Beyond Individualism

Two books completed recently share some common ground although using different lenses to see it.

George Rupp, former Harvard Divinity School dean, President of both Rice and Columbia University and most recently president of the International Rescue Committee, has penned Beyond Individualism: The Challenge of Inclusive Communities (Columbia University Press, 2015). The chapters are largely recent rewrites of talks he has given over the past decade or so dealing with religion, universities, ecology, global affairs and the search for the 'good life'. The book is in part memoir but more directly a thought provoking inquiry into how to move the human family forward. His global overseas work with International Rescue Committee which deals specifically with refugees from disasters, both natural and human created, clearly pulses through the pages. But he also ties the philosophy and theology of the great religions that he studied in depth over the earlier part of his career. Agnostics and atheists will not be uncomfortable reading his take on the need and possibility for inclusive communities.

Nicole Aschoff, a lecturer at Boston University and editor at Jacobin magazine has put her lens on five icons of the uber successful business world - Bill and Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey, John Mackey (Whole Foods), and Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook) in The New Prophets of Capital (Verso, 2015). While she clearly notes their financial success she is more concerned with how they each frame that success and then proselytize it to others. In essence, assuaging any concern about their own massive accumulation of wealth and power.

Read in tandem, they provide a contrast in approaches to tackling the issues of incredible inequality. Aschoff does not linger on the individual wealth of her case studies, but rather on their unflagging belief that capitalism needs only a tweak to repair the damage it has wrought to date.

     They believe that the solutions to our problems lie in refining the existing political and economic system, expanding the reach of capitalist markets,submitting more and more aspects of our lives to a market logic, and channeling our struggles for a better life through corporations. (p.144)

Aschoff holds a dash of hope.

     Instead of thinking about how to fix capitalism, we can start thinking about a different kind of society. We can imagine a world designed for the needs of people instead of profit, and we can get to work building it (p.150).

Rupp delivers an approach that drives us towards increasing inclusivity. His studies and experience have forged a long-term view, one for which he still holds hope.

     Seeking ever greater inclusion may seem like little more than the utopian aspiration of a head-in-the-clouds idealist. I plead guilty to being an idealist in both the philosophical sense (I find Hegel more persuasive than his detractors, to take what for me is a salient example) and also in the more down-to-earth meaning of not easily settling for so-called "realistic" solutions to pressing problems. But seeking greater inclusion cannot only be an aspiration that idealists cherish. It is also an imperative if the international community is going to have any prospect of addressing the crisis of sustained conflict among communities that share a common location. For that reason, the quest for greater inclusion is a worthy ideal and also a practical requirement (p.182).

I only could wish the candidates for President could read him before they take office. And  I wish I could be so hopeful.

Be Kind. Be Connected. Be Unafraid

It has been a month without a post. Between a vacation without information technology and without a visit from the Muse, ideas simply sauntered through the consciousness without pausing. This entry does indicate that information technology is at hand, but whether the Muse has visited can be best be determined by the reader.

The post title, "Be Kind. Be Connected. Be Unafraid." comes from a novel read on the vacation, The Dandelion Insurrection by Rivera Sun.

The phrase becomes the rallying cry of the insurrection that takes place in what would seem to be the not too distant future - a time when climate change and income inequality have grown even more visible and troublesome than they are today. It's a dark period, but the optimism of the everyday people who become forces for change drives the story.

 Rivera Sun, who has authored several other novels, is a good writer.

 

The website Good Reads gives this a 4.4 out 5.0 score from its 33 raters. I'd make it 34.

It's surely a book meant to inspire the reader to "Be the Change You Want to See" as Gandhi is often quoted uttering. Indeed, like Gandhi there is a strong visible current of commitment to nonviolence from the lead characters. But of course, not all the characters who want to see change share that commitment. Yet unlike most novels, Sun actually wants the reader to be moved, to get involved. She, for example, includes an appendix  from nonviolence scholar Gene Sharps "198 Methods for Nonviolent Action".

I heard from the characters of this novel a similar call to that being heard recently from Bernie Sanders in his continued emphasis less on his election as President but more for the importance of citizens becoming engaged, regardless of whom is elected. We also hear a parallel theme coming from Pope Francis, especially in his recent encyclical on climate change and poverty, Laudato Si, which I also read on this vacation. If I wasn't such a skeptic I could easily believe that Francis read Dandelion Insurrection and it inspired the encyclical.

       "113. There is also the fact that people no longer seem to believe in a happy future; they no longer have blind trust in a better tomorrow based on the present state of the world and our technical abilities. There is a growing awareness that scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history, a growing sense that the way to a better future lies elsewhere. This is not to reject the possibilities which technology continues to offer us. But humanity has changed profoundly, and the accumulation of constant novelties exalts a superficiality which pulls us in one direction. It becomes difficult to pause and recover depth in life. If architecture reflects the spirit of an age, our megastructures and drab apartment blocks express the spirit of globalized technology, where a constant flood of new products coexists with a tedious monotony. Let us refuse to resign ourselves to this, and continue to wonder about the purpose and meaning of everything. Otherwise we would simply legitimate the present situation and need new forms of escapism to help us endure the emptiness.

112. Yet we can once more broaden our vision. We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral. Liberation from the dominant technocratic paradigm does in fact happen sometimes, for example, when cooperatives of small producers adopt less polluting means of production, and opt for a non-consumerist model of life, recreation and community. Or when technology is directed primarily to resolving people’s concrete problems, truly helping them live with more dignity and less suffering. Or indeed when the desire to create and contemplate beauty manages to overcome reductionism through a kind of salvation which occurs in beauty and in those who behold it. An authentic humanity, calling for a new synthesis, seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door. Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn resistance?"

Is this from the encyclical or the novel?

Years ago, I heard Tony Cortese, founder of Second Nature talk about the essential connection of Head, Hands, and Heart as we try to design a sustainable future for all. Second Nature was working on trying to infuse sustainability thinking, reflection and action into higher education. The dominant force in higher education as you might guess is on the HEAD. The hands and the heart are scuttled to the side so they don't bias pure objectivity. Pope Francis and Rivera Sun are clearly calling for the unification of Head, Hands, and Heart and you hear it in the motto, "Be Kind. Be Connected, and Be Unafraid." I think it's the last of these that is most needed in this time. Pope Francis and Rivera Sun encourage us to "Be the Change We Want to See in the World." 

The urgency grows by the day. Perhaps we begin with Rivera Sun's first suggestion - "Be Kind - If you do nothing else, bring kindness to the forefront of your daily life." A better world is possible and these two works help us appreciate that possibility.

Reframing the Iran Nuclear Agreement

Critics of the proposed "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action" agreement with Iran and six other world powers fail to address the double standards that run rampant with the nuclear club. Of the current nuclear club members (US, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) only China and India have pledged a non-first use of nuclear weapons, while the US is the only state that has used them. The use of nuclear weapons would be a moral, environmental and legal crime as they kill indiscriminately.

Those nation states without nuclear weapons that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty have in large part agreed to forgo acquisition of nuclear arms because the treaty, which came into affect in 1970, included one of three foundation pillars of the treaty that required the members of the club to eliminate their stockpile of nuclear weapons. Even as the Cold War ended, the US, as the lone superpower, blew an opportunity to defuse what has become again an increasing global concern. Why are no concerns are raised of those nations that already have them, especially those that have not yet declared a no first use?

According to the Federation of American Scientists there are approximately 15,700 nuclear warheads in the hands of the nuclear club. The U.S. and Russia have by far the most, more than 7,000 each. 


The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) reports that each of the club members is building and/or modernizing its stockpile. Why is there  ZERO concern with this fact, while we have so much attention regarding one country that might someday get one and which has signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Pact?

Meanwhile the U.S. budget for nuclear weapons spending grows. The National Priorities Project calculates that we US taxpayers spent $2.2 million EVERY HOUR.


The Union of Concerned Scientists reported earlier this year that President Obama's 2016 budget plan called for $328 billion to be invested in reshaping our nuclear arsenal over the next decade. This from a fellow who gave an impassioned call for nuclear arms reduction in Prague shortly after beginning his presidency.

While President Obama has given lip service to reducing our nuclear arsenal, he has done almost nothing to move forward on it. Perhaps realizing that fear baiting legislators and their military-industrial-complex supporters, would throw out the usual ‘red herring’ that he’d be turning the US over to communists, terrorists, or whatever the evil incarnate du jour happens to be. Just look at what they are saying about the Iran agreement which has broad global support. 

We spend more on military than the next seven nations combined, as Robert Reich notes in his short video on The Costs of War and yet the fear-mongers tell us it’s not enough. We need more weapons, more deadly weapons. If the roles were reversed and China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Brazil, India or Pakistan was in that position, wouldn’t we be concerned about their excessive power? Can you imagine how the rest of the world looks at us – the one that has so many nuclear weapons, has used them, has invaded or attacked numerous nation states since WWII?

I wouldn't claim here that Iran is a democratic paradise, although it seems to treat their people better than does, say our good friend Saudi Arabia, and probably gives less support to enemies of the US than do the Saudis. And don’t forget how we helped overthrow their democratically elected president in the mid-50s and installed our puppet Shah who, like our one time buddy, Saddam, was a terror to his people


Just as Israel has destroyed Gaza to the point that the UN reported last week that at current deteriorating rate, it will be unlivable in five years, so did we with destroy Iraq, not only their infrastructure, but their society. 

We aren’t the saints those who espouse American exceptionalism tout us to be. Nor is Iran, the vilest nation on the planet. The Iranians love their children as much as we love ours. It’s time to stop the cycle of violence. The threats or use of more violence will not provide the children we both love the security and freedom from fear that we all desire. Join with the community of nations in building a peaceful  future by inviting Iran to join with our human family in renouncing nuclear weapons.

Perhaps if we had a department focused on peace instead of war (the Department of Defense was called the Department of War) we could find more ways to use our heads to build a lasting peace. Actually, Rep. Barbara Lee, the ONLY member of Congress brave enough to vote against the "authorization of the use of force" resolution after the 9/11 tragedy  has reintroduced such a proposal to create a Department of Peacebuilding, H.R. 1111.


 Rep. Lee was right on September 14, 2001. And she is right in recommending the peacebuilding approach now. See her short speech to Congress almost 14 years ago to the day and be inspired to stand up for peace and against war.

No Justification

Report on UNCTAD assistance to the Palestinian people: Developments in the economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory

This report just released from the UN Conference on Trade and Development on the situation in Gaza show just what our insane foreign policy can buy. The innocuous title belies the provocative material inside it. Although the brouhaha over the concerns with the pending Iran nuclear agreement will pretty much guarantee this report will be largely ignored by our mass media. I for one am frustrated at the vivid hypocrisy of those in the U.S. Congress that harp on the awful Iranian government while we ignore, for example, our good pals the Saudi Arabian dynasty which funds lots of horror in the world and who treats its own women as second-class citizens.

But all this pales in my mind from yet another pile of evidence of what our blind allegiance to the government of Israel has most recently purchased.  I’ve seen a few photos and little videos of the destruction in Gaza but the 18 page report from the UN  released this week, if you can stomach reading it all, makes pretty clear that you would need a lot of pictures to describe what Israel, and by proxy, the U.S. has inflicted on the people of this ancient land. There is in my mind, NO legitimate moral or legal justification for the situation in the Palestinian Territories, most acutely in Gaza as delineated by this report. The targeted destruction of 15,000 fruit trees is hardly a defensive action.  The report suggests that current trends would make Gaza unlivable in five years. Based on what I read it seems that way now. Let the report speak for itself.

“The Palestinian economy is the economy of an occupied territory, and

therefore – contrary to the claims of some observers – the efficacy of donor support has been undermined by occupation, not by the inadequacy of Palestinian National Authority policies or poor donor coordination. The fiscal burden of the humanitarian crises and the occupation-related fiscal losses have diverted donor aid from development to humanitarian interventions and budget support. No amount of aid would have been sufficient to put any economy on a path of sustainable development under conditions of frequent military strikes and destruction of infrastructure, isolation from global markets, fragmentation of domestic markets and confiscation and denial of access to national natural resources.” (pp.2-3)

The contraction of the Palestinian per capita GDP by 3.3 per cent and the extremely high unemployment rates subject large sections of the Palestinian population to poverty and food insecurity. Before the military operation in Gaza and the economic contraction in 2014, food insecurity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was already very high, with one in three households food insecure, according to 2013 data. Conditions were worse in Gaza, where nearly 6 in 10 households were food insecure compared to 1 in 5 households in the West Bank (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics et al , 2014). (p.4)

Israeli settlements in the West Bank continued to expand, and the number of settlers has quadrupled since the Oslo Accords. Today, settlers outnumber Palestinians in Area C (61 per cent of West Bank area), which includes the most valuable Palestinian natural resources. Overall, 341,000 Israeli settlers live in 235 settlements and outposts in Area C, compared to 300,000 Palestinians (United Nations, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 2014a). Settlers’ violence against Palestinians and their productive assets continued, with 9,333 productive trees destroyed or vandalized in 2014. The violence escalated in 2015; in January

alone, another 5,600 trees across the West Bank were uprooted or vandalized (

OCHA, 2015). (p.4)

Towards the end of 2014 the movement of Palestinian people and goods in the

West Bank was hindered by 490 barriers installed by Israel, including checkpoints, roadblocks, trenches and the Separation Barrier, which runs into the Occupied Palestinian Territory and unilaterally redefines the borders away from the internationally recognized Green Line (OCHA, 2014b). Gaza remained under a blockade that isolates it from the world and its traditional markets in the West Bank and Israel, which absorbed some 85 per cent of its exports before the blockade. (p.4)

The latest military operation has effectively eliminated what was left of the middle class, sending almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid. With the destruction of the economy and its capacity to create jobs, food insecurity now affects 72 per cent of households (Office of the Quartet Representative (OQR), 2014). Consequently, the majority of the population is forced into dependency on humanitarian aid to meet basic needs. The number of Palestinian refugees solely reliant on food distribution from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) increased from 72,000 in 2000 to 868,000 by May 2015, representing half the population of

Gaza and 65 percent of the registered  refugees (UNRWA, 2015b) (p.8)

OQR compiled a partial list of damages incurred by Gaza during the 2014

operation, which have significant economic and social effects, and reported the following (OQR, 2014):

(a)  18,000 housing units destroyed or severely damaged and 44,300 units damaged

(b)  26 schools destroyed and 122 damaged

(c)  15 hospitals and 45 primary health centres damaged

(d)  Gaza’s sole power plant affected by damage and lack of fuel and widespread damage to electricity lines

(e)  20–30 per cent of the water and sewage network damaged

(f)   Water desalination plant in Deiral-Balah damaged

(g)  Total damage to the agricultural sector at $550 million

(h)  220 agricultural wells destroyed or badly damaged

(i)   At least 40,000 people employed in the agricultural sector affected through

Damage to agricultural lands and the loss and/or death of productive animals

(j)   247 factories and 300 commercial establishments fully or partially destroyed

(k) Damages to Gaza Industrial Estate estimated at $5 million

(l)   Widespread damage to landline, mobile and Internet infrastructure, including destruction of switches, fixed - line networks, cellular stations, networks, cables and the headquarters of companies

(m)       Loss of existing contracts and partially approved future contracts of information and communications technology (ICT) - related businesses and software outsourcing centres

(n) A number of tourist sites destroyed or damaged, including sites being considered for application for World Heritage status from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (pp.9-10)

During the last six years, Gaza has endured severe human losses, with

three military operations claiming the lives of at least 3,782 Palestinians and 95 Israelis.4 According to OCHA and UNRWA, in 2014, Gaza witnessed the highest civilian death toll since 1967. By May 2015, 20 per cent of Gaza’s population, or 360,000 people, needed treatment for mental health conditions, and there is already a serious shortages of such services. With regard to children, Gaza’s future human capital, 521 lost their lives, and about 1,000 were injured and 400,000 are in need of immediate psychosocial support (OCHA, 2014c, and Save the Children, 2015). (p.11)

There is much more in these 18 pages which come more than a month after an Amnesty International report on the Gaza conflict.

You might also consider Richard Falk’s recent blog and review of Mohammed Omer’s recently published Shell-Shocked: On the Ground under Israel’s Gaza Assault.

What we do with this is less clear. But adding more arms to the equation is the last thing we should be doing.

Arms Are for Hugging

Arms are for hugging. At least, they should be. But Oscar Arias Sanchez, former President of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize winner notes that arms are also killing us.
He just published this opinion piece to accompany the First Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (Cancún, Mexico,  August 24-27th, 2015).
“Throughout modern history, we have, in effect, told the children of the world that while we will regulate the international trade in food and textiles and any other product under the sun, we are not interested in regulating the international trade in deadly weapons”.

We just recently passed the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, Most of us with a pulse realize the world is poised to enter into a nuclear arms agreement with Iran, if the U.S. Congress doesn't subvert diplomacy. Yet there comes news this week also of yet other 'illegal' arms being used in Yemen. The U.S. supplied cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, which is not a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. And of course, they are using them in opposition to the treaty.

In fact, as defense analyst William Hartung noted "the volume of major deals concluded by the Obama administration in its first five years exceeds the amount approved by the Bush administration in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion." This is the legacy of a Nobel Peace Prize winner? Hartung was reporting before the announcement earlier this month that the US was speeding up arm sales to the Gulf States. Hartung , in a piece published in Foreign Policy this year shared more insights into the growth in the arms trade, calling the Iran negotiations an "Arms Fair".

The latest data available from SIPRI - Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, five of the top six arms manufacturers are US based multinational corporations. Names familiar to most of us including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northop Grumman, and General Dynamics accounted for more than $120 billion in 2013, the last year for which data is available. The stakes are high and President Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago about the power of the "military industrial complex". No doubt, it is alive and well and driving foreign policy here and abroad. 


Oxfam reported recently, while calling for implementation of the International Arms Trade Treaty, that armed violence in Africa alone costs the continent $18 billion a year, the rough equivalent of the total amount of foreign aid they receive.

All this paints a backdrop for the debate over the Iran Nuclear Agreement reached with Britain, China, France, Germany Russia and the U.S. One side you have the Israeli government and its supporters declaring that to agree to this pact is the death to Israel. Of course, Netanyahu, the Israeli President has been making much the same claim for 20 years. Richard Falk, eminent international legal scholar exposes that narrative in a blogpost  last month. 

The fear mongering of those opposed to the agreement, and even some of the supporters, is wildly speculative. Iran is depicted as the axis of evil while Saudi Arabia gets a pass on their behavior towards both their citizens and neighbors, behavior that is arguably worse on both counts. And almost everyone agrees that the failure of this agreement would bring an escalation in violence, instability, and yes, of course arms sales!!!!

Which nations have nuclear weapons now and do they all allow 24x7 inspection of their nuclear facilities by the IAEA? I think we know the answer. Double standards based on raising fear levels escalates the manufacture, sale and use of arms. Let's not let diplomacy get in the way of that. president Eisenhower must be shaking his head and saying, "I told you so."

Let's move beyond the Iran nuclear agreement and get an arms reduction agreement for all arms and use our real arms for hugging and shaking hands.