March 2015 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

#1008 – Dick Bernard: The Negotiations With Iran: "Eve of Destruction" or "Dawn of Correction"?

March 31, 2015/0 Comments/in History, International Relations, Peace & Justice, Politics, War /by dickbernard

Last nights news had a rather dismal looking visual image: a rectangular table in Switzerland, around which were sitting many very serious and not at all confident looking men and women, attempting to come to some agreement about the general issue of nuclear and relationships between their own countries and Iran. The general story was that they weren’t at all sure they could come to a bargained agreement.
Of course, outside the room, were endless talking heads and written opinions about what was being done wrong, or should be done this way…or that…or whose fault it would be if things wouldn’t work out…. As is always true with unilateral arguments, these arguments always were airtight: there was no “other side of the story” to deal with.
Overnight, on another topic, came an interesting sentence from a friend to another discussion group about another much more mundane issue in the city of Minneapolis: “Compromise – something Americans are not very good at.” Indeed.
My predictions: there will be a deal, imperfect as such deals always are, which will look better and better as time goes on. Surrounding the deal will be those on all sides with vested interests to protect, but no “skin in the game” at the bargaining table, who will talk about “sellout”, and all the like. In the longer term, President Obama’s negotiations ability will be seen as a great strength, rather than a perceived weakness.
Many who know me, know I spent most of my working career involved in one sort of negotiations or another, from interpersonal disputes, to fairly large contracts between labor and management, to occasional labor strikes.
I’ve been there, done that.
There were quite frequent “deaths door” bargains where, near the end, the “sides” looked much like the parties mentioned earlier around the table in the Iran negotiations.
By the time this “deaths door” stage of negotiations was reached, everyone knew that their cherished non-negotiables most certainly had to be negotiated; that walking away was no longer a viable option.
They also knew that they would have to face their own particular “public”, who would complain vigorously about the results, and make assorted threats; and that the negotiators would have to say, “folks, this is the best we can do”.
The seasoned negotiators – the ones who’d done this thing two or three times or more – would know that, long term, the imperfect deal would look better and better; a building block for a better bargain next time, where both sides would actually win. That “win-lose”, which is actually “lose-lose”, was an undesirable option.
It is no particular secret that the Middle East is a jumbled up geopolitical mess at the moment, and has been for years. You don’t have to read far beyond the headlines to get that sense. There is a great plenty of blame to go around, abundantly including our own country and others past policies in the region. We like being in control. As stated earlier: “Compromise – something Americans are not very good at.”
As I observed so often in those smaller negotiations in which I was involved, it is necessary to go through the messiness to get to the brighter world existing from a negotiated settlement. But to get there you need to let go of many of your own cherished absolutes, and that is very hard to do. Better that the other side concede.
My prediction: there will be a negotiated agreement, and soon. It will be imperfect, but it will be a beginning.
Yesterday, when I was thinking of this post, after watching Charlie Rose’s interview of President Assad of Syria, and reading about places like Yemen, etc., I thought about Barry McGuire’s old song “The Eve of Destruction”. It’s pretty powerful.
I went to find out more about the song: about Barry McGuire, when it was written, etc., and stopped by the Wikipedia entry which revealed the song was a hit in 1965.
It was there, in the “people’s encyclopedia”, that I learned about another 1965 song, an answer to Eve of Destruction, called “Dawn of Correction” by a group called the Spokesmen.
I’d never heard of Dawn of Correction before, and listened to it, carefully. Very, very interesting point of view, also from 1965. Take a listen.
Directly related, from yesterday, here.

#1007 – Dick Bernard: Esperanto, a Language for All

March 29, 2015/0 Comments/in International Relations /by dickbernard

(click to enlarge photos)

Since the time I met him a dozen years ago, my friend, Dr. Joe Schwartzberg, always worked into his programs his Affirmation of Human Oneness, which he first wrote in 1976. As I got to know him, I came to learn that he’d been working to have the Affirmation, in English, translated into as many major world languages as possible.
He’s now at 41 languages.
In 2010 Dr. Schwartzberg gave me the translations and allowed me to prepare a small imperfect book of them and publish them on the internet in time for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Forum at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. You can find the resulting booklet here.
One language in the booklet especially intrigued me as I had never heard of it. It is Esperanto*, and you can find it in the above booklet in its alphabetical place, following English, and preceding Farsi (Persian).
To me, at the time, Esperanto appeared to be something like Spanish.
Life moved on, until March 12, 2015, when I was invited to attend a small dinner with Prof. Ron Glossop, in Minneapolis for an event. I’d met Prof. Glossop in another context, and hardly knew him, and in the course of conversation, asked him why he was in town.
Prof. Glossop was presenting a workshop on Esperanto the next day at the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Language (CSCTFL). An activist for world citizenship, Prof. Glossop said he learned Esperanto because he wanted to be a world citizen, and now largely because of Esperanto and getting to know Esperantists throughout the world, he felt like a world citizen.
I asked, would he mind if I “crashed the party” the next day, and attend his session. Come on over, he replied.
So I went, and it was a fascinating hour and the language made sense to me.
I have no gift in languages, so simplest to just introduce Dr. Glossop by photo, and include (with his permission) his handouts on Esperanto001, and include the official website of Esperanto-USA, and an 8 minute and fascinating recommended video describing Esperanto, in English, including some verbal Esperanto.
Dr. Glossop’s contact information can be found at the first page of the handout, should you have questions or an interest.

* – Prof. Glossop told me he was the one who authored the translation which appears in the booklet.

#1006 – Dick Bernard: The Plane Disaster in France. Thinking about Flying….

March 26, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, History /by dickbernard

NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS:
1. Links to full length videos of about 10 talks at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum Mar 6-8 can be accessed in the first paragraph, here
2. The entire 90 minute video of the powerful Seven Stories from Vietnam on Mar 20 can now be accessed, also in the first para, here.
*
“I watched the news tonight from a slightly different perspective than usual. My wife is flying home from Arizona tomorrow night, and I am sure she and her sister are watching tonights news with more than a normal amount of interest.”
*
Those first sentences were written Thursday evening, March 26. What follows is written on Saturday, March 28.
A few hours ago, about 1:30 a.m., I went out to Terminal 2 to pick up Cathy. The plane was full, she said. Not a word was mentioned about the Germanwings catastrophe over France, still dominating the news. The 1280 mile flight was apparently uneventful.
Truth is, of course, that flying is far safer than driving a car somewhere. Over the last 15 months I’ve averaged 1500 road miles per month, 310 miles at a stretch, just traveling between my home and the town in rural North Dakota where my uncle lived. Over half of that trip is on very busy I-94, including big city traffic; the rest is on rural ND roads, sometimes facing icy or snowy conditions, and always meeting oncoming traffic.
We all know, from life experience, that stuff can happen. People are killed in cars all the time. Sometimes we’re the crazy ones; other times the person is driving the other car.
Aircraft casualties kill more at a time, and are thus more newsworthy.
But to be in a plane is, on average, to be much safer than to be in a car. Anytime. Anywhere. It is impossible to enact and enforce rules that guarantee anyone anything.
We tend to forget that.

We are a creature of the air age. This morning at coffee I simply jotted down some memories (below). My Dad’s sister, Josie, my oldest Aunt, who I knew well, was 1 1/2 when Orville and Wilbur Wright made the famous flight at Kittyhawk (Dec. 17, 1903).
Here’s a photo of Josie with a tour group just arrived in Hilo Hawaii in 1969: Airline tour group 1969003
Personally, I would be in the category of occasional passenger on an airplane, several times a year during my work career, but not “frequent flier”. Except for my first flight, which was nerve-wracking (personally, not anything to do with the plane), most of the flights were normal, though some had their moments, like landing in an approaching storm at St. Louis’ Lambert Airport back in the 1990s. Either we’d land or we wouldn’t – nothing you can do about it.
Here’s some of my memories. Maybe they will jog your own.
First sightings of airplanes:
1940s, in Sykeston ND: A local electrician owned a two-seater, and occasionally took off and landed in the pasture north of our house. One time he overshot the runway, ending up in Lake Hiawatha. It was far more interesting to me that he’d run in the lake, rather than what had happened to him. He apparently lived.
Somewhere in the late 1940s, same town, a huge six engine airplane flew over our town at very low altitude. It came from the northeast, as I recall. Later research showed that it probably was a B-36B from Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, South Dakota. They were probably practicing bombing runs. Thankfully, we weren’t a target. It was probably enroute home to Ellsworth, approximately 300 miles southwest of us
About 1953, I saw Air Force One over Minot ND. President Eisenhower came to town, probably to review the in-progress Minot Air Force Base. Later we had a close up and personal view of the President in motorcade down the main street, in an open convertible. Those were the days….
First flights:
In 1962, I flew home on Army leave from Denver’s Stapleton Airport, to Bismarck ND. The plane was one of the class I knew as DC-3 planes, very, very loud. Lots of rattling. It was frightening just to be on the plane. We arrived at Rapid City, and the connecting flight to Bismarck was full. So two of us were switched to a single engine four-seat plane and flew across the night landscape. It was a flight not to be forgotten.
A year later, in the same Army unit, a practice troop deployment took us from Colorado to South Carolina. We didn’t know it then, but the Army was practicing for Vietnam.
We flew in what I’d call a flying cigar, probably a 707 type aircraft, which doubled as troop and general cargo carrier. There were no attendants on this flight, no plush seats, and there was only one tiny window, and the only sensation of whether you were flying or crashing, etc., was your gut. There was not much banter among the GI’s that day.
Most interesting flight:
In 1973, the organization for which I was working chartered an airliner to take a plane full of delegates from Minneapolis to Portland OR. The memorable part of this trip was when the pilots opened the door to the cockpit and allowed us to actually enter the cockpit, a couple at a time, to see the business end of the airplane, in business.
Wouldn’t happen today, that’s for sure.
Most tense flight:
Back in the good old hi-jacking days of U.S. flights in the 1970s, I was on another flight from Minneapolis to Denver.
A man boarded with a metal suitcase which seemed to be very heavy, and there was a protracted and very tense negotiation between the flight crew and the man, asking him to store the suitcase during the flight.
He refused, and ultimately they relented and he kept the suitcase with him.
I’ve often wondered what he was carrying.
The most memorable flight day:
Actually, this was an absence of flight days.
We live more or less on the flight path into and out of Minneapolis. There is always something in the air, and often times you can hear residual noise from planes.
For a few days after 9-11-01 there was no air noise whatsoever. Every plane had been grounded.
We have, it seems, been terrorized ever since.
I’m sure you have your own stories….
Care to share?
Comment
from Anne D: Dick, yes it jogged my early memories of plane sightings and other flying objects… blimps.
I had secured a collection of plane cards, probably from a cereal box. So when one flew over I ran outside to see if I could identify the airborne vehicle. Some of the planes pulled banners. Later I remember many that wrote on the sky. My favorite were the slow floating dirigibles that fascinated me and my grandfather Vanoss. Also, the searchlights that lit the night. My grandfather told me they were friendly ghosts dancing in the sky. We watched them together from the front porch.

#1005 – Dick Bernard: Photos of Positive People, and a Call to Act.

March 24, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, Education, History, International Relations, Minnesota, Native American, Nature, Peace & Justice /by dickbernard

(click to enlarge)

Park Rapids MN Mar 14, 2015

There are lots of good things going on in the world, every day, every where.
This fact is easy to miss in a contemporary media environment that incessantly emphasizes bad news. But all one needs to do is to look around, listen, and get engaged.
Here’s a little photo gallery, with small captions, from just one recent week, taken at a League of Women Voters Saturday afternoon workshop in Park Rapids MN, and at a meeting about overpopulation of the planet in Minneapolis. Most of the speakers were ordinary folks, just like the rest of us. But this gave particular power to their presentations, in my opinion.
And at the end, a recent article I spied in last Sunday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune about Climate Change, and something I wrote about the same topic 10 ten years ago.
The March 14 workshop in Park Rapids was about Sustainable Agriculture, and the citizen speakers well informed, and interesting. (In the end, my opinion, it is always ordinary citizens who will make the difference…and time and time again, I hear the “expert” speakers affirm that the essential folks towards positive change are the folks we’ve never heard of.

Sally Shearer, Park Rapids MN, Mar 14, 2015

Sally Shearer talked about the history of Minnesota agriculture, beginning, of course, with the indigenous people. She especially referenced a particularly interesting older book, Helping People Help Themselves, by Roland H. Abraham, about the history of agricultural extension,

Ed Poitras, Mar 14, 2015

Ed Poitras talked about this experience, as a boy in WWII, with Victory Gardens in his home state of Massachusetts. For those of us of a certain age, we remember gardening, cooking, canning, raising chickens, and the like. These are lost arts which may well again become essentials.

Anne Morgan, Mar. 14, 2015

Anne Morgan gave us a primer on garden seeds.

Les Hiltz, Mar 14, 2015

Les Hiltz talked about bees and beekeeping. Bees are crucial to sustinability.

Winona Laduke, Mar 14, 2015

Winona Laduke was the most high profile speaker, and she spoke with feeling and intelligence and intensity about the land and the traditional ways.
March 19 in Minneapolis, David Paxson gave a jam-packed session on the issue of global overpopulation. His website is worth a visit.

David Paxson, Mar 19, 2015

Finally, in the March 22, Minneapolis Star Tribune, in the Science section, I found an article about Al Gore and the issue of Climate. The article (pp 4&5), and some of my “history” with Mr. Gore (pp 1, 2 & 3), can be read here: Al Gore, 2005, 06, 2015002
In my opinion, Mr. Gore is a visionary, well worth paying attention to.
For me, personally, the solution ends up with those who are in the seats, listening.
Others better informed and in one way or another more “important” than us, may, in fact, know more than we do. But in the end it is every individual setting out to make a little difference, who will make the big and essential long term difference.
It is what we – not they – do that will make the difference.

Mar 19, 2014, Minneapolis

#1004 – Kathy McKay: Going to Selma, 2015; Remembering 1965

March 21, 2015/0 Comments/in History, Peace & Justice, Politics /by dickbernard

The Selma, Alabama, march was actually two marches. The first, March 7, 1965, was the confrontation at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma; the second began March 21, 1965, and ended four days later at the capitol in Montgomery.
My friend, Kathy McKay, decided to go to Selma March 6-7 to remember 50 years ago. Following are her notes as she experienced Selma, and Alabama, in 2015.
Kathy McKay
Why go to Selma?
When I read a short note in January that President Obama was scheduled to go to Selma for the fiftieth anniversary march I knew I wanted to go too.
I remember the first marches in Selma with the really frightening pictures. Selma has become an iconic event of many occurring during the intensity of the Civil Rights movement in the 60’s and 70’s. It seemed like a way to remember these efforts, to underline their importance, and to participate in a public display of democracy given the challenges to civil rights still so with us. As Obama said in his speech at the foot of the bridge the US is still a work in progress. Democracy is still perhaps more of an ideal than a reality.
Another reason I wanted to go is that Lee and I own property in Alabama. Though I wholeheartedly embrace the unspeakable beauty of the island coast with its birds and quiet beaches I had not yet found a way to feel as though I politically belonged. I winched at statistics of poverty rates, anti immigration sentiment, disproportionate rates of incarceration and a general suspicion of pick up trucks with gun racks.
Perhaps traveling to Selma would expand my orientation to Alabama…give me a better feel…help me see if there is a way I can “fit” better into an Alabaman identity.
Montgomery, March 6th, night before Selma
Here I am at a Waffle House in a town I have never been to before. Montgomery, the capital city of Alabama is about 50 miles east of Selma and the closest place that I could find a room three weeks ago when I started calling.
This week end Montgomery has the Patti LaBelle celebration concert and the Grammy nominated Imani Winds doing a world premiere of a piece memorializing both Langston Hughes and negro spirituals in a nod to the 50th anniversary.
Montgomery has the Southern Poverty Law Center which was started by Morris Dees during the 60’s and is premiering a film highlighting several of the original local marchers.
There is a lot going on in central Alabama celebrating this civil rights event.
*****
In March of 1965 I was living in a college dormitory of 600 women in Winona, Mn. Not only was there no internet but only one television in the whole building. We got our news and commentary from TIME and Newsweek sometime after the events happened.
I was stunned when I viewed the news reports and video on that TV of policeman attacking the citizens they were hired to protect, and the now infamous footage of rage and brutality against the non violent marchers. It is the deep disrespect and de-humanization this event represents that draws me Montgomery
*****
President Obama was scheduled to speak at 1:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, March 7. I was 48 miles away in Montgomery. The news was saying security checks for the up close area would begin at 8:30 in the morning. I made a decision that I did not want to wait in an enclosed area with no water or seats for 5 hours so didn’t try for that deadline.
Wonderfully the Museum of Alabama opened at 8:30 on Saturday morning and had an exhibit of some of the Spider Martin black and white photographs from the first March. I headed to downtown Montgomery and entered the atrium of the museum a few minutes after 8:30am. Walking past busts of Alabama heroes I saw a military general that fought against the Spanish and one from the revolutionary war. I saw a proud bust of Booker T. Washington and one of George Washington Carver There may have been the expected Confederate generals but I did not see them.

Photo: Kathy McKay, March 7, 2015

The Spider Martin exhibit was on the first floor. A friendly docent welcomed me and directed me to the Milo Howard room where the large copies of pictures were hung.
Following this visit I headed for the highway to Selma figuring I would get there early and look around. Spring begins in late February in Alabama. The rolling hills had some green and the four lane highway with a broad grassy median was a pleasant drive.
As I reached the peak of one of the many undulating hills I noticed in my rear view mirror flashing blue lights. “Oh oh someone is getting a ticket” I thought. The blue lights persisted and then I notice motorcycle police leading a trail of vehicles. “Oh, a funeral procession.”I slowed slightly. As there were two lanes going in my direction no need to pull over.
Pulling up beside me going, perhaps 55 mph or maybe 60 mph, were eight large motorcycles with leathered drivers and blue lights flashing. Immediately behind them a long black limousine, and then one after another of black SUV’s with license plates 001, 003, etc. As I was counting the SUV’s and got to about seven or eight i was stunned to realize this is the president and his entourage…family, secret service, etc. I was overwhelmed with the impact of driving along side of the president to get to the Edmund Pettus bridge and the city of Selma. The symbolism of a black president coming to the sacred ground of Selma to honor the marchers, the people of Selma and to proclaim to America and the world “what happened here was so important”. I was in tears.
Later came a train of seven tour buses, the congressional delegates, with staff, I believe. About 12 miles from Selma the traffic slowed and for the next three hours we crawled toward the truck route into Selma. The main highway goes across the bridge onto Broad street, the main street in Selma.
The president’s entourage went into town over the bridge, the rest of us through the back door truck route. Along the highway at the equivalent of about every three blocks were municipal police or sheriffs or state police guiding traffic and answering questions. We were all patient. Some stopped at empty lots a mile or so out and walked in to the town. South High school, about a mile and a half out of town was charging a modest fee to park in their lot, a fund raiser. I stayed on the road and went into the heart of Selma arriving about 12:30. Magically I found the last perking space on Clark street in the residential area. I hopped out and headed for the center of town. Needless to say I had missed the opportunity to get up close to the bridge in the secured area. The town was packed with people, tour buses from Atlanta, New Orleans, South Carolina and places unnamed and thousands of pedestrians.
Broad street was solid people so I made my way up the next street over. I could get within a block of the river and there met barriers and secret service. This would be my place for the next couple of hours. Although the sound system was loud enough to reach our area the “noise” was not decipherable. We didn’t care. The music still worked. The cadence of John Lewis was unmistakeable and the instructive and insistent President Obama spoke clearly without the specific words. (we all said we’d catch the actual speech later on tv).

At Edmund Pettus bridge at time President Obama spoke, March 7, 2015

The crowds included lots of children, young people and old people. People dressed up and those more casual. No one seemed in a hurry to get anyplace. Everyone seemed happy just to be there…that was the point, to be there. The weather was friendly, bright sun and about 70 degrees.
After the speeches music played over the several blocks of milling people. There were booths selling food, I bought a roasted corn and then barbecued ribs from these ladies who were running a busy booth but consented to have their picture taken.

Post event hospitality in Selma, Kathy McKay March 7, 2015

Chicken, grits and desserts were available. I bought a memory water bottle with Selma-50 Years written on the side. No one wanted to leave. People sat on the steps of all the churches, in the yards of the schools…everywhere they stayed around.
I, too, milled around feeling totally comfortable, not wanting to leave. I listened to an older gentleman singing tunes he was making up with recorded music background. I wandered back and forth down various streets, had a sweet tea and noticed the overflowing trash bins from all of the food that was being consumed.
As the sun’s light began to change I went looking for my car. Luckily I had written down the intersection and had my GPS with me. I walked by dozens of tour buses waiting for their travelers and got in line again to retrace my route out of town. The line was not as long leaving as it had been coming into Selma.
I left feeling proud, fulfilled, very American…we do create change, we have more to do, there are people willing to put their lives on the line to move the needle in the direction of justice, of fairness.
Alabama is different for me now. The people gathered at Selma both local and visitors enveloped me with assurance that there is room for me in Alabama…maybe, even, with my resist-the-status quo bent, a particular place for my perspective and my voice.

#1003 – Dick Bernard: A Remarkable Evening Remembering the Vietnam War

March 20, 2015/0 Comments/in History, International Relations, Peace & Justice, War /by dickbernard

UPDATE Mar 27, 2014: Bill Sorem filmed the entire event which is available on his vimeo site here. The entire program is about 90 minutes, featuring solely the seven speakers.
*
Tonight I was at a remarkable story-telling session in St. Paul. More later on that. There will be a continuation of the conversation on Thursday, April 9, at Plymouth Congregational Church, 1900 Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis MN. Several pages of handouts from tonight, including the the agenda for tonight, and for April 9, can be read here: Vietnam War Recalled001
(click on drawing to enlarge it)

photo copy of Padre Johnson sketch from 1968, used with permission of the artist. See Postnote 4.

Personal background:
In mid-November, 1982, I was in Washington D.C. for a meeting of a volunteer board of which I was a member.
On Saturday, Nov 13, a member reported to us that she’d seen many veterans of the Vietnam War the previous evening, and they were in town for the dedication of the just completed Vietnam Memorial on the National Mall. Emotions were intense, she reported.
Sunday, Nov 14, 1982, I had several hours between the end of our meeting, and my flight back to Minneapolis from D.C.’s National Airport, and I decided to stop by this new monument. The visit to the wall was an intense one for me as well. I described my experience a couple of weeks later: Vietnam Mem DC 1982001 (See Postnote 1)
I’m a Vietnam era Army Infantry veteran, 1962-63. None of us in Basic Training at Ft. Carson CO ever left stateside; we were simply folded into a newly reactivated Infantry Division which, it turned out, was being prepared for later deployment to Vietnam. At that time, I recall my platoon sergeant wanted an assignment to Saigon. It was considered “good duty”. Later my two younger brothers were Air Force officers who both served in Vietnam, circa 1968 and 1971, one as an F-105 pilot; the other, navigator on military transport planes, some in and out of Vietnam airstrips.
It occurred to me that day at the Memorial that I had never welcomed my brothers home after their tours ended, so I wrote both of them letters in the plane enroute home. Ten or so years earlier they just came back, that’s all.
In more recent years I learned my former Army Company had been decimated in a 1968 ambush in Vietnam. My source was a colleague from the same company, from Sauk Rapids MN, who’d learned this from another veteran who’d later been in the same Company. As I recall, the vet said to my Army friend: “I’ll tell you this story once; never ask me about it again”. (See Postnotes 2 and 3)
Tonights gathering (see page two here, and photo below: Vietnam War Recalled001)
My words are superfluous to the intensity of the messages conveyed by seven speakers in 90 minutes tonight. Below is a picture of the printed agenda. Click to enlarge. I noted someone filming the talks. Hopefully the evening will be translated into an on-line presentation for others to see. Every presentation was powerful.
(click to enlarge)

Agenda, March 20, 2015

Postnote 1: As I was preparing this post, I thought it would be simple to find a link that described the history of the Memorial. In the end, I had to use this Wikipedia entry as a source. Scroll down to find the early history of the Memorial and the controversy surrounding it. At this 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War (April 30, 1975), active attempts are being made to re-invent the Vietnam War as being something other than the disaster that it was. History is never safe, which is why the stories told tonight are so important.
Postnote 2: Some years ago I learned that someone had placed online a website remembering the history of the Infantry Battalion of which my Infantry Company was part. You can access it here, including some photographs I took as a young GI at Ft. Carson CO.
Postnote 3: On Monday evening, March 16, 2015, I was checking into the motel in LaMoure ND. The clerk at the desk, a Mom who I’ve gotten to know in the course of many visits to the town, felt a need to talk this particular evening. Just a short while earlier her Dad had died, at 65. He’d had a very rough life, spending most of his recent years on 120% disability from the Veterans Administration for severe exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. It was falling to her to clean up final affairs for her Dad, and it was not easy.
When I got home I wrote a note of support and condolence to her.
It only occurred to me tonight, writing this piece, that she, and my friend from Army days, were from the same town, Sauk Rapids MN.
Postnote 4: Artist Ray (Padre) Johnson is a great friend, and was a medic in Vietnam during some of the deadliest combat in 1967-68. You can read more about the drawing he did here. The section about the drawing is below the photo of the hearse….
COMMENT Mar 27 from Dick Bernard to Chante Wolf’s presentation: I’ve known and respected Chante for years; heard her speak in person on March 20, and just watched her and the others just now.
I can only speak to my own experience in an Army Infantry Company 1962-63.
In those days, our units were 100% male. I really don’t recall even seeing women. I was engaged at the time, and never “went to town” (Colorado Springs) so never experienced the more raw side of life there.
We were young men, then, and doubtless thought the same as young men of any generation. In my particular units, anyway, I don’t recall the raw sexual commentary even in the drill cadences. We lived in barracks, perhaps 20 to a floor, with zero privacy, one bed next to the other with a bathroom down the hall.
Had there been females in the unit, I have no doubt that the behavior we would have witnessed would have been the same as Chante experienced. But I can speak only from my own personal experience.
I did a quick google search to see if there was more information on the topic. All I can do is add the page of links, fyi.

#1002 – Dick Bernard: Netanyahu's "victory" in the 2015 Israel Election, reflecting back on a 1996 Trip to Israel.

March 18, 2015/0 Comments/in International Relations, Politics /by dickbernard

UPDATE Mar 19: A useful analogy of Vietnam in 1975 to Israel today can be read here, entitled, “The End of Purposeful Ambiguity”. It’s long, but sometimes a bit of reading is worthwhile…. If nothing else, read the first paragraphs, and the last.
(click to enlarge)

Certificate received at end of Jan. 1996 Scripture Study Tour in Israel.

Twenty years ago, sometime in 1995, I heard through a friend that a tour group was being organized to visit Israel.
It sounded interesting; I went to an introductory meeting, paid the deposit, and on January 5-16, 1996, well over 30 of us, from several midwest states, spent an unforgettable nine days taking “A Musical and Scripture Study Tour Through the Land of the Bible”. Our leaders were a popular Catholic theologian, a Lutheran minister whose Dad had been artist for Billy Graham Ministries, and one of the three premiere composers of contemporary Christian music. Among the tour group were perhaps 20 choir members from assorted church choirs around the U.S.
The group I had been lucky enough to find out about, and now tag along with, was extraordinarily talented, as I learned each time the choir sang in any of the holy places we visited.
Our tour was also, I learned early on, primarily put together by the leader who I would now call a “Zionist Christian”. Page four of the 93 page program booklet we carried with us throughout the tour was clear enough: “In 1964, before there were any occupied territories, the Arab states created the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) for the specific purpose of destroying the Jewish state. The PLO leadership declared themselves to be “the sole representatives” of Palestinian Arabs, and their terrorism intimidated Arab moderates by killing all who dared challenge their authority….” The statement was doubtlessly carefully written and reviewed before printing.
There is nothing like certainty to make one’s case. They’re bad, we’re good….
We were under the guidance of good friends in Israel. Everything was spectacular.
But this was no ordinary tour. It came right after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli at a Peace Rally in Israel (Nov. 4, 1995). We visited Rabin’s grave when we arrived in Jerusalem. We left for home just days before the election of Yasir Arafat as PLO President (January 20, 1996). Indeed, our group was allowed to visit the famous Mosque of the Golden Dome on the site of the original Temple. I recall no tense times during our visit.
In mid-1996 Binjamin Netanyahu barely won his first election; I don’t recall his name being mentioned during our tour.
Some years later came the Separation Barrier (aka Wall of Separation).
And now we have had the 2015 election in Israel.
Of all the memorable things from the travel to Israel, I remember Saturday morning, January 13, 1996.
That morning we attended Shabbat Services at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.
The Rabbi who spoke that morning certainly knew in general who we were, guests at that service, and quite soon launched into a very passionate oration about power politics in Israel. It seemed pretty clearly directed at us.
Of course, all I have is vivid memory, but in essence this is what he said: the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel had devised a strategy for taking and keeping control of the political stucture in Israel. It was very simple. Encourage large ultra-orthodox families, and ultimately the population game would be won.
The Reform Jews, who typically had smaller families, and who provide lots of support to Israel from particularly the United States, would ultimately be, at least in a power sense, on the sidelines.
The Rabbi was obviously very angry about this developing reality which has, of course, played out: more people, more power.
So, why the “victory” in parentheses in the title?
Such strategies as described above are always temporary. The Palestinians have a growing population as well, and they are Israelis, though, it seems, they are second class.
Sooner or later the truth will out.
The Reform Jews in the United States need to come to grips with their own cause in the matter which is an increasingly dangerous Israel. Self-defense can backfire….
A FOOTNOTE: Ehud Olmert, then Mayor of Jerusalem and the person who signed our certificate of Pilgrimage in the Year of King David, himself was a significant power actor in Israel.
COMMENTS:
from Jeff P:
Extremists continue to proliferate on all sides and this will not help.
Israel started out as a secular idea… the first Zionists were completely secular, even the 1947-1948 wars and starting of Israel was Secular, and is probably why there was such strong USA support by Jews here. (Of course the empty land they wanted and took over, much like the empty land of America after 1492, was of course inhabited quite nicely by others).
It was not till after the 1967 Yom Kippur war when the Arab world realized how Israel was the major military power in the region and the Palestinians truly became a cause celebre. And it was at that time that religious Zionism came to the forefront.
I am reading Karen Armstrong’s “Fields of Blood”… highly recommended.

#1001 – Dick Bernard: When Stupidity Triumphs

March 13, 2015/0 Comments/in International Relations, Politics /by dickbernard

On Halloween night, 2000 – it was a Tuesday – my wife and I were in Washington DC, and managed to get a pass to see an evening session of the U.S. House of Representatives.
No cameras were allowed, so I have no photos. Down on the floor were two small gaggles of congresspeople, gathered on the left and on the right side of the House. A couple of people were giving speeches about, as I recall, ergonomics legislation.
Nobody on the floor gave any appearance of listening to the speakers.
What we witnessed in person was so strange that a Congressman, my memory recalls he was from Illinois in the Alton area, came up to the gallery where we were sitting and literally apologized for his colleagues behavior to those few of us who were sitting watching the spectacle below. To my recollection, he wasn’t running for reelection.
Soon came a vote, and red and green lights appeared on the tally board “stage left”. There were, it appeared, far more votes tallied, than there were people on the floor. Apparently the rules were that persons who had earlier checked in were able to vote from their offices or somewhere, present, though absent.
Afterwards I asked my then-Congressman if I could get a copy of the Congressional Record for that date. He sent it, and I still have it: the only such document in our home.

Some things, especially unpleasant, are worth remembering. Opportunities to learn come (hopefully) from bad experiences.
Exactly a week later, came Election 2000, the election of the “hanging chads”, where the U. S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled that George W. Bush beat Al Gore. A key popular vote was Florida’s. Note especially the Ralph Nader vote in 2000 in Florida. It is one my progressive friends like to forget.
That election was over 14 years ago, now, and in between the consequences have been lost in the “memory hole” of our national and collective repressed memory: Afghanistan, the Iraq War, which spawned ISIS; the very near collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008, and so forth.
Yes, some things, especially unpleasant, are worth remembering….
But we seem never to learn.
Witness the bizarre actions of 47 U.S. Senators just a few days ago. The closest analogy is some juvenile petition circulated around without a thought as to consequences. There are, by now, boat loads full of analysis about this petition. Here and here are two which I find most interesting.
And these signers are the most powerful and astute political people in the United States? They have instant access to all of the expertise this country offers, and this is the result?
There is no way to walk back the stupidity of this action, except by waiting for it to be forgotten by the people who elected them. The U. S. Senate dining room – I’ve been there once, in 1985, for lunch – is apparent haven for far more dim bulbs than just myself.

1985

Of course, the question needs to be asked: how do these idiots get in these offices in the first place?
We are a democracy, after all.
Think about that as the posturing for 2016 intensifies.
We are the ones who are responsible for our own fate, how, whether, for whom, we finally vote (including not voting at all).

#1000 – Dick Bernard: Some Empty Chairs. Thoughts at 1000

March 10, 2015/0 Comments/in International Relations, Minnesota, Peace & Justice, War /by dickbernard

Related posts: March 6, 7, 8 and 9 .
(click to enlarge photos)

Was this an empty room about to become full; or a full room which had just become empty? Answer at the end of this post.

This blog began March 25, 2009. You can read it here.
Expressing an opinion on-line wasn’t new to me: that went back to the time immediately after Sep 11, 2001. Perhaps the first was two letters to family and friends in September, 2001: Post 9-11-01001
A few friends now and again suggested that I blog, and here I am, 6 years and 1000 posts later.
Does this every other day exercise matter? (There have been about 2175 days between posts #1 and #1000.)
I can only speak for myself.
Doing this near-daily exercise causes me to think about why I’m saying what I’m saying on any particular topic to a largely unknown audience, talking to more than just myself.
Even the simple act of finding a link to something describing the country of Central African Republic (as I did, yesterday) helps me to broaden my own knowledge.
I feel a bit more alive than I felt 15 years ago.
Before 9-11-01 the world I inhabited seemed more simple than it was the day after. Fear and hatred have overtaken too many of us, with predictable consequences. But many more of us are pushing back, worldwide, albeit too quietly, to change the conversation to one of peace and hope. We may not notice this: the media on which we rely makes its money on bad news; good news is boring….
Shortly before I wrote my first blog 3-25-09 our nation’s first non-white President had been inaugurated. That singular election has changed the complexion of our country forever, and is perhaps the reason for the sometimes bizarre pushback that we are experiencing, including today: the pendulum has moved. Equilibrium will take time. The past some long for is, indeed, past. Thankfully.
All in all, I feel a bit more hopeful than I did after we as a nation freely chose war over reconciliation in the fall of 2001.
Since 2001 the mood of the body politic world-wide has changed in many ways, and our individual capability to make waves – positive waves for positive change – has increased in ways we couldn’t imagine even 14 years ago.
On Woman’s Day, Sunday, I think it was Samran Anderlini, Iranian, peacemaker, who said that for 2500 years the global conversation was dominated by the few who dominated political and military leadership. The conversation, always, was power through dominance in war.
It might well be said that the war “side” still dominates, but they’re running scared.
And people like ourselves, once we get over our timidity and stand for a better peaceful world, will make the difference.
In the caption at the beginning I ask was the room waiting to be filled, or had it just emptied?
It doesn’t make any difference, really.
What makes the difference is that the room, about the time I took the photo, contained one speaker and 75 listeners. The speaker reflected on her life; it was then up to the listeners to define her reflections in a way they could use to impact our world going forward.
A useful speech is always much more than just a speech.
It is we who fill those empty chairs, the listeners, who must make the difference when we leave the room.
During this years Peace Prize Forum the background for every single session was photographs like the one below, of men and women about the task of clearing away deadly weapons of war somewhere, sometime, in our world.
Their task is, we were told, both dangerous, and more and more successful. There is an opportunity to rid the world of chemical weapons.
Now to deal with the nuclear and other insane weapons of destruction.

Clearing chemical weapons from a battlefield.

Positive change is happening. Let’s be part of making it.
A Suggestion: Those who glance regularly at my meanderings on this page know that I frequently link to an Los Angeles blogger, a retired guy like myself, who publishes Just Above Sunset six days a week. Just Above Sunset works at distilling national and international politics through the thoughts of assorted writers. I always find it a useful, albeit lengthy, collection of opinions. Here and here are the offerings from the last two days. Subscribing is free, and the post comes into my inbox about 2 a.m. each day. Consider joining.
Comment:
from Peter in New Hampshire: Funny thing: when you started to blog, the Obama election, was when I stopped. Personally, I could not see myself making a difference that way, just being one of millions of bloggers in a blogosphere. That’s not to say blogging is the problem… But I applaud your insights about what the writing process is. It’s the same for me; I want another venue, though. I think it’s books, but books are different now, so “timely” with a colon and a subtitle, out of date in a week or so. Maybe books are becoming blogs. I know a lot of blogs become books. Anyway I hadn’t written you in a long time, and wanted to respond, stand in awe, be proud to know you.
from Norm in Boston: My sentiments also, what Peter said, “…and wanted to respond, stand in awe, be proud to know you.”
I attend a poetry workshop where everything I write has to be in rhyme and humorous.
eg: Obama advocates breathing,
Dems behind him ally,
Republicans, silently seething,
Each of asphyxia die.
Most everything read at the workshop seems to have abandoned rhyme. Your blog, today, sounded like wonderful free verse.
Thanks for encouraging subscription to Just Above Sunset. Something Alan said awhile back was the idea for the rhyme above.

#999 – Dick Bernard: A Takeaway from the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Forum

March 9, 2015/0 Comments/in International Relations, Minnesota /by dickbernard

Related, here, here,here and here .
(click to enlarge photos)

Gina Torry, Sunday March 8, 2015

Sunday morning was the first day of Daylight Savings Time, so when we convened at 9 a.m. the crowd in the meeting room was somewhat thinner than expected for the usual reasons, including forgetting to “spring ahead”.
Forum Executive Director Gina Torry began promptly, with a story about a visit she’d had with a large group of women in a strife torn village in the Central African Republic some time back.
She asked them some questions, but no one answered. The interpreter said that they were shy, and the interview style was replaced by their singing a song in which they articulated some of their wishes.
She played a short video of the women singing to her. It was inspirational.
It caused me to think of a visit nine years ago to Haiti, with a delegation from the micro-finance group Fonkoze. At least twice, in the interior of Haiti in or near Hinche, we met with groups of women who greeted us with group singing.
As it was with our group, Gina’s time together with the CAR women was good. Then she left.
But within a week she heard that some of the women had been killed, others disappeared.
It was a sad story about a sad reality.
As I often do in such settings, myself part of the audience listening to someone else who’s the expert, I notice how I feel: what would I do? What can I do? I notice my colleagues around me. Those older than I; women; students…. What are they thinking and feeling?
Chances are, for most of us, there are variations on the same theme: We convince ourselves, or others help us to be defeated before we even start: “I couldn’t do that”; or, “I don’t have the time”, or, or, or.
It likely took great courage for those women to come to that meeting, to sing their song for the visitor. Some of them, apparently, paid with their lives soon thereafter.
I thought of some years earlier, in that same country of Haiti, where illiterate peasants – most of the population – finally, for the first time, actually had an opportunity to vote for their President, but had all manner of roadblocks thrown up to make voting all but impossible. They showed up and voted, regardless of the hardships.
They put many of us to shame.
At the end of her short presentation, Gina noted to us that she was wearing only one earring.
The other, she said, had been left on a table outside the room, along with other single earrings, a silent witness of native American women to those of their sisters who had disappeared into the abyss of things like sex trafficking.
It was a powerful witness, and I hadn’t noticed the table before.
But I stopped by the table several times later.
Our time on the planet is short, and it is up to us what we do with it.
Are we on the court, or in the stands, or do we even bother to show up for the game?
It is up to us.
That is my takeaway from the Nobel Peace Prize Forum 2015.

The single earrings, March 8, 2015