One World, Many Peaces

China-India Tensions Rise over Pakistan and Kashmir Commercial Projects

Tensions between the two most populous countries totaling about one third of world inhabitants were ratcheted up a notch this week, with no resolution in sight. Indian Prime Minister Singh strongly objected to China's new and ongoing commercial projects in Pakistan and the disputed territories it controls in Kashmir. Within a wider context from China's point of view, this is only one more step towards total domination of Central Asian natural resources and industry, highlighted by China's monopolies on most such resources in Afghanistan, to NATO's and the U.S.'s great dismay. 

While Pakistan is internally preoccupied in terms of security due to militants with Afghanistan in much the same plight, China is swooping in to capitalize, snatching up mines of precious and base metals, agricultural lands  as well as key heavy industries in the two countries. Meanwhile, the U.S., NATO and Pakistan itself seem strangely willing to take on the proverbial "dirty work," and content to hand off the rewards to China, which has yet to deploy rapidly growing military powers abroad, anywhere.  Needless to say the extent to which the U.S. military is strained and NATO cooperation halfhearted makes them vulnerable, and Chinese expansionism easy. Not even the U.S. military command could be so dumb as to instigate a war between them.

Kashmir is a contentiously disputed region between India, Pakistan and China in which armed conflict has flared several times between the countries since 1947. The U.N. has deployed several large peacekeeping forces to the region to little success other than maintaining a status quo detrimental to everyone involved, especially the Kashmiri people.  Yet, in the 1970s, India and China agreed to the peaceful principles of coexistence, which then set the stage for the Non-Aligned Movement, arguably the most peaceful global force during the Cold War. All this leads to a far-fetched but poignant question: Are Al-Quaeda and China working together, as their alignment of interests (other than religious) suggest?

If the U.N. Security Council had any prescience whatsoever, they would address the rising tensions between India and China head on without delay. The potentially dire consequences of not doing so have no historical precedent in human history because of the size and military capabilities of the two countries, both nuclear powers. But China is a permanent, veto-wielding member of the Security Council, so little is likely to be done if it were presented as an issue, as was the case with the Korean and Vietnam Wars. China-India tensions, almost inevitable as a current event, must be actively reduced to avoid a catastrophe beyond the proportions of the World Wars.

Launch and Live Coverage of the PJSA Conference on the Power of Nonviolence

Bringing together scholars, activists, educators and leaders of many top local, national and international organizations, the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) conference starts today at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (October 8-10, 2009). This year's topic is "Exploring the Power of Nonviolence," honoring Gandhi's 140th anniversary. For live coverage follow @AntonyAdolf on Twitter.

Randall Amster, Executive Director of the PJSA and a conference organizer, describe it thus: "a focus on grassroots organizations, working with individuals and groups in the region to help develop a bridge from dialogue to action. Plenary panels, breakout groups, brainstorming sessions, and an impressive list of keynote speakers will offer multiple points of engagement and opportunities for networking with scholars, activists, and educators in the pursuit of peace and justice. Some of the highlights include:

Sister Helen Prejean: author and real-life story behind Dead Man Walking (made into an Academy-Award winning film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn), and also one of the world's great death penalty abolitionists, will give the opening keynote speech tonight. She is also the founder of "Survivor," a victim's advocacy group in New Orleans.

A Panel Discussion on "The Future of Peacemaking":  with Jonathan Schell, author of several books, most recently The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger (American Empire Project) and  George Cheney, Director of Peace and Conflict Studies, and of the Barbara L. and Norman C. Tanner Center for Nonviolent Human Rights Advocacy University of Utah.

Will Allen:  Founder of Growing Power and A MacArthur Fellow in 2008, Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations, for which he was named . He will give a plenary speech on Saturday entitled "Food Sovereignty and Justice."

Special Sessions On: Violence in the Workplace, Transformative Nonviolence and the History of Peacemaking, Models for Peace Education, Social Media and Activist Education, and special sessions on the Gandhian tradition, Loyola, and Technology as well as field trips to peace organizations around Wisconsin.

Visit the PJSA Conference website, and get there as soon as you can! If you can't, get live coverage of the 2009 PJSA Conference by following @AntonyAdolf on Twitter. Antony Adolf will be presenting "Transformative Nonviolence and Cultural Change in World History" on Friday afternoon, and is certain this conference is a current event that will shape a more peaceful future for everyone.

Freaky Facts: Worldwide Military Spending Figures

Warning: the following is not for the weak at heart or those easily excitable by all things military. Chinese annual military expenditures have increased 230% since 1998 (guess how this compares to the U.S.), among other freaky facts about national military expenditures around the world.

The following military expenditures figures (from the leading journal Arms Control Today) include all current and capital expenditures on personnel, procurement, operations, maintenance, and research and development for armed forces, defense ministries, and military space activities.

Some freaky facts include: Chinese military expenditure growth dwarfs that of the U.S. over the past decade, by about five times; more money was allocated to the bank bailout than total U.S. military spending for 2008; China's military expenditures will be bigger than that of the British and French combined with ten year at current rates of growth:

Current Trends in Military Expenditures:

• Total world military expenditures in 2008: $1,464 Billion
• Total U.S. military expenditures in 2008: $607 Billion
• Increase in U.S. military expenditures since 1998: 67%
• Total Chinese military expenditures in 2008: $85 Billion
• Increase in Chinese military expenditures since 1998: 230%
• Total French military expenditures in 2008 $66 Billion:
• Increase in French military expenditures since 1998: 4%
• Total British military expenditures in 2008: $65 Billion
• Increase in British military expenditures since 1998: 20%

While the need for defense spending is understandable if in the end undesirable, there is no end to what these funds could do as current events if only a small fraction of them were reallocated towards creating a more peaceful future by peaceful means .

Déjà Vu: Day by Day, Afghan War Becomes More Like Iraq War

Changing strategies by new commanders, contentious elections, war-torn people, ineffective government, periodic suicide and other bombings, and valiant military men and women dying in increasing numbers with evermore called for. Sound familiar? No, this in not about the Iraq war, it's about the Afghan. U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, leader of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, announced a change in strategy amidst the rest yesterday, calling Obama into question as well as himself and the whole war effort by bringing it one step closer to Vietnam.

 

 

It is beyond moronic to call any war "serious," especially as if it meant something, as General McChrystal did in his briefing. Is any war not serious? Was the Afghan war some kind of children's game before now, and has suddenly become a "serious" matter worthy of adult attention? In the very same sentence, he goes on to say that NATO needs "commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort." Brilliant, Einstein, we are so reassured that you are heading up the effort. This was a sound bite worthy of silence. To be precise, he called for a change in "implementation" strategy, suggesting that the overall U.S./NATO strategy in Afghanistan has yet to be changed, as it was repeatedly in Iraq.

 

When McChrystal's boss, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, was asked about raising troop levels in relation to the strategy change while touring a Lockheed Martin plant, he said "we'll have to look at costs." He meant in billions of dollars (much of which goes to Lockheed Martin), not thousands of lives. Meanwhile, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs played the blame game on the Bush administration: "This was underresourced, underfunded, undermanned and ignored for years." The moral of the stories is that, more likely than not, more troops will be needed and people will die, with no mention of Bin Laden being sought after or found, and with obscenely naïve worries that Afghans will see NATO as a hostile occupying force, as if they don't already.

 

When I saw Obama give his landmark war policy speech at the Chicago Council of Foreign Affairs when he was still a senator, he presented the Iraq war as misguided and the Afghan war as a necessary evil. He harshly criticized the Bush team for changing strategies several times, which he (I believe rightly) attributed to poor planning and having no endgame in sight. This became his campaign mantra and but now, as President, he and his team seem to be getting the two more and more confused. The 8-year war Afghan war is becoming indistinguishable in news reports from the Iraqi and so, we can believe, for those involved on all sides, from top to bottom, a recurrent event jeopardizing the future.

Mobocracy Threatens U.S. Participatory Democracy in Healthcare Reform

The powerful grassroots strategy that brought Obama to the White House has been difficult to translate into impacts on the formation and passing of specific policies, notably economic. Healthcare has not been an exception, other than  in (or especially because of) the counter-strategies Obama opponents are expanding day by day, community by community.

An email from Democratic National Committee Executive Director Jen O'Malley Dillon makes clear the imminent danger mobocracy in America presents to the burgeoning experiments in participatory democracy. The "five facts about the anti-reform mobs" she presents are shocking even with a grain of partisan salt and an understanding that she comp licitly extends the very fears of which she warns, though overlooking the positive role other corporate and social groups are playing in achieving healthcare reform:

1. These disruptions are being funded and organized by out-of-district special-interest groups and insurance companies who fear that health insurance reform could help Americans, but hurt their bottom line. A group run by the same folks who made the "Swiftboat" ads against John Kerry is compiling a list of congressional events in August to disrupt. An insurance company coalition has stationed employees in 30 states to track where local lawmakers hold town-hall meetings.

2. People are scared because they are being fed frightening lies. These crowds are being riled up by anti-reform lies being spread by industry front groups that invent smears to tarnish the President's plan and scare voters. But as the President has repeatedly said, health insurance reform will create more health care choices for the American people, not reduce them. If you like your insurance or your doctor, you can keep them, and there is no "government takeover" in any part of any plan supported by the President or Congress.

3. Their actions are getting more extreme. Texas protesters brought signs displaying a tombstone for Rep. Lloyd Doggett and using the "SS" symbol to compare President Obama's policies to Nazism. Maryland Rep. Frank Kratovil was hanged in effigy outside his district office. Rep. Tim Bishop of New York had to be escorted to his car by police after an angry few disrupted his town hall meeting -- and more examples like this come in every day. And they have gone beyond just trying to derail the President's health insurance reform plans, they are trying to "break" the President himself and ruin his Presidency.

4. Their goal is to disrupt and shut down legitimate conversation. Protesters have routinely shouted down representatives trying to engage in constructive dialogue with voters, and done everything they can to intimidate and silence regular people who just want more information. One attack group has even published a manual instructing protesters to "stand up and shout" and try to "rattle" lawmakers to prevent them from talking peacefully with their constituents.

5. Republican leadership is irresponsibly cheering on the thuggish crowds. Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner issued a statement applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to "a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress."

Compounding the dangers on the healthcare front is another kind of mobocracy hitting communities nationwide, oblivious to the reality the organizing for healthcare and other rights is a longstanding American tradition. The Westboro have held threatening demonstrations at gay-friendly places of worship and clinics, and opendly anti-Semitic and anti-Islam protests, pointing to a reactionary renewal of intimidation tactics new to only those with short historical memories.

Mussolini took power in Italy with similar tactics and the KKK held on to it in the same way, and we all know how well they turned out. That these U.S. mobocracies seem to be decentralized organizationally even if centrally funded is cause for more concern, not less.  As current events, it is in the world's best interest that mobocracy does not create the future.