bailout of the nation’s wealthiest corporations, including $15 billion
for the airline industry, $1.4 billion for IBM, $833 million for General
Motors, $671 million for General Electric, $600 million for Daimler-Chrysler
and $572 million for Chevron-Texaco. Fourteen of the world’s richest corporations
are receiving $6.3 billion of the $25 billion tax refund.
Not
one penny of this money has been used to hire back any of the hundreds
of thousands of workers that were laid off after the September 11th attacks.
Bill
Moyers, author and journalist, said, "They (the corporations) are
counting on your patriotism to distract you from their plunder. They're
counting on you to stand at attention with your hand over your heart,
pledging allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket."
Little
opposition to these policy shifts has been offered by the nation’s environmental
organizations for fear of appearing unpatriotic during a national crisis.
But
the power of the major environment organizations to influence national
policy may have been waning for some time. The October 11, 2001 edition
of “Rachel's Environment & Health News,” published by the Environmental
Research Foundation, said, “For the past 20 years, the mainstream groups
have found themselves unable to influence national policy in any lasting
way because tweaking regulations and lobbying to amend laws – a strategy
of "whispering in the king's ear"-- doesn't put any lasting
pressure on the king. The king may arbitrarily grant your wishes, but just as quickly
such favors can be reversed because there's no organized constituency
across the country holding the king's feet to the fire.”
The
public can no longer assume that their interests are being represented
by their political leaders or the many organizations who lobby elected
officials. The only way you can be sure your wishes are made known is
to contact your leaders personally, through email or phone calls. With
the concern over anthrax in the mail, contacting your leaders by regular
mail is the least reliable form of communication.
 A
more accurate flag (courtesy The
Media Foundation)
As we reflect on the bounty
of our lives this Thanksgiving and express our gratitude for the riches
in our lives, we must spend some mindful moments stripping away the assumptions
that have plagued our lives. The meaning of Thanksgiving may be the first
of these assumptions to strip away.
Before
the arrival of Europeans, the inhabitants of North and South
America were remarkably
healthy. But along with the Europeans came their illnesses and their livestock
and the native inhabitants were now exposed to the many diseases that
can be passed back and forth between those animals and humans – anthrax,
tuberculosis, cholera, streptococcus, ringworm and various poxes.
The
British and French had fished in Southern
New England for some time before the Pilgrims landed in 1620. It
is likely that they came in contact with the Indians at that time. The
native inhabitants had no resistance to the diseases brought by the Europeans
and within three years, a plague wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of
the inhabitants of coastal New
England! This death
rate was unknown in all previous human experience.
This
piece of history is usually omitted from most textbooks, yet these plagues,
which ravaged the Indian population for the next fifteen years, set the
tone for our relationship with the natives.
The
English settlers inferred from the plague that God was on their side in
taking over the land. John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony in 1634, wrote that the plague was “miraculous.” He said “God hath
thereby cleared out title to this place . . .” Between 1520 and 1918,
there were 93 epidemics among Native Americans.
The
United States was created through the intentional extermination of
the native inhabitants, which the invaders believed was the will of God.
Is it any wonder that our political leaders of today ask for God’s blessing
and protection as they go to war.
The
hypocrisy of false patriotism must end. We must stop the plunder of our
world by corporate leaders and their representatives in Washington, D.C. Don’t be fooled by the patriotic call for all Americans
to get out and shop. You will only be emptying your pockets, contributing
to the desecration of our natural resources, and filling the coffers of
the shareholders of the nation’s wealthiest polluters. The cheap DVD player
or zero interest financing you get in return are hardly worth the pillaging
of our future.
National
security needs to mean creating safe places for our children and the protection
of our future on this planet. Those in power cannot be allowed to turn
that phrase into one that lines the pockets of the rich at the expense
of everyone else.
RESOURCES
1.
This year's "Buy Nothing
Day," sponsored by The Media Foundation, was on November 23. They
proposed that we all buy nothing on the biggest shopping day of the year,
the day after Thanksgiving. Stage your own "Buy Nothing Day"
once a week. Learn more from their website at: http://www.adbusters.org/
2.
Get involved with the issues
with the help of the Working For Change website at: http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/index.cfm
3.
Get help overcoming consumerism
at: http://www.verdant.net/
4.
See the full text of the
undelivered speeches of President Kennedy at: http://www.truthout.com/11.23A.Kennedy.Speeches.htm
5.
Keep informed of the inner
workings of Congress during the war on Afghanistan that will not be reported in the mainstream media from the
Truthout website at: http://www.truthout.com/index.htm
6.
See another point of view
on today’s crisis from the Independent Media Center at: http://www.indymedia.org/
7.
The following organizations
will keep you in touch with the issues and help you get involved:
World Wildlife
Fund at: http://www.panda.org/
Wilderness Society at: http://www.wilderness.org/
Natural Resources Defense Council
at: http://www.nrdc.org/
Physicians for Social Responsibility
at: http://www.psr.org/
8.
Find out who your Congressional
representatives are and e-mail them. Tell them that you want them be courageous
and stop the plundering of our Earth. If you know your Zip code, you can find them
at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html
{Jackie
Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle. Please send your
thoughts, comments, and visions to him at jackie@healingourworld.com and
visit a complete archive of his commentaries at http://www.healingourworld.com}
(c)
November 2001 Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D
|
