The Island of Diego Garcia, B 52s and You and Me

A Letter from Lindsey Colleen to any interested people in Britain and the U.S.A. about injustices elsewhere

Introductory Note;  Ever wonder how the United States came to possess an island in the Indian Ocean that could serve as a bombing platform for the attack on Afghanistan? And did you know that the United States has nuclear weapons on an island in the Indian Ocean?  Can you guess what the residents of the area–in the Republic of  Mauritius–think about our bombs and planes being in their neighborhood?

The history of Diego Garcia island is replete with all the usual dark secrets and dirty tricks of colonialism, including a long history of enslavement and forced labor of the native Ilois and their eventual forced removal by the British.  You can find it, but you have to dig deep to sort it from the U.S. and British propaganda, by simply typing “Diego Garcia” into a good search site. You’ll also find many very delicious photos of a very beautiful place.  

 Please read the fascinating account of writer and activist Lindsey Colleen, a resident of Mauritius.--Hardly Waite,Gazette Senior Editor. 

 

Dear people of Britain and the USA,

I write from Mauritius. You may not remember quite where that is. Although, then again “The Overcrowded Baracoon” by V.S Naipaul, especially since he has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature, may just stir a memory, if ever you came across his bitingly accurate travelogue where Mauritius is depicted as a lousy hell-hole of a place. His story was banned by the Mauritian government at the time.

Or the word “Mauritius” may evoke the equally accurate tourist brochures showing luscious green islands, where it never rains of course, a place so perfect for visitors to holiday in, that there are no people actually living there. No factory workers on piece rates, no sugar cane workers in that hot sun, no computer workers linked to satellite, not even hotel workers as human beings. Maybe just as stage props for dreams.

But there are people living here. In all the contradictions. And some of us have a link with you. Through our shared history. That’s how it is that I come to write to you, who vote in and are citizens of Britain or the US? I, who vote here and am a citizen of Mauritius.

It’s all because of an island.

It’s a particular island that you, over there, and us, over here, share responsibility for. Only maybe you don’t know that you share this responsibility. And while we know we do, we can’t do enough about it so long as we are on our own.

This island is being used for waging war.

In Mauritius, it is hard to find anyone who agrees to the island, part of our country after all, being used for B-52’s to set off from to go bombard the cities of Afghanistan. Our hearts ache to see the children in the rubble the next morning. Maybe there is someone here who agrees, but I haven’t met the person yet.

The Mauritius Foreign Affairs Minister did publicly “give assent”. So he agrees. But he only says it in his formal speeches as representative of the state. At a political party rally, he would certainly not try it. The people are too angry with “America”.

I’ll share the story with you, the story about the island. It is a “small story”. But it is one that will perhaps help understand the deepness of the rage felt in so many places against the powers that be in your countries. A rage often wrongly projected on to “Americans” as a whole. A rage that sometimes makes it hard for people world-wide to pardon the ignorance amongst ordinary folk in the US and Britain about the role of their elected governments in “the rest of the world”. (The rest of the world is such a big place.)

And this rage here, and I would think elsewhere in the rest of the world, too, has somehow got mixed up with the horror that spread on the day of the attack on the World Trade Centre, an attack by missiles made up of passengers and aimed at the level of the hearts of the Twin Towers. Causing collapse. And the terrible emptiness left at Ground Zero. Giant in rubble. Enough to cause everyone on the planet insomnia. And yet somehow the recurring image, no matter how much I try to wipe it from my mind, is that of Goliath being felled by the hand-made sling of the new millennium, a carpet-cutter.

And then? As if bombarding Kabul from B-52’s could rout out young men with carpet cutters.

But, I am speaking today, in particular, of an island. The island of Diego Garcia. And the role of the Diego Garcia military base on it. A US base it is, in the Indian Ocean. In the Republic of Mauritius, more specifically. And curiously, just one week before the 11th September came and changed everything, the Bush administration announced that Diego Garcia was being expanded to take in all the hardware and troops from US bases in Europe that, they added, would from then on be gradually phased out.

The story I will tell is so evocative that you may not have believed it, were it not for all the articles in November last year on the High Court in London’s stinging judgment against the British state in a case brought by people from here. The time had come around for a court action for the right of inhabitants to return to the island, when all the relevant facts, after a 30-year period of being held under secrecy laws, were “declassified” in Britain, in 1998.

The story is another story of a terrible emptiness.

In 1965, in the preparation for the Independence of Mauritius, the Harold Wilson Labour Government in Britain decided to act illegally and to cut out part of Mauritius and hold on to it, as a condition for Independence, which was to be “granted” in 1968. This kind of blackmail is against the UN Charter. A colonizing power cannot impose conditions on a part of itself, that is to say, on one of its colonies, in exchange for Independence.

Britain then tagged on some of the Seychelles Islands (Seychelles was still a colony too), and made up a new fiction of a “colony” on 8th  But whatever the price, the US Government is the receiver of the stolen goods.

We want to close this base down.

We want the terrible emptiness of the tarmac runways out! And the concrete docks out! We want the emptiness of all the military hardware out, too. We want to regenerate the coral around these islands. And the palms.

Living life. We want Diego Garcia to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site immediately on the closure of the base.

But, more than anything, we want to heal the terrible emptiness in the hearts of a people forcibly removed. We want to heal the tearing apart of a country. We want people to be free to go back home.

There have been UN resolutions, year after year, for the reunification of Mauritius through the return of Diego Garcia and the whole of Chagos. Only the US and UK governments voted against. But these two votes have, so far, been enough.

The 1995 UN “Pelindaba Treaty for a Nuclear-Weapons Free Africa” was signed by all the countries concerned, but on the insistence of the representatives of your two countries, there were the infamous “dotted lines” scribbled in around Diego Garcia.

So Diego Garcia is not “nuclear free”. And nor are Pakistan and India. Which is all the more reason for all of us to say “no” to war. And “yes” to the closing down of the base.

I write to ask if perhaps you could start by writing to your MP’s and Congressmen to inform them that the theft of the islands and the receiving of stolen goods was done without the knowledge of the people of your lands, that the forcible removals of our people were done behind your backs, that your people would never have condoned this ultimate violence, that you want the people of Diego Garcia to return to their homes, that a Court judgment has granted them the right to return, that the base is illegal and must be closed down.

That the base must be closed down in any case.

We ask this to be included as part of the movement towards ending the war. As part of the movement for peace.

And as we all know, peace only comes with justice. And justice only comes when we find out about injustices being committed near and far, and all over the rest of the world, so we can put a stop to them. It is these injustices that sometimes breed the ideas that sometimes breed terrorism.

At other times, the injustices breed rioting. In Los Angeles and in Mauritius. In Harare and in Northern Towns in Britain. In Algeria and in Indonesia. And whether it is terrorism or rioting, it brings in its wake, repression.

So, we need coherent, conscious movements against the war, and for justice worldwide. And justice, as we all know in our hearts, is only born in the movement towards equality. The e-word. You are not allowed to say it in good company anymore. It is only permissible in reference to past revolutions.

But it is, curiously, precisely the e-technology that may help now.

We live in a world of sufficient technological advancement to permit a much better form of democracy than we ever dared dream of before. Democracy at the work place. Democratic control over finance. Where democracy will be much more than casting a vote to choose between two political parties, both financed by private companies, once every five years, where you live or where I do.

Democracy in which human rights in all spheres – political, civil, economic, social, cultural – gain broader and broader definitions through our struggles, wherever we are.

Democracy where human beings gain in dignity. Democracies from which guns and land-mines are not exported to prop up dictatorships in countries unknown, nor to make profits from warring factions in countries elsewhere in the world. We have to inform ourselves and act. Together.

So that dog stops eating dog. And horse horse.

Lindsey Collen, For LALIT, in Mauritius 16th October lalmel@intnet.mu

Lindsey Collen was born in South Africa and lives in Mauritius. She is the author of several novels “There is a Tide”, “The Rape of Sita” and “Getting Rid of it”. “The Rape of Sita” won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Africa Region in 1994 and was longlisted for the 1996 Orangeprize. Her latest book is called “Mutiny”. She is a human rights’ activist in Mauritius, active in the women’s right’s movement, in the movement for social housing, in an organisation for adult literacy and in the political organisation, Lalit.

For a brief, Americanized “history” of Diego Garcia, with map, please go to http://www.infoplease.com/spot/dg.html.

For a complete and well-documented history of the British/American theft of Diego Garcia, please go to http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=diego_garcia.

Reprinted with Permission of Lindsey Coleen.

Wave Our Flag!

Jim Hightower
October 16, 2001

I’m waving the flag these days — the stars & stripes, Old Glory, our flag.

Since September 11, I’ve been waving it all over the place, because it stands for something special, historic, important, and uniting. I’m not waving it as some macho bravado assertion of American Empire, but in the spirit of America Eternal, the land of deep democratic values and ambitions, the place where “Liberty and Justice for All” is not a throw-a way line, but a founding principle that we must struggle daily to try to implement.

Our flag is more than the emblem of America’s financial and military might, it’s a mirror in which we can see reflected our finest ideals of economic fairness, social justice, and equal opportunity.

Or not. This is why it’s especially important for us to wave America’s flag now, in these dark days when anti-democratic forces are loose in Washington and in the media, howling for a repression of the very freedoms the flag symbolizes. I’ll be double-damned to hell before I meekly allow this banner of democracy to be usurped by political opportunists, corporatists, xenophobes, war-mongrers, and fear-mongers who confuse conformity with patriotism, demanding that we be quiet, get in line, and be “patriotically correct.”

Hey, we’re not lemmings. We’re citizens, and as the founders knew, the first job of a citizen is to keep your mouth open. Our democracy was forged in rebellion, crafted by mavericks and risk-takers who refused to salute authority. They rejected all autocrats who tried to suppress liberties in the name of providing security and order.

This is Jim Hightower saying … Ours is the flag of the pamphleteers and Sons of Liberty, the abolitionists and suffragists, Populists and Wobblies, Mother Jones and Joe Hill, Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr. — freedom-fighters all. Too many true patriots struggled and died to bring our democracy this far. We have no right to be quiet. Stand up! Wave our flag! Speak out!

Saying goodbye to patriotism

by Robert Jensen

 [A talk delivered to the Peace Action National Congress, November 10, 2001]

 

This summer I wrote a book review for an academic journal — one of those terribly important pieces of writing that will be read by tens and tens of people, some of them actually people outside my own family. The book is about the history of governmental restrictions on U.S. news media during war, and it’s a good book in many ways. But I faulted the author for accepting the American mythology about the nobility of our wars and their motivations. I challenged his uncritical use of the term patriotism, which I called “perhaps the single most morally and intellectually bankrupt concept in human history.”

By coincidence, the galley proofs for the piece came back to me for review a few days after September 11. I paused as I re-read my words, and I thought about the reaction those words might spark, given the reflexive outpouring of patriotism in the wake of the terrorist attacks. I thought about the controversy that some of my writing had already sparked on campus and, it turned out, beyond the campus. I thought about how easy it would be to take out that sentence.

I thought about all that for some time before deciding to let it stand. My reason was simple: I think that statement was true on September 10, and if anything, I’m more convinced it is true after September 11.

I also believe that nestled in the truth of that assertion is a crucial question for the U.S.-based peace movement, one that we cannot avoid after 9-11:

Are we truly internationalist? Can we get beyond patriotism? Or, in the end, are we just Americans?

That is a way, I think, of asking whether we are truly for peace and justice.

I realize that framing of the question may seem harsh. It may rub the wrong way people who want to hold onto a positive notion of patriotism.

I mean the statement to be harsh because I believe the question is crucial. If in the end we are just Americans, if we cannot move beyond patriotism, then we cannot claim to be internationalists. And, if we are not truly internationalist in our outlook — all the way to the bone — then I do not think we truly call ourselves people committed to peace and justice.

Let me try to make the case for this by starting with definitions.

My dictionary defines patriotism as “love and loyal or zealous support of one’s own country.” We’ll come back to that, but let’s also look beyond the dictionary to how the word is being used at this moment in history, in this country. I would suggest there are two different, and competing, definitions of patriotism circulating these days.

 

Definition #1: Patriotism as loyalty to the war effort.

 

It’s easy to get a handle on this use of the word. Just listen to the president of the United States speak. Or watch the TV anchors. Or, as I have done, be a guest on a lot of talk radio shows. This view of patriotism is pretty simple: We were attacked. We must defend ourselves. The only real way to defend ourselves is by military force. If you want to be patriotic, you should — you must — support the war.

I have been told often that it is fine for me to disagree with that policy, but now is not the time to disagree publicly. A patriotic person, I am told, should remain quiet and support the troops until the war is over, at which point we can all have a discussion about the finer points of policy. If I politely disagree with that, then the invective flows: Commie, terrorist-lover, disloyal, unpatriotic. Love it or leave it.

It is easy to take apart this kind of patriotism. It is a patriotism that is incompatible with democracy or basic human decency. To see just how intellectually and morally bankrupt a notion it is, just ask this question: What would we have said to Soviet citizens who might have made such an argument about patriotic duty as the tanks rolled into Prague in 1968? To draw that analogy is not to say the two cases are exactly alike. Rather, it is to point out that a decision to abandon our responsibility to evaluate government policy and surrender our power to think critically is a profound failure, intellectually and morally.

 

Definition #2: Patriotism as critique of the war effort.

 

Many in the peace-and-justice movement, myself included, have suggested that to be truly patriotic one cannot simply accept policies because they are handed down by leaders or endorsed by a majority of people, even if it is an overwhelming majority. Being a citizen in a real democracy, we have said over and over, means exercising our judgment, evaluating policies, engaging in discussion, and organizing to try to help see that the best policies are enacted. When the jingoists start throwing around terms like “anti-American” and “traitor,” we point out that true patriotism means staying true to the core commitments of democracy and the obligations that democracy puts on people. There is nothing un-American, we contend, about arguing for peace.

That’s all clear enough. As I have said, I have used that line of argument many times. It is the best way — maybe the only way — to respond in public at this moment if one wants to be effective in building an antiwar movement. We all remind ourselves, over and over, that we have to start the discussion where people are, not where we wish people were. If people feel “love and loyal or zealous support of one’s own country,” then we have to be aware of that and respond to it.

But increasingly, I feel uncomfortable arguing for patriotism, even with this second definition. And as I listen to friends and allies in the peace-and-justice movement, I have started to wonder whether that claim to patriotism-as-critical-engagement is indeed merely strategic. Or is it motivated by something else? Are we looking for a way to hold onto patriotism because we really believe in it?

I think it is valuable to ask the question: Is there any way to define the term that doesn’t carry with it arrogant and self-indulgent assumptions? Is there any way to salvage patriotism?

I want to argue that invoking patriotism puts us on dangerous ground and that we must be careful about our strategic use of it.

At its ugliest, patriotism means a ranking of the value of the lives of people based on boundaries. To quote Emma Goldman: “Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others.”

People have said this directly to me: Yes, the lives of U.S. citizens are more important than the lives of Afghan citizens. If innocent Afghans have to die, have to starve — even in large numbers — so that we can achieve our goals, well, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it should be. I assume no argument here is needed as to why this type of patriotism is unacceptable. We may understand why people feel it, but it is barbaric.

But what of the effort to hold onto a kinder and gentler style of patriotism by distinguishing it from this kind of crude nationalism? We must ask: What are the unstated assumptions of this other kind of patriotism we have been defending? If patriotism is about loyalty of some sort, to what are we declaring our loyalty?

If we are pledging loyalty to a nation-state, we have already touched on the obvious problems: What if that nation-state pursues an immoral objective? Should we remain loyal to it? The same question is obvious if our loyalty is to a specific government or set of government officials. If they pursue immoral objectives or pursue moral objectives in an immoral fashion, what would it mean to be loyal to them?

Some suggest we should be loyal to the ideals of America, a set of commitments and practices connected with the concepts of freedom and democracy. That’s all well and good; freedom and democracy are good things, and I try to not only endorse those values but live them. I assume everyone in this room does as well.

But what makes those values uniquely American? Is there something about the United States or the people who live here that make us more committed to, or able to act out, the ideals of freedom and democracy — more so than, say, Canadians or Indians or Brazilians? Are not people all over the world — including those who live in countries that do not guarantee freedom to the degree the United States does — capable of understanding and acting on those ideals? Are not different systems possible for making real those ideals in a complex world?

If freedom and democracy are not unique to us, then they are simply human ideals, endorsed to varying degrees in different places and realized to different degrees by different people acting in different places? If that’s true, then they are not distinctly American ideals. They were not invented here, and we do not have a monopoly on them. So, if one is trying to express a commitment to those ideals, why do it in the limiting fashion of talking of patriotism?

Let me attempt an analogy to gender. After 9-11, a number of commentators have argued that criticisms of masculinity should be rethought. Yes, masculinity is often connected to, and expressed through, competition, domination, and violence, they said. But as male firefighters raced into burning buildings and risked their lives to save others, cannot we also see that masculinity encompasses a kind of strength that is rooted in caring and sacrifice?

My response is, yes, of course men often exhibit such strength. But do not women have the capacity for that kind of strength rooted in caring and sacrifice? Do they not exhibit such strength on a regular basis? Why of course they do, most are quick to agree. Then the obvious question is, what makes these distinctly masculine characteristics? Are they not simply human characteristics?

We identify masculine tendencies toward competition, domination, and violence because we see patterns of different behavior; we see that men are more prone to such behavior in our culture. We can go on to observe and analyze the ways in which men are socialized to behave in those ways. We do all that work, I would hope, to change those behaviors.

But that is a very different exercise than saying that admirable human qualities present in both men and women are somehow primarily the domain of one of those genders. To assign them to a gender is misguided, and demeaning to the gender that is then assumed not to possess them to the same degree. Once you start saying “strength and courage are masculine traits,” it leads to the conclusion that woman are not as strong or courageous. To say “strength and courage are masculine traits,” then, is to be sexist.

The same holds true for patriotism. If we abandon the crude version of patriotism but try to hold onto an allegedly more sophisticated version, we bump up against this obvious question: Why are human characteristics being labeled as American if there is nothing distinctly American about them?

If people want to argue that such terminology is justified because those values are realized to their fullest degree in the United States, then there’s some explaining to do. Some explaining to the people of Guatemala and Iran, Nicaragua and South Vietnam, East Timor and Laos, Iraq and Panama. We would have to explain to the victims of U.S. aggression — direct and indirect — how it is that our political culture, the highest expression of the ideals of freedom and democracy, has managed routinely to go around the world overthrowing democratically elected governments, supporting brutal dictators, funding and training proxy terrorist armies, and unleashing brutal attacks on civilians when we go to war. If we want to make the claim that we are the fulfillment of history and the ultimate expression of the principles of freedom and justice, our first stop might be Hiroshima. We might want to explain that claim there.

If we are serious about peace and justice in the world, we need to subject this notion of patriotism to scrutiny. If we do that, I would suggest, it is clear that any use of the concept of patriotism is bound to be chauvinistic at some level. At its worst, patriotism can lead easily to support for barbarism. At its best, it is self-indulgent and arrogant in its assumptions about the uniqueness of U.S. culture.

None of what I have said should be taken as a blanket denunciation of the United States, our political institutions, or our culture. People often tell me, “You start with the assumption that everything about the United States is bad.” Of course I do not assume that. That would be as absurd a position as the assumption that everything about the United States is good. I can’t imagine any reasonable person making either statement. That does raise the question, of course, of who is a reasonable person. We might ask that question about, for example, George Bush, the father. In 1988, after the U.S. Navy warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner in a commercial corridor, killing 290 civilians, Bush said, “I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don’t care what the facts are.”

I want to put forward the radical proposition that we should care what the facts are. We should start with the assumption that everything about the United States, like everything about any country, needs to be examined and assessed. That is what it means to be a moral person.

There is much about this country a citizen can be proud of, and I am in fact proud of those things. The personal freedoms guaranteed (to most people) in this culture, for example, are quite amazing. As someone who regularly tries to use those freedoms, I am as aware as anyone of how precious they are.

There also is much to be appalled by. The obscene gaps in wealth between rich and poor, for example, are quite amazing as well, especially in a wealthy society that claims to be committed to justice.

In that sense, we are like any other grouping of people. That doesn’t mean one can’t analyze various societies and judge some better than others by principles we can articulate and defend — so long as they are truly principles, applied honestly and uniformly. But one should maintain a bit of humility in the endeavor. Perhaps instead of saying “The United States is the greatest nation on earth” — a comment common among politicians, pundits, and the public — we would be better off saying, “I live in the United States and have deep emotional ties to the people, land, and ideals of this place. Because of these feelings, I want to highlight the positive while working to change what is wrong.” That is not moral relativism — it is a call for all of us to articulate and defend our positions.

We can make that statement without having to argue that we are, in some essential way, better than everyone else. We can make that statement without arrogantly suggesting that other people are inherently less capable of articulating or enacting high ideals. We can make that statement and be ready and willing to engage in debate and discussion about the merits of different values and systems.

We can make that statement, in other words, and be true internationalists, people truly committed to peace and justice. If one wants to call that statement an expression of patriotism, I will not spend too much time arguing. But I will ask: If we make a statement like that, why do we need to call it an expression of patriotism? What can we learn by asking ourselves: What makes us, even people in the peace-and-justice community, want to hold onto the notion of patriotism with such tenacity?

When I write or talk with the general public and raise questions like these, people often respond, “If you hate America so much, why don’t you leave?”

But what is this America that I allegedly hate? The land itself? The people who live here? The ideals in the country’s founding documents? I do not hate any of those things.

When people say to me “love it or leave it,” what is the “it” to which they refer?

No one can ever quite answer that. Still, I have an answer for them.

I will not leave “it” for a simple reason: I have nowhere else to go. I was born here. I was given enormous privileges here. My place in the world is here, where I feel an obligation to use that privilege to be part — a very small part of, as we all are only a small part — of a struggle to make real a better world. Whatever small part I can play in that struggle, whatever I can achieve, I will have to achieve here, in the heart of the beast.

I love it, which is to say that I love life — I love the world in which I live and the people who live in it with me. I will not leave that “it.”

That “it” may not be specific enough for some, but it’s the best I can do. Maybe it will help to answer in the negative, for I can say more clearly what the “it” is not. I can describe more clearly what is the America I do not love.

The America I love is not this administration, or any other collections of politicians, or the corporations they serve.

It is not the policies of this administration, or any other collection of politicians, or the corporations they serve.

The America I love is not wrapped up in a mythology about “how good we are” that ignores the brutal realities of our own history of conquest and barbarism.

Most of all, I want no part of the America that arrogantly claims that the lives and hopes and dreams of people who happen to live within the boundaries of the United States have more value than those in other places. Nor will I indulge America in the belief that our grief is different. Since September 11, the United States has demanded that the world take our grief more seriously. When some around the world have not done so, we express our outrage.

But we should ask: What makes the grief of a parent who lost a child in the World Trade Center any deeper than the grief of a parent who lost a child in Baghdad when U.S. warplanes rained death on the civilian areas of Iraq in the Gulf War? Or the parents of a child in Nicaragua when the U.S. terrorist proxy army ravaged that country? Soon after 9-11, I heard a television reporter describe lower Manhattan as “Beirut on the Hudson.” We might ask, how did Beirut come to look like Beirut, and what is our responsibility in that? And what of the grief of those who saw their loved ones die during the shelling of that city?

We should ask: Where was the empathy of America for the grief of those people?

Certainly we grieve differently, more intensely, when people close to us die. We don’t feel the loss of a family member the same way as a death of a casual friend. We feel something different over the death of someone we knew compared with the death of a stranger. But we must understand that the grief we feel when our friends and neighbors became victims of political violence is no different than what people around the world feel. We must understand that each of those lives lost abroad has exactly the same value as the life of any one of our family, friends and neighbors.

September 11 was a dark day. I still remember what it felt like to watch those towers come down, the darkness that settled over me that day, the hopelessness, how tangible death felt — for me, not only the deaths of those in the towers but also the deaths of those who would face the bombs in the war that might follow, the war that did follow, the war that goes on.

But humans are resilient; in the darkness we tend to look for light, for a way out of the darkness.

I believe there is a light shining out of September 11, out of all that darkness. It is a light that I believe we Americans can follow to our own salvation. That light is contained in a simple truth that is obvious, but which Americans have never really taken to heart: We are part of the world. We cannot any longer hide from that world. We cannot allow our politicians, and generals, and corporate executives to do their dirty business around the world while we hide from the truths about just how dirty that business really is. We can no longer hide from the coups they plan, the wars they start, the sweatshops they run.

For me, all this means saying goodbye to patriotism.

That is the paradox: September 11 has sparked a wave of patriotism, a patriotism that has in many cases been overtly hateful, racist and xenophobic. A patriotism that can lead people to say, as one person wrote to me, “We should bomb [Afghanistan] until there’s no more earth to bomb.”

But the real lesson of September 11, which I believe we will eventually learn, is that if we are to survive as a free people, as decent people who want honestly to claim the ideals we say we live by, we must say goodbye to patriotism. That patriotism will not relieve our grief, but only deepen it. It will not solve our problems but only extend them. I believe there is no hope for ourselves or for the world if we continue to embrace patriotism, no matter what the definition.

We must give up our “love and loyal or zealous support of one’s own country” and transfer that love, loyalty and zealousness to the world, and especially the people of the world who have suffered most so that we Americans can live in affluence.

We must be able to say, as the great labor leader of the early 20th century Eugene Debs said, “I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.”

I am with Debs. I believe it is time to declare: I am not patriotic. I am through with trying to redefine the term patriotic to make sense. There is no sense to it.

That kind of statement will anger many, but at some point we must begin to take that risk, for this is not merely an academic argument over semantics.

This is both a struggle to save ourselves and a struggle to save the lives of vulnerable people around the world.

We must say goodbye to patriotism because the kind of America the peace-and-justice movement wants to build cannot be built on, or through, the patriotism of Americans.

We must say goodbye to patriotism because the world cannot survive indefinitely the patriotism of Americans.

Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, a member of the Nowar Collective (www.nowarcollective.com), and author of the book Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (www.peterlangusa.com). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.

 

Reprinted with permission.

Editor’s Note: Tiger Tom’s “I support the war but not our troops” originally  appeared in the early days of the most recent U.S. invasion of Iraq,  during the reign of Bush the Younger.

I Support the War But Not Our Troops

Our Slogans and Our Battlefields Aren’t So Hot, Either

by Tiger Tom

— “My country, right or wrong” is like saying “My mother, drunk or sober.”–G.K.Chesterton.

Like all red-blooded Americans,  I’m crazy about this nifty war in Iraq.  It is truly something to be proud of.  Us, with the most expensive military machine ever assembled,  kicking the ragged ass of a downtrodden third world country,.  What could be sweeter?  That’s what America is about.

We can be proud that we have not allowed the lessons of history to spoil our noble primitive nature. Like our beastly ancestors,  we know that when some problem comes up,  there’s nothing as effective and as satisfying as good old brute force. By not learning a whit from the  grief caused by the 36,452,765 wars of the past, we’ve disproved the theory of evolution.  We’re as dumb as we were in the Garden of Eden, and we still believe whatever the snake tells us.

This is a pretty good war, but frankly our troops don’t meet the test.  I have seen many soldiers on TV, and  I, Tiger Tom, say that what this war needs is better troops.  Most of these guys are pretty plain and, frankly,  don’t seem a lot smarter than the Commander in Chief, although, like the great civilian soldiers at the Department of “Defense”(1),  when the camera is rolling they can spit out a few modern soldier cliches like “survivability”  and “shape the battlefield.”

They do not have good haircuts. It is hard to support troops with bad haircuts.

Do You Support Our Troops?

I, Tiger Tom, am confused about what our armchair warriors mean when they say that they “support our troops.”  As soon as a good TV war gets rolling,  everyone “supports our troops.”   How do they support our troops?  I, Tiger Tom, who pay my taxes, do not know how to support our troops other than that. So I looked for ways in which other citizens support our troops.  I did some research.

I read a Z-Net quiz that asked people questions about the war and how to support our troops. Here is the first item of the questionnaire.  See if you can answer it.

War Quiz

by Stephen R. Shalom

1. The anti-war movement supports our troops by urging that they be brought home immediately so they neither kill nor get killed in a unjust war. How has the Bush administration shown its support for our troops?

a. The Republican-controlled House Budget Committee voted to cut $25 billion in veterans benefits over the next 10 years.

b. The Bush administration proposed cutting $172 million from impact aid programs which provide school funding for children of military personnel.

c. The administration ordered the Dept. of Veterans Affairs to stop publicizing health benefits available to veterans.

d. All of the above.

(D is correct.)

Now, I, Tiger Tom, offer the following questionnaire for Gazette readers.

 

The Pure Water Gazette Troop Support Survey

by Tiger Tom

I, Tiger Tom, support our troops by paying my taxes.  Other than paying your taxes, how do you support our troops?

a. I knit mittens for our troops.

b. I bake cookies for our troops.

c. I do not drive my car, thus saving gasoline for the use of our troops.

d. I spend countless hours watching our troops on television.

e. I write letters to my congressperson demanding that my taxes be raised to take care of our veterans.

f. I volunteer 20 hours per week at a Veteran’s Hospital cleaning the bed sores of quadriplegic veterans of past wars.

g. I bought a paper poppy from a veteran in front of the Post Office in 1993.

h. I get drunk frequently at dances at the local VFW chapter.

i.  I go around saying, “I support our troops.”

When I gave this test to a group of patriotic Americans,  selecting only true patriots (those who had big, gaudy flags on their vehicles),  here were the results:

a. 0
b. 0
c. 0
d. 86%
e. 0
f. 0
g. 3%
h. 29%
i. 100%

We need  better battlefields

In addition to better troops, we need a better battlefield.  Whoever thought up having a big, expensive, televised war in Iraq was a moron. It’s like playing the Super Bowl game in Fairbanks, Alaska.   I, Tiger Tom, say that when it’s time for Operation Iranian Freedom and Operation North Korean Freedom, we must not let them host the war in their dumb countries. It’s our war.  We should get to choose the battleground. Iran will just be a rerun of Iraq. Sand, wind, and desolation. Boring.   And North Korea is way too cold, plus it’s about as

scenic and appetizing to a TV audience as a rotten turnip.

I say, let’s move both wars to a really nice place to fight. A place like Hawaii.  It will make for better TV, and our troops and journalists will enjoy it so much more.

Support our troops.  Demand that the next war be fought on a nice island in the South Pacific. Or in Florida.  In and around the governor’s mansion.  That would be good.

We need better slogans

Another thing our next wars need is better slogans.  I mean, the guy who writes this “Iraqi Freedom,” “Valiant Shield,” and “They hate us for our freedom”  crap should be cast down from the highest pinnacle of Saddam’s palace (if Saddam still has an unbombed pinnacled-palace left).  I, Tiger Tom, suggest some better war slogans. The obvious one has two good variations.  Either “Operation Ignorant Arrogance” or “Operation Arrogant Ignorance” seem equally powerful. Here are some others:

“Operation Enduring Arrogance”

“Operation Overwhelming Arrogance”

“Operation Never-Healing Wound”

“Operation Enrich Halliburton”

“Operation Pepsi Peace”  (This one would be used only if Pepsi agrees to cough up several billion for the reconstruction of whatever country we plan on demolishing.   This very sound idea for war financing is based on the reality that Pepsi has a lot more money than the combined wealth of the bottom 90% of the countries that make up the Coalition of the Bribed and
Intimidated–our “allies”–and it makes more sense to sell advertising rights in order to finance the war than to bleed Cameroon dry to rebuild buildings in Iraq.  The schools prostitute themselves to the corporations, so why can’t the military?  We give Pepsi an exclusive on, let’s say, all soft drink machines in Iraq (with an option for machines in Iran)  for a 10-year period in exchange for a few $ billion to rebuild the country. And while we’re on this train of thought, selling advertising on the sides of tanks isn’t all that shabby an idea.)

“Operation Arrogant Shield”

“Operation Valiant Arrogance”

“Operation Fight Fair”  [This one, made relevant by the dirty fighting in the Iraqi war, is designed to remind the enemy that only WE get to have big

powerful weapons.  Fighting with unorthodox methods and un-approved weapons (like sharpened sticks) is not fair and will not stand. Enemy troops are required to wear U.S.-approved uniforms and stand in open areas away from civilians where we can easily bomb them “cleanly and fairly.”]

In conclusion, I, Tiger Tom,  say that this war thing needs better planning. War is our main export. We need to get serious about it.  It needs professional management. I say, dump Donald Rumsfeld.  “Rummy” is clearly an arrogant and ineffective old fart.  We need someone dynamic who can give our wars the epic sweep that will command weeks and weeks of top prime time ratings.  The man for the job, I say, is Charlton Heston.  He has epic movie experience aplenty,  and even the most weepy-eyed of the bed-wetting liberals would not object to soldiers having guns. Everyone would be happy.

Another Editor’s Note:  Rummy, of course, did get dumped, but unfortunately Charlton Heston has gone on to the great rifle range in the sky and is not available.

Footnotes

1. As with most things that regard war, this is a commonly inverted term. When they say Defense they really mean Offense.

A Kinder, Gentler Patriotism

by Howard Zinn

i sing of olaf

e.e.cummings

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but–though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments–
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
“I will not kiss your fucking flag”

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but–though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat–
Olaf (upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
“there is some shit I will not eat”

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ (of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see; and Olaf, too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me: more blond than you.

Corporate Patriotism

by Tiger Tom

 Editor’s Note:  Tiger Tom posted this article to the Pure Water Gazette’s former site during the period of post-911 patriotic madness when homeland-loving corporations were scrambling for a choice place at the feeding trough. –Hardly Waite.

It makes you proud to be an American when you see how our corporations answer the call in time of crisis. I mean, individuals are certainly doing their  share.  Many people have put up a big heavy flag on their home, or at least a small one on their car, or both. Some, like the guy below, even have big bloody or weepy signs and pictures.  But, as important as individual patriots are, it’s our corporations that have really come through for us.

Here are some examples of what they’re doing for the good of the nation.

The big round numbers I’ll put behind the names of the corporations and trade associations are the amount they’ve given from 1999 to the present (late 2001) in campaign contributions.  I, Tiger Tom, did not  go to a lot of trouble looking these numbers up.  Instead, I copied them from some research done by Public Campaign (http://www.publicampaign.org), a non-profit group that pushes hard for campaign finance reform.  I do not include these numbers to suggest that the obscenely rich companies mentioned are attempting to buy favors from the government. I would never think that about these patriotic corporate friends that keep America strong.

California date growers ($25,000) patriotically asked the Pentagon to buy dates for the food packages being dropped in Afghanistan. Getting dates rather than peanut butter would show the Afghans we care and  make them  feel much better about being bombed.  I, Tiger Tom, say that this is a good idea, and I suggest that the U.S. would not have been so steamed about Pearl Harbor if the Japanese had had the good manners to make an extra pass or two after the bombing to drop the survivors some sodas and potato chips.

American Traffic Safety Services Association ($26,000) made the patriotic suggestion that much more federal cash is needed for road signs to prevent traffic snarls after terrorist attacks.  Nothing ruins your day like driving off into a bomb crater because the feds scrimped on detour signs.

Telecom services and equipment makers ($21.3 million) suggested that the answer to terrorism is to re-establish telecommunications monopolies.  Big, powerful companies, they say,  unencumbered by the nuisance of competition, can better keep us safe.

The oil and gas megaglomerates ($38.8 million) suggest we meet the challenge of terrorism by drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

I, Tiger Tom ($4.75), wrote my senator to suggest conserving energy by asking patriots to drive their flagmobiles a little slower, say at a voluntary 55 mph or so,  but so far I’ve had no answer.

The travel industry ($9.3 million) came up with the patriotic notion of a $1,000 per family tax credit to help offset vacation expenses.  Think of it.  You could patriotically fly to Acapulco and get a tax credit for your trouble. That’s not much harder than putting a flag on your car.

Farm lobbies ($69.9 million) are proposing a Farm Security Act that would serve as a “bulwark against disruptions in food supplies” and, incidentally, provide millions in subsidies for corporate “farmers” in the process.

I, Tiger Tom ($4.75), wrote the president suggesting reestablishment of  Victory Gardens but have not yet had an answer.

Verizon Communications ($3.7 million) is patriotically asking the federal government to remove rules that give smaller competitors access to its network. This would be good for the fight against terrorism, the company says, because big companies can get things done in time of crisis.

Boeing (a paltry $500,000), with the Marine Corps’ help,  is begging Congress to bring back the hapless V-22 Osprey, its unique experimental aircraft that crashes now and then and kills a few Marines. 20% of the Ospreys that have been built have crashed. Nothing’s perfect. As an airplane, it’s a flop,  but it has the advantage of costing  a lot and will get Boeing back to work and be good  for the old economy. Congress has apparently already caved in on this one and is giving Boeing a billion (that’s a thousand million) to keep working on it. The big, weird plane on the right is an Osprey.

The airline industry ($8.3 million), which has had many patriotic suggestions including direct government dole, now suggests a patriotic repeal of the federal tax on jet fuel to save the country.

And finally, everyone surely has heard that our sixteen biggest corporations ($46 million in the last ten years) have patriotically whined and pleaded until congress is handing them back $7 billion (that’s billion with a “b”). Even Enron, now bankrupt, will get around $250 million under this plan . That will certainly get the economy rolling. The big guys are no doubt begging for this handout so they can help the economy by giving big raises to their workers and hiring back their laid-off employees whether they need them or not.

I, Tiger Tom ($4.75), patriotically wrote to my representatives suggesting that they further help these struggling nice-guy companies to make ends meet by putting at least a temporary salary cap of, say, $50 million per year,  on corporate CEOs. I know that this will not be popular with the CEOs, but, as I  suggested in my letter to the Vice President (sent to “Address Unknown”): “These slimy greedheads need to make some sacrifices, too, and it they don’t like it, I, Tiger Tom,  say tell them to put it in their think tank and smoke it.”

Dear Friends,

This letter is for those of you who were born after the Vietnam War.

Many of you are in high school right now. Some of you have recently graduated

and are working the Slurpee machine at the 7-11 (your way of celebrating the

greatest economic boom in history!).

By now, you have probably figured out that a lot of adults have a hard time

speaking the truth. Some are just forgetful, which comes with age. Some need

to believe that the world is ordered a certain way so they can justify their

actions and the way they live their lives. Others just want the pain to go

away, and creating fantasies is one way to relieve the sorrow of the past.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. But that’s not

exactly true. It’s really the 25th anniversary of the Vietnamese VICTORY over

the United States of America. It’s hard for a lot of adults to say those

words. No one likes to lose. We did.

You have probably seen a lot of nonsense on TV this week about how the 58,000

Americans who lost their lives in Vietnam “did not die in vain.”

That, is not the truth.

Those young lives were wasted and eliminated for absolutely no good reason

whatsoever. They were sent to die in Vietnam at the whim of a bunch of

politicians and the men who pick up their tab at the country club.

I encourage you to read “Taking Charge” by Michael Beschloss.  Beschloss

obtained the secretly-recorded White House tapes from the day when President

Johnson decided to send the troops to Vietnam. They show that Johnson KNEW he

was doing the wrong thing, that the war could not be won, but, after a pause

in the conversation, he decided to go ahead anyway. You can hear what little

was left of Johnson’s conscience in that brief pause of self-doubt, and like

the moment of decision in a frightening cliffhanger, you’ll find yourself

shouting at the book, “Don’t do it, don’t do it, thousands — millions! — of

lives will be spared!!” But he does do it. He went to Congress and lied about

an American boat being attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam, and the

Senate voted 98 to 2 to send our boys to their early graves.

By now, you have probably also figured out that politicians will lie about

anything to create a justification for their actions. In order to get away

with invading Vietnam without calling it an “invasion,” the political leaders

and their compliant media friends told the American people that the

Communists were overrunning South Vietnam, a democracy and an ally of the

United States (it was a totalitarian state with a puppet leader we installed

after our government helped to assassinate the former leader). We were told

the Communists had to be stopped and, if they weren’t, Communism would spread

throughout all of Asia.

Communism, for those of you too young to have experienced the scare, was this

thing that enslaved billions of people to a system where they had little or

no say, where elections contained essentially no choice on the ballot, where

competition and choice in the marketplace were eliminated, and where

virtually every town had but one newspaper which told them what was going on.

In other words, sorta like the U.S. today!

The truth was, Vietnam had been invaded and colonized by various foreign

powers for a thousand years. In the 1940s, during World War II, a Vietnamese

leader, Ho Chi Minh, sided with America and the Allies to defeat the Japanese

and Germans. After the war, he came to Washington in the hopes of convincing

the President and Congress to back his people’s struggle to be free. He was

certain that the Americans, whose own country was founded through a

revolution against a foreign king, would back his efforts to create a free

and democratic Vietnam. He was not a “Communist” then. His hero was George

Washington. The Vietnamese Constitution he proposed was based on the U.S.

Constitution, which he thought to be a profound document.

The Congress and the President turned him away. The French, who “owned”

Vietnam at the time — you see, they were our “friends.”

Ho and the Vietnamese were forced to look for help elsewhere. And the rest is

history.

There is not much talk on the news today about the Vietnamese who died in the

war. Over two million perished. Two million people were killed in our name,

using our taxes and America’s sons in perpetrating a mass slaughter. You

probably have seen a lot of Senator John McCain this year, everyone talking

about him being a “a war hero.” McCain’s job was to bomb innocent civilians

in the neighborhoods of Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam. He got shot down

while committing this heinous act. He ejected and crashed into a lake in the

center of town. How did the Vietnamese react to this American who fell from

the sky after killing their children? Did they string him up and kill him?

No, they jumped into the lake and saved his life. Thirty-two years later, he

rides with the press on his “Straight Talk Express” and calls them “gooks”

and few bother to report it.

A lot of people my age and older went to Vietnam. They were not bad people.

They were just kids who didn’t know they were being used. But, we are all

responsible for our individual actions, and on judgment day, using the excuse

that you were “only following orders” will not sit well. But neither will our

lack of compassion and understanding. “All are punish’d.”

The only true heroes of the Vietnam War — you will not read about them in

your high school history books or see statues of them in city parks — were

the brave ones who stood up against the government and refused to go and kill

Vietnamese. Contrary to what you may have seen on TV, being against the war

was never the popular position to take (until near the very end). Those who

protested took a lot of abuse, not to mention a few billy clubs to the head.

Those who refused to be drafted were sent to jail. Over a hundred thousand

escaped to Canada, a country that took them in without question. Families

were ripped apart. To this day, in spite of the amnesty, the government

continues to track down and punish those unfairly accused of violently trying

to stop the war (please read the excellent article on Howard Mechanic in

today’s New York Times Sunday Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/)

Nine guys who went to my high school were killed in Vietnam. If there is

anything you take from this letter, it is my hope that you will always resist

our government’s efforts to send you off to fight the rich man’s wars. Most

would agree that there come those times in history when, out of sheer

self-defense, a nation must defend itself. That is not what happened in

Vietnam — or in Grenada or Panama or Nicaragua or Iraq or Kosovo. These are

wars to make the world safe for oil and sweatshops. Don’t ever let an adult

tell you any differently. They will lie to you because they need YOU to go

fight THEIR war. Don’t fall for it. Only the strong and brave and courageous

are able to resist what appears to be the human instinct to kill other

humans. Be brave. Be strong. Learn from your parents’ and grandparents’

mistakes.

Twenty-five years later, many of them still can’t figure out what went wrong.

That’s why I believe April 30 should be a national holiday, a day to always

remember what went wrong with us, so that it never happens again. In Vietnam,

it’s not called the “Vietnam War.” It’s called the “American War.” The BBC

news ticker that runs across the top of my computer screen just flashed on:

“Vietnam Celebrates American Defeat.” Defeat? Defeat! I have not read a

headline like that in the U.S.

As long as we can’t call it for what it was, we are doomed to repeat our

worst mistake. Kids, help us.

Yours,

Michael Moore

Obituaries

by Gary North

March 28, 2002

Milton Berle died yesterday. For a brief moment, just before “The West Wing,” this message flashed on the screen:

Milton Berle, 1908-2002

There was no other comment.

I went to Drudge’s site this morning. I figured there would have to be a link to the obituary. There was. But beneath it, there was another link:

British comedian Dudley Moore dies at age 66

Milton Berle got a 5-second screen shot on NBC. Dudley Moore didn’t. Such is death.

Milton Berle was known as “Mr. Television.” This was based on his weekly TV show, which ran from 1948 to 1956.  He was the biggest star on television in the years in which TV first penetrated America. Americans bought TV sets just to watch Milton Berle. This seems inconceivable in
retrospect. The Kinescope clips from his old shows usually feature him dressed as a woman or even a pre-pubescent girl with a huge lollipop. After 1956, he pretty much faded from public view.

The man’s career is a testament to the truth that the comedy of one era rarely survives into the next. Written humor survives (Mark Twain, Will Rogers), but verbal comedy doesn’t. If your audience laughs out loud rather than smiles or chuckles, your career will probably be short. Bob Hope was an exception, but his individual jokes did not survive his show’s closing credits. Would anyone actually sit through a re-run of a Bob Hope Special? He knew it, too, which is why he toured military bases all those years. The troops would laugh at anything. He was beloved. When
he dies, flags will probably be flown at half mast. But no one remembers even one of his tens of thousands of jokes, which still sit in huge index files.

Back to Berle. I can vaguely recall one dramatic role on a weekly TV series which he impressed me — maybe on “The Defenders” — but that was probably forty years ago. I thought, “This guy can act.” But he rarely did. He spent the rest of his career doing cameos or parodies of himself.

The most information I ever read on Berle is the obituary linked from Drudge. I hadn’t known how long he had been in movies an on stage: from age 5. I didn’t know that he had been a big vaudeville performer, headlining with the Ziegfeld Follies in 1936. He was so well known at the dawn of TV that he got his 5-second death notice on NBC. Dudley Moore didn’t.

I started listening to Dudley Moore/Peter Cook skits in the mid-1960’s, and I saw them on stage around 1975. “The Frog and Peach” was their big skit back then. Cook died in 1995. His most famous movie role is probably as the lisping bishop in “The Princess Bride.” Moore starred in several major movies, most notably “10” and “Arthur.” He died of a crippling disease, PSP.

These were famous men for a time, but they all died in obscurity. Two of them received obituary links on Drudge. You and I won’t.

This is an advantage, you know. Millions of readers will not think, “Why, I thought he had died years ago.” They also will not think, “I’m sure glad I’m not a has-been.” Because, honestly, that’s what I thought when I read Berle’s obituary. The alternative thought isn’t much better: “What a tragedy. He went out at the peak of his career.”

Buried in Newspaper

The obituary is a recent invention: the product of the newspaper. Millions of readers like to read obituaries of famous people. They check the obituary page daily just to see if anyone worth reading about has died. I’m not sure why. Are we comparing the deceased with ourselves? Are we
thinking, “I’m alive, and he isn’t”? Do we enjoy discovering that former giants have faded in the stretch?  After all, if a person lives long enough, he fades (exceptfor George Burns). As someone has said, “Old age is when men who were attractive to women and men who were not attractive to women become equally unattractive to women” (except for Cary Grant and Sean Connery).

I recall a former colleague of mine at the Foundation for Economic Education, an older man whose job I could never quite figure out. He read the NEW YORK TIMES’s obituary page every day. I found that I developed the same habit when I subscribed to the paper version. Now that I read it on-line, and only occasionally, I no longer read the obituary section. In fact, I rarely read them. But I do think about this artifact of modern civilization.

Really famous deceased people make it to the front page of the newspapers.

Obituaries are positive unless the person was a convicted felon. They are not quite eulogies, but the
familiar rule of etiquette, “never speak badly of the dead,” generally holds. I recall only one truly savage obituary. It began with what I regard as the classic opening line for any obituary. It was for Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti, one of the era’s more flamboyant despots, noted for the teenage girls who accompanied him. He died in 1971. The obituary began with these words (I am quoting from a 31-year memory):

Yesterday, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier was visited by Haiti’s last remaining democratic
institution.

Which brings me to my topic of the day: the equalizing effects of death. Or, as King Solomon put it so long ago: For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion (Ecclesiastes 9:4).

It’s About Time

The numerical disparity between rich and poor is enormous, e.g., Bill Gates vs. just about anyone. But in terms of lifestyle, there is not much difference. Gates can hire more servants that you can. He lives in a larger home. I have seen it from the water that surrounds it: I was boating with a friend. I saw it when it was being built. It looked kind of like the skeleton for a Ramada Inn. I never wanted to live in a Ramada Inn. In any case, how much time does he spend in it? Maybe his wife does,
but he built it before he got married. It’s the kind of home that is for entertaining large crowds. But who wants to entertain large crowds at home? Not I.

Gates can fly anywhere he wants to in his corporate jet. But I can get there almost as fast. Besides, I don’t want to go anywhere.

With his money, Gates can do a lot more good than you or I can, and also a lot more harm.

I live 40 minutes down Highway 540 from four of the five heirs of Sam Walton. The combined wealth of all five: $100 billion. They don’t like publicity. They rarely get written up in the local newspaper. They stay out of sight. They live in nondescript houses, as big houses go.

Cancer got Sam Walton. He could not buy another year, Just as Ralph Stanley sings. I once wrote to him about a potential cancer cure — unconventional. He wrote back, thanking me for my concern. But he stuck with conventional, expensive treatment.

The difference in life spans, you vs. Walton, or a Chinese peasant who reaches his fifth year vs. anyone else who reaches his fifth year, is minimal, compared to wealth differences. The bell-shaped curve of life expectancy is pretty tight. There aren’t many people on the far right-hand side of the curve. When it comes to standard deviation, there isn’t much deviation.

But there is some, or so the obituary notices indicate. I don’t know if we can trust the following. The examples are amazing. The final entry is the most amazing of all (scroll down). Li Chang Yun’s 1933 obituary is said to have been the inspiration for James Hilton’s novel, LOST HORIZON (1934), the story of Shangri-la. The movie’s character was played by Sam Jaffe. Unlike Gunga Din, this Jaffe character was like the Energizer Bunny. Could the following really be true?

http://www.custance.org/Library/SOTW/APPENDIXES/App_I.html

My point is, that with a few exceptions, there is remarkable equality of the capital asset we call life expectancy. The most precious resource of all is uniformly distributed across the human race. While the distribution of other capital assets can vary widely, time is handed out pretty evenly. Pareto’s 80-20 rule does not apply to life expectancy. Twenty percent of the population does not live 80% longer than the others.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away (Psalm 90:10).

Time is our only irreplaceable resource. This includes Bill Gates. It included Sam Walton.

In this one area of life — life itself — all of us have close to the same quantity of goods.

This is our great opportunity as individuals. Nobody has a significant advantage.

Yet, in terms of capital, the West is richer than the rest of the world. You and I have tremendous advantages that the typical Asian doesn’t enjoy,

This article is reprinted from Issue 127 (March 28, 2002) of Gary North’s very interesting financial email newsletter,  REALITY CHECK.

And It Still Stinks

by Hardly Waite, Pure Water Gazette Senior Editor

 

In 1838 and 1839 the United States government committed a vicious act of genocide,  our own version of the holocaust,  against the Cherokee Indians, a peaceful, civilized 16,000-member tribe living in Georgia. The Cherokees’ crime was that gold had been found on the land they occupied, and the state of Georgia wanted their land for settlement.  Although the U. S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall had ruled that the Cherokees constituted an independent nation and the state of Georgia had no jurisdiction over its territory,  President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the court’s ruling (thereby violating his oath of office in which he swore to uphold the Constitution) and Georgia took away the Cherokees’ land by sponsoring a  public lottery.

In spite of vehement protests of such notable Americans as Senators Davy Crockett and Henry Clay and America’s greatest writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson,  Congress, by a margin of a single vote, decreed  the “relocation” to Oklahoma. of 16,000 Cherokees.   The relocation, known as the Trail of Tears, consisted of a brutal forced march in which fully a fourth of the Cherokee tribe died.  The suffering was unspeakable.  There was no justification and there can be no explanation other than greed.

While the relocation was being plotted by government officials and a fake treaty was signed to make the theft of the Indian land appear legitimate,  Emerson wrote a moving letter of protest to President Martin Van Buren.  In part,  he said:

Such a dereliction of all faith and virtue, such a denial of justice, and such deafness to screams for mercy were never heard of in times of peace and in the dealing of a nation with its own allies and wards, since the earth was made. Sir, does this government think that the people of  the United States are become savage and mad? From their mind are the sentiments of love and good nature wiped clean out? The soul of man, the justice, the mercy that is in the heart’s heart in all men form Maine to Georgia, does abhor this business.

You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit to infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world.

Ralph was right.  And it still stinks.