The Wisdom to Know the Difference

For those of you who read this blog, you know that I've spent the last several months being upset. I've been stuck on the idea that America "should" be leading the world in civil liberties and human rights. I keep thinking the US government "should" stop spying on its citizens and torturing people. We "should not" indefinitely hold people in Guantanamo and other secret prisons. The more I think about the way things “should” be, the more upset I become. In response to my level of upset, I write my blog and take an active role in protesting, but it never seems like enough.

I've come to realize that "should" only increases my level of struggle, and struggle increases my level of upset. Like Deepak Chopra said, "At the level of the ego, we struggle to solve our problems. Spirit sees that struggle is the problem."

Recently I saw a counselor who reminded me of the serenity prayer. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference." I have been meditating on this prayer and it has helped me a lot. I am beginning to distinguish between the things I cannot change and the things that I can change. I am still upset about what is going on in the world, but I'm not as consumed as I once was. I guess you could say I'm in the process of recovery, though I've got a way to go.

The question I get to ask myself is, “Where is the balance?” How do I balance between standing up for civil liberties and maintaining my serenity? The answer seems to lie in the “wisdom to know the difference.” Yes, I get to accept those things I cannot change. That makes sense. I have never lacked for the courage to change the things I can change. That’s not an issue. My challenge is in knowing the difference and being determined to set boundaries.

It might sound like a platitude, but I like this saying. “I may be only one, but I am one. I may not be able to do everything, but I can do something.” I feel like that’s my mission, to do the something that I can do and no more. I will continue to fight, but with balance and serenity. That way I’ll be here for the long battle ahead.

Do You Know Joe?

Do you know the name Jose Padilla? You might think, “Wasn’t he caught trying to set off a dirty bomb?” or maybe, “Wasn’t he fighting in Afghanistan?” I’m afraid you’d be wrong on both counts, though it’s easy to see how you would be confused with all of the misinformation that has been spread by the Bush Administration. Despite the fact that his name is mentioned regularly on the national news, you might have lost him in all of the terror-related news since September 11, 2001. Let me help you to get caught up.

Jose Padilla is a citizen of the United States. He was born in Brooklyn, NY and lived in Chicago. In 2002 Jose traveled to the Middle East. Upon his return on May 8, 2002 he was arrested on a warrant as a “material witness” to the September 11th attacks. No connection was ever made to September 11th, only a vague material witness allegation. On June 9th, President Bush arbitrarily declared Jose Padilla to be an “enemy combatant.” The effect of this designation was to take Jose out of the criminal system while not affording him the rights provided under the Geneva Conventions. Jose Padilla, a US citizen was cast into a legal no-man’s land.

Before we go on with this story, I want to pause just to make sure you get what I just said. Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago, not on some far off battle field fighting American forces. He has not been tried on any charge. He was simply declared by one person in the US, President Bush, to be an “enemy combatant,” and just like that, all of his rights went away. Upon President Bush’s order, Jose Padilla was taken away from his family and his attorney and sent to a Navy brig in South Carolina. The scary thing is, this could happen to you or me.

In June, 2002 the Bush Administration made sweeping allegations about Jose Padilla’s intention to set off a dirty bomb in the US. An attorney, Donna Newman took up his case. Despite dogged opposition from the Bush Administration, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Jose’s case in November, 2005, three and a half years after his capture. Two days before the case was to go to the Supreme Court, the Bush Administration decided to drop the military charges and instead file charges in criminal court alleging that Jose had “conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas.” Nowhere in the charges did the Bush Administration allege a plot to blow up a dirty bomb or to commit any other criminal act in the US.

Jose’s day in court is scheduled for April 16, 2007, almost four years after his initial capture. In the mean time, his lawyers allege that he has been tortured to the point where he cannot assist in his own defense. According to recent testimony in his competency trial it was revealed that Jose was kept in sensory depravation for years. His windows were blacked out and the one light in his cell could only be activated by his jailers. He had no clock or visibility to the outside. When Jose was moved outside of his 8’ x 8’ cell, heavy goggles and headphones were placed on him to keep him in sensory deprivation. At other times he was subjected to intense lights and pulsating sounds. According to reports, Jose Padilla was kept under these conditions for 1,307 days. His interrogators covered their name badges when they questioned him for hours on end. This information has just begun to trickle in. More revelations could be forthcoming.

Jose Padilla was only able to find his way out of this hell because he had the power of habeas corpus, the right to have his day in court. Last year the Republican-led Congress stripped all enemy combatants of their habeas corpus rights in a bill called the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This Act and the general treatment of “enemy combatants” have brought on the scorn of the UN high commissioner for human rights.

Today, Jose Padilla has been found competent to stand trial. However, the judge also commented that she may conduct another hearing into torture allegations, and so the revelations will continue. What is being uncovered in this trial is not a mad bomber about to explode a dirty bomb. Instead the trial is revealing a rogue US administration violating international laws with flagrant disregard. If this is the democracy that the Bush Administration wants to export, I don’t blame the world for being frightened. We could all suffer the fate of a US citizen named Jose.

One Grain at a Time

Have you ever held a single dry soybean in your hand? What do you think it weighs: one gram? Imagine holding a soybean in your palm and see if you can get a sense of the weight of it. It’s very, very light – hardly noticeable. And yet, this year, somewhere in the Midwest, it is very likely that someone will probably die from the weight of soybeans.

At a grain silo, grain in the silo drains into several openings in the floor, then into an underground tunnel and onto a conveyor belt. The grain occasionally will hang up and not flow through those openings. When it hangs up, too often someone will enter the silo to move the grain. And too often, that someone will not make it out of the grain silo alive. It is too common an occurrence. Sometimes the person who enters the silo places their face too close to the grain, where there is a layer of carbon dioxide and they die from a lack of oxygen, but just as often the person suffocates by an avalanche of the grain inside. One tiny grain is very light, but when a man is under thousands of grains, they can take his life.

I don’t know what it’s like to suffer such a fate and I would not compare anything I’ve experienced to the suffering of the families of such a farmer, but I will say I know what it’s like to have thousands and thousands of tiny weights lying on top of me until I can hardly breathe. Every day tiny infractions of our rights as citizens, every human right and civil liberty that is violated, stack on us like so much grain, unnoticed and unimportant at first, until it is too late.

Today the news media reported that a deal has been struck for sharing oil revenue in all of the Iraqi provinces equally. This is good news, right? I should feel relieved, right? But then I found out that the dark side of the story went mostly unreported. It seems that big oil companies are being given absolute control over Iraqi oil, and it feels like another grain has fallen on top of me. A federal appeals court said it was fine to indefinitely hold prisoners without charge. “Tic,” goes the sound of one tiny grain striking my arm. Dick Cheney is saber-rattling with Iran. Tic. The Bush Administration continues to spy on us. Tic, tic, tic.

The horrible thing about imagining oneself suffocated in a grain bin is that you observe the phenomenon from within the tragedy. This is not like sitting in your car and watching a careening truck coming your way. You have no sense of dispassionate detachment. You are inside the tragedy as it happens grain by grain. As a citizen, I sit within the US and watch this imperial presidency implode upon itself and there is nothing I can do about it. Tic, tic, tic go the grains and I just can’t seem to get ahead of them. Soon their weight is alarming, but by the time I realize this, it’s almost too late.

All we can do is struggle. We must struggle for the oxygen of freedom, for overcoming the weight that besets us. We must struggle against imperialism and hubris; against the military-industrial complex. We must struggle against violations of human rights and civil liberties wherever they occur. If we do not struggle, then one grain at a time, we will be overcome. Struggle on!

Four Questons For John Edwards

As a blogger I was lucky enough to be invited to sit in an intimate setting with John and Elizabeth Edwards and ask them some questions. I've uploaded a video of four questions I asked John Edwards along with his answers.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN-Iiumg-3o

The issues we asked about included

1. What should we do about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?
   
2. Would you make the US a States Party of the International Criminal Court?
   
3. Would you sign the Kyoto Protocol, dealing with the causes of global warming?
   
4. Should there be parity between mental and physical health insurance?

Take a look at the video to see Senator Edwards’ responses.

Your Only Choice is the Role you will Play

Wow. I hope my thoughts are coherent as I write this. My blood is pumping with adrenaline. Something very, very strange just happened, and I want to share it right away, but I’m still shaking and I want to make sure my description is rational.

I have a neighbor, whom I barely know. They are a charming young couple with a precocious three-year-old. The man’s name is Jim and I never can remember the wife’s name. The three-year-old is Madison. She’s one of those not-quit-chubby-but-hasn’t-yet-grown-taller toddlers. She’s got chocolate brown hair that falls perfectly in a Dorothy Hamill cut. She is constantly smiling her baby-teeth smile at my wife and me as we pass in the hall of our apartment building, especially if we have our dog with us. This is a child that loves life and is full of more energy than any 10 mortals deserve. At least that’s my impression from our 5 second encounters. I don’t really know them, but I know who they are. Do you know what I mean?

The couple doesn’t get out much and so I guess today they decided to hire a babysitter and to go out, perhaps to a matinee movie. I only know this because I heard someone being walked around their apartment being given specific instructions about who to call in case of an emergency and his cell phone number and her cell phone number and what to do if she gets their voice mail and that they would call her right back if they miss the call because they might have their phones on vibrate and… you get the picture. They don’t get out much.

We can hear the neighbors a bit better than either of us wishes and so I heard the bath running not too long after the parents left. I heard the usual “bath time” followed by tiny feet running and squealing as Madison decided it was not bath time after all. This is almost a comforting rhythm for me. Bath runs. Madison runs. Parents chase and laugh. Madison gets a bath. But there was something different. The baby sitter wasn’t laughing.

The more Madison ran, the more the babysitter tried to sound authoritarian. “Madison, you come here right now!” Pause. “Madison, I mean it.” Longer pause. “One…two…Madison you come back here!” I laughed quietly to myself. This babysitter had a lot to learn about the use of power and authority. Madison was running this show and she knew it.

After a couple of minutes, I heard a sound I wasn’t expecting. It was the sound of Madison being spanked. Now, let me say that I believe there may be times for a spanking, so it’s not the spanking itself that disturbed me so. It was the length to which it was carried on…by a babysitter…in anger. I could feel my face flushing. Like I said, I don’t really know this couple that well, and it’s not my child, and, I didn’t hire the babysitter…but I’m babbling. Let’s just say I thought about telling the parents when they came home.

Now I was interested in what was going on next door. Madison was very upset. She had not seen this coming. From her perspective it was normal behavior to run before the bath, but this beating must have seemed unfair, unprovoked and, quite frankly, completely new. I don’t think Madison had ever been spanked before for any reason. And she was livid.

The sound moving from the far end of the apartment until the sitter and Madison arrived in the bathroom sounded like quite the struggle. I could tell that Madison was being dragged forcibly toward the still-running bathtub. She was howling and the sitter was barking out threats of further beatings. But this was nothing compared to what happened when they finally arrived in the bathroom.

Through our thin walls I heard the baby sitter undressing the sobbing child. Madison was beginning to calm. The sitter was beginning to calm. But when the sitter lifted Madison into the tub, Madison screamed at a pitch that caused me to leap out of my chair. “Hot” she screamed. “HOT!”

“Oh, it’s not that hot,” I heard the sitter say while struggling to hold Madison down while simultaneously switching off the hot water and switching on the cold.

“HOT!” insisted Madison and she screamed again.

Now, let me interrupt this story with two questions.

1. How are you feeling right now?


If you’ve been reading this story with anything more than a passing interest, I’m sure you’re like me – heart pounding, blood pressure up, anxious to resolve this. I realize that, with Madison suspended in this situation, it’s hard to think of anything else, but for one moment, let’s pretend that you’re me, that you’re in this situation. You’re standing five feet away from this screaming child with a thin wall in between. This brings us to our second question.


2. What would you do? Here are some choices:

1. Collaborate with the babysitter and help her victimize Madison.


2. Run next door and jump into the tub with Madison so that you are also victim.


3. Bang on the wall and shout at the babysitter, hoping to disrupt the situation.


4. Dial 9-1-1, run to the neighboring apartment door, kick in the door, run to the bathroom and snatch up the child.


5. Not bother with the phone or door, but jump straight through the wall.


6. Go down to Starbucks and try the new Mint Mocha Frappuccino your friends are raving about.

In any situation in which someone is being victimized, there are only six roles you and I can play.

• Perpetuator
  
• Collaborator
  
• Victim
  
• Bystander
  
• Resistor
  
• Rescuer

This is the total extent of our choices. Whether we welcome our role or not, simply by being aware of the situation means we have taken on one of these roles. The only good news here is that we have a choice as to which role we will play.

Obviously, the babysitter is the perpetuator and Madison is the victim (or perhaps the resistor). But what about us? What is our role here? Are we going to be a collaborator, bystander, resistor or rescuer? If you’re like me, there are only one or two choices that fit my values. I can resist, or I can rescue. Nothing else matches my image of myself.

Use this same model to think about what happened during the holocaust. As six million Jews were systematically stripped of their rights, swept up into ghettoes and concentration camps, and eventually murdered, what role did their neighbors play? They did not ask for a role, but by virtue of the public humiliation of the Jews, they had no choice to but to take on one of the roles named above. Sure there were some who were resistors and rescuers, but the truth is, the vast majority of the neighbors of the Jews who were murdered, were simply bystanders.

Historian Ian Kershaw, who has deeply studied the holocaust, said “The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.” As the most infamous genocide of all time was taking place, most people who were aware played the role of the bystander - millions of times, millions of choices and millions upon millions of bystanders. As Edmund Burke is supposed to have said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The cost of indifference is incalculable.

As you read the news reports about men tortured or shackled in the euphemistically phrased “stress positions,” for hours on end, sleep deprived, and kept at extreme temperatures…some guilty, some innocent, and yet none of them charged…when you read about men being held without charge in Guantanamo Bay for five years or more, without hope of reprieve, unable to face their accusers in court…when you are aware of all of this, how do you feel? Are you unblinking and unmoved?

As you read the story of Madison, you are moved to…what? Outrage? Anger? Action? I tell you one fictitious story about one fictitious little girl, and you’re ready to leap out of your chair. You hear hundreds of reports of men being treated in the most heinous and inhumane ways, and what is your reaction? More importantly, what is your role? Are you a bystander, or are you willing to be a resistor or even a rescuer? Are you ready to take direct action, such as signing petitions, writing letters or participating in protests? Or is it OK with you to be a bystander? Again, you get to choose one of the roles, but these roles are your only choices.

What is it about the plight of men being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or being tortured in secret CIA prisons…what is it about men who are flown by our government to Syria or Egypt or other countries to be tortured on our behalf that does not move you? Is it because our government has told us that these men are “bad men” or that they are “terrorists,” and yet they have never been tried or found guilty of anything?

Did you know that of the more than 700 men who have come through Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, only 10 have ever been formally charged with any crime and none have been given a trial to determine whether or not the charges are true? Did you know that a few hundred men have been released from Guantanamo Bay, and turned over to their home countries for “further prosecution,” and yet the vast majority of those released from Guantanamo Bay are never prosecuted, but released from custody? Why? It seems there’s no reason to hold these people since it was never shown that they were in any way connected to Qaeda or terrorism.

In closing, let’s look at the words of Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor who gave a speech at the Whitehouse in 1999. As he looked back at the violence of the century just ending, he remarked:

"So much violence, so much indifference. What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means 'no difference.' A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil."

Our children will look back at this time in history. What will your role be? As you choose, remember that there is a very high price to be paid for indifference.