June/July 2002

Community Consciousness
Eric Sirotkin

Peace and Nuclear Disarmament: A Call to Action
Congressman Dennis Kucinich

We Are Not An Isolated Fringe
Kayla M. Starr, MPH

Rejecting Neo-Liberal Globalization Will Diminish Causes of War and Conflict
Gerald Cavanaugh

War, Inc.
Mike Ferner

Hell to Pay: The Proving Ground
William Rivers Pitt

Liberation Psychology and The Power Elite
Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.

The Age of Inequality
Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Industrial Agriculture Poisoning Our Water and our Home

PR Firms Help Corporations "Infect the World"
George Monbiot

Book Reviews:
The Democracy Owners Manual and The Global Activists Manual

Green Beings: Plant Mind, Planetary Mind
Jesse Wolf Hardin

The Yearly Round
Richard Moeschl

Keep Your Tubes Outta Me … It's a Good Day to Die
John Darling

The Movie Mystic: Waking Life
Stephen Simon

Soy to Enjoy and Soy to Avoid
Rebecca Wood

Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain

BACK TO TOP

Peace and Nuclear Disarmament

A Call To Action

By Congressman Dennis Kucinich

If you believe that humanity has a higher destiny, if you believe we can evolve, and become better than we are; if you believe we can overcome the scourge of war and someday fulfill the dream of harmony and peace on earth, let us begin the conversation today. Let us exchange our ideas.

Let us plan together, act together and create peace together. This is a call for common sense, for peaceful, non-violent citizen action to protect our precious world from widening war and from stumbling into a nuclear catastrophe. The climate for conflict has intensified, with the struggle between Pakistan and India, the China-Taiwan tug of war, and the increased bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinians. United States’ planned troop deployments in the Philippines, Yemen, Georgia, Columbia and Indonesia create new possibilities for expanded war. An invasion of Iraq is planned. The recent disclosure that Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Libya are considered by the United States as possible targets for nuclear attack catalyzes potential conflicts everywhere.

These crucial political decisions promoting increased military actions, plus a new nuclear first-use policy, are occurring without the consent of the American people, without public debate, without public hearings, without public votes. The President is taking Congress’s approval of responding to the Sept. 11 terrorists as a license to flirt with nuclear war.

“Politics ought to stay out of fighting a war,” the President has been quoted as saying on March 13th 2002. Yet Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution explicitly requires that Congress take responsibility when it comes to declaring war. This President is very popular, according to the polls. But polls are not a substitute for democratic process. Attributing a negative connotation here to politics or dismissing constitutionally mandated congressional oversight belies reality: Spending $400 billion a year for defense is a political decision. Committing troops abroad is a political decision. War is a political decision. When men and women die on the battlefield that is the result of a political decision. The use of nuclear weapons, which can end the lives of millions, is a profound political decision. In a monarchy there need be no political decisions. In a democracy, all decisions are political, in that they derive from the consent of the governed.

In a democracy, budgetary, military and national objectives must be subordinate to the political process. Before we celebrate an imperial presidency, let it be said that the lack of free and open political process, the lack of free and open political debate, and the lack of free and open political dissent can be fatal in a democracy.

We have reached a moment in our country’s history where it is urgent that people everywhere speak out as president of his or her own life, to protect the peace of the nation and world within and without. We should speak out and caution leaders who generate fear through talk of the endless war or the final conflict. We should appeal to our leaders to consider that their own bellicose thoughts, words and deeds are reshaping consciousness and can have an adverse effect on our nation. Because when one person thinks: fight! he or she finds a fight. One faction thinks: war! and starts a war. One nation thinks: nuclear! and approaches the abyss. And what of one nation which thinks peace, and seeks peace?

Neither individuals nor nations exist in a vacuum, which is why we have a serious responsibility for each other in this world. It is also urgent that we find those places of war in our own lives, and begin healing the world through healing ourselves. Each of us is a citizen of a common planet, bound to a common destiny. So connected are we, that each of us has the power to be the eyes of the world, the voice of the world, the conscience of the world, or the end of the world. And as each one of us chooses, so becomes the world.

Each of us is architect of this world. Our thoughts, the concepts. Our words, the designs. Our deeds, the bricks and mortar of our daily lives. Which is why we should always take care to regard the power of our thoughts and words, and the commands they send into action through time and space.

Some of our leaders have been thinking and talking about nuclear war. Recently there has been much news about a planning document which describes how and when America might wage nuclear war. The Nuclear Posture Review recently released to the media by the government:

• Assumes that the United States has the right to launch a preemptive nuclear strike.
• Equates nuclear weapons with conventional weapons.
• Attempts to minimize the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.
• Promotes nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack.

Some dismiss this review as routine government planning. But it becomes ominous when taken in the context of a war on terrorism which keeps expanding its boundaries, rhetorically and literally. The President equates the “war on terrorism” with World War II. He expresses a desire to have the nuclear option “on the table.” He unilaterally withdraws from the ABM treaty. He seeks $8.9 billion to fund deployment of a missile shield. He institutes, without congressional knowledge, a shadow government in a bunker outside our nation’s Capitol. He tries to pass off as arms reduction, the storage of, instead of the elimination of, nuclear weapons.

Two generations ago we lived with nuclear nightmares. We feared and hated the Russians who feared and hated us. We feared and hated the “godless, atheistic” communists. In our schools, each of us dutifully put our head between our legs and practiced duck-and-cover drills. In our nightmares, we saw the long, slow arc of a Soviet missile flash into our neighborhood. We got down on our knees and prayed for peace. We surveyed, wide eyed, pictures of the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We supported the elimination of all nuclear weapons. We knew that if you “nuked” others you “nuked” yourself.

The splitting of the atom for destructive purposes admits a split consciousness, the compartmentalized thinking of Us vs. Them, the dichotomized thinking, which spawns polarity and leads to war. The proposed use of nuclear weapons pollutes the psyche with the arrogance of infinite power. It creates delusions of domination of matter and space. It is dehumanizing through its calculations of mass casualties. We must overcome doom thinkers and sayers who invite a world descending, disintegrating into a nuclear disaster. With a world at risk, we must find the bombs in our own lives and disarm them. We must listen to that quiet inner voice which counsels that the survival of all is achieved through the unity of all.

We must overcome our fear of each other, by seeking out the humanity within each of us. The human heart contains every possibility of race, creed, language, religion, and politics. We are one in our common-alties. Must we always fear our differences? We can overcome our fears by not feeding our fears with more war and nuclear confrontations. We must ask our leaders to unify us in courage.

We need to create a new, clear vision of a world as one. A new, clear vision of people working out their differences peacefully. A new, clear vision with the teaching of nonviolence, nonviolent intervention, and mediation. A new, clear vision where people can live in harmony within their families, their communities and within themselves. A new clear vision of peaceful coexistence in a world of tolerance.

We must move away from fear’s paralysis. This is a call to action: to replace expanded war with expanded peace. This is a call for action to place the very survival of this planet on the agenda of all people, everywhere. As citizens of a common planet, we have an obligation to ourselves and our posterity. We must demand that our nation and all nations put down the nuclear sword. We must demand that our nation and all nations:

• Abide by the principles of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
• Stop the development of new nuclear weapons.
• Take all nuclear weapons systems off alert.
• Persist towards total, worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons.

Our nation must:

• Revive the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty.
• Sign and enforce the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
• Abandon plans to build a so-called missile shield.
• Prohibit the introduction of weapons into outer space.

We are in a climate where people expect debate within our two party system to produce policy alternatives. However both major political parties have fallen short. People who ask “Where is the Democratic Party?” and expect to hear debate may be disappointed. When peace is not on the agenda of our political parties or our governments then it must be the work and the duty of each citizen of the world. This is the time to organize for peace. This is the time for new thinking. This is the time to conceive of peace as not simply being the absence of violence, but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness. This is the time to conceive of peace as respect, trust, and integrity. This is the time to tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness which compels violence at a personal, group, national or international levels. This is the time to develop a new compassion for others and ourselves.

When terrorists threaten our security, we must enforce the law and bring terrorists to justice within our system of constitutional justice, without undermining the very civil liberties which permits our democracy to breathe. Our own instinct for life, which inspires our breath and informs our pulse, excites our capacity to reason. Which is why we must pay attention when we sense a threat to survival.

That is why we must speak out now to protect this nation, all nations, and the entire planet and:

• Challenge those who believe that war is inevitable.
• Challenge those who believe in a nuclear right.
• Challenge those who would build new nuclear weapons.
• Challenge those who seek nuclear rearmament.
• Challenge those who seek nuclear escalation.
• Challenge those who would make of any nation a nuclear target.
• Challenge those who would threaten to use nuclear weapons against civilian populations.
• Challenge those who would break nuclear treaties.
• Challenge those who think about nuclear weapons, to think about peace.

It is practical to work for peace. I speak of peace and diplomacy not just for the sake of peace itself. But, for practical reasons, we must work for peace as a means of achieving permanent security. It is similarly practical to work for total nuclear disarmament, particularly when nuclear arms do not even come close to addressing the real security problems which confront our nation, witness the events of September 11, 2001.

That is the purpose of HR 2459. It is a bill to create a Department of Peace. It envisions new structures to help create peace in our homes, in our families, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, in our cities, and in our nation. It aspires to create conditions for peace within and to create conditions for peace worldwide. It considers the conditions which cause people to become the terrorists of the future, issues of poverty, scarcity and exploitation. It is practical to make outer space safe from weapons, so that humanity can continue to pursue a destiny among the stars. HR 3616 seeks to ban weapons in space, to keep the stars a place of dreams, of new possibilities, of transcendence.

We can achieve this practical vision of peace, if we are ready to work for it.
People worldwide need to meet with like-minded people, about peace and nuclear disarmament, now.
People worldwide need to gather in peace, now.
People worldwide need to march and to pray for peace, now.
People worldwide need to be connecting with each other on the web, for peace, now.

We are in a new era of electronic democracy, where the world wide web, numerous web sites and bulletin boards enable new organizations, exercising freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, to spring into being instantly. Thespiritoffreedom.com is such a web site. It is dedicated to becoming an electronic forum for peace, for sustainability, for renewal and for revitalization. It is a forum which strives for the restoration of a sense of community through the empower-ment of self, through commitment of self to the lives of others, to the life of the community, to the life of the nation, to the life of the world.

Where war making is profoundly uncreative in its destruction, peacemaking can be deeply creative. We need to communicate with each other the ways in which we work in our communities to make this a more peaceful world. I welcome your ideas at dkucinich@aol.com or at www.thespiritoffreedom.com. We can share our thoughts and discuss ways in which we have brought or will bring them into action.

Now is the time to think, to take action and use our talents and abilities to create peace: In our families. In our block clubs. In our neighborhoods. In our places of worship. In our schools and universities. In our labor halls. In our parent-teacher organizations.

Now is the time to think, speak, write, organize and take action to create peace as a social imperative, as an economic imper-ative, and as a political imperative. Now is the time to think, speak, write, organize, march, rally, hold vigils and take other nonviolent action to create peace in our cities, in our nation and in the world. And as the hymn says, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

This is the work of the human family, of people all over the world demanding that governments and non-governmental actors alike put down their nuclear weapons. This is the work of the human family, responding in this moment of crisis to protect our nation, this planet and all life within it. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace. As we understand that all people of the world are interconnected, we can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace. We can accomplish this through upholding an holistic vision where the claims of all living beings to the right of survival are recognized. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace through being a living testament to a Human Rights Covenant where each person on this planet is entitled to a life where he or she may consciously evolve in mind, body and spirit.

Nuclear disarmament and peace are the signposts toward the uplit path of an even brighter human condition wherein we can through our conscious efforts evolve and reestablish the context of our existence from peril to peace, from revolution to evolution.
Think peace.
Speak peace.
Act peace.
Peace.

To reach Congressman Dennis Kucinich contact: info@thespiritoffreedom.com or http://www.kucinich.us/contact.htm

On Saturday, thousands of American citizens gathered in Washington, DC to challenge the open-ended war the United States is now waging. They are right to do so, and the broader American public would do well to listen.

Congress authorized a police action to apprehend the conspirators behind the September 11 attack. Congress did not declare war because the President did not ask Congress to declare war. Yet, the Administration is conducting itself as if it were engaged in a declared war, sending military special operations forces to many new countries and ramping up defense spending. The Administration’s budget contains real, inflation-adjusted spending increases only for military spending. Non-military spending is projected to remain flat, and funding for many important programs is decreased, in spite of growing unmet needs. The list of national priorities from which the Administration has taken away federal funds includes education, housing for the elderly, health care, and transportation.

This war footing will ultimately make the world a more dangerous place. Already, the Administration has derailed efforts to negotiate the termination of North Korea’s missile program and undermined efforts by President Khatami and other pro-reform Iranians to moderate the policies of Islamic fundamentalists in Iran. The Administration’s unilateral intention to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, its abandonment of efforts to pass a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and its refusal to negotiate enforcement mechanisms for the Biological Weapons Convention will only compound this instability.

The protestors are also concerned about having civil liberties and basic rights undermined at home. The USA Patriot Act, which 65 of my colleagues and I opposed, allows widespread wiretapping and internet surveillance without judicial supervision. It also allows secret searches without a warrant and gives the Attorney General the power to determine what is and isn’t a domestic terrorist group. The law allows the U.S. government to imprison suspected terrorists for an indefinite period of time without due process or access to family members or lawyers. Last November, the President announced his intention to establish military tribunals as well. The Administration remains confused about extending internationally recognized treatment under the Geneva Convention.

The protestors’ central observation is that these actions will likely have the opposite effect of what is intended—U.S. efforts intended to quell international terrorism will provoke more of it. History is replete with the unintended and counterproductive consequences of U.S. action: the U.S.-led embargo of Iraq, which has led to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians, has solidified Saddam Hussein’s hold on power. Our government secretly sponsored anti-Soviet fundamentalists in Afghanistan and this led to the rise of the Taliban and their harboring of Osama bin Laden.

The path to ending terrorism, whether by individuals, organizations or nation states, is a foreign or domestic policy based on social and economic justice—not corporate concerns. This is the hopeful premise of HR 2459, a bill to create a Department of Peace. This Cabinet-level Department would serve to promote nonviolence as an organizing principle in our society. We should treat others as we would want them to treat us. We should follow international law, if we want others to do so. We should practice non-violence and encourage non-violent conflict resolution whenever possible. We should stop supporting repressive regimes, if we want democracy to flourish.

But that is not the path the Administration has chosen. Those gathering in Washington, DC believe we cannot stop terrorism with an open-ended, permanent war. They believe the time has come for new thinking in meeting the challenges of terrorism. I believe they are right.

From a speech Congressman Kucinich gave last April during the demonstrations in Washington, DC. You may communicate with Dennis Kucinich via email at dkucinich@aol.com or visit www.thespiritoffreedom.com .