Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup metatuning Re: If you were President, what would you do?

Hello, there, everyone, and here are a few ideas on what a President
of the United States -- or any concerned world citizen -- might do in
this crisis.

First of all, I consider it very important to affirm that we _are_ in
a global crisis, which would be waiting in the wings whether or not
these specific acts of terrorism and war had occurred. The crisis in
energy, and in inequality of living conditions, would be there in any
event.

Secondly, I consider it vital to recognize that acts of terrorism or
"collateral damage" against civilians are reprehensible, as much so at
the World Trade Center as anywhere else in the world.

There seem to me three imperatives of the 21st century that these
attacks underscore, indeed three imperatives pointing to a nonviolent
revolution of expectations and reality.

The first imperative is one of basic human rights, the elementary
standards defined and defended by such organizations as Amnesty
International and the European Union.

From this perspective, for example, a major problem in the troubled
land of Palestine/Israel is the frequent violation of elementary human
rights by the authorities of both recognized "sides," a problem shared
in common between the Jewish and Palestinian communities despite their
many well-publicized differences:

* Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been
implicated by respected international human rights
organizations in the use of torture, whether excused
as "moderate physical pressure" or otherwise;

* The Palestinian Authority has carried out judicial
executions; while Israel, although it has laudibly
abolished the death penalty in practice since 1962,
has made extrajudicial killings an act of policy.

While borders and political arrangements may evolve in various ways as
negotiations proceed -- with internationalization of Jerusalem, and
possibly a larger portion of Palestine/Israel, an alternative to be
considered -- the guaranteeing of basic human rights within those
borders should be a top priority of policy for nations committed to
democracy, including the USA.

The second imperative is a revolution _in_ the means of defense and
revolution: a shift toward "People Power" and active nonviolence as
weapons for communal empowerment and the restructuring or replacement
of governments which violate the principles of democracy and human
rights, whether the oppression is aimed against minoriity groups or
the overall population.

Here a hero of the Pashtun people who have endured so much suffering
within the borders of the former British Empire, and more recently of
Pakistan and Afghanistan, may play a special role in this revolution
needed throughout the world, including the Islamic world.

Khan Abdul Gaffir Khan, known and honored as Badshah Khan or "King
Khan" among his people, came from a nation with a fierce warrior
tradition and led that nation in a new development of that tradition:
a war against the British occupation fought with the weapons of
militant nonviolence.

Looking both to the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, and to his Islamic
tradition, Khan and his followers founded the Khudai Khidmatgar, or
"Servants of God," identified as the "Red Shirts" because of their
distinctive dress. They were a disciplined army of nonviolent
soldiers, pledged to reject not only the outward enemy of British
oppression but the inward violence of traditional codes of revenge.

They took part in the great Salt Campaign against British Rule in
1930-1931, where in Peshawar they faced machine guns of the Imperial
forces without either fleeing or retaliating violently.

The best defense against terrorism is what Badshad Khan established:
an engaged nonviolent army drawing the youth into social service and
active struggle against injustice.

Badshah Khan, who ironically later spent time as a political prisoner
in Pakistan after the defeat of the British, has been aptly called a
"nonviolent soldier of Islam." His life may help to give the best
definition to an oft-cited concept of Islam: _jihad_.

Here it should be understood that _jihad_ might be translated by the
English word "struggle," and refers to a person's inner ethical and
spiritual struggle as well as to social or political struggles for
justice.

While the term _jihad_ has sometimes described armed struggles viewed
as just, the life of Badshah Khan shows how both the personal or
spiritual struggle and the outward or political struggle may be waged
by means of active nonviolence.

All too often, tragically, this active nonviolence or "People Power"
has been asserted by oppressed peoples where the convenience of the
USA and other "developed countries" may not necessarily coincide with
the interests of justice.

For example, the struggle of the indigenous Ogoni people of Nigeria
has been waged with the support of global human rights organizations
not only against human rights abuses by the Nigerian government, but
to protect the Ogoni lands and culture against violations by
international corporations such as Shell exploiting Ogoni resources.

An Ogoni leader of this nonviolent struggle, Ken Sawo-Wiwa, was put on
trial on a charge of murder not taken seriously by independent
observers, including Amnesty International, and hanged along with
other leaders of the campaign in 1995.

While each people must wage its own struggle, the USA can and should
act so as to facilitate rather than to impede such movements for
justice, even if corporate interests are sometimes inconvenienced.

Prisoners of conscience and activists for their people such as Leyla
Zana of Northern Kurdistan, winner of the Sakharov Prize of the
European Parliament for 1995, deserve the support of democratic
governments and international organizations.

Also, the USA can and should declare that in a world where conflict is
itself an inevitable human experience, the resolution of such
conflicts by nonviolent means is an imperative interest for friends of
peace, justice, and human rights.

Thus the USA should establish a Department of Peace seeking to promote
research, development, and education in the methods and technologies
of active nonviolence as dedicated as was the pursuit of nuclear
weapons technologies in the 20th century.

III

The third imperative is the development as an emergency priority of
renewable sources of energy, and the addressing of economic inequities
that pose a reality of suffering now for billions of people, with the
threat of instability and terrorism in many forms for a global
community rife with such injustices.

Here active nonviolence and "People Power" must be part of a movement
for economic democracy as well as political democracy, the struggle
for "Freedom From Want," to borrow the words of President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt of the USA.

The institution of foreign and economic policies encouraging
community-based development with a central role for women is one
weapon of peace in the struggle against want and terrorism.

The reform of international economic associations whose current
practices weaken environmental standards or the ability of labor to
organize within or across national borders is another priority in the
struggle for community self-determination and power, and against
terrorism.

On 4 April 1967, just one year before his assassination, Martin Luther
King, Jr., voiced many of these concerns in a famous address given in
the city of New York, a city which now courageously continues its
struggle for survival and community after the attacks of September 11
and now another airplane tragedy which may have been an accident.

In the year 2001, a date sometimes connected with science fiction
scenarios, we face the challenges already outlined in 1967 by Dr. King
in his speech, the challenges of peace, nonviolent struggle, and
economic renewal through global democracy.

An old political adage has it that what touches all, must be consented
to by all. Today the communal security of the Ogoni people may be
essential to the security of the people of New York, both seeking
fulfillment in a world of shared dignity and diverse cultures.

Although world peace has often been sought through a consolidation of
power, whether in Dante Alighieri's _monarchia_ or universal
government, or in some New World Order, the key to peace may today
take shape in a more culturally and politically decentralized world,
with basic human rights standards and techniques of active nonviolence
as unifying themes.

For example, the precise political form which a Kurdistan might take
in the 21st century is an open question: but one can predict that any
kind of regional organization that does not have room for recognizing
the cultural and political reality of Kurdistan does not have room for
true democracy and human rights for others living in the region.

It would be naive to suppose that terrorist acts are always committed
by those devoted to the cause of social justice, or that they always
and necessarily represent the last desperate resort of "the poorest of
the poor." All too often the actors are major world powers defending
oppressive interests and privileges, or sometimes lesser powers with
equally oppressive agendas. Let us not romanticize history.

However, it is equally evident that terrorism is often a kind of
opportunistic infection which strikes and spreads when a society's
normal immune system of free social institutions and human rights
values have been disrupted, or forestalled, by war or economic
exploitation. In places from Cambodia to Afghanistan, the calculated
military violence of superpowers has been followed by mass genocide or
democide -- the "killing of the people" by murderous forces filling
the vacuum.

In the 21st century, the highest and most noble form of leadership for
a "developed" nation such as the USA may be to follow the path of
Badshah Khan, Ken Sawo-Wiwa, and Leyla Zana.

Against the threat of terrorism, a moment of quiet reflection and
self-examination may be a most powerful weapon of the spirit. Let us
listen and hear the "voice of the voiceless," which may reverberate
through the world in a global revolution of nonviolence.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...

Dear Dave Keenan,

Welcome to metatuning, and thank you for your most eloquent words on
the tragedy at hand.

/metatuning/topicId_1094.html#1094
/metatuning/topicId_1094.html#1103

The problem is to break the cycle of terrorism, and RAWA is a courageous
association of nonviolent warriors for women's rights and human rights
which should be at the center of a struggle against violence and terrorism
in all forms.

As an opponent of human rights violations, including those perpetrated
by the Taliban, I do not need Osama bin Laden to point out the deadly
violence of superpower politics, and sadly more specifically the
policies of the USA, over the last century.

Dr. Martin Luther King did this very eloquently on 4 April 1967 in his
"Declaration of Independence" from the Indochina war, and his message
still needs to be heard and heeded.

Of course, I also honor the advocates of peace and social justice in
Australia and New Zealand, yourself included; it is a global struggle,
and not necessarily the top priority on the mass media agenda in all
parts of the "developed world," to understate a bit one of your main
points.

A bit of background, although not necessarily the most current
information: tax resistance has been a practice of some peace
activists in the USA in regard both to income tax (would "inland
revenue" be a correct synonym here?) and things like the telephone tax
in effect during the era of the Indochina war.

For example, peace activists have often placed the disputed amount of
the tax in some kind of account devoted to social, nonprofit purposes
such as peace or community organizing, with the government then
seizing these assets and applicable interest, etc.

It is a minority stance among the peace movement here, although one
with a long tradition -- for example, Henry David Thoreau's act of tax
refusal as a protest against slavery which led both to his brief
jailing, and to his famous essay on civil disobedience.

One book about such resistance is Juanita Nelson, _A Matter of Freedom
and Other Writings_ (San Francisco: Peace & Gladness Press, 1988),
where she tells her own story, explaining "my declination to pay
income taxes because most of the money goes for H-bombs and other
combustibles capable of setting off conflagrations which cannot be
extinguished by the average hook and ladder company."

That last image all too tragically now suggests the terrorist acts of
September 11, and also the bombings in all too many places over the
last century, often carried out by officially sanctioned air forces,
and sometimes by less well-credentialed actors.

Sometimes there are proposals to permit taxpayers in the USA to
designate, at least in a general way, how their specific payment
should or should not be spent -- excluding military uses, for
example.

To evaluate the situation in Afghanistan, I would turn to a nonviolent
warrior whom I am delighted to see has become the topic in a number of
recent messages: Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, sometimes known as "the
Frontier Gandhi."

In the early 1980's, he warned that the war in Afghanistan was a
confrontation between communism and capitalism in which his people
would lose, with devastating consequences.

As perestroika and glasnost took shape in the Soviet Union of the late
1980's in the era of Gorbachev, there was an opportunity for the world
community to support the conditions in that ravaged country for some
kind of at least moderately progressive coalition protecting the
rights of women and the principle of religious liberty (including the
liberty of nonbelievers, I would add).

Instead, we had the kind of foreign policy which made the Taliban
possible, and made the courageous acts of RAWA necessary, but sadly
not necessarily sufficient for justice to prevail. That is still up to
us all.

These are difficult words in a difficult time, which I humbly address
in welcome to someone who has made an uncommon commitment to minimize
complicity with violence out of hatred or violence out of simple
political inertia.

Loving the people on all sides, and rejecting the hatred of people on
all sides, is an ideal which I seek, however imperfectly.

Given the importance of Indigenous movements in the land recently
known as Australia, as well as on other continents, I might comment
that my goal as a newcomer to the land of the Nisenan Nation, one of
the many peoples of the continent on which I live, is to become an
immigrant rather than an agent of conquest and occupation.

Recognizing the Indigenous roots of the land on which one lives,
learning the language if possible, and considering how the people of
the First Nations (to use a term current in Canada) are treated are
steps toward friendship and mutual respect between Natives and
newcomers.

For example, in Massachusetts, the Woapanaak Nation is acting to
reclaim its language, often known as Wampanoag -- interestingly, one
learned by Roger Williams in the 17th century, an English newcomer of
that time and an advocate of religious liberty.

Nine years ago, in 1992, I had the opportunity to participate in a
commemmoration of the Quincentennial of the invasion of 1492, in which
an Aborginal Australian (as I recall he described himself) took part;
next year, another representative of one of the peoples of Indigenous
Australia gave a very interesting presentation on the local University
campus, focusing on the themes of community and shared responsibility.

Dave, thank you for sharing your views here, and I hope that as your
time permits we may have some ongoing dialogues.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...

Re: If you were President, what would you do?

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

🔗dante.interport@...

🔗dante.interport@...

🔗John Starrett <jstarret@...>

🔗jpehrson@...

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>