Childhood Scream B Stop the Killing!

Francoise Hall

Table of Contents

Introduction.................................................................................................................................... 5

Waiting for the Bomb.................................................................................................................... 9

Little Girl in Your Cellar................................................................................................... 10

Bombardment Revisited.................................................................................................... 11

I killed Her......................................................................................................................... 12

Me and the War................................................................................................................. 14

I am the War...................................................................................................................... 15

The Cellar-School.............................................................................................................. 16

The War B A Child=s Perspective............................................................................................. 18

A Sea of Dead................................................................................................................... 19

Food and Punishment........................................................................................................ 21

A Child=s World Destroyed............................................................................................. 23

The War B Still Unfinished......................................................................................................... 25

Mise-en-Scene: World War II............................................................................................ 26

In the Cellar....................................................................................................................... 27

The War B Now Inside...................................................................................................... 29

War.... 30

AAfter the War@................................................................................................................ 32

Mourning...................................................................................................................................... 33

The Plight........................................................................................................................... 34

To Miriam.......................................................................................................................... 35

War B Then and Now................................................................................................................. 36

Similarities......................................................................................................................... 36

On the Anniversary of World War II in Belgium.................................................. 37

1940, 2003............................................................................................................. 38

Across Generations........................................................................................................... 39

Indictment of My Ancestors................................................................................. 40

The Banality of War.............................................................................................. 41

The Present................................................................................................................................... 42

After World War II........................................................................................................... 43

Conditions Propitious for War................................................................................................... 46

The Meaning of Life......................................................................................................... 46

Kosovo................................................................................................................... 47

In the Nursery................................................................................................................... 49

Memorial Day........................................................................................................ 50

Exploiting Nature.............................................................................................................. 51

Born in 2025.......................................................................................................... 52

Exploiting Others.............................................................................................................. 57

September 11, 2001............................................................................................... 58

Demagoguery.................................................................................................................... 64

Call to Arms........................................................................................................... 65

Culture............................................................................................................................... 70

Alone. 71

The Lure of Power............................................................................................................ 73

Hubris 74

Trauma.............................................................................................................................. 77

Sickness................................................................................................................. 78

Science and Technology................................................................................................... 79

On Killing.............................................................................................................. 80

Silence............................................................................................................................... 83

Iraq Tortured.......................................................................................................... 84

Resources.......................................................................................................................... 89

Oil Today, Water Tomorrow................................................................................. 90

Denial 94

To 500,000 Iraqis................................................................................................... 95

Injustice............................................................................................................................. 97

Our Global Village B North and South................................................................. 98

Insensitivity...................................................................................................................... 105

Guernica, Baghdad.............................................................................................. 106

The Future.................................................................................................................................. 108

Western Civilization BA Short History of its Aerial Bombardments.............................. 109

Western Civilization at Crossroads.................................................................................. 114

March 14, 2003

Introduction

I was born in Liege, Belgium, in 1932. After a life-threatening breast abscess (caused by a form of sexual abuse B the squeezing of my normally swollen nipple by a nun), and a life-and-death struggle with whooping cough (brought home by my older sisters), I finally began to grow and thrive at around five months of age. That was March 1933, the month Hitler became dictator of the Third Reich. We were 25 miles from the German border.

My mother always preferred a career to bringing up children. My two sisters were wanted. I was not. I was a burden from the start and it didn=t help that I was a third girl. Genevieve was three years and Marguerite was not quite one year older than I was. Mother enrolled me in nursery school at age three, herself undertaking studies towards a teacher=s certificate. For me, school henceforth would seem more a warehouse than anything connected with life.

When I was six years old, in 1939, mother packed four suitcases and placed then on chairs in each corner of the dining room, ready to be closed for a quick departure whenever the dreaded event would take place B the German invasion of Belgium. The plan was that father would report to the Belgian army and mother, with us children, would flee to her mother, in Brussels, about fifty miles west of Liege.

The fateful day came on Friday, May 10, 1940, at 4 a.m. Awoken by a cataclysmic noise of strafing airplanes and exploding bombs, my sisters and I scampered down to my parents= bedroom on the second floor. The radio was announcing the German invasion. To the horrific sounds of falling plaster and shattering windows, mother gave us a bath in a small puddle of cold water at the bottom of the bathtub B it was unthinkable for her to leave the house unwashed. On the street (where I first saw bombs dropping out of airplanes), she pleaded with a man to give us a ride in his car to the train station. Once there, we barely squeezed ourselves into a train headed for Brussels. Father, after very narrowly escaping death on his way, joined us the next day.

The Germans were advancing fast and my parents decided to flee to France. I will always see my grandmother=s face, red, swollen and full of tears, as she went around our car to kiss each one of us, perhaps for the last time. She was refusing to flee. AThis is my home!@ she was saying, AI am staying right here! If God means me to die, then I will!@

We slept that night in the home of an older couple on whose door we had knocked at random to beg for floor space. They insisted that we sleep in their own bedroom, my parents in the double bed and us children on the floor beside it. The bombs detonated all night to the sound of church bells announcing the invasion. Lying on the floor, trembling, I put my feet on the wooden frame of the large bed to gain some comfort B through the wood.

The next day, even the western-most part of the frontier with France, near the North Sea, was closed to cars. Father sold our car, bought five bicycles and the French border guards waved us through. All our possessions fitted on five bicycles. It was a long way to Dunkirk for me, a seven year old, on a hot day, with the three or four layers of clothes mother had put on me. The bike was strange and I fell. Terror that my family might leave me behind put steel in my exhausted and suffocating body.

We stayed in Paris for two to three days. It was in a parc, playing by ourselves, that Marguerite and I had our first experience in a public shelter B those dark, smelly cement pits in which people pack themselves and wait, trembling, wondering which of those bombs they hear whistle above, could be headed for their family.

The Germans were advancing through France and we fled further south. During a period of less than twenty-four hours, mother sold her jewelry to have money to buy a car, my parents bought a car, and the French army requisitioned the car.

Both my parents, as children, had been through the German occupation of Belgium during the First World War. They did not want a repeat now when they were in their thirties. Their hope was to reach the port of Bordeaux and from there, flee to England which would hopefully escape a German invasion. But we were on the first train that didn=t make it to Bordeaux. The tracks just ahead were bombed. The train deposited us in a hay field, in the middle of the French countryside, along with our meager belongings, which nevertheless included for each one of us, a large, well-fitting gas mask.

In Montauban, in the South of France, near Toulouse, we asked asylum from a succession of French families, finding ourselves thrown out onto the sidewalk several times. France was deluged by Belgian refugees. Mother=s left hip, bad from a childhood illness, began to hurt more and more. One day, exhausted, she left the three of us in a ditch on the side of a rural road so she could walk unencumbered to the center of town for her obligatory daily report to the French authorities as to our whereabouts. I was convinced that she was abandoning us and that I would never see her again. For many, many hours after she returned, I was unable to stop crying.

Father, a civil engineer, was in St. Etienne, 200 miles to the northeast, working for the French army. We joined him there, renting an apartment from an old lady who forbade us to wash ourselves, much less do laundry, because this would increase the mildew on her walls. Mother did wash us in the sink, one by one, but her rinse water was scarce and my itchy skin kept me awake many a night.

On June 22, France surrendered. We were back in Belgium by the end of July. German soldiers were in the streets everywhere. Soon the Allies started bombing, in particular, the bridge across the River Meuse, two blocks from our home. An anti-aircraft defense cannon (DCA) was placed on the six-story apartment building at the corner of our street. The almost nightly inferno of strafing airplanes answered by the staccato of anti-aircraft artillery would last five years B the Allies bombing German-occupied Belgium from 1940 to 1944, and the Germans bombing Allied-occupied Belgium from 1944 to the end of the war, May 8, 1945.

Living under a harsh military occupation was a nightmare experience for a growing child B ages 7 to 12 years. But the worst of this seemingly unending hell were our trips to the cellar, 2-3 times weekly, mostly at night, to wait, literally, for the next bomb to drop. The combination of the obligatory immobility and the complete impossibility of escaping, amounted to torture B an agonizing expectation of probable death. Father would bid us adieu, AGoodbye, children, the next one is for us!@ He and Genevieve would be sitting on one bench; mother, Marguerite and I on another. Marguerite and I would be glued to mother, or more accurately, glued to exactly our own half of her poor, overburdened body. All of us would be shaking. To wait in a semi-dark cellar for death coming from the skies, is one of the most prolonged and damaging experience the war has inflicted on me.

In May 1944, as the Allies were gaining ground, a member of the Resistance working in the same cell as my father, was caught and under extreme torture revealed some names, among which were my father=s. We went into hiding in the Ardennes, the beautiful mountains in the southeast part of Belgium. The contrast between the serenity and harmony of the pristine pine forests and the merciless, continuous killing of human beings by one another, made a deep impression on me. I would look up at the stunning stateliness of the pines then look with apprehension behind each trunk for clues to my impending death from a gun barrel. I never went to relieve myself in the woods without Marguerite as my protective guard to spot any possible German soldiers.

During Christmas 1944, while we were in Brussels, the Germans made a last ditch attempt to regain Belgian territory. This offensive, by Field Marshall von Rundstedt, made a bulge in the front in the direction of Belgium and hence became known at the Battle of the Bulge. It was one of the more sordid moments of World War II. The Germans, desperate, knowing that they had lost the war and forbidden by Hitler to surrender, fired on anything that moved. Our house was bombed and we lost many friends, in particular, those that had been so generous to us while we were in hiding.

We stayed in Brussels for a year and then, in 1946, moved to Montreal, Canada, father taking a position in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a subsidiary of the United Nations, formed the previous year. The nightmare was over. The New World welcomed us. Bombs did not drop from the skies, Jewish classmates did not disappear, murder was not a daily occurrence, there were no concentration camps, there was no torture or Gestapo, food was not rationed and school bags did not hide revolvers for the Resistance.

After finishing college at McGill University, I came to the United States to study medicine at Harvard Medical School. I entered the second year the School accepted women in their program. I married a classmate and had three children. He sought another mate, Anot burned by the war,@ after twenty years of marriage.

It has been a source of enormous pain for me that my liberators, the Americans and Canadians, have since World War II, pursued a policy of hegemony rather than the alleviation of the conditions which lead to the horror which is war. Iraqi children are at this very moment waiting for a bomb to drop on them, just like I was sixty-three years ago. Today=s political situation is reminiscent of that in 1939-1940, when one rogue state was intent on war and the would-be victims had their suitcases ready. Now, unfortunately, it is my once-liberators who are the ones bent on war.

Today=s explosive power is far, far greater than it was during the Second World War. But it only takes one small bullet or one very small bomb to kill a little girl who, while waiting in her cellar to be killed, negotiates desperately with the next bomb, begging it to drop on someone else, for she has just tasted life and would do or give anything to be able to keep it.

This book is dedicated to all the children who have been physically and psychologically split apart, devastated, alienated, maimed, disfigured and killed by the barbarism which is war.

Francoise Hall

March 14, 2003

***

February 5, 1975

Little Girl in Your Cellar

Little girl in your cellar

You still exist, though only in memory

I am the woman you became

You didn=t die, as you were sure you would

You are still there frozen with fear

Waiting for that next fateful bomb

Feeling completely alone

Though your head lay on your mother=s lap

You lived B by chance, I know not why

But bewildered and frightened

You grew up a mock adult

And lived a travesty of life

Then one day out of nowhere and unannounced

A man appeared within your path^(*)

He walked along and gently said

Life need not be a living death

You cried and cried but through it all

You became the woman I am

Almost adult, almost mature

Living life rather than fearing its end

And now I can go back to you

Little girl in the cellar

Stunned, angry and helpless

Perhaps I can soothe and comfort you

B And if not you another child

Who, like you, expects to be killed.

___________________

(*) My therapist.

June 9, 2000

Bombardment Revisited

Wailing sirens

The war engulfs

(Because of my badness)

Chaos, gunfire, artillery, killings

Mayhem, screams, detonations, maimings

Search lights pierce the night sky

Airplanes shriek down and groan back up

Cannons respond in staccato

Bombs moan to their destination

Shrapnel slice, cows bellow

Windows shatter, houses crumble, bridges fall,

A lottery so infernal even the devil shivers

(All because of me?)

Waiting, trembling

An explosion

I heard the bomb

Therefore it wasn=t for me

Waiting, shaking

No explosion

I don=t hear the bomb

Therefore it=s meant for me

The ground shudders

The house cracks and leans

Dust fills the air

Surely the next one is for us

All will disappear

Terror

Let me crawl into your arms

October 6, 2000

I killed Her

The bombs were falling and for sure one would drop on us

My mother sitting beside me, patiently, resignedly tolerating my glueing myself to her for safety

(Or rather glueing myself to Amy@ half of her, since Marguerite Aowned@ her other half)

My father further away with Genevieve, shaking like a leaf

AGoodbye children.! The next one is for us! Goodbye children!@

Then my mother: AFor God=s sake, shut up!@

The cellar plunged in almost total darkness according to strict blackout rules

The incessant noise of haphazard destruction

AI am going to die

But why? Why are they trying to kill me?

I haven=t done anything

Or maybe I have. I want to live

I very much want to live

Then that must be my crime

I want to live and they don=t want me to live

I must kill the me that wants so much to live. She wants to live too much@

So I killed her. I killed my soul

I killed her because she was going to die anyway

Better die now at my hands than later at their hands

It hurts less when you kill yourself than when others kill you

And the timing is more certain, under your own control

Now they could never get to her because she was already dead

A private murder hidden from all -- the Allies (our supposed Afriends@) dropping their bombs

The Germans who wanted to kill us all, my parents who never took notice

I laid her in her coffin

Sweet innocent child

Her face white, her eyes closed, peaceful, no longer afraid

She was my heart, my soul, my hope for happiness, my hope for life itself

A ghost remained behind

A body numbed, without life, without wish, without passion

Now it won=t hurt so much to die

And in any case a murderer deserves to die

But the bomb didn=t drop on us

Against all odds the murderer lived

A criminal unable to rescue her soul from death

Doomed forever to suffer for her crime

Later in life, the murderer became a missionary

And accused all of humanity of being murderers

For no one had ever been able to save that Alast@ suffering child in the world

The child who was me ^(*)

____________________________________________

(*) I was the third and last child in our family.

January 14, 2001

Me and the War

Both unwanted

Both in the way

Both a big burden on my parents

Both a noose around their neck

If I were not there

Perhaps the war would not be either

Both gone

And the world better off

The war is hateful

So am I

Nobody wants war

And nobody wants me

January 14, 2001

I am the War

Of course I kill. I am the war

My mother hates men. I=ll kill them for her

My father hates women. I=ll kill him for it

I am the war. My power reaches everywhere

I hate men. They kill

I hate my father=s penis

And by extension, I hate him

I want to kill him

Men are soldiers and they kill

If I killed all the men

There would be no war

When I become a woman, I=ll kill all the men

German soldiers torture me

They are men

I resist

I=ll resist men always

My mother feels like killing my father sometimes

When I grow up, I=ll feel like that also

To be a woman is to wish to kill a man

Men hurt and kill and deserve to be killed

My father says sex is no different from eating or defecating

Wearing clothes a sign of bourgeois decadence

Sex a natural animal function to preserve the species

Marriage only the invention of irrational people

War cows even him, this most powerful of individuals

I see how it makes him helpless, defenseless, afraid, subdued

I want to be, like war, more powerful than he

Then kill him for parading his penis around as a badge of superiority

I=ll cow him anyway because as a woman

I=ll have something he can never have

The ability to bear children

That only a woman can have

But then, one needs men to have children...

January 11, 2003

The Cellar-School

It doesn=t award degrees or certificates

And is not recognized by the authorities

Its walls are unfinished and mildewed

Its lighting a weak, yellow ceiling bulb

There are no windows or blackboard

No pens, bright colors, books or maps

No teachers to explain or give exams

For in it, bare facts speak for themselves

It takes two days to transmit the lesson

The first is above ground. Upon awakening

The child gazes upward, dumbfounded

What are these things falling out of airplanes?

A blood-curdling noise deafens her ears

She shakes and watches bewildered

As the earth surrenders itself up the sky

That instant also turning her into a coward

The second day, the child does not look

She rehearses the scene by its sounds

As she runs to the cellar, her life school

Helpless, scared, seeking only survival

She has learned that some people kill

And if one does, then they all could

She has lost her center of control

Her life now belongs to those she fears

She must either propitiate or escape them

And though on the outside she still lives

Inside she has died, only a blank remaining

To decide whether to beg, cringe or flee

Why, she asks? What have I done?

What horrible crime have I committed?

But she realizes there is no forgiveness

She must face alone the fate handed to her

Soon she discovers there is no God

For no God would ever allow this

Hers is only emptiness and dread

Life become a prelude to death

I spent my youth in such a school

Daily I pleaded with my enemy

Bomb, not here, please, let me live

On somebody else, I=ll do anything

The sky was one of my biggest losses

Even blue it became a carrier of death

I preferred our dungeon-like cellar

My head buried in my mother=s laps

I don=t know history or the liberal arts

I was not honed to be a leader

But I know the preciousness of life

And that wars should never happen

As I have grown older, I have noted

That cellars tend to be for the powerless

The elite often only reading about them

At times even skipping crucial passages

Cellar-schools may keep bodies alive

But courage, faith, trust, the joy of life

Self-assurance, belief in others= goodness

Are all murdered mercilessly, irrevocably

As is also the hope that the non-initiated

Might one day understand the devastation

Wrought in the heart of the pupils

Cellars wield a deep and indissoluble divide.

***

June 9, 2001

A Sea of Dead

1940

The ditch in which my father has escaped when his train was bombed, already harbors two men

The driver of a motorcycle who is dying and his passenger who cannot drive the vehicle

My father becomes the new driver. He and the passenger abandon the dying man

Our train Dunkerque-Paris stalls and shakes as it is being strafed and bombed by the Germans

Out the window I see a bomb falling onto the cow pasture. With a tremendous detonation

The earth and cows are blown sky-high. Were there any people in the pasture?

1941

Commotion and gunfire interrupt a rare trip with my mother to downtown Liege

The Germans are cordoning off a city block, rounding up all men for deportation to labor camps

One man runs. I hear gunshots. He falls to the ground. I avert my eyes

1942

My mother points to a cattle train going east, towards Germany

They are Jews in those wagons, she says, not cattle. No one knows what will happen to them

Like no one knows what happened to Miriam?

Awoken from sleep and huddled in the cellar, we are waiting for a bomb to drop

Suddenly, a surprised gasp in the street, an angry tirade in German, and three shots

Did the man die? Why did he break the curfew? Who found him the next day?

1943

My father=s four train companions spend the trip comparing their smuggling feats

Upon arrival in Liege, one of them gets up, shows his Gestapo card and arrests the other three

My father, thanking his own silence, returns home with his two suitcases of smuggled food

Wailing sirens announce a bombardment as my father returns from work on his motorcycle

He knocks on a door to request shelter. A woman graciously lets him in and they talk

The house is hit, the woman killed. My father comes home dumb, ghostly, dirty, bloody, shaking

A woman explains to my mother how she takes her newborn with her wherever she goes

She fears being killed by the Resistance and hopes the baby will give them pause

Her husband, under torture, has revealed some names B including my father=s

1943-44

Whiling away the time in Renardmont, I count the airplanes on their way to bomb Germany

They take hours to pass overhead, totaling hundreds per sortie, in formations of five or ten

My heart fills with hope. The more Germans killed the better

1944

All trains have been requisitioned. I am traveling to Liege in a truck, alone with six adults

The alert sounds. We stop and look at the starry sky strafed with flying bombs and search lights

As I am looking at a V-1, its motor stops. If I die, I will die alone

Christmas 1944 B The von Rundstedt Offensive (ABattle of the Bulge@)

They killed the old couple next door when they re-took Renardmont

She will never again syringe her ears, bent over a basin, on her front porch

He will never again sit contentedly in the sunshine, taking in the pine smell of the Ardennes

Our other neighbors while we were hiding, were a family with eight adult children

The Germans killed six, point-blank, in front of their parents, then killed the parents

They had given us milk, protected our identity, introduced me to the wonders of four-leaf clover

A young mother was shopping, infant in her arms, when the Germans re-invaded Stavelot

She fell in the snow when they killed her. When her family dared venture out three days later

They found her body, the baby under it, frozen to death

The Stavelot doctor must have surmised we were in hiding

He said little and asked no questions when he treated my wound six months ago

Did the Germans spare him, as he spared us, when they re-took the town? Is he dead?

1945

A train of American wounded is refueling in Tirlemont, between Liege and Brussels

Through an open door, I catch a glimpse of a young man, face up, immobile in his tidy bunk bed

I cannot see his wound. Can he move? Will he die?

Brussels has a well-publicized motorcade to welcome back its concentration camp survivors

I wave enthusiastically from the sidelines B only to realize I am waving at the remains of men

Bald, dazed, lifeless, wide-eyed skeletons in well-pressed suits. Is that what they call alive?

My cousins, in their early twenties, have spent the past two years in Buchenwald

Victor has just returned. Aunt Maggie refuses to believe Alain is dead. She loses her mind

And begins a life-long search for the son she as a young widow, raised single-handedly

We have moved to Brussels. I stick war poetry on the wall of our small toilet stall

One is by an American, wounded, saying goodbye to his wife

Did he die? Did he die for me?

1946

The dead, the dying, the almost, the probably and the imagined dead

Fuse into one large, thick amorphous sea of dead

Which I bring to Canada.

June 15, 2001

Food and Punishment

1940

Amid the incessant noise of airplanes, bombs, artillery, breaking glass and a shaking house

Mother tells me to drink my milk. AYou won=t have any more for a long time,@ she says

Will this then be my new punishment?

Off our train, the cows were eating peacefully when the bomb dropped

They had done nothing wrong. How much more I then, who causes so much trouble

Deserves to die?

The lemon mother gave me was good to me. It quenched my thirst

How can I now throw it out the window as she tells me to do?

I will not abandon it and cause its death. I=ll keep it safe in my pocket

The French lady may be giving us shelter but she is a killer

She knocks her chicken on the head with her fist, slices their throat

Hangs them upside down on large hooks and waits for them to bleed to death

The eel was still alive wrapped in its newspaper when mother placed it on the kitchen counter

It jumped on the floor and slid forcefully away for its life

But mother grabbed it and mercilessly cut off its head. Even mothers kill

1941-42

The mouse eating our flour in the attic, must have been hungry

It probably wanted to live as much as I do. I heard it scurrying for its life

But father in his rage beat it to a bloody pulp. Even fathers kill

The worms in our bacon hanging from the attic ceiling needed to be killed

Mother boiled them in grease. But they had their revenge

She spilled the grease and burnt her legs

1943

How loathsome of me to put my whole family in danger by stumbling on barbed wire

While getting milk and needing medical care in Stavelot

Will the doctor denounce us? Will I cause my whole family to be killed?

1944

I am earning my right to live by risking my life. I bike to town daily to queue for bread

If the siren sounds, I am supposed to hide in a ditch

But I know I never will. I am much too scared to die

1945

Long regiments of exhausted, dirty, limping German soldiers in faded uniforms

Pass by our house on their way back to Germany. At gunpoint we give them water

They seem human. Are we traitors? Are they the ones who tried to kill us?

1946

Killing is punishment

For something one has or has not done

And I who caused so much misery to my parents

Should surely have been among the dead.

***

March 29, 2003

A Child=s World Destroyed

That bridge near our house was part of my world

I walked over it four times a day to and from school

It should never have been a target for destruction

The six-story building at the end of our street

Was new, stately, the home of many families

It should not have been a platform for cannons

House cellars are made for rats, not for little girls

To sit in, terrified while they negotiate with bombs

So the next one will please drop on somebody else

Living room radiators should not be anchors

For a rope down which a father will slide and flee

When soldiers break in the front door to capture him

Home windows carefully marred with crisscross tape

To increase their resistance to shattering from blasts

Themselves shatter the outside world of the child

Dandelions expect to be freely picked and smelled

So the child can settle whether or not they are fragrant

They should never be next to mines disguised as toys

Ants deserve to instill marvel at their own pace

Without interruption by death-announcing sirens

Without their earthworks being flattened by tanks

The blue sky is entitled to hold only clouds and birds

Invasions by formations of bombers draw the child

Into counting killing machines instead of life wonders

Stars should be allowed to display their grandeur

Unmimicked by rockets whose light suddenly vanishes

Causing the child to shrivel in fear, certain she is doomed

And tree trunks should hide only squirrels and foxes

Not ever enemy snipers on the lookout for a kill

Especially if the child knows it is her father they want

A mother should not have to fry worm-infested ham

Preserved beyond its time in anticipation of famine

The grease spills and burns both the mother=s legs

A father should not return home pale and half-mute

Recounting how he rode a dead man=s motorcycle

Or how the woman next to him was crushed to death

It is not right that friends should suddenly disappear

Because they are Jewish, or that schools have shelters

Where children are admonished to have good manners

But most of all B it is not right that grown-up people

Who have reached that exalted state of adulthood

Should try to kill a child whose life has just begun

You destroyed, maimed, distorted and disfigured my world

Thereby doing the same to me, though you did not kill me

I had hoped that you might stop your deeds

And spare those who grew up after me

But the children of war have it worse now

You have honed and amplified your killing skills.

***

July 28, 2001

Mise-en-Scene: World War II

How to give up my war-colored glasses

Stop turning Boulder into Liege

The year 2001 into 1940-45

Americans into Germans

How to stop hearing sirens as air raid alarms

Airplanes as strafing bombers

Thunder as exploding bombs

Fire-crackers as artillery fire

How to stop reacting to cars as armored tanks

The spattering of exhaust pipes as rifle shots

Pens on the ground as volatile land mines

Policemen as soldiers ready for the kill

How to stop converting English into German

The wealthy into Gestapo officers

The powerful into replicas of the Fuhrer

The poor into victims of an occupying army

How to stop expecting conflict to lead to death

Trembling at the sight of war on a movie screen

Hiding in the crowd to avoid being a target

Asking for physical life only lest the bomb B in its wisdom B find me after all

How to stop hating people for participating in the carnage

Seeing all as equally oblivious to the ravages of war

Their days filled with banality while others die

Their claim of superiority based on their capacity to kill

What to do with those pervasive, familiar feelings

My worthlessness B useful in giving the logic for why the world did not want me

My guilt for being alive when so many B immensely more capable B died

My outrage that my life should have been deemed expendable

How to stop re-staging the War

Let go of my aloneness, alienation, distrust

How to stop ensuring my continued unhappiness?

September 28, 2001

In the Cellar

The dark void which surrounds me extends to infinity

From my center through my pajama and coat

Through my mother=s limp arm on my shoulder

To the walls of the cellar and beyond

Where airplanes fly and bombs drop

In the blackness of the night

My heart wades in thick nothingness

I float in emptiness, without mooring

My father announces that the next bomb is for us

In a few minutes, I=ll be under the rubble of our house

Hurting, bleeding, crying for my mother

But she will be dead and not respond

I so desperately want to live

Without legs, then is it better to die?

And if I bleed, would I really die as they say?

Why could I not hold on by sheer willpower to live?

Bomb, please don=t drop on me. Let me live

I promise I=ll never ask for anything else

I rub against my mother -- that is, my allotted half of her

(Marguerite, on her other side, has the right to her other half)

I briefly pity Genevieve for being assigned my father

The lonely drone of airplanes continues

No one speaks of the horror that is about to befall us

I am alone in a vast, arid, nameless desert

Suddenly, the high-pitched shriek of an airplane diving down

Sears the air. The whistle of a bomb, a deafening detonation

The shattering of glass. The house trembles. I tremble

The anti-aircraft guns atop the high building six doors down the street

Go into high gear. Reversing the pitch of its shriek, the plane

Groans back up, out of range. Father declares that this one was close

I don=t know how long passes before I hear steps in the street above us

Probably a soldier, flashlight and gun at the ready, checks our curfew

I hold my breath but he passes our house

I=ll see soldiers tomorrow on my way to school

They are the monsters who want to kill me

But the bombs falling now are our friends= and they kill just the same

I am a piece of dirt, bad, dumb, worthless, in the way

A criminal not deserving to live

Sometimes I want to die B but that is betraying myself

I really want to live. It is the others who want to me dead

The Germans definitely don=t want me. I hate them all

My mother tolerates me. Does she want me to live?

I can=t stand it

I am splitting apart

The void is engulfing me

Year 2001, Boulder, Colorado

The World Trade Center disaster

The return of death from the air

I can=t stand it

I am splitting apart

The void is engulfing me

***

December 1, 2001

The War B Now Inside

You are my core, my center, my master

Your truth wells from suffering, your wisdom from experience

I, a mere an envelope grown around you to protect

And mediate in this obliviously murderous world

Stop, stop. stop the war

Stop this killing. this torment, this constant punishment

I want to live. Stop them from killing

Adults kill. I hate them all. I hate the world

Don=t you ever become one of those adults who kills

When you grow up, prevent them from making war

Don=t let this suffering happen again, not even to one other child

Promise that if you live, you=ll make them stop their ceaseless killing

I became a doctor to decrease pain and suffering

Specialist in public health to forestall predictable deaths

Psychiatrist to understand why they kill

Researcher to know what turns them into killers

Not enough, you thankless traitor, deserter of our bargain

They are still making war, still hurting children like they hurt me

You are a citizen of a country that kills

You pay taxes, have stocks, swim while others beg for their life

Don=t you know that it is thanks to me that you survived

When not a soul was there to soothe your loneliness, share your mind-splitting pain

I took for myself the terror of waiting to be killed, the torture of impending death

I let you play, go to school, grow. And now you are adult and I have never left the war

I am a rat infested with plague

I am war itself, black, tarred, despicably guilty

A miserable failure in my one assigned task

Too base even to deserve solace

Hear my moan, my lament, my agony

I gave you all. I myself could never grow

The pain was too great

I could only freeze and endure

My strength could do no more.

March 8, 2003

War

At the time it was happening, the war was so obvious

It did not require description. It was everywhere B

The air, the sounds, all the nooks and crannies of daily life

Soldiers, guns, tanks, bombs, killings, disappearances

Imprisonments, torture, curfews, food and fuel shortages

All was part of the self-evident world in which I lived

Neither of our parents talked to us children about the war

Father, though in the cellar with us during bombardments

Wrote afterwards, AFor the children, all this hardly existed@

Mother faced the war much as she would a bad toothache

An unavoidable and recurring burden to be born stoically

She had survived the first War. We might survive this one

We settled in the New World and the nightmare receded

Increasingly, the war became like a tar stain on my skin

Large, black, sticky, indelible, glaringly present, visible to all

The mark of my differentness, inferiority, unfortunate life

AYou were in the war? How was it?@ they would ask

ABad,@ I would reply, hating them for singling me out

The taint was there as I tried to be best ever wife and mother

I had an accent, I was a refugee, I had come from Belgium

My childhood had been maimed, I lacked a good education

The war transformed itself into symptoms I could not suppress

My abhorrence of war movies, my panic at firecrackers

My hate of soldiers, power, the German accent, non-pacifists

In therapy, I told John Gorman I had been damaged by the war

AHow so?@ he said, AYou survived and so did your family@

So I was clean after all, unblemished, declared fit for life

But then, why did I continue so unhappy among Americans?

In my alienation and isolation, I would try to console myself

AHow superficial to be happy while others are suffering!@

Then I knew what I had B post-traumatic stress syndrome

A respectable, commendable and guilt-free diagnosis

Others had done me wrong and hence my difficulties

I was normal, my experience abnormal. Good, until I asked

AWhy is it me only and not any of my would-be murderers

Who needs medical treatment? Was their experience normal?@

You said in our last session that you were a witness ^(*)

I know now what you meant B that you were with me

Standing by, your soul with me, validating my suffering

But at the time, I misunderstood. I felt like a museum piece

An old artifact at which people stare in awe and disbelief

Antiquated, odd B the relic of someone who has seen war

And all this time, my heart has never ceased to scream

High-pitched, desperate, AWhy did you do this to me?

How could you try to kill me, a vulnerable little girl

Who so much wanted to live and taste this world?

Don=t you want to live? Were you not once a child?

Why did you try to take this life that is so dear to me?

AI cannot understand why people kill,@ says the me

Who has now become an old woman. Don=t kill, ever

Because if you do, it is me you could be killing

Don=t kill, don=t kill, don=t kill B don=t kill... me!

***

____________________

(*) During my present psychoanalysis.

March 15, 2003

AAfter the War@

It was a most nebulous concept but I used it all the time

I didn=t remember what life was like before the war

Much less knew how it might be once the war ended

Killing for me was part of a continuous hellish present

What would newscasts report, if there were no war?

But the phrase was magic and honey to my ears

A focus on the future made the present more liveable

It soothed me to know that some people certified

That a world without murders could really exist

Can you imagine, without bombs, tanks or guns?

It also enabled me to defer gracefully all of life=s tasks

Why plan, for instance, until this awful war is over?

Why learn and engage, if soon one might be killed?

Survival should surely be my one and only focus

Any other effort a detraction from this one sacred aim

Then, one day, the golden, craved-for moment arrived

The now in which I lived, became a now Aafter the war@

What to do with it? How to cope? I was in disarray

How does one take into account one=s own wishes?

How does one know oneself, if one has never looked?

Unprepared to cope with such an unregimented world

I continued to hide, this time in my own mental cellar

Placing others in the role of authoritarian decision-makers

Much like bombs, the Gestapo or German soldiers

I remained in my well-honed role of helpless victim

I was not among the 46 million killed in World War II

I was not in any banal pronouncement or dry statistics

But nevertheless, just the same, the war took my life away

Insidiously, surreptitiously, with my own participation

Unforgivably, without even my own awareness of the fact

You who today are planning to bomb and invade Iraq

Will you, in sixty-three years, look for long-term effects?

Or perhaps you plan while you Areconstruct@ the country

To reshape and remake the psyche of its hapless children?

My life is up for reconstruction

Do you care what happened to me?

February 23, 1975

The Plight

One moment playing, laughing, running

Then some flames and screams

And now your charred crimson body lies

Swollen to twice its size

Motionless, voiceless, monstrous

Giving you more pain than any two-year old can bear

Your mother dares not lay eyes on you

Your father, reinforced by alcohol

Throws himself onto what=s left of you, sobbing

How will it be later when you discover

You lack even the symbol of you manhood

But perhaps, in your wisdom, you will chose to die now

For you they called it an accident

Not so for your brothers around the globe

For them, in war, we intend it

In the name of something higher and noble

Tell me what is noble

That leads to this...

June 2, 2001

To Miriam

Amid the bombings you disappeared one day B I think on your way back from school

No trace, no word, no news, no comments

And the next day your parents and two brothers had gone from your home

Vanished, evaporated, turned into thin air

Mother said you had been taken for the pleasure of the German army

Were they gentle to you? Harsh? Brutal? How many used you? Did you get pregnant?

Did they kill you afterwards? How? Did they torture you first?

Was it in Belgium or in Germany? Did they send you to a concentration camp? Which one?

I refused to let you die and secretly, within myself, kept you alive

Put you in a bag like an old, well-used, forever-smiling, painted wooden doll for storage

What else to do since no one ever heard or talked about you

Your 13 year old life suddenly excised mercilessly from my surroundings?

Why you? Why not me? Your eyes were so bright, cheerful, lively, self-assured

Your black hair, wide smile, squarish shoulders and ready giggle so familiar

You were just one of us until the Star of David made its appearance on your lapel

Searing yellow, foreboding, ominous, singling you out from among us

The urge to live took possession of me, exploding in me like a murderous bomb

Splitting me apart, breaking all bounds, overflowing all banks, consuming all parts of me

Nothing else mattered. And deep within me, at the edge of my consciousness

I was glad it was you who had died and I was still living

I would make it up to you by living for both of us

Seek your forgiveness by always taking the victim=s side

Never tempt fate by asking more than mere physical life

I would keep you alive within me always

But my life=s worth never matched what yours would have been

My guilt towards you never left me

My hate of others for killing you never abated

My loathing of myself for living instead of you never lost its poisonous sting

I became a small, hardened black ball parading as a person

Fearing happiness lest it might make you jealous

Doubly sealing the bag which was your home

Never mentioning your name except briefly in passing, like a long-lost fiction

Softly, gently, with care, respect and many tears, I bury you now

I must stop hating myself. For had you lived, you would not have turned on yourself

The light you radiated was too bright for that

Good-bye, Miriam. You will shine in my heart, always

I am sorry fate was so unjust to you.

January 1, 2003

1940, 2003

In 1940, we had our suitcases ready

One in each corner of the dining room

We would only have to close them and flee

Whenever the Germans decided to attack

But my grandmother refused to flee

She said if God willed her to die, she would

This was her home and she would stay

Even if that meant she had to die

In 2003, the Iraqis have their suitcases ready

One in each corner of their dining room

They will only have to close them and flee

Whenever the Americans decide to attack

But some have decided to refuse to flee

They say if God wills them to die, they will

This is their home and they will stay

Even if that means they have to die

Didn=t Hitler know the torture it was

To live under the threat of sudden death

At the hands and whims of others?

No, he wanted his own aggrandizement

Doesn=t Bush know the torture it is

To live under the threat of sudden death

At the hands and whims of others?

...............................................................

June 2, 2002

Indictment of My Ancestors

Your legacy to me was a culture of selfishness

Greed, self-centeredness, competition, exploitation and war

Those bombs that almost dropped on me as I was awakening to life

Were your legacy to me. Yours as much as Hitler=s

You, even more than the Germans, had participated in

And gained from the violence pervading the European culture

Hitler only turned your own weapons against yourselves

Weapons which you had been using for over four centuries

Against others, turning people into slaves and nations into colonies

I indict you for this heritage

How sweet to have been born into a culture respecting of life

A civilization whose goal were not self-aggrandizement

But rather equality, justice, empathy, interpersonal respect

Understanding, peaceful conflict negotiation, joy in diversity

Perhaps then, I would not have had to cower in agony

Because bombs were falling from the sky B

A sky you should have bequeathed to me beautiful

Forever and ever only beautiful

Today, our same culture is marring the sky with nuclear bombs B

That same sky that for our descendants should remain beautiful

Forever and ever only beautiful.

December 2, 2002

The Banality of War

Soldiers at the ready, high on violence

Men rounded up, hooded, made impotent

Women, dogs, looking, waiting, searching

Children lost, maimed, trembling, starving

Trusted ones disappearing, collaborating

Shots, explosions, tanks, artillery fire

The air screaming, the earth shaking

Glass breaking, ambulances wailing

Airplanes strafing, survivors looting

Bombs, leaflets, shrapnel dropping

Bodies unrecognizable, elbows, limbs

Blood, burns, screams, dust, stench

Flies, check points, detention centers

Torture, rape, deceit, a black market

Scenes of savagery and of sacrifice

All to achieve peace, freedom, democracy

A better life, help friends, prevent worse

Stamp out evil, suffering, dictatorships

Communism, terrorism, insurgencies

Cleanse the world of its latest plague

Few notice in the moment of terror

Children learning at this school of life

Scheming heroism, revenge, martyrdom

Resolving to better their parents

And themselves capture peace at any price

Preparing for their own round

By pulling the wings off living birds.

May 5, 2001

After World War II

Fifty-six years since the end of the nightmare

Fifty-six bloody conflicts since then

Instigated by my adoptive land

Each fraying my dream of AAfter the War@

Each excoriating my festering war wound

And now...

East Timorese children wander in what looks like paradise

Searching for their dead parents and grandparents

Puerto Rican children die of heart disease

Caused by the loud noise of practice bombing on their tropical isle

Iraqi children huddle for protection

Waiting for the next bomb to drop

Yugoslav children drink water

Containing the uranium 238 that will eventually kill them

Vietnamese children dig for unexploded mines

And the remains of men who burnt their village 40 years ago

German children can=t believe the atrocities

Books say their grandparents committed

Armenian children sense the family secret

That once they had a land, towns, a culture, roots of their own

American children are tried in adult courts

Because they use adult weapons to kill

Botswanan children watch their siblings die of AIDS

Rehearsing their own torture as they too have the virus

Colombian children grow cocaine, their only means of livelihood

And the probable cause of their untimely, violent death

Nigerian children have never seen a starry night

Because raging natural gas fires have lit up the skies ever since they can remember

Palestinian children throw stones

At the state-of-the-art armored tanks that destroy their homes

Brazilian children hope that prostitution

Will at least give them some semblance of a life

I am in every one of these children

I was in the cellar once

Waiting for a bomb to kill me

My own children are on a chartered boat

Trusting their country to be just, fair, upright, well-meaning

Generous, free, humane, democratic.

References

Blum, William, Killing Hope B U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine), 1995.

Bold face type indicates direct U.S. involvement in the use of torture.

During the period 1945-1995, the United States Military and Central Intelligence Agency have intervened in the following countries.

(d) China 1945-1960

(e) Italy 1947-1948 1950's - 1970's

(f) Greece 1947-1950 1964-1974

(g) Philippines 1940's and 1950's

(h) Korea 1945-1953

(i) Albania 1949-1953

(j) Eastern Europe 1948-1956

(k) Germany 1950's

(l) Iran 1953

(m) Guatemala 1953-1954 1960 1962-1980's

(n) Costa Rica Mid 1950's 1970-1971

(o) Syria 1956-1957

(p) Middle East 1957-1958

(q) Indonesia 1957-1958 1965

(r) Western Europe 1950's and 1960's

(s) British Guiana 1953-1964

(t) Soviet Union Late 1940's to 1960's

(u) Vietnam 1950-1973

(v) Cambodia 1955-1973

(w) Laos 1957-1973

(x) Haiti 1959-1963 1986-1994

(y) France/Algeria 1960's

(z) Ecuador 1960-1963

(aa) The Congo/ Zaire 1960-1964 1975-1978

(bb) Brazil 1961-1964

(cc) Peru 1960-1965

(dd) Dominican Republic 1960-1966

(ee) Cuba 1959-1980's

(ff) East Timor 1975

(gg) Ghana 1966

(hh) Uruguay 1964-1970

(ii) Chile 1964-1973

(jj) Bolivia 1964-1975

(kk) Iraq 1972-1975 1990-1991

(ll) Australia 1973-1975

(mm) Angola 1975-1980's

(nn) Jamaica 1976-1980

(oo) Seychelles 1979-1981

(pp) Grenada 1979-1984

(qq) Morocco 1983

(rr) Suriname 1982-1984

(ss) Libya 1981-1989

(tt) Nicaragua 1981-1990

(uu) Panama 1969-1991

(vv) Bulgaria 1990

(ww) Afghanistan 1979-1992

(xx) El Salvador 1980-1994

The above cover the period until 1995. Since then, at a minimum, the U.S. has intervened in the following countries:

Afghanistan

Colombia

Diego Garcia (Great Britain)

East Timor

Indonesia

Iraq

Mozambique

Okinawa (Japan)

Palestine

Puerto Rico (U.S.)

Sudan

Turkey

Yugoslavia.

***

June 6, 1999

Kosovo

Several hundred years ago, Western men declared

That they were not part of nature. The world was Aout there,@ they said

Waiting to be explored and exploited for their own benefit

Some two hundred years ago, the thirteen colonies rebelled against the British Empire

But they did not rebel against the acquisitive nature of its culture

On the pillars of genocide and slavery, they build a country that could bully and terrorize others

By the time of the first World War, the hegemony of the United States

Extended well beyond its now transcontinental borders B

To Latin America, the Caribbean and the Phillippines

In the wake of the Second World War, it included Western Europe

Japan, Korea, Indochina, Indonesia and parts of Africa

The process of bringing Russia and China into the fold was well under way

Yesterday, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Today, Kosovo

Tomorrow the Black and Caspian seas, Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan

And a link the Middle East B Iraq is already Asoftened@

Capitalism invades like a cancer, homogenizing, killing diversity

Was the Columbine School tragedy but collateral damage

In a nation whose imperialistic drive demands

The desensitization of its citizens to the suffering of others?

Within a generation, look for the market=s expansion to new frontiers B

Domination of deep outer space, commodification of your mind

Privatization of the building blocks of life itself B plant, animal and human

Look for a planet management team

Saving itself and the well-armed rich

From the impending ecological catastrophe

You have the power, now

To acknowledge the seductiveness and addictiveness of the siren=s song

You can kill the Buddha you thought you saw on the road

May 24, 2001

Memorial Day

They celebrate the murderers

By playing, eating, praying and thanking the dead

Marching in step toward another carnage

Fastidiously blind to the cause within of their deadly ventures

Meanwhile mothers continue to labor in the crucible of life

Giving humanity its next fragile generation

Their own pain, anxieties, ordeals and traumas little heeded by society

Often not even by their own husband

A female world will surround the newborn child

During its most helpless and formative years

And little boys grown up will need to downgrade women

For fear of their awesome, overwhelming power

Alienated from their female roots

Young men will believe there is reason to kill B negate a mother=s work

Meantime offering themselves for sacrifice

On the altar of their mother(land)

Their death to be celebrated

By next generations

Of Memorial Day party-goers.

September 7, 2001

Born in 2025

Daddy, what is the sky for?

In the old days, the sky was just for looking, Johnny, but not now

We use it to preserve our way of life

We are masters of the skies and beyond

When other countries, poorer than we are, want what we have

We defend ourselves with lasers, missiles and nuclear bombs

We are the wealthiest nation on earth and want to keep it that way

Daddy, can I see a butterfly?

There are none anymore, Johnny

But I can show you one in a picture book

Those we had in my time were all poisoned

From eating corn we had altered

To make it resistant to our chemicals

You are eating that corn now, Johnny

Daddy, I don=t want this water

Finish your glass, Johnny. You are privileged

Many people in the world don=t have clean water to drink

And there are more and more people in the world, mostly poor ones

The corporation from which we buy our water

Has again just raised its prices

Water is the stuff of life and scarce, even in our own country

Daddy, why were bathing suits so small when you were growing up?

We didn=t have to cover our bodies, then, Johnny

The earth=s ozone layer was much thicker

And the sun=s rays were not as deadly as they are now

When we realized the ozone was disappearing

We put cream on our bodies for a while

But now we cover our whole body and wear dark goggles too

Daddy, why are all trees the same?

They are not all the same, Johnny, just the swaths we see around us

They are a special variety that grows fast and gives us wood quickly

Other people have other types of trees around where they are

In each area the trees can be efficiently planted and harvested

And were produced in the laboratory to resist their particular pests

Birds too are separated since each species likes their own type of tree

Daddy, what is that on the sea?

That=s an old oil-rig, Johnny. We don=t need those anymore

In my time, we used to drill for oil underneath the sea

But now most of the world=s oil is used up

B First come, first served, I guess B

I can assure you though, that we can have whatever is left

Our weapons have more killing power than anybody else=s

Daddy, why don=t I have any legs?

That was an unfortunate accident, Johnny

You see, these things we=ve been talking about

Radioactivity, herbicides, pesticides, other chemicals, rays from the sun

All cause an increase in mutations B changes in our genes

The basic building blocks of life that determines how our body will form

There must have been a mutation, Johnny, that affected the cell

From which you were born

Some people have to sacrifice themselves

I am sorry this happened, Johnny.

References

I have focused on some of the present trends which seem irrevocable, in the sense that it is now becoming too late to reverse them. The consequence of any one of these trends, and certainly of all of them combined, is serious abuse of the next generations of children.

Space

Chomsky, Noam, ANormal Accidents in Highly Complex Systems,@ Interview with Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, WBAI, New York, August 7, 2001.

Grossman, Karl, The Wrong Stuff -- The Space Program=s Nuclear Threat to our Planet (Common Courage), 1997.

Grossman, Karl, Weapons in Space (Seven Stories, N.Y.), 2001.

United nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999 (UNDP, N.Y.) 1999, page 38.

The United States= per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is the highest in the world -- $21,558 in 1992 (in 1990 US dollars) and the gap between rich and poor countries is continuing to widen (from a ratio of 44 to 1 in 1973 to 72 to 1 in 1992). The U.S. Space Command, in its 1996 report, Vision for 2020, explicitly states its goal of full spectrum dominance of space to protect U.S. interests and investments. Radioactive materials with half-lives in the millions of years have already been introduced into space, both intentionally and Aaccidentally.@ The Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) increases the probability of a cataclysmic world Aaccident@ to almost certainty, as accidents are known to occur normally B that is, with certainty -- in all such highly complex systems.

Genetic Engineering

Anderson, Luke, Biotech 2001, Interview with Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, WBAI, New York, July 2, 2001. Luke Anderson=s book on the subject is entitled, Genetic Engineering, Food and our Environment.

Gelbspan, Ross, The Heat is On B The Climate Crisis, The Cover-up, The Prescription (Perseus), 1998.

Lappe, Marc and Bailey, Britt, Against the Grain B Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food (Common Courage, Monroe, Maine), 1998.

Losey, John E., Linda W. Rayor and Maureen E. Carter, ATransgenic Pollen harms Monarch Larvae,@ Nature, 399:214 (1999), 05/20/99, page 214.

In its 1997 annual report, the Monsanto Corporation projected that by the next year, half of the United States grain crops would be planted with its genetically engineered seeds, mainly soybeans, corn and cotton -- seeds which contain a gene isolated from either a petunia or a bacterium. During its Biotech 2001 conference, the biotechnology industry predicted that within 5-10 years, over 90 percent of the United States grain crops would be genetically engineered. Such altered organisms released into the environment cross with other species and reproduce

their modified genes. If they have an edge in reproduction over natural species, they may displace the original species entirely. The death of monarch butterflies feeding on milkweed growing at the edge of genetically modified corn fields and hence ingesting the modified pollen, is but one of the innumerable consequences of the genetic alteration of life forms. The entire species of butterflies is also being threatened by global warming.

Water

Klare, Michael, Resource Wars B The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Henry Holt, N.Y.), 2001.

Postel, Sandra, AWater Scarcity and Challenges for the Twenty-first Century.@ Presentation, Tufts University, Medford, MA., November 15, 1999 (Broadcast on Alternative Radio, KGNU, Boulder, CO).

At present, 10 percent of the world=s food is grown at the expense of a decrease in the earth=s water tables (fossil aquifers -- large underground reservoirs that have formed over long periods of time). This water is irreplaceable as the earth=s supply of water is not expected to increase. Climate change and increasing pollution will tend to lower the efficiency with which we use our supply. With a projected rise in world population from its present six billion to seven billion by 2025, water stress is likely to be high. Even now, water B a non-substitutable, essential ingredient of all life -- is being appropriated by private corporations to be sold to the rich.

The Ozone Layer

Foster, John , The Vulnerable Planet -- A Short Economic History of the Environment (Monthly Review, New York), 1993, 1999.

Gelbspan, Ross, The Heat is On B The Climate Crisis, The Cover-up, The Prescription (Perseus), 1998.

The depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer shielding the earth from lethal solar ultraviolet (UV) rays, was first noted in the early 1980's and is still continuing today. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that in the United States, an additional 200,000 deaths from skin cancer will occur over the next decade due to increased UV light. Blindness and malformations are occurring principally in Antarctica, Australia, Southern Chile and Argentina, Greenland, Scandinavia, and western Siberia. In Boulder, CO, toddlers now wear full-body suits for swimming and dark glasses at all times when outside.

Decrease in Biodiversity

Lappe, Marc and Bailey, Britt, Against the Grain B Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food (Common Courage, Monroe, Maine), 1998.

Postel, Sandra, AWater Scarcity and Challenges for the Twenty-first Century.@ Presentation, Tufts University, Medford, MA., November 15, 1999 (Broadcast on Alternative Radio, KGNU, Boulder, CO). Sandra Postel is Director of the Global Water Policy Project at the World Watch Institute, Washington, D.C. Her books include, Last Oasis, and Pillar of Sand B Can the Irrigation Miracle last?

The World Conservation Union, Geneva, Switzerland, estimates that 10-30 percent of fresh water fish are now being threatened with extinction. The extinction of species and the replacement of local varieties of crops with commercially profitable single varieties, are rapidly diminishing both the number and variety of life forms on earth. Diversity has been the key to survival for all species throughout the ages. Massive crop failure resulting from monocultures have occurred three times in the United States in the past 31 years B 1970, 1984 and 1989 affecting corn, citrus fruits and wheat, respectively.

Oil

Klare, Michael, Resource Wars B The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Henry Holt, N.Y.), 2001, pages 19 and 40.

At the present rate of consumption B 73 million barrels per day in the year 2000, and increasing at the rate of 2 percent per year, the world=s proven supply of petroleum will be depleted by 2025 - 2030. Half of the supply will have been used up by about 2010.

Mutations

Epstein, Samuel, The Politics of Cancer, Revisited (East Ridge Press, Fremont Center, N.Y.), 1998.

Fagan, Dan, Marianne Lavelle & the Center for Public Integrity, Toxic Deception -- How the Chemical Industry manipulates Science, bends the Law and endangers Your Health (Common Courage, Monroe, ME), 1999.

Schettler, Ted, Gina Solomon, Maria Valenti and Anette Huddle, Generations at Risk -- Reproductive Health and the Environment (MIT, Cambridge), 1999.

The radioactivity on earth due to our nuclear activities (nuclear bombs, tests, space probes, Aaccidents,@ power plants, waste sites, etc...) together with the thousands of chemicals released into the atmosphere every year, has increased the cancer rate and the probability of mutations for all species, including humans. Children in the post-colonizing countries are not immune. This maiming of children is questionably less abusive to unborn generations than the ultimate in child abuse which destruction of the world would represent.

***

September 14, 2001

September 11, 2001

Cry, humanity, for your loss is great

A gaping hole disfigures you

An ugly wound maims you

Void reigns where vibrancy once stood

Recoil from the acrid smell of death

The sharp pain in your heart

Fathom the depth of your sorrow

Mourn for what can never be

Then dry your tears and know

Your tragedy was self-inflicted

A punishment meted out by none other but you

The result of your choices about your fate

Of your six billion precious parts

Two hundred have, on the average, assets of 5 billion dollars each

Two and a half billion have, on the average, a yearly income of 440 dollars each

This wealth ratio is 12 million to one

One billion live an average of 77 years

One billion live an average of 55 years

Among one billion, 6 babies of every 1000 born, die before age one

Among half a billion, 105 babies of every 1000 born, die before that age

One billion use 8,600 kilowatts-hours of electricity per year

One billion use 403

One billion live in areas where 86 percent have access to safe water

One billion live where 18 percent have such access

The country which was assaulted has a wealth of $29,080 per person

Of this, $26 goes for aid to poor countries

Four other countries in your world have an average wealth of $28,605 per person

Of their wealth, $223 goes for aid to poor countries

The targeted country comprises 5 percent of your total parts

Yet it emits 22 percent of the carbon dioxide released into your atmosphere

Other countries comprising 7 percent of your total

Emit less than 2 percent of this gas, so toxic to your planet

The targeted country spends $1,031 per person yearly in military expenditures

Yearly, it exports $11 billion worth of conventional weapons to other countries

It is now challenging both the Outer Space Treaty which reserves space for peaceful purposes (1967)

And the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which it signed with the former Soviet Union (1974)

It has not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966)

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979)

The Convention on the Rights of Child (1989)

Or the Kyoto Protocol of the Convention on Climate Change (1997)

The issue, humanity, is not whether or how to further injure yourself

B Perhaps even to the point of suicide --

But whether you can bring all your parts into one whole

And learn to live as one on spaceship earth.

***

References

Total World Population

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, p. 200..

The world population in 1997 was estimated to be 5,743.7 million.

Wealth Ratio

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, pp. 38 and 200.

In 1998, the assets of the world=s 200 richest people ($1,042 billion) totaled more than the combined yearly income of 41 percent of the world=s population (2.4 billion people).

Life Expectancy

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, pp. 168, 171,197 and 200.

In 1997, life expectancy at birth in countries ranked in the High Human Development category (population 1,018.2 million), was 77.0 years.

Sub-Saharan Africa (population 555.4 million with a life expectancy of 48.9 years) and South Asia excluding India (population 374.1 million with a life expectancy of 63.0 years) together had a total population of 929.5 million with a life expectancy of 54.6 years.

Infant Mortality Rate

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, pp.171 and 200.

In 1997, the infant mortality rate in Industrialized Countries (population 842.0 million) was 6 per 1,000 live births.

The rate in Sub-Saharan Africa (population 555.4 million), was 105 per 1,000 live births.

Electricity Consumption

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, pp.197, 200, 201 and 204.

In 1996, the electricity consumption in countries ranked in the High Human Development category (population 1,018.2 million), was 8,550 kilowatt-hours per capita.

Sub-Saharan Africa (population 555.4 million with a consumption of 399 kilowatt-hours per capita) and South Asia excluding India (population 374.1 million with a consumption of 410 kilowatt-hours per capita) together had a population of 929.5 million with an average consumption of 404.4 kilowatt-hours per capita.

Access to Safe Water

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, pp. 146, 148, 197 and 200.

In 1997 (or the year closest to that year for which data are available), the proportion of the population without access to safe water in the countries ranked in the High Human Development category (population 1,018.2 million), was 14 percent.

East Asia excluding China (population 54.8 million of whom 10 percent had access to safe water), South Asia excluding India (population 374.1 million of whom 15 percent had access to safe water), Arab States (population 252.4 million of whom 18 percent had access to safe water) and Latin America and the Caribbean (population 490.4 million of whom 22 percent had access to safe water) together had a population of 1,171.7 million of whom 18.3 percent had access to safe water.

Wealth

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, p.180.

In 1997, the wealth of the United States, as measured by its gross national product (GNP), was US $29,080 per capita.

Net Official Development Assistance

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, pp.180, 192, and 197.

In 1997, the United States had a per capita gross national product (GNP) of US $29,080. Its net official development assistance was 0.09 percent of its GNP, that is, US $26.2 per capita.

Norway (population 4.4 million with a GNP of US $159.0 billion, of which it gave 0.86 percent as assistance), Sweden (population 8.9 million with a GNP of US $231.9 billion, of which it gave 0.79 percent as assistance), Netherlands (population 15.6 million with a GNP of US $403.1 billion of which it gave 0.81 percent as assistance) and Denmark (population 5.3 million with a GNP of US $184.3 billion of which it gave 0.97 as assistance) together had a population of 34.2 million with a total GNP of US $978.3 billion B US $28,605 per capita B of which they gave US $8.25 billion B US $241 per capita B as assistance.

Carbon Dioxide Emissions

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, pp.197, 200, 205 and 208.

In 1997, the United States had a population of 271.8 million and, in 1996, was responsible for 22.2 percent of the world=s total carbon dioxide emissions.

South Asia excluding India, with a population of 374.1 million (6.5 percent of the total world=s population of 5,743.7 million) was, in 1996, responsible for 1.6 percent of the world=s carbon dioxide emissions

Military Expenditures

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, pp 180, 188 and 197.

In 1997, the United States had a gross national product (GNP) of US $7,783.1 billion of which, in 1996, it spent 3.6 percent (US $280.2 billion) on military expenditures. That year, the United States population was 271.8 million and hence the military expenditures were US $1,031 per capita.

Exports of Conventional Weapons

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, p.188.

In 1997, United States= export of conventional weapons was US $10.8 billion.

International Outer Space Treaty

Grossman, Karl

The Wrong Stuff -- The Space Program=s Nuclear Threat to our Planet (Common Courage), 1997, p. 90.

Weapons in Space (Seven Stories, N.Y.), 2001, pp. 9, 21 and 22.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty provides that space be reserved for peaceful purposes only. On November 1, 1999, the United Nations General Assembly reaffirmed the Treaty, noting specifically its provision for the peaceful use of space. The vote was 160 in favor, with two abstentions -- the United States and Israel.

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

Grossman, Karl, The Wrong Stuff -- The Space Program=s Nuclear Threat to our Planet (Common Courage), 1997, p.123.

The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was signed in 1974 by the United States and the former Soviet Union.

International Human Rights Instruments

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, New York, N.Y. 1999, p. 245.

As of February 1, 1999, the United States had signed but not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).

Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change

Gelbspan, Ross, The Heat is On B The Climate Crisis, The Cover-up, The Prescription (Perseus), 1998, pp. 108 and 176.

As of 1998, the United States had not signed the Kyoto Protocol of the Convention on Climate Change (1997). As of the present date, the United States has not signed it.

***

September 22, 2001

Call to Arms

The people in the town of Guernica experienced it first

In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War

When a bomb, dropped from an airplane

Inflicted death from the skies for the first time in history

In 1941, death came from above for 2,330 Americans in Pearl Harbor

In 1943, for 42,000 people in Hamburg, Germany

In 1945, for 60,000 in Dresden, Germany

And then 140,000 in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki

Our own cataclysm came on September 11, 2001

The World Trade Center and the Pentagon

Signature institutions destroyed

The slaughter of 6,500 people

And now, our political leaders are preparing us for revenge

They have identified our enemies B they are the terrorists of all nations

Conspiring and enormously powerful, these sub-humans wander the globe

They have declared war. It is they against us

With a language implying assault, our leaders incite us to action

We are innocent victims and need to defend ourselves

No dialogue is possible. We must destroy evil before it destroys us

We must cleanse the world of this spreading, deadly scourge

Convinced of their own benevolence, our leaders call upon us to obey them

They are enlightened, and if we follow them, they will save us from disaster

If we work hard and sacrifice, they will make us feel safe

It is our duty to step in line, an honor to serve

Anticipating possible guilt, our leaders justify even now any possible destructive act

The present crisis demands that we act outside the law

We have no other option but violence. The stakes are too high

Our way of life is being threatened. Civilization itself is under siege

To further ease our decision, our leaders are empowering us

We can and will meet this new challenge. We have shown our metal before --

Grenada, in 1983; Panama, in 1989; Iraq in 1991; Yugoslavia, in 1999

And we have the means to win B nuclear, conventional, chemical and biological

Our reward will be complete and unequivocal success B

And so it is likely to be with Afghanistan, the recommended first target

A country with a population less than a tenth that of ours, most of it without access to safe water

A third of it illiterate, and with its children dying at a rate 32 times that of our own

But most important of all...

Of every eight persons in Afghanistan, one has recently died in war

One in every family

The population is traumatized B as we know so well

Is it really time again to kill?

Forty-six million people died during the Second World War

Two hundred and six million died at the hands of others last century

***

References

Guernica

Shlain, Leonard, Art and Physics B Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light (Quill, William Morrow, New York, 1991) p. 244

The New Columbia Encyclopedia (Columbia University Press, Columbia University Press, New York, 1975) p.1158.

The indiscriminate killing of a civilian target aroused world opinion and the bombing of Guernica became a symbol of fascist violence. The event prompted Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) to paint Guernica, (1937), which was to become a master image of brutality, terror and impotent rage.

Pearl Harbor, Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki

Pearl Harbor, Hamburg and Dresden

Gilbert, Martin, The Second World War B A Complete History, Revised Edition (Owl, Henry Holt, New York, 1989) pp. 272, 448 and 641.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Charny, Israel, Editor, Encyclopedia of Genocide (in two volumes), (ABC-CLIO, Denver, Colorado, 1999) pp. 291and 429.

AOur Leaders@

Charny, Israel, Editor, Encyclopedia of Genocide (in two volumes), (ABC-CLIO, Denver, Colorado, 1999) pp. 253-261and 387-389.

Included in these stanzas are some of the indicators of impending genocide incorporated in President Bill Clinton=s 1999 proposal for the creation of a national genocide early warning center.

Our Previous Successes

Grenada, Panama and Iraq

Blum, William, Killing Hope B U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (Common Courage, Monroe, Maine, 1995), pp. 270, 310 and 329.

Yugoslavia

Clark, Ramsey, Sean Gervasi, Sara Flounders, Nadja Tesich, Thomas Deichman, and others, NATO in the Balkans B Voices of Opposition (International Action Center, New York, N.Y.), 1998.

Elovitz, Paul, AWar, Trauma, Genocide and Kosovo in the News and the Classroom,@ The Journal of Psychohistory, Volume 27, Number 2, Fall, 1999, pages 188-1999

Udovicki, Jasmina and James Ridgeway, Editors, Burn this House B the Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia (Duke University Press, Durham, N.C.), 1997.

Afghanistan, Development Indices

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999 (Oxford University Press, New York, 1999)

Population

Pp.197 and 246.

Access to safe water

P. 246.

Data refer to the most recent year available between 1990 and 1997.

Adult Literacy

Pp.134 and 246.

Under-five mortality rate, per 1,000 live births

Pp.168 and 246.

This ratio of under-five mortality B 257:8 B comes to 32:1.

These and additional indices are as follows:

Afghanistan United States

(1997) (1997)

Population 20,893,000 271,800,000

Life Expectancy

(years), (pp. 134 and 246) 46 77

Infant Mortality Rate

(per 1000 live births), (pp.168 and 246) 165 7

Under-five Mortality Rate

(per 1000 live births) 257 8

Daily per Capita Supply of Calories

(1996), (pp. 211 and 246) 1,676 3,642

Adult Literacy Rate

(percent) 33 99

Population without access to safe water

(percent, 1990-97) 88 1

Afghanistan, War Fatalities

Charny, Israel, Editor, Encyclopedia of Genocide (in two volumes), (ABC-CLIO, Denver, Colorado, 1999) pp. 48-50.

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999 (Oxford University Press, New York, 1999) pp. 246 and 256.

Afghanistan has never had a census. A confidential sample census conducted in Kabul in the mid-1970's suggested that the pre-1978 population was probably 12.5 to 15 million (assume 13.75 million). The United Nations estimates that about 1.5 to 2 million people were killed between 1978 and 1992 (assume 1.75 million). The death rate was, therefore, approximately 13 percent B one out of every 8 persons.

The total fertility rate of a country is defined as the average number of children that would be born alive to a woman during her lifetime, if she were to bear children at each age in accord with prevailing age-specific fertility rates. The total fertility rate in Afghanistan, in 1997, was 6.9 children per woman. If we assume nine persons per family (seven children and two parents), an average of over one person per family died during the war years, 1978-1992.

World War II Fatalities

Gilbert, Martin, The Second World War B A Complete History, Revised Edition (Owl, Henry Holt, New York, 1989) p.1.

Killings during the 20^th Century

Charny, Israel, Editor, Encyclopedia of Genocide (in two volumes), (ABC-CLIO, Denver, Colorado, 1999) pp. 24-25.

World-wide, there were approximately 169,202,000 deaths from genocide, politicide (political killings) and mass murder B excluding war B during the period 1900-87 (most probable mid-estimate). Battle deaths from all wars, international and civil, amounted to approximately 36,500,000 during the 20^th century. The total comes to over 205,702,000 violent deaths inflicted by others during the last century.

***

October 6, 2001

Alone

The park nearby is named after an admiral

The word comes from the Arabic amir-al, commander

Commander of the sea. What presumption!

How many did he kill during his career, I wonder

My street is named after an Indian tribe, the Mohawk

One of the many in the Iroquois Confederacy we all but exterminated

Not because of any particular failing of theirs or unique merit of ours

But because we killed so much better than they did

The flags waving in town these days hail American greatness

Never mind the world resources we plunder

The human, animal and plant varieties we are extinguishing

The sickness of our earth heralding death within some fifty years

My friend says we were at peace before September 11th

What about our bombing of Iraq two days before? Was that not war?

Our intentional targeting of that country=s water supply ten years ago

The one million children who have died since then because of us?

My admired mentor says we must defend our constitution

Because so many of our ancestors fought to get it

What is the relationship between the worth of our constitution

And the fact that our ancestors obtained it by killing?

I watch as we raise our children to accept the killing of others by age eighteen

Ensuring that when the next one in our long line of enemies threatens us

The young generation will follow suit, and even feel like us

Innocent victims of a malign and treacherous attack

We dominate the earth through our power to kill

Its continents, oceans, atmosphere and even deep space

Its beauty, mystery, magic, unfathomable grandeur

Its role as humanity=s gateway to the heavens

And we are poised to hold on to our prize by killing

Perhaps even to the day when no one will be left

Except those willing to kill

Not only each other

But also their mother, the planet, as collateral damage

I feel sad and alone.

References

Mohawks

Churchill, Ward, A Little Matter of Genocide B Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (City Lights), 1997.

Resources

Foster, John , The Vulnerable Planet -- A Short Economic History of the Environment (Monthly Review, New York), 1993, 1999.

Gelbspan, Ross, The Heat is On B The Climate Crisis, The Cover-up, The Prescription (Perseus), 1998.

Iraq

Cockburn, Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes -- The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (Harper Collins), 1999, p. 137.

Nagy, Thomas, AThe Secret behind the Sanctions B How the U.S. Intentionally destroyed Iraq=s Water Supply,@ The Progressive, September 2001, pp. 22-25.

Domination of the Earth

Blum, William, Killing Hope -- U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (Common Courage), 1995.

Grossman, Karl, Weapons in Space (Seven Stories, N.Y.), 2001.

Johnson, Chalmers, The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Owl, Henry Holt), New York, 2000.

Kako, Michio, Explorations, B The Black Box Program (Pacifica Radio, 3729 Cahuenga Boulevard West, North Hollywood, CA 91604) PRA PZ0389.013, 12/26/00.

***

October 13, 2001

Hubris

Plotting to assassinate world leaders?

President Fidel Castro, Cuba, 1960's

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran, 1982

President Muammar Khadaffi, Libya, 1986

Undermining world leaders?

Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, Congo, 1961

President Salvador Allende, Chile, 1973

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti, 1991

Vilifying world leaders?

Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran, 1953

Prime Minister Michael Manley, Jamaica, 1976-80

President Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua, 1981-90

Supporting dictators?

President Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire, 1965-75

General Suharto, Indonesia, 1965-98

President Augusto Pinochet, Chile, 1973-90

Invading other countries?

Cuba, 1961

Grenada, 1983

Panama, 1989

Bombing other countries?

Libya, 1986

Sudan, 1998

Afghanistan, 1998

Arming both opponents in an ongoing conflict?

Iran and Iraq, 1980-88

Greece and Turkey, 1954 - present

China and Taiwan, 1972 - present

Mining other countries?

Cambodia, early 1970's

Nicaragua (ports), 1983

Afghanistan, 1980-88

Spraying other countries?

Columbia (herbicides), 1990's- present

Iraq (depleted uranium weapons), 1991

Yugoslavia (depleted uranium weapons), 1999

Destroying islands?

Vieques, Puerto Rico -- at present

Diego Garcia, Britain -- at present

Okinawa, Japan -- at present

Without moral outcry in the face of genocidal acts?

Israel against Palestinians, 1948 - present

Turkey against its Kurd minority, 1992 - present

Rwanda -- Hutus against Tutsis, 1994

Silent about the use of chemical weapons?

Japan against China, 1960's

Egypt against Yemen, 1960's

Iraq against Iran, 1982-88

Angry if other countries refuse to import cigarettes?

Taiwan, 1980's

South Korea, 1980's

Thailand, 1990's

~~ W e a r e h o w w e a c t ~~

... W i t h t e a r s, I w o n d e r w h a t t h e y c a l l u s ...

References

Alternative Academic Educational Network, Survey on Physical Damage in Yugoslavia by NATO, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 07/21/99. (Democracy Now, War and Peace Reports, Jeremy Scahill, 07/21/99 and 07/27/99. Audiotape: Pacifica Radio Archive, 3729 Cahuenga Boulevard West, North Hollywood, CA 91604; 1-800-735-0230).

Bennis, Phyllis, Calling the Shots B How Washington dominates To-day=s UN (Olive Branch), 1996.

Blum, William, Killing Hope -- U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (Common Courage), 1995.

Charny, Israel ( Ed.), Encyclopedia of Genocide, Volumes 1 and 2 (ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA), 1999.

Chomsky, Noam, Deterring Democracy (Hill and Wang), 1991.

Cockburn, Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes -- The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (Harper Collins), 1999.

Cole, Leonard, The Eleventh Plague -- The Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare (W. H. Freeman), 1997.

Johnson, Chalmers, Blowback B The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, (Owl, Henry Holt, N.Y.), 2000.

Parenti, Michael, To Kill a Nation B The Attack on Yugoslavia (Verso, New York), 2000.

***

October 24, 2001

Sickness

I hurt myself repeatedly, proudly, brazenly

The wound I carved into myself six weeks ago is still bleeding

Yet three weeks ago, I started another cut B similar

Only this time on a different part of my body...

Scars everywhere reveal my past self-abuse

Festering sores disfigure me, amputations bend my shape

Yet I am still intent on maiming myself B defiantly, arrogantly

Under any excuse. They abound...

I like to split myself into good and bad parts

Blame the bad for my plight

Then so focus on extirpating the evil from my being

That death itself seems worth courting in the process...

I poisoned myself intentionally two weeks ago

Stand watch now as pieces of me shrivel and fall to the ground

I can sense the poison spreading within me

It will last a millennium and I have no means to stop it...

I live in my own accumulating wastes

Disdainful of my deteriorating circumstances

I devour my life support system

As if there is no to-morrow...

Sometimes a frail little voice within begs me mend my ways

Saying all my parts are good enough and can function in harmony

I crush it mercilessly. How foolish this luxury of thought!

Pain has always been my bedrock. Torture brings life its cogency...

Most of my young know suffering early

Cold, hungry, ill, rootless, routinely assaulted

Starving for love by night, craving attention by day

They will forever inflict punishment, on themselves or others...

I am humanity

Traumatized since time immemorial

Depressed to the point of suicide

Delusional at times

Can anyone help?

June 16, 2002

On Killing

Why, on a vulnerable planet where nothing comes without its context

Where everything is connected and interdependent, do we, people, kill each other?

Not one by one, but wholesale, purposefully, ever more efficiently, often covertly

Vying to get a better deal for ourselves, those near us, and those who are like us

Hoping our own boat will be among those lifted by the purported rising tide

Never mind the dinghies and leaky wrecks left to sink amid the waves

The measure of a society is in the fate

Of its least, weakest, most disliked member

When our Christian God made the world, and then Adam and Eve to populate it

Did He intend to impart to us the message that neither nature nor we are divine

Only manufactures of the divine, and hence surely not as sacred?

To populate the world soon came to mean to dominate it, and now we are sovereign

We can marginalize Him, usurp His throne, for at our command is life on earth B

The birth, the death and the evolution of all species, including our own

Why does God give us babies that are less than perfect?

Surely an error, referred to our biotechnicians for rectification

Our science excludes, minimizes, ignores and shatters the web of life

We look at microbes under the microscope, take butterflies to the laboratory

Put lions in cages, dissect plants and animals in order to see how they function

We induce mutations, clone human embryos, insert genes without their modifiers

Turn plants into pesticides, create new fungi, enhance the virulence of pathogens

Develop bioregulators B all for our own purposes, as if we were dealing with machines

The Luddites were not against the development of machines

They were against machines used to dehumanize workers

We shun the unmeasurable, seeking only unalterable laws, whether in physics or economics

We reward greed, competition, selfishness, self-advancement at the expense of others

We see the world as merely the sum of its parts, assigning each its own commercial value

Our statistics have no language for human bonding, kindness, empathy, love, community

Perhaps we pull together only in war when we are threatened by our latest enemy

And send our young ones to kill and be killed, so that we can maintain our way of life

Look at the stars, says the mother to her six-year old, in the year 2025

No, not that one B that is a nuclear space station circling the earth to protect us

I know exploitation. My paternal grandfather used Caribbean slaves to make his fortune

His father was a General when the Gatling gun made subduing natives a painless adventure

My maternal step-grandfather used African, AGold Coast@ slaves to accumulate his capital

Never permitting his wife possession of company shares, reserving these for his family only

My maternal great-grandfather used Russian cheap, docile and flexible workers for his business

Feeling most cheated when they confiscated his gambled money during their Revolution in 1917

Are we not re-staging in our world the hierarchical image of our youth

Parent/child becoming powerful/weak, wealthy/poor, boss/worker, industrialized/Adeveloping@?

Converting our human commons into the patented properties of the wealthy

We are acting as if land, water, air, animals, plants and even our own germ plasm

Were mere commodities B manufactured goods for sale to those who can afford them

When in fact, our universe is a given, a gift, free, there without even an asking

A delicately balanced wonder which, parceled out, bartered, altered, owned or brutalized

Shrivels and ceases to sustain our most precious miracle B the biosphere and us within it

Water is being bottled and transported across oceans for the wealthy

While the Sahara desert expands, spurred by global warming

Splitting the atom has meant Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a legacy of monstrous newborns

The clear-cutting of forests and industrial fishing mean the massive extinction of species

Exploring other planets means potentially bringing back uncontrollable, deadly viruses

Surrogate motherhood means the intentional and unnatural corruption of maternal bonds

Embryo manipulation means designer children and a new biological eugenics

Splicing genes means the creation new life forms, lately a goat head with a sheep body

There was political conquest, and then economic conquest

We have now entered the age of biological imperialism

We must have a God in whose divinity we partake

We must devise a science that contextualizes and empathizes

We must redefine success as raising children who do not kill

We must respect our own evolution, even if we think it imperfect

We must nurture the lowliest algae for they form the basis of our food

We must rejoice in the diversity in which we were born

And if we don=t, we will die

Together with the planet we have plundered.

Acknowledgment

I stand upon the shoulders of giants. Only the most recent ones are listed below.

Bibliography

Ahmad, Eqbal, Terrorism B Theirs and Ours (Seven Stories, New York, N.Y.), 2001.

Ali, Tariq, The Clash of Fundamentalisms B Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (Verso, N.Y.), 2002.

Barlow, Maude, and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold B The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World=s Water (The New Press, New York, N.Y.), 2002.

Brook, James and Iain Boal, Eds., Resisting the Virtual Life B The Culture and Politics of Information (City Lights, San Francisco, CA), 1995.

Caldicott, Helen, The New Nuclear Danger B George W. Bush=s Military-Industrial Complex (The New Press, New York, N.Y.), 2002.

deMause, Lloyd, The History of Childhood (Jason Aronson, Northvale, New Jersey), 1974.

Ellis, John, The Social History of the Machine Gun (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD), 1975.

Grossman, Karl, Weapons in Space (Seven Stories, N.Y.), 2001.

Hammond, Edward, ABiological Warfare,@ TUC Radio, 06/15/02. Edward Hammond is Co-director of The Sunshine Project, 101 West 6^th Street, #607, Austin, TX 78701; Tel. 1-512-494-0545; www.sunshine-project.org.

Kimbrell, Andrew, The Human Body Shop B The Cloning, Engineering, and Marketing of Life (Gateway/Regnery, Washington, D.C.), 1997.

Kneen, Brewster, Farmageddon B Food and the Culture of Biotechnology (New Society, Gabriola Island, B.C., Canada), 1999.

Roy, Arundhati, Power Politics (South End), Cambridge, MA), 2001

Shiva, Vandana, Stolen Harvest B The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (South End, Cambridge, MA), 2000.

***

January 18, 2003

Iraq Tortured

The moment the law squeezes your arm

The instant you trip into the hole of no return

Into another world, beyond the looking glass

The split second when you fall from grace

After which nothing is ever the same

That moment came for Iraq on August 2, 1990

We, the United States, had undermined progressives

Encouraged Saddam Hussein=s hold on power

He was helping our agenda in the Middle East

Maintaining for us its fragile balance of power

But now after a long dispute with Kuwait

He had invaded the small monarchy. A crime?

Yes, like Israel=s invasion of Palestine in 1967

Turkey=s invasion of Cyprus in 1974

Indonesia=s invasion of East Timor in 1975

Like our own invasion of Grenada in 1983

Our own invasion of Panama in 1989

Our intervention in 60 countries since 1945

Our bombing of 24 countries since then

All unpunished by the international community

However, this time, we meant to give a message

Show the world the extent of our impunity

We were an unequaled, supernatural power

And could on a whim punish an errant

Isolate, desolate, torture, annihilate

Torture is the pitting of overwhelming power

Against one helpless designated enemy

It silences. Who wants to risk the same fate?

Who would not betray to avoid such pain?

Who is not terrorized by its awesome devastation?

We invaded Iraq, killing some 100,000

We used depleted uranium, thus prolonging

Our punishment for well over 5 billion years

We destroyed chemical and water treatment plants

And monitored as disease epidemics ravaged

The prisoner must be isolated and starved

For Iraq, sanctions have been our tools

Since 1990, the strict rules we have imposed

Have denied even antibiotics for civilians

Dual use B can an army not also use antibiotics?

Our sanctions have killed 840,000 children

Over 5000 every month B but we are not satisfied

Just as a prisoner=s testicles must be squeezed

So Iraq=s future must be amputated, obliterated

Sanctions continue. Despair must be absolute

The prisoner must be humiliated, degraded

Stripped of his clothes, be under total control

We took possession of Iraq=s airspace

Declaring Ano-fly zones,@ north and south

Bombing them, since 1991, 2-3 times a week

Privacy must be invaded B mouth, vagina, anus

All body cavities to be inspected repeatedly

So have our inspectors (some of them spies)

Thus intruded B now entering private houses

And even palaces, on demand, unannounced

A confession completes the social spectacle

We scoff at Iraq=s 12,000 page declaration

But have whisked it away to blot out evidence

Of our complicity the country=s weapons program

Distributing to others only the redacted version

And all the while we browbeat our victim

ACooperate or your fate will be worse still We will invade, bomb again with depleted uranium

Our electronic surveillance shows your every move

Surrender, for no one will come to your help@

Thus it is that the torturer=s power increases

In the measure that that of his victim shrinks

Appeals to noble causes providing pretexts

AWe must save civilization from Evil@

AWe are not against the people of Iraq@

Notes

Definition

United Nations Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Torture, 9 December, 1975, Article 1.

Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or confession, punishing him for an act he has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating him or other persons.

History

The United States:

The United States is the overwhelmingly most powerful driving force defining the United Nations policy on Iraq. For this reason, the focus of the poem is the United States.

Torture:

The 1975 United Nations Declaration Against Torture was strengthened and augmented by The 1984 United Nations Conventions against Torture. Neither have been implemented.

Amnesty USA states, in its 1984 Report, Torture in the Eighties, that there have been allegations of the practice of torture by the government in 66 of the 154 member nations of the United Nations.

The United States ratified The 1984 United Nations Conventions Against Torture in 1992.

Depleted Uranium:

Depleted uranium (DU, Uranium 238) is a by-product in the manufacture of nuclear weapons and has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

The United Nations estimates that 60,000 pounds (27,256 kilograms) of DU now lie on Iraq=s landscape. One gram throws off 12,400 alpha particle per second, each of which, if in touch with the human body, can cause cancer or congenital malformations.

Sanctions:

Including adults, sanctions have killed over 1.5 million Iraqis B more than all weapons of mass destruction in the entire history of the world.

Acknowledgment

My poem is based on Kate Millet=s outstanding book, The Politics of Cruelty (See reference below).

Bibliography

Arnove, Anthony, Ed., Iraq under Siege B The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War (South End, Cambridge, MA), 2000.

Blum, William

Killing Hope B U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (Common Courage, Monroe, Maine), 1995.

Rogue State B A Guide to the World=s Only Superpower (Common Courage, Monroe, Maine), 2000.

Caldicott, Helen, The New Nuclear Danger B George W. Bush=s Military-Industrial Complex (The New Press, New York, N.Y.), 2002.

Cockburn, Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes B The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (Harper Collins), 1999.

Free Speech Radio News, WBAI, New York, 01/17/03.

Millet, Kate, The Politics of Cruelty B An Essay on the Literature of Political Imprisonment (W. W. Norton, New York, N.Y.), 1994.

Zunes, Stephen, Tinderbox B U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage, Monroe, Maine), 2003.

***

February 16, 2003

Oil Today, Water Tomorrow

All eyes are turned towards Iraq, as they should be

Empire is determined to extend its dominion

To teach the world that what it says goes

To gain control over more of the black gold

To change balances of power more to its liking

But oil does not belong to Iraq

Any more than it will belong to the United States

When it waves its flag in righteous victory

Oil is part of our planet, our earth, our home

Our children=s lives poorer for us having stolen it

And though now the hour may be too late

To undo the witches= brew which has led

To the present impasse, watch for Empire=s moves

The brew it is concocting presently, knowing

That the price of water will soon match that of oil

Scarcity of the blue gold has hit even within

The Ogallala Aquifer is rapidly being depleted

The Colorado River no longer reaches the sea

Lakes Ontario and Erie are polluted beyond hope

The President has laid claim the neighbor=s water

In their rush to turn a profit, financial powers

Tell us that water, like oil, is a commodity

Which should be privatized and sold

According to the logic of a free market

The price to determine who the lucky ones are

But I can live without oil, not without water

I can find substitutes for oil, not for water

My life depends on my access to safe water

My sustenance, on water to nurture my food

My health, on sanitation to stave off disease

Of the just over six billion of us on the planet

A quarter has no access to potable water

One half no access to basic sanitation services

Almost half are now experiencing water scarcity

Almost half use rivers adjoining other countries

Notes

Ogallala Aquifer

Barlow and Clarke, p. 16; Klare, p. 144.

The Ogallala Aquifer, the largest underground body of water in North America, stretching from the Texas panhandle to South Dakota, is being depleted 14 times faster than its rate of replenishment B which is in the many thousands of years. Like fossil fuels, it must be considered a non-renewable resource. By some estimates, more than half has been tapped to date

Colorado River

Barlow and Clarke, p. 9.

The Colorado River is so oversubscribed on its journey through seven U.S. states that there is virtually nothing left to go out to sea

Lakes Ontario and Erie

Barlow and Clarke, pp. 35-37; Petrella, p. 54.

The Great Lakes are highly polluted, the situation now considered irreversible in the cases of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Application of the Apolluter pays@ principle, whereby high polluters pay an increased price for water, has led many to relocate in poor countries where they do not incur such a cost

The President

Barlow and Clarke, p. 71.

Canadians are concerned about the inclusion of water as a tradable commodity in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Many Canadians believe that American politicians and business leaders view Canadian resources, including water, as continental resources, to be shared as if there were no border. Some fear that if the U.S. runs short of water and Canadians refuse to divert their resources south of the border, Americans might view this as tantamount to a declaration of war.

Canadian concerns were not allayed when, in July 2001, just before the G-8 meeting in Genoa, Italy, President George W. Bush remarked that he saw Canadian water as an extension of Canada=s energy reserves, to be shared with the U.S. by pipeline in the near future

Access to Potable Water

Barlow and Clarke, p. 24; Petrella, pp. 8 and 27.

More than 1.4 billion people do not have access to drinking water.

Access to Sanitation Services

Barlow and Clarke, p. 24; Petrella, p. 8.

In addition to the 1.4 billion people with no access to drinking water, another more than 2 billion have no system for either domestic sanitation or the purification of waste water

Almost Half are now experiencing Water Scarcity

Klare, p. 142; Petrella, p. 28.

Forty percent of the world=s population, residing in a total of eighty countries, are faced with a scarcity of water B defined as the availability of less than 1,000 cubic meters per person per year, without compromising water capital

Almost Half use Rivers adjoining Other Countries

Barlow and Clarke, p. 69.

About forty percent of the world=s population relies on the 214 major river systems shared by two or more countries

Bibliography

Barlow, Maude and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold B The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World=s Water (The New Press, New York, N.Y.), 2002

Klare, Michael, Resource Wars B The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Henry Holt, N.Y.), 2001.

Petrella, Riccardo, The Water Manifesto B Arguments for a World Water Contract (Zed Books, New York, N.Y.) 2001.

***

February 23, 2003

To 500,000 Iraqis

It is you, you, and you who will soon be killed

By American bombs, missiles, tanks and guns

Stop hoping that it will surely be somebody else

That you, by chance, will escape the dreaded fate

Within months you will die before your time

Made immobile, silenced, brushed away

So the victors can stomp on your wealthy land

Westernize your leaders and call it democracy

Were you sure you are among the future victims

What would you do? How angry would you be?

Would you rise en masse, all 500,000 of you?

Hold hostage all now complicit to the crime?

Only the hope that death is reserved for others

Keeps you plodding now with your daily life

Fearful, compliant, making plans for the future

Trusting God will save you because you are you

The denial that it will be us

Keeps us in line, like sheep

Both in the country to be raped

And the country of the aggressor.

Note

Five hundred thousand is a low-end estimate of the number of violent civilian casualties likely to occur during the anticipated a war on Iraq. For purposes of comparison, the 1991 Gulf war B which did not entail a fight for Baghdad B incurred 100,000 - 200,000 civilian casualties (Zunes, Stephen, Tinderbox B U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage, Monroe, Maine), 2003.

The above figures do not include non-violent civilian casualties. A United Nations document published earlier this month estimates that, in the eventuality of war, 30 percent of Iraqi children under five years B that is, over one million children B would be at risk of death from malnutrition. This represents half of the 60 percent of Iraqi children under five who are presently dependent on governmental food rations. Should the governmental structure disintegrate, as anticipated during a conflict, these children would have no other source of nutrition (Dr. Glen Rangwala, Lecturer, University of Cambridge, U.K., Counterspin, 02/24/03. See www.fair.org and www.casi.org.uk).

If nuclear bombs are used, the number of casualties would, of course, be much higher, both due to delayed deaths from radiation exposure and death of future children from congenital malformations.

***

March 1, 2003

Our Global Village B North and South

Global Village? A term surely coined by the North

To entice us into believing we all get along

In the South, it feels more like a permanent slum

A favela, a barriada, perhaps a parched hell

A desert whose odor is that of human waste

A testimony to our violent past, our 191 countries

Are shaped arbitrarily, borders often drawn by victors

More intent on dividing and ruling than uniting

Did you note the small size of the oil-richest countries?

Or how watersheds are made to separate, not join users?

In 1960, the richest among us earned 30 times

What the poorest earned. Now it is 70 times

And every year, the disparity is widening faster

The combined income of half a percent of us

Equals the combined income of 43 percent of us

The United States, with 5 percent of the population

Terrifies all others with its present war on terrorism

The 400 billion dollars it spends yearly on its military

Is less to fight any possible credible enemy in sight

Than to achieve its aim of full dominance in space

Giddy with the brazen arrogance of a new Empire

The U.S. has sabotaged treaties on missiles, race

Nuclear arsenals, biological weapons, land mines

Terrorism, global warming, the rights of the child

Biosafety, biodiversity, torture and a criminal court

The South has most of our biological resources

A wealth now being decimated at a vertiginous rate

It contains the country where one in four has HIV

It spawns the child dying every 8 seconds due to bad water

It has the three billion of us without access to sanitation

Market rights, not human rights, cross borders easily

Pollution, wastes and predation flow North to South

Genes and intellectual heritage flow South to North

The North gives the South 50 billion dollars yearly

The South loses to the North 500 billion dollars yearly

Notes

Perhaps a Parched Hell

Barlow, p. 24. UNDP 1999, p.148.

Thirty-one countries, most of them in the South, are currently facing water stress and scarcity. The South has almost all of the one billion people who have no access to clean drinking water.

A Desert whose Odor is that of Human Waste

Barlow, p. 24. UNDP 1999, p. 148.

The South has almost all of the three billion people who have no access to sanitation services.

Did you note the small size of the oil-richest countries?

Klare, pp. 44-45; UNDP 2001, pp 154-157 and 238.

Over half of the estimated global reserves of petroleum, is in the hands of four countries whose combined population is 0.77 percent of the total world population:

Percent of World Percent of World

Estimated Reserves Total Population

Saudi Arabia 25 0.33

Iraq 11 0.37

United Arab Emirates 9 0.04

Kuwait 9 0.03

Total 54 0.77

In 1960, the Richest among us earned 30 times

Mahajan, p. 103; UNDP 2001, p. 20.

The income ratio between the richest 20 percent and the poorest 20 percent of the world=s population, based on country averages, has been as follows:

1960 30

1970 34

1990 60

1997 70

The Combined Income of Half a Percent

UNDP 2001, p. 19.

In 1988-93, the combined income of the richest 10 percent of the United States population B around 25 million people, or 0.42 percent of the 5.863 billion world population B had a combined income greater than that of the poorest 43 percent of the world=s population (around 2 billion people).

The United States, with 5 percent of the Population

UNDP 2001, pp. 154 and 156.

The United States population was 280.4 million in 1999, when the total world population was 5.863 billion.

The 400 billion Dollars (the United States) spends yearly on its Military

Mahajan, Presentation, 09/02.

Than It is to achieve its Aim of Full Dominance in Space

Grossman, Karl.

Vision for 2020, the United States Space Command, 1996 Report, gives its raison d=etre: AU.S. Space Command B dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investments B integrating Space Forces into war-fighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict... The globalization of the world economy will... continue, with a widening gap between the Ahaves@ and Ahave-nots...@.

The U.S. has sabotaged Treaties

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

Bennis, pp. 2-3 and 10; Mahajan, p. 22.

The World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerences

Bennis, pp. 15-20.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

Bennis, pp. 2-3 and 10; Mahajan, p. 140.

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention

Bennis, pp. 12-13; Mahajan, pp. 140-141.

The Anti-personnel Land Mine Treaty

Bennis, p. 1; Mahajan, p. 46.

(Terrorism) The International Court of Justice; United Nations Security Council Resolutions

Bennis 172-173; Olshansky, pp. 59-62. Mahajan, p. 143.

The Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change

Bennis, pp. 3 and 10; Mahajan, p. 22; UNDP 2001, p. 200.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child

UNDP 2001, p. 230.

The Biosafety Protocol

Anderson, Luke, p. 98.

The Convention on Biological Diversity

Shiva, Monocultures, p. 152; UNDP 2001, p. 200.

The United Nations Conventions against Torture; The International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights

Millett pp. 13 and 305-306; Olshansky, pp. 7, 23-24, 47-48, 52, 54-58, 60 and 75.

The International Criminal Court

Bennis, pp. 1 and 10; Mahajan, pp. 143-144.

The South has most of our Biological Resources

Anderson, Luke, p. 81; Shiva, Monocultures, p. 65.

The Third Word contains over 95 percent of the world=s genetic resources. Tropical moist forests cover only 7 percent of the earth=s land surface but contain at least half of the earth=s species.

A Wealth now being decimated at a Vertiginous Rate

Anderson, Luke, p. 52; Shiva, Monocultures, p. 66.

During the 1990's, species were being extinguished at the rate of 10,000 a year, an increase from 1000 species a year in 1980's. Some estimates put the figure as high as 30,000 species a year during the 1990's.

(The South) contains the Country where One in Four has HIV

UNDP 2001, p. 163; Mahajan, p. 108.

About 20-25 percent of South Africa=s population in the reproductive ages, is thought to be infected with the AIDS virus.

(The South) spawns the Child dying every 8 Seconds due to Bad Water

Barlow, p.52; UNDP 1999, p.148; UNDP 2001, pp. 149-150.

(The South) has the Three billion of us without Access to Sanitation

Barlow, p. 24; UNDP 1999, p. 148.

Market Rights, not Human Rights, cross Borders easily

Anderson, Sarah; Shiva, Protect or Plunder?

Pollution, Wastes and Predation North to South

Pollution and Wastes

UNDP 2001, p. 200; Gelbspan, p. 110 and 113.

The United States is responsible for 23 percent of the world=s total carbon dioxide emissions. Developed countries may account for as much as 80 percent of the world=s pollution. To achieve stabilization of the atmosphere, the industrial world would have to cut its emission by 60-70 percent below 1990 levels.

Predation

Blum, pp. 125-167; Klare, p.15.

The United States=s share of the yearly consumption of raw materials by the world population, is approximately 30 percent. In the past 50 years, the United States has intervened overtly or covertly to further its own power in over 60 nations, most of them in the South.

Genes and Intellectual Heritage flow South to North

Shiva, Monocultures.

The South loses to the North 500 billion Dollars Yearly

Shiva, Protect or Plunder?, p. 23.

While $50 billion flows annually from the North to the South in terms of aid, the South loses $500 billion every year in terms of interest payments on debt and loss of fair prices for commodities due to unequal terms of trade.

The North=s Language embeds its View of the South

Shiva, Monocultures.

But the North sells Seeds which do not germinate

Shiva, Monocultures, p. 144; Shiva, Plunder or Protect?, pp. 80- 82.

The seed has been dubbed the ATerminator Seed@ and the technology, ATerminator Technology.@

The Industrialized Farming Practices (the North) has given us

Anderson, Luke, p. 52.

Bibliography

Anderson, Luke, Genetic Engineering, Food, and Our Environment (Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont), 1999/2000.

Anderson, Sarah, Views from the South B The Effects of Globalization and the WTO on Third World Countries (Food First/International Forum on Globalization, Chicago, IL), 2000.

Barlow, Maude, and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold B The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World=s Water (The New Press, New York, N.Y.), 2002.

Bennis, Phyllis, Before and After B US Foreign Policy and the September 11^th Crisis (Olive Branch/Interlink, New York, N.Y.), 2003.

Blum, William, Rogue State B A Guide to the World=s Only Superpower (Common Courage, Monroe, Maine), 2000.

Gelbspan, Ross, The Heat is On B The Climate Crisis, The Cover-up, The Prescription (Perseus, Reading, MA), 1998.

Grossman, Karl, Weapons in Space (Seven Stories, Open Media, N.Y.), 2001.

Klare, Michael, Resource Wars B The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Henry Holt, New York, N.Y.), 2001.

Mahajan, Rahul

The New Crusade B America=s War on Terrorism (Monthly Review Press, New York, N.Y.), 2002.

Presentation, 09/02, transmitted by Alternative Radio, KGNU, Boulder, CO, 09/18/02.

Millett, Kate, The Politics of Cruelty B An Essay on the Literature of Political Imprisonment (W. W. Norton, New York, N.Y.), 1994.

Olshansky, Barbara, Secret Trials and Executions B Military Tribunals and the Threat to Democracy (Seven Stories, Open Media, N.Y.), 2002.

Shiva, Vandana

Monocultures of the Mind B Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology (Zed Books, New York, N.Y.), 1993.

Protect or Plunder? Understanding Intellectual Property Rights (Zed Books, New York, N.Y.), 2001.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Human Development Report 1999 (UNDP, New York, N.Y.), 1999.

Human Development Report 2001 B Making New Technologies work for Human Development (UNDP, New York, N.Y.), 2001.

***

March 19, 2003, 8 p.m., EST

Guernica, Baghdad

Guernica, Baghdad B soon sister cities-to-be in airborne death...

Guernica, a vibrant town of 6000 on the Northern coast of Spain

Was bombed on market day, Monday, April 26, 1937, at 4 p.m.

By the Nazi Condor Legion, on orders of the insurgent General Franco

Hitler and his Minister of Aviation, General Hermann Goering

Had been eagerly looking for an opportunity to test the ability

Of their young pilots to wage a blitzkrieg B a lightning war

Which would create shock and disorganization on the ground

By means of speed, surprise and massive fire power from the air

The three-hour campaign was efficient, accurate and effective

Reported its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen

Explaining, AIf cities are destroyed by flames, if women and children

Are victims of suffocating gases, if the population in open cities

Far from the front perish due to bombs dropped from planes

It will be impossible for the enemy to continue the war

Its citizens will plead for an immediate end to hostilities@

Guernica was obliterated. Some 2000 were killed, the rest fled

Homeless dogs roamed what had been the cradle of Basque culture

The horror suffered by its people was immortalized by Pablo Picasso

Whose painting, Guernica, helped the world begin to comprehend

For the first time in history, the barbarism of death from the skies

Generalissimo Francisco Franco was a deeply religious man

Who believed that God had selected him to assist Hitler

In returning Europe to the authoritarian inviolability of the state

Then there was Coventry, Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki

And now, Baghdad... President George W. Bush=s plan is for 3000 bombs

To be dropped on the City during the first 48 hours of his campaign

Which is to begin now at any time, to instill Ashock and awe@ in its inhabitants

Will our leaders, will we, ever hear the primal howl of our victims?

Bibliography

Churchill, Winston, The Second World War II, Vol. I B The Gathering Storm (Houghton Mifflin), 1948, p. 214.

Lindquist, Sven, A History of Bombing, translation from Swedish by Linda Rugg, (The New Press, New York), 2001, pp. 5, 72-75 and 138.

Martin, Russell, Picasso=s War B The Destruction of Guernica, and the Masterpiece that changed the World (Dutton/Penguin, New York, N.Y.), 2002, pp. 2, 30, 32, 35, 43, 49-51, 158, 179, 182-183, 233, 236, 242 and 267.

Picasso, Pablo, Guernica, 1937. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Bilbao, Spain.

The New Columbia Encyclopedia (Columbia University Press, Columbia University Press, New York, 1975) p.1158.

Shirer, William, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich B A History of Nazi Germany (Touchstone), 1959, pp. 282 and 297.

***

November 12, 2001

Western Civilization B

A Short History of its Aerial Bombardments

1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright fly the first motor-driven machine

Defying gravity for twelve seconds while covering forty yards

The world is ecstatic. Dreams of freedom, peace, perfection

Immortality and even divine power seem within reach

1911 Lieutenant Giulo Cavotti has flown his monoplane from Italy

The North African desert below him is home to 600,000 Arabs

Over the Oasis of Tagiura, he drops a Danish Haasen hand grenade

The death toll is unknown in this, the first site ever to be bombed from the air

1914-18 The Acolonial shortcut@ of bombing civilians is inadmissible in Europe

But four years of stalemate on the ground makes pilots imprecise

And accidents routinely happen over the center of cities

Civilians joining en masse the ten million dead the war produces

1920 Mohammed Abdille Hassan of Somaliland rebels against British rule

The AMad Mullah@ must be killed and in what better way

Than with a man-hunt from the air B a first success which serves as precedent

For the henceforth systematic bombing of restless natives and savages

1925 American legionnaires in the service of Spain follow their orders

Chechaouen, capital of the Jibala people

A town of 6,000 inhabitants, clinging to the mountainside of northern Morocco

Becomes the first city ever to know death from the air

1937 German legionnaires in the service of Spain follow their orders

Guernica, capital of the Basque people

A town of 6,000 inhabitants, clinging to the mountainside of northern Spain

Becomes the first European city ever to know death from the air

1939-45 The Germans kill 40,000 in England over six months, using conventional bombs

The British kill 50,000 in Hamburg overnight, using incendiary bombs

Then they kill 100,000 in Dresden overnight, using incendiary bombs

The Americans kill 100,000 in Tokyo overnight, using the new napalm bombs

1945 From the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets drops Little Boy over Hiroshima

Within one minute 100,000 are dead

Within weeks 100,000 die from radiation sickness

Over the next 12 years, one of every seven newborn has a birth defect

1946-54 The Second World War has killed forty-six million people

Colonies are indispensable for re-building

In Vietnam, the French try the bait-and-trap method of subduing

They drop sacks of rice, wait, then bomb those who have gathered

1950-53 Americans dominate the airspace over Korea

In three months they destroy all the North Korean cities

Without encountering resistance

In a war that kills five million people

1954-62 The French change the conditions of warfare with the helicopter in Algeria

They seed the countryside with antipersonnel fragmentation bombs

Drop paratroopers to smoke out guerillas on the ground

Then hunt the men from the air as they are fleeing for their lives

1960 The United States has 10,000 nuclear bombs, 1,000 of which are hydrogen bombs

A ten-megaton hydrogen bomb has five time the explosive power

Of all the bombs dropped on Germany during the Second World War

A fifteen megaton hydrogen bomb is equivalent to 1,200 Hiroshima bombs

1962 The Soviet Union explodes a fifty-megaton bomb

Bigger than any exploded to date B the equivalent of 4,000 Hiroshima bombs

Then for several days in October, the world teeters on the brink of annihilation

Until Nikita Khrushchev humbly removes his bases from Cuba

1964-75 The United States drops the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima bombs on Indochina

From 1966 to 1971, it drops 500,000 cluster bombs, made to kill humans

And when these explode into their 285 million secondary bombs

It equates to seven bombs for every Indochinese man, woman and child

1969 At home, the United States and the Soviet Union together

Have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world population 690 times

In Vietnam, the United States inaugurates the fuel-air bomb

Bridging the gap between conventional and nuclear weapons

1975 On the thirtieth anniversary of Hiroshima

The United States has a nuclear capability

Equivalent to 100,000 Hiroshima bombs

With the systems to deliver it simultaneously everywhere on earth

1980 On the thirty-fifth anniversary of Hiroshima

The United States and the Soviet Union

Together have a nuclear capability

Equivalent to 1,000,000 Hiroshima bombs

1991 The United States bombs an enemy, Iraq

Which it itself has helped arm during the preceding ten years

An erstwhile ally whom it now accuses

Of possessing Aweapons of mass destruction@

2001 The United States= own airplanes

Are used as bombs

To destroy two of its icons

One commercial, the other military

The United States declares Afghanistan the culprit

And in one month, drops 8,000 bombs on this country, the size of Texas

At home, it hastens its work on missiles launched from outer space

And the use of lasers rather than bombs to kill earthlings

In the year 2001

Western civilization

Is at the helm of the world.

Acknowledgments

Sven Lindquist is a source of inspiration. His steady refusal to use the usual euphemisms for killing (Aemploying violence,@ Aprojecting military force,@ Aputting pressure on the enemy,@ Aengaging the enemy in combat,@ etc...) is very welcome and refreshing. Most of my information was taken from his book published in Sweden in 2000, and translated by Linda Rugg, under the title, A History of Bombing, (The New Press, New York), 2001.

References

The following page numbers refer to Lindquist, Sven, A History of Bombing, translation from Swedish by Linda Rugg, (The New Press, New York), 2001.

1903 B The First Airplane

Lindquist, pp. 26-28.

Harris, William and Judith Levey, The New Columbia Encyclopedia (Columbia University Press, New York), 1975, p. 41.

1911 B The First Bomb from the Air

Lindquist, pp.1-2.

1914-18 B The First World War

Lindquist, pp. 2-5 and 40.

1920 B The Somaliland War

Lindquist, pp. 2 and 42.

1925 B Chechaouen, Morocco

Lindquist, pp. 5 and 51.

1937 B Guernica, Spain

Lindquist, pp. 5 and 72-74.

1939-45 B The Second World War

Lindquist, pp. 81, 83, 95, 102, 107-108, 147 and 175.

1945 B Hiroshima

Lifton, Robert and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America B A Half Century of Denial (Avon Book, New York), 1995, pp. xii and 231.

Lindquist, pp. 111-112, 147 and 175.

1946-54 B The French Vietnam War

Gilbert, Martin, The Second World War B A Complete History (Revised Edition), (Owl, Henry Holt, New York), 1989, p. 1.

Lindquist, p. 135.

1950- 53 BThe Korean War

Lindquist, pp. 126-127 and 130-131.

1954-62 B The Algerian War

Lindquist, pp. 144-145.

1960 B Stockpiling Atomic Bombs

Lindquist, pp. 136, 141 and 148.

1962 B The Super-Bomb

Lindquist, pp. 151-152.

1964-75 B The American Vietnam War

Lindquist, pp. 155- 157 and 163.

1969 B More Weapons

Lindquist, pp. 157-158 and 160.

1975 B More Weapons and Better Delivery

Lindquist, p. 165.

1980 B More and Better Weapons

Lindquist, p. 168.

1990-91 B The Gulf War

Lindquist, p. 173.

2001 B The Afghanistan War

Grossman, Karl, Weapons in Space, (Seven Stories Press, New York), 2001, pages 28,52, 61 and 66.

Skahill, Jeremy, KGNU, Democracy Now, 11/09/01 (Reporting the announcement of the United States Department of Defense).

***

November 24, 2001

Western Civilization at Crossroads

The earth is dying

It cannot absorb the waste we impose on it

Replenish its resources at the pace we withdraw them

Sustain its species in the face of our assaults

Provide more oil, water or metals than it has

We can continue our tradition

Of murdering, maiming, plundering and enslaving to get our way

As we did in past centuries on all continents which were not ours

As we have done twice to our own selves this past century

And have continued to do to others these past fifty years

Our harvest will be more of the same

Worst perhaps, for we are changing life=s genetic make-up

Through the radioactivity we release by our nuclear detonations

Our technical manipulation of genes, including our own

And our steady replacement of diversity by single varieties, including among humans

Or we can realize that we have to share our earth with others

Produce waste only in proportion to our numbers

Have others= resources only to the extent they are willing to give them

Humanize all people, no matter their race, gender, age, sexual habits or abilities

Recognize the validity of political and economic arrangements other than our own

Our harvest would be more of the same

Better perhaps, for wealth and secrets for survival hide in diversity

And the half of our time we now spend devising ways to kill

Could be spent dreaming, playing, enjoying, developing ourselves

Bathing in the warm glow of community rather than alone in the cold wind of enmity

But first we would have to recognize that killers are made, not born

And for the first time in the history of humankind, raise our children to not need enemies

Not be enlivened by death, not seek revenge, not communicate through the infliction of pain

They would need to know that power to kill does not imply greatness of civilization

That technical prowess does not equate with morality

We have some fifty years in which to decide

For by then, if we continue our present ways

The earth will no longer be able to sustain complex forms of life

And strange living things may change forever the world as we know it today.

References

Our Earth is dying

Waste

Foster, John

The Vulnerable Planet B A Short Economic History of the Environment (Monthly Review, New York), 1993, 1999.

Gelbspan, Ross

The Heat is On B The Climate Crisis, The Cover-up, The Prescription (Perseus), 1998. (Developed countries produce over 60 percent of the world=s pollution).

Resources

Klare, Michael

Resource Wars B The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Henry Holt, N.Y.), 2001. (Developed countries use over 40 percent of the resources available to the human population, yearly. The United States alone uses approximately 30 percent of all raw materials, yearly)

We can continue our Tradition

Five Continents

Ahmad, Eqbal

Confronting Empire (In Conversation with David Barsamian), (South End, Cambridge, MA), 2000.

Fanon. Frantz

The Wretched of the Earth (Grove), 1963.

Hochschild, Adam

King Leopold=s Ghost B A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Houghton Mifflin), 1998.

Johnson, Charles & Patricia Smith

Africans in America B America=s Journey through Slavery (Harcourt Brace), 1998.

Lindqvist, Sven

Exterminate All the Brutes, 1992. Translation, Joan Tate (The New Press), 1996.

Robinson, Randall

The Debt B What America owes to Blacks (Dutton, Penguin, N.Y.) 2000.

Rodney, Walter

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Howard University,) 1972.

Twice to Ourselves

The First World War

Lindqvist, Sven

A History of Bombing, 2000. Translation, Linda Rugg (The New Press, N.Y.), 2001, pages 2-5 and 40.

The Second World War

Gilbert, Martin

The Second World War, Revised Edition (Owl, Henry Holt, N.Y.), 1989.

Lindqvist, Sven

A History of Bombing, 2000. Translation, Linda Rugg (The New Press, N.Y.), 2001 pages 81, 83, 95, 102, 107-108, 147 and 175.

The Past Fifty Years

Blum, William

Killing Hope B U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (Common Courage), 1995.

Chomsky, Noam

Turning the Tide B U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace (South End), 1985.

A New Generation Draws the Line B Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West (Verso, N.Y.). 2000

Rogue States B The Rule of Force in World Affairs (South End, Cambridge, MA), 2000.

Klare, Michael

Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws B America=s Search for a New Foreign Policy (Hill and Wang, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, N.Y.), 1995,

Our Harvest will be

More of the Same

Gonzalez, Juan

Harvest of Empire B A History of Latinos in America (Viking, 2000).

Johnson, Chalmers

Blowback B The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, (Owl, Henry Holt, N.Y.), 2000.

Radioactivity

Space Exploration and War Preparations

Grossman, Karl

The Wrong Stuff B The Space Program=s Nuclear Threat to our Planet (Common Courage), 1997.

Weapons in Space (Seven Stories, N.Y.), 2001.

Wars

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Lindqvist, Sven

A History of Bombing, 2000. Translation, Linda Rugg (The New Press, N.Y.), 2001, pages 111-112, 147 and 175.

Iraq, Kuwait, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan

Jawad Metni, Director and Producer, ADownwind B Depleted Uranium Weapons in the Age of Virtual War,@ Documentary Film, 2001. Summarized in an interview with Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, KGNU, Boulder, CO, 11/16/01. The amount of depleted uranium released has been as follows:

Gulf War (Iraq and Kuwait) 320 tons

Bosnia (*) 2 - 3 tons

Kosovo (*) 10.5 tons

Afghanistan (to date) 1,1000 tons (**)

(*) Slavs occupy a peripheral position in Europe. While European, they (like the Celts, Semites, Czechs, Slovenes and Slovaks), occupy an inferior position in the hierarchy of European Araces.@ Hitler=s expansion eastward for Lebensraum, would have made them the servants and workers for the Germanics.

(**) As yet unconfirmed by the United States Department of Defense).

Technical Manipulation of Genes

Advanced Cell Technology, a small privately financed biotechnology company, has announced that it has successfully cloned human embryos. Democracy Now (Host, Amy Goodman), KGNU, Boulder, CO, 11/26/01.

Anderson, Luke

Genetic Engineering, Food, and Our Environment (Chelsea Green White river Junction, Vermont), 1999/2000.

Dawkins, Kristin

Gene Wars B The Politics of Biotechnology (Open Media, Seven Stories), 1997

Lappe, Marc and Bailey, Britt

Against the Grain B Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of your Food (Common Courage, Monroe, Maine), 1998.

Teidel, Martin and Kimberly Wilson

Genetically Engineered Food B Changing the Nature of Nature (Park St. Press, Rochester, VT), 1999.

Replacement of Diversity

Gedicks, Al,

Resource Rebels B Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations (South End, Cambridge, MA), 2001.

Shiva, Vandana

Biopiracy B The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End), 1997.

Stolen Harvest B The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (South End, Cambridge, MA) 2000.

Or We can realize

Have to Share

Singer, Daniel

Whose Millennium? Theirs or Ours? (Monthly Review Press, New York), 1999.

Humanize All People

Abramovitz, Mimi

Regulating the Lives of Women B Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (South End Press, Revised Edition), 1996.

Parenti, Christian

Lockdown America B Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (Verso, 1999).

Other Political and Economic Arrangements

Fotopoulos, Takis

Towards an Inclusive Democracy B The Crisis of the Growth Economy and the Need for a New Liberatory Project (Cassell, New York), 1997.

Herman, Edward

Triumph of the Market B Essays on Economics, Politics and the Media (South End), 1995.

Marable, Manning

How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (South End), 1983.

Our Harvest would be

More of the Same

Danieli, Yael (Ed.)

International Handbook of Multi-generational Legacies of Trauma, (Plenum, N.Y.), 1998.

deMause, Lloyd

Psychohistory, Childhood and the Emotional Life of Nations (To be published. May be unloaded from the Internet at http://www.psychohistory.com), 2001, 7 Chapters.

Loewenberg, Peter

Decoding the Past B The Psychohistorical Approach (Transaction Pub., New Brunswick, USAP), Essays 1985 (With new introduction, 1996).

Fantasy and Reality in History (Oxford University Press, New York), 1995.

Van der Kolk, Bessel, Alexander McFarlane and Lars Weisaeth, Editors,

Traumatic Stress B The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body and Society (Guildford, N.Y.), 1996.

But First We would have to recognize

Killers are made

deMause, Lloyd

Editor, The History of Childhood (Jason Aronson, Northvale, New Jersey), 1974.

Foundations of Psychohistory (Creative Roots, Inc., P.O. Box 401, Planetarium Station, New York, N.Y. 10024), 1982.

AThe Universality of Incest,@ The Journal of Psychohistory, 19:2. Fall 1991. May be unloaded from the Internet at http://www.psychohistory.com), 17 pages.

AThe History of Child Abuse,@ The Journal of Psychohistory 25:3. Winter, 1998. May be unloaded from the Internet at http://www.psychohistory.com), 11 pages.

Griffin, Susan

A Chorus of Stones B The Private Life of War (Anchor), 1992.

Miller, Alice

For Your Own Good B Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, N.Y.), 1980.

Thou Shalt Not Be Aware B Society=s Betrayal of the Child (The Noonday Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, N.Y.), 1981.

The Untouched Key (Anchor, Doubleday, N.Y.), 1988.

Banished Knowledge B Facing Childhood Injuries (Anchor, Random, N.Y.), 1988.

Breaking Down the Walls of Silence (Penguin, N.Y.), 1990.

Not need Enemies

Churchill, Ward

A Little Matter of Genocide B Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (City Lights), 1997.

Keen, Sam

Reflections of the Hostile Imagination B The Psychology of Enmity (Harper & Row, San Francisco), 1988.

Lifton, Robert and Greg Mitchell

Hiroshima in America B A Half Century of Denial (Avon/Hearst, N.Y.) 1995.

We may have Some Fifty Years

Mutations

Epstein, Samuel

The Politics of Cancer, Revisited (East Ridge Press, Fremont Center, N.Y.), 1998.

Fagan, Dan, Marianne Lavelle & the Center for Public Integrity

Toxic Deception B How the Chemical Industry manipulates Science, bends the Law and endangers Your Health (Common Courage, Monroe, ME), 1999.

Schettler, Ted, Gina Solomon, Maria Valenti and Anette Huddle

Generations at Risk B Reproductive Health and the Environment (MIT, Cambridge), 1999.