Despite at times being disappointed that our nation isn’t living up to its promise, most Americans - left, right and center - regard this country as the greatest in the world. But how often do we hear such sentiments from the foreign press, let alone the Middle East or even Israel?
“Many believe that today, as a new global system forms, China, Brazil, India, Russia and China have an undeniable role to play. … The tremendous economic growth of these powers does come along with political influence. … But can we expect these countries to exercise the role that the United States plays at the global level, or in clearer words: Do these countries possess the audacity to forcefully intrude on international affairs, like the United States does?”
“America’s great generosity and sacrifice, both in money and in lives, is well-known. No nation in history has offered its sons to death and drained its coffers for the sake of others the way the United States of America has. ‘Courageous intrusion’ requires a spirit that stands apart from industrial growth or agricultural development. Today’s newly-industrial states don’t presently have this spirit, nor will they have it in the future. Because such a spirit requires so much money and so many souls that if any of these nations had such courage, its coffers would quickly be emptied and its economy would collapse, never to rise again.”
Note: There have been a number of posts at TMV during the last few days on the Russia-Georgia conflict. I’ve listed them at the end.
At The New York Times, Andrew E. Kramer discusses the peace plan brokered by the French (as the country holding the rotating presidency of the EU). According to him, it provided the Russians with a rationale for pushing further into Georgia as part of a “peacekeeping” role they demanded under the agreement. Mr. Sarkozy also “failed to persuade the Russians to agree to any time limit on their military action.” (NYT)
The Russians demanded that their troops be allowed “in a peacekeeping role” outside the separatist enclaves and “to implement security measures” while “awaiting an international monitoring mechanism.” (NYT) Rationale or no rationale, they seemed to have been determined to do this anyway.
Russian troops have the right to take any actions necessary to prevent hostilities, said a Kremlin spokesman, Alexei Pavlov, including inside Georgia.
I wrote yesterday about the conflicting ambitions and hatreds in play here (which Russia is manipulating to further its own ambitions). The situation is an immense tangle of conflicting ambitions—in the form of the desire for land and resources— and furious ethnic hatred.
As I noted yesterday, Georgia is now bringing a lawsuit against Russia for ethnic cleansing:
“Today, the Georgian ambassador to the Netherlands filed a law suit to the International Court of Justice called ‘The state of Georgia against the state of Russia’ because of ethnic cleansing conducted in Georgia by Russia in 1993 to 2008,” Lomaia told Reuters.
The ICJ confirmed Georgia’s filing, in which the country accused Russia of violating an anti-discrimination convention during three interventions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia from 1990 to August 2008. Georgia requested the court to order Russia to comply with the convention, cease all military activities in Georgia, including South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and withdraw its troops, Georgia said in a filing released by the ICJ.
Having labored under the yoke of Soviet domination in the very recent past, the countries of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus have a visceral feel for the politics of the now blossoming conflict between Russia and its former territory Georgia.
“In no case will he jump to defend the territorial integrity of Georgia with weapon in hand, even though there are still 100 American soldiers there training Georgian troops. The times when Russia was a weak state and that the U.S. could build a bridge to Georgia are over.”
“The Moscow Bear cannot be challenged through the bars of its own cage: Georgia is within Russia’s sphere of influence, which is why Tbilisi has no reason to hope for NATO entry anytime soon.”
The Iraqi refugee crisis–and it is a crisis–continues to draw my interest, and, the refugees, my compassion.
Perhaps it is because of my personal involvement in another refugee crisis in the seventies; perhaps it is because, in my opinion, the tragedy is a direct, albeit unintended result of our disastrous decision to invade Iraq and our equally disastrous mismanagement of the subsequent, nearly six-year-long occupation.
While, according to some sources, the situation in Iraq seems to be improving, there is no near-term end in sight to the sheer misery that over four million displaced Iraqis are experiencing–in squalid camps in their own country and in equally sordid conditions, mostly in Syria and Jordan.
Regardless of my passion for this issue, it is always great when I come across other voices that are equally or more passionate, and especially much more eloquent and authoritative.
A few days ago, I related the expert opinion on this issue by Morton Abramowitz, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a board member of the International Rescue Committee.
Today’s New York Times had an opinion piece on the Iraqi refugees issue by none other than two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Nicholas D. Kristof.
I honestly can not think of another journalist–or for that matter, a politician or government official–who has focused more of the world’s attention on genocide, famine, global health, poverty and refugee issues in the developing world and elsewhere. Since 2004 Kristof has written dozens of columns about Darfur and visited the area eight times.
Thus, it should be no surprise that Mr. Kristof won his second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called “his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.”
In his column, “Books not Bombs,” Kristof calls attention to what he calls the “dirty little secret” of the Iraq war:
The dirty little secret of the Iraq war isn’t in Baghdad or Basra. Rather, it’s found in the squalid brothels of Damascus and the poorest neighborhoods of East Amman.
Some two million Iraqis have fled their homeland and are now sheltering in run-down neighborhoods in surrounding countries. These are the new Palestinians, the 21st-century Arab diaspora that threatens the region’s stability.
Many youngsters are getting no education, and some girls are pushed into prostitution, particularly in Damascus. Impoverished, angry, disenfranchised, unwanted, these Iraqis are a combustible new Middle Eastern element that no one wants to address or even think about.
Kristof also writes:
We broke Iraq, and we have a moral responsibility to those whose lives have been shattered by our actions. Helping them is also in our national interest, for we’ll regret our myopia if we allow young Iraqi refugees to grow up uneducated and unemployable, festering in their societies.
In one of my pieces on this subject I quoted one of the members of our compassionate Conservative administration expressing just the opposite opinion: “…our obligation was to give [Iraqis] new institutions and provide security…” and , we don’t “have an obligation to compensate [Iraqis] for the hardships of war.” You guessed it, this was our former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton
Kristof also bemoans how little the U.S. has done towards accepting more Iraqi refugees into our country. But he also has a suggestion that would help the refugees and at the same time would address the region’s security challenges instead of “devoting billions of dollars to permanent American military bases,” as American hawks would prefer doing:
A simpler way to fight extremism would be to pay school fees for refugee children to ensure that they at least get an education and don’t become forever marginalized and underemployed.
[…]
We have already seen, in the case of Palestinians, how a refugee diaspora can destabilize a region for decades. If Jordan were to collapse in part from such pressures, that would be a catastrophe — and the best way to prevent that isn’t to give it Blackhawk helicopters, but help with school fees and school construction.
If we let the Iraqi refugee crisis drag on — and especially if we allow young refugees to miss an education so that they will never have a future — then we are sentencing ourselves to endure their wrath for decades to come. Educating Iraqis may not be as glamorous as bombing them, but it will do far more good.
Amen, Mr. Kristof, and thank you for continuing to give “voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.”
It will doubtless come as no surprise to readers of the Moderate Voice that people around the world have been outraged by the Bush Administration’s conduct of the Iraq War. But the passing of the fifth anniversary of the war has triggered a particularly strong upwelling of anger, which one can get a sense of by reading this article by Reinaldo Spitaletta of Colombia’s El Espectador.
Spitaletta writes, “Is it worth killing over 450,000 people, mostly civilians? Yes. And destroying a culture thousands of years old? Yes. And as if the matter was of little consequence, torturing prisoners in a jail? Yes, indeed. That’s how the president of the United States, George W. Bush, sees it, now five years after invasion of Iraq.”
As for the Iraqis, Spitaletta writes, “Perhaps it never occurred to the Gringos that their bombers, their infantry, their paraphernalia - yes- of mass destruction, would be unable to overcome an entire people … the Iraqi people, who today are suffering through the most unspeakable criminal invasion, know that never in their history has any foreign occupier triumphed. Neither the Romans nor the British. Today, without jobs, without social security, without tranquility but with the living hope of expelling the invader, they continue their resistance. And for those who have been displaced and mutilated - for the humiliated Iraqis of today - it will all be worth it to reverse the situation and defeat the troops of the superpower.”
By Reinaldo Spitaletta
Translated By Douglas Myles Rasmussen
March 25, 2008
Colombia - El Espectador - Original Article (Spanish)
Is it worth killing over 450,000 people, mostly civilians? Yes. And destroying a culture thousands of years old? Yes. And as if the matter was of little consequence, torturing prisoners in a jail? Yes, Read the rest of this entry »
“The article written by Mia Farrow confuses right and wrong and relentlessly discredits China, but even more frightening, it has begun to change the atmosphere of public opinion in the West. … She has wantonly brainwashed the public’s thinking by seizing the moral high ground. … Now is the time to expose the weaknesses of Mia Farrow and her ilk. They cannot be permitted to wantonly brainwash public opinion. This is not only unfair to China but to the entire world - and especially to Mr. Spielberg.”
By Shan Renping
Translated By Mark Klingman
February 29, 2008
Global Geographic Times - People’s Republic of China - Original Article (Chinese)
For the Beijing Olympic Games, the West seems to be showing us two completely different attitudes. On the one hand, most Western countries have given the Beijing Games a positive evaluation and oppose the “politicization of the Games.” But on the other, some non-governmental organizations and members of civil society still clamor to resist the Beijing Olympic Games.
Among these people, one cause of dissatisfaction is that they believe China hasn’t acted played a positive role in resolving the Darfur problem. So despite the fact that to date, the leaders of over sixty countries have announced that they will attend the Beijing Olympics; and opposing the “politicization of the Games” has become the message of the mainstream of global public opinion - we cannot ignore the voices of average Western people in this matter - especially the negative voices.
Not long ago, American director Steven Spielberg resigned as art director for the Beijing Olympics. On the surface it seems as though he had no choice, and although there is no chance that this will affect the success of the Beijing Olympics - the act does tell us something of the Western misunderstanding of China.
It’s fair to say that for some time now, the director has been under tremendous political pressure. Last year, on March 28, the American actress Mia Farrow wrote a commentary in The Wall Street Journal with language that maliciously accused the Beijing Olympics with being the “Genocide Olympics.” This article was the first time that the Beijing Games and Sudan were hung on the same hook - and beside condemning China, she sought to persuade Spielberg.
She wrote: “That so many corporate sponsors want the world to look away from that atrocity during the Games is bad enough. But equally disappointing is the decision of artists like director Steven Spielberg … to sanitize Beijing’s image.” Even more provocatively, she linked the Beijing Olympics to Spielberg’s own Shoah Foundation for Holocaust-remembrance which he founded in 1994, asking him to be aware that “China is bankrolling Darfur’s genocide.”
Mia Farrow’s article not only confuses right and wrong and relentlessly discredits China, even more frightening is that she has begun to change the atmosphere of public opinion in Western societies: the question of supporting the Beijing Olympic Games has become a moral issue. Once again, Spielberg’s resignation undoubtedly proves that the pressure of public opinion is very strong. It can be inferred that in the next five months, these same people will turn up the pressure on athletes and sponsors alike.
People like Mia Farrow think they have found China’s soft rib - that is, they believe they have found the most opportune place to apply pressure to China. They are wrong! In fact it is their proposed solution to the Darfur problem that is the real soft rib! Now is the time to expose the weaknesses of Mia Farrow and her ilk. They cannot be permitted to wantonly brainwash public opinion …
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of issues that involve the United States.
February 21st, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
I hoped it wouldn’t come into being. But, in my bones I knew this was coming. But, it was still like taking an unexpected gut-shot to the spirit.
I was at a Starbucks yesterday, not a normal occurrence for me. I mostly stay in the cave. But, as I’ve mentioned here on TMV before, I am trying to learn to draw. So, I went with my conte and pages to draw passersby out the window at Starbucks.
… and there at a table, four men were discussing the remark that Michelle Obama made about being proud of her country for the first time in her adult life…
Suddenly one of the four men burst out loudly: “I ain’t voting for no nigger!”
The entire Starbucks of all women patrons and wait-staff went into stop-motion. Silence. Were these guys miscreants, mentally-ill wanderers? No. They appeared to be just four businessmen, two middle-aged, two younger, talking out of their minds over their coffee cups, and laughing about ‘niggers.’
I sensed that if, “I ain’t voting for no nigger,” is said boldly by one person in a public place, by someone who rightly or wrongly feels no fear of confrontation or retaliation, then you can be sure, it is being said aloud elsewhere by thousands more.
Certainly there is much talk today about ‘what Michelle Obama’ said, and really meant. Many kinds of talk and opinion… various people have been discussing or debating or just flatly carrying on about what Michelle Obama meant or didn’t mean, and weighing in on her character, brainpower, heart, or lack of such, etc. (Her husband, later said she meant her words more narrowly with regard to the political process wherein people stood up for change.)
My thoughts however, keep returning to another matter entirely. I’m not new to scabrous words. This man’s outburst at Starbucks is not the first, but merely the elevendy-millionth time as a woman from a minority group myself, I’ve heard such or been felled by such words personally.
BUT, especially since being flash-shot by this man at Starbucks bellowing about “a nigger only gonna be president over my dead and burning body,” ….I rode the Time Machine back over the many decades I’ve be blessed to live thus far, and I see, with immediacy, how far we’ve come in this nation… meaning, that yes, any of us minority persons can be objected to publicly nowadays, and called names out loud, in print, in front of and behind backs….
but NOT immediately and with full looking away by all authorities and cronies, be dragged to the dark of the woods and dealt an ‘inch of one’s life’ beating, or death with finality, there…
when I count the changes of consciousness in law enforcement in many parts of our country, the changes in appellate court sight and insight, the plethora of ways eye-witness news is nowadays availed and delivered, the tireless souls who keep driving for justice for those unjustly treated….
then I am reminded for the uncountable-eth number of times in my life, that such as this man’s outburst at Starbucks, may in fact, represent progress.
January 25th, 2008 By DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
No immediate link to anything currently in the news, though it does remind me of my Dartmouth L.J. paper. I just wanted to save it for later:
The question of how Jews would fit in when cultural and linguistic identity became the basis of citizenship, and the Volksgeist was embodied in a Volksstaat, could be answered in only one of two ways. Either the Jews had to surrender their Jewishness and become good Germans or there would be no place for them. At the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, a liberal assimilationist perspective was ascendant in German thought, but beneath it lurked a deep intolerance of the Jew who remained distinctive. In 1793, the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who professed to be advocating that Jews be given “human rights,” put the choice before them in starkly brutal terms: “As for giving them [the Jews] civil rights, I see no remedy [*72] but that their heads should be cut off in one night and replaced with others not containing a single Jewish idea.”
George M. Fredrickson, Racism: An Introduction (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002), 71-72.
Similar sentiments were expressed in France during this time period. And, of course, this theory of enlightenment universalism is the guiding force behind much of modern Western philosophy in America and Europe — including the “color-blind” theory of race relations and the doctrine of strict separation between Church and State.
Notice how obliterating Jewish distinctiveness was cast as being in accordance with securing human rights — Jews literally had to be destroyed in order to be saved. The evident Christian overtones accentuate the fact that this “liberal” revolution was hardly the break from the past that it used to be — it merely found new language to express its fear of Jewish difference and its desire for Jews to disappear. Given that the “universal” personhood Jews were expected to assimilate into was based on a Christian norm, even the desire for conversion is barely affected. All that changed was the removal of the few protections Jews had when their oppression was strictly theological: at least some Christians theologians had some need for some living Jews — the model expressed here explicitly wanted all Jews to disappear and pointedly chose a very violent metaphor to bring across its point.
It’s no wonder that many post-Holocaust theorists consider the Shoah to be the bastard child of the Enlightenment.
January 24th, 2008 By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
If the news is correct that the US administration has been able to pressurise Pervez Musharraf to allow American troops to train/advise Pakistani soldiers, then this development could create more headaches for the beleagured Pakistan President. Or, will it?
Further, it would erode Musharraf’s credibility (of whatever is left) because he recently roared that if the US troops ever entered Pakistani territory it would be considered as “invasion of my country”. Moreover, dissent is also emerging within the strong Pakistani army establishment.
Now let’s read the latest news: “The commander of U.S. forces in Central Asia, Admiral William J. Fallon, has launched planning for more extensive use of U.S. troops to train Pakistani armed forces, a senior defense official said Wednesday,” reports Robert Burns of AP from Washington.
But who is the enemy?
Before we proceed further here is another breathtaking revelation…Pervez Musharraf said in Paris on Tuesday that “the Afghan-based fundamentalist Islamic group Taliban is a bigger problem for the stability of Pakistan than the al-Qaeda terrorist network.” He suggested that Osama bin Laden’s network had been decimated.
“Al-Qaeda’s presence in Pakistan has been so reduced, Musharraf said, that ‘it doesn’t matter much that Osama has not been captured’.”
I may sound alarmist but the recent reports, including the Musharraf speech in Paris, seem to confirm my worst fears that the bogey of al-Qaeda was raised/maintained in the same manner as the WMD charges against Saddam Hussein. And now even Musharraf has let the cat out of the bag… More of this later…
Back to the AP story from Washington: “Fallon’s intent is to develop new approaches to help Pakistan, with a time horizon stretching to 2015, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the order has not been made public.
“Fallon was in Pakistan this week meeting with senior Pakistani military officials. In an interview last week during a conference with Middle Eastern defense chiefs in Florida, Fallon said Pakistan is taking a more welcoming view of U.S. suggestions for using American troops to train and advise its own forces in the fight against anti-government extremists.
November 13th, 2007 By MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
Earlier this year I wrote about the tribunal set up in Cambodia to examine the genocidal crimes committed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge three decades ago and to bring the perpetrators, those still alive, to justice — see here and here.
Even though the government was committed to it, or seemed to be, “procedural differences” threatened to sink the process. The issue had to do with differences between international legal standards and local law.
But, thankfully, the tribunal is up and running, differences overcome. And it is, it seems, working well:
Police and security guards from Cambodia’s “Killing Fields” tribunal arrested former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary on Monday, the third Pol Pot henchman to be taken into custody by the UN-backed court.
His wife, Khieu Thirith, another leading member of the Khmer Rouge, was arrested with him, a tribunal spokesman said after the couple had been ferried from their plush Phnom Penh villa in a police convoy with sirens blazing.
They would be questioned by investigating judges in an initial appearance later on Monday, he said. The pair would be charged, the spokesman added without specifying the charges or when they would be brought.
*****
He and Khieu Thirith were the third and fourth to be arrested after years of delays since the $56-million tribunal got off the ground in earnest this year.
Kaing Guek Eav — commonly known as Duch — is a former schoolteacher who ran the notorious S-21, or Tuol Sleng, interrogation and torture centre at a former Phnom Penh high school. He has been charged with crimes against humanity.
So has “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, who is also accused of war crimes.
While Nuon Chea has proclaimed his innocence, Duch, in interviews with Western reporters, has confessed to his role in the mass killings and is expected to be a key witness against other senior regime figures.
Let us hope that justice is finally brought to bear on those who turned Cambodia into a bloodbath.
October 18th, 2007 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
The move to get a vote in the House of Representatives condemning the killings of Armenians nearly 100 years ago has seemingly hit a big, fat political snag:
The sudden misgivings about a popular House resolution condemning as “genocide” the large-scale killings of Armenians more than nine decades ago illustrate a recurring tug of war in US foreign policy: when to take the moral high ground and when to heed the pragmatic realities of national interests.
The measure, which would put the House of Representatives on record as characterizing as genocide the deaths of more than 1 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, appeared on track to passage by the full House after the Foreign Affairs Committee approved it last week. But pressure from the White House – worried about the impact of the nonbinding measure on relations with Turkey, a crucial logistical partner in the war in Iraq – is now causing Republicans and Democrats who had supported the measure to reconsider.
This underscores several factors at play.
It’s continuing evidence (among lots of mounting evidence) that even a “lame duck” White House is a strong duck. It also underscores that fact that, even amid many political divisions, there is a common pragmatism among many lawmakers of both parties that causes them to pause and consider whether a controversial action is indeed in the long-term national interest. And it also reflects the fact that BOTH “hawks” and “doves” on Iraq (despite the polemics of talk radio and many weblogs) don’t want to do anything that will seriously sandbag the American troops already over there.
“We regularly see the impulse of Wilsonian idealism, the emphasis on democracy and human rights, counterbalanced by the pragmatic demands of realpolitik. It’s one of the constant dynamics of American foreign policy,” says Thomas Henriksen, a foreign-policy scholar at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif. “We want to be the city on the hill, but then some overriding interests come up and we say, ‘Oh, that’s different.’ ”
In this case, the overriding interest appears to be keeping on good terms with Turkey, a NATO ally that opposed the war in Iraq but that allows the United States to use bases there as part of crucial supply lines to US troops and personnel in Iraq.
The fact that the vote has come up at all has sparked a mini-firestorm in Turkey, raising the oft-stated theme that the Democrats are weak when it comes to acting in favor of long-range foreign policy interests:
Prospects for a full House statement on Armenian genocide have been feeding nationalist flames in Turkey. The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already been battling heavy anti-American public opinion as it acts to address the problem of recurring attacks by Kurdish rebels from across the border in Kurdish Iraq.
How quick has the move been to back off from what earlier had seemed a near-certain vote?
It’s as if a parent unwrapped a toy for her child and suddenly saw a label that declared: “MADE IN CHINA.”
Support for a House resolution condemning as genocide the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 continued to weaken today as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who only days ago vowed to bring the measure to the floor of the House, signaled that she may be changing her mind.
“Whether it will come up or not, what the action will be, remains to be seen,†Ms. Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill today. Her uncertainty stood in sharp contrast to her earlier pledge to bring the measure to the floor if it emerged from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which it did a week ago by 27 to 21.
Worried about antagonizing Turkish leaders, House members from both parties have been withdrawing their support from the resolution, which had been backed by the Democratic leadership.
The measure’s prospects were weakened further today when Representative John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who heads the Appropriations subcommittee on military matters, spoke out against it.
“What happened nearly 100 years ago was terrible,†said Mr. Murtha, who has urged the speaker not to bring up the resolution for a vote. “I don’t know whether it was a massacre or a genocide, but that is beside the point. The point is, we have to deal with today’s world.â€
And dealing with today’s world means dealing with Turkey, said Mr. Murtha, long a Democratic leader on national security issues. “Until we can stop the war in Iraq, I believe it is imperative to ensure continued access to military installations in Turkey, which serve U.S. operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan,†he said.
The news cycle hasn’t seen this much media coverage of flip-flopping since stories about the campaigns of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Arizona Senator John McCain and New York Senator Hillary Clinton….
President George Bush has been calling for a “no” vote on the resolution, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s tilting the windmill back to its regular wind-path.
Meanwhile, there has been some political fallout within Turkey. According to Bloomberg, ire over this issue coming up in America has caused some in Turkey’s political establishment to point their fingers at — you guessed it — the Iranian President’s favorite target: Read the rest of this entry »
October 14th, 2007 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
A Conversation with Dr. Jack Kornfield, American Buddhist Teacher trained in Thailand, Burma and India…on Burma, Buddhism, H.H. the Dalai Lama, and non-violence.
Kornfield is one of the foremost teachers of Theravada Buddhism in the West. He was trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India (He is on the far right in the photo). He graduated from Dartmouth in 1967, joined the Peace Corps in Public Health Service in northeast Thailand, home to some of the last forest monasteries of Buddhist monks and nuns.
There Buddhist master Ajahn Chah became his teacher for many years. Returning to the United States, Kornfield took a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and became a founding teacher of the Buddhist Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California.
I met Jack some years ago when we were both teaching at a symposium in D.C. His father suddenly took a turn for the worse, and Jack was called away. I joined in teaching Jack’s group in order to help, and we have had a friendship since then.
Now 62 years old, he is a soft spoken, devout man with a secular sense of humor lurking beneath the surface, a wonderful trait in a religious. He meets yearly with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, and has published twenty books.
Here is a part of our conversation from October 9, 2007, about the use of violence against violence; the potential use of violence to effect change in Burma… from one man’s deeply Buddhist point of view.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés: “Jack, Buddhists often seem simpatico with others I grew up amongst and admired; Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Dunkards, priests, brothers and nuns of The Holy Cross … most all being people who often managed to act calmly in helping to aright injustices in the midst of mayhem all around. It’s one thing to be calm in a peaceful mountain monastery, and quite another to act calmly on a festering street corner in East L.A.
“But, right now, looking between the worlds at the murderous mayhems of our times, many hearts are breaking for the millionth time, Jack, and this time, it’s Burma again. On the newsblog I write for, Themoderatevoice.com, some thoughtful commenters have said, amongst other cogent ideas, that the Burmese monks and nuns perhaps ought arm themselves and overtake the junta.
“As an old believer, I know a literal warrior pledges to strive to act with courage in the face of scorn, ridicule and aggression… but not to act in violence. Yet, I know there are warrior traditions in my faiths, amongst them, the Knights, and that there is a warrior-monk tradition in Buddhism from times of old too, as amongst some of the Samurai. Neither of these ancient traditions are portrayed well in modern works, seeming instead to have been severed from their mystical underpinnings…
“… But, thinking of the Burmese again, can holy monks and nuns arm themselves in aggression? Can this be integrated somehow in the non-violent heart of Buddhism?”
Jack Kornfield:”I’d tell you a story about His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. A group of young Tibetans came to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. They told him they were very distraught by the suffering of the Tibetans, and thought they should go back into Tibet armed. They said, We have lost temples, nuns, monks, our culture. We want Stinger missiles for we have nomads who know the mountains and the Chinese don’t know our mountains, and we can launch from there.
“The Dalai Lama put his head in his hands and wept. He reminded them of the Buddhist precept of no killing, no harming living beings, the precept the Dalai Lama has taught all his life as the incarnate head of Buddhism. His Holiness told the young Tibetans, I don’t know if I have done the right thing; but I’ll step down if I have done it wrong. If I believed I have taught untruth, I would resign.
“I’ll tell you another story. We have in our history as Buddhists, many times of being treated unjustly… Yet, I knew Maha Ghosananda, the holy man of Cambodia. After Pol Pot, one-third of the population of Cambodia was massacred. Ninety-five percent of the monks and nuns were felled.
“We were in Thailand at the time, and traveled to where refugees were from Cambodia. And Maha Ghosananda came as the elder to the refugee camps, and he asked permission from UN to reopen a Buddhist temple right there in the camps.
“It was dangerous to do. The Khmer Rouge were underground in the refugee camps. The KR said to the refugees, You go to this man, this ceremony, and we will kill you later.
“But, there in the midst of thousands and thousands of tiny bamboo huts, Maha Ghosananda rang a sacred bell.
“25,000 refugees came; the ones who’d’ had their village temples burned, the ones who’d survived the murders by the Khmer Rouge of their elders, their children, their sisters, brothers, parents, so that now a family was one grandparent and two children left, or one uncle and one niece, left.
“Mahan Ghosananda chanted in Cambodian and Sanskrit, chanting from the Dhammapada, that Hatred never ceases by hatred, that hatred is conquered by love, that this is the ancient and eternal law…
“25 thousand Cambodians who had not heard the holy scripture aloud in years, were chanting and weeping. Read the rest of this entry »
October 10th, 2007 By DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
A House committee just passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide. Turkey has threatened to go berserk if it passes the full House. Why we should let them do their worst.
The totalitarians who call the country Myanmar, a military junta that makes up one of the most brutal regimes in the world, have clamped down on those who wish to liberate the country from within, the monks and other protesters who have had enough of being brutalized.
The insular rulers of that insular country, a country made ever more insular by the insular totalitarianism of those rulers, seem to care nothing for world opinion, nor for their country’s place in the world. They have responded to internal dissent by cutting the country off even more from the outside world, notably by cutting off access to the Internet.
And, of course, they have responded to non-violence with violence, with brutality, with murder. The “official” reports, those released by the totalitarians, the illegitimate “government” of what is rightly called Burma, play down this violence. They set the death toll well below what it must really be. The violence, much of it unreported, given the absence of international journalists and the control of whatever local media there are, has been widespread, as the totalitarians have sought to crush any and all opposition to their rule. It is being reported that the death toll, the mass slaughter, is in the thousands, including hundreds of monks.
And yet the protests continue, the streets in Rangoon and elsewhere alive with hope:
Several hundred people have held protests in Burma’s main city of Rangoon, despite three days of crackdowns on pro-democracy protests.
Protesters chanted slogans before being baton-charged by security forces, and at least two were severely beaten, eyewitnesses said.
In the central town of Pakokku hundreds of monks reportedly led a peaceful march of thousands of demonstrators.
Such incredible courage, such an admirable cause. But what is to be done? They cannot do it alone.
August 23rd, 2007 By DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
Anybody can come up with reasons for Israel to turn away the Darfur refugees. Anybody could have (and did) come up with reasons to turn back Jewish refugees in the Holocaust. Avoiding one’s responsibilities to the victims of genocide is easy, and easier to justify. But Jews have always been insistent that nation’s were wrong to do so. We’ve staked a significant amount of moral credibility on the issue. It’s time to put our money where our mouth is.
And I guarantee you, if we don’t–nobody will be there for us in our hour of need either. If even the past victims of genocide can justify turning away their contemporary peers, the precedent set for another “again” will be virtually unassailable. We cannot set the table for the next generation of bystanders. Ours is a people of rescuers, not watchers.
August 21st, 2007 By DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
I hate to be on such a self-hating kick, but the American Jewish community’s tepidity in supporting the Armenian community in their quest to get the Armenian genocide recognized by the United States is disgraceful. Yes, Turkey is a friend. No, it’s not one at any cost. There are certain things we cannot compromise on, and the willingness of groups like the ADL to barter away its principles does not speak well of its actual commitment to opposing genocide wherever, whenever.
![[The Independent, U.K.]](http://worldmeets.us/images/daliahu_independent.gif)
