#157 – Dick Bernard: Haiti et al, a little arithmetic lesson in caring and sharing

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Thursday of this week we showed a few photos from what, in retrospect, were better times for Haiti kids at SOPUDEP School in Petion-ville in December, 2003. Our audience was about 100 2nd graders at an elementary school in a nearby twin cities suburb. Kids relate to kids everywhere, and this audience of young persons paid close attention to the photos of their peers far away, and they enjoyed participating in a small lesson in Kreyol words I was able to teach them.
SOPUDEP school is no longer useable; many of its students were casualties of the earthquake. It has temporarily died, but will rise again with the help of places like that elementary school in the twin cities which is considering helping SOPUDEP recover with part of their relief efforts. It helps to be able to make a personal connection with a person or a place.
The day we were at the school this past week, they were collecting quarters from whoever wished to participate. It was a small amount, but a very intriguing idea.
The school was devoting a week, I gathered, to participate in some way in relief efforts, and was involved in various efforts to better understand Haiti.
Someone(s) had come up with a neat idea: on Monday, the collection began by collecting pennies; on Tuesday, nickels; Wednesday, dimes; Thursday, our day, quarters; and Friday, dollars. If you do the math, that’s $1.41 – a small sum, granted, but coins put together accumulate to real money quickly.
The teacher noted that the trip to the bank with the coins involved a bit of heavy lifting, so to speak.
The fundraising strategy has stuck with me, and this morning at coffee I did a little paper and pencil arithmetic.
IF a person did the same routine as the kids were doing at the school, and repeated the routine every five days over the course of a year, that $1.41 would grow to over $100 by years end.
Of course, one need not stop at a dollar. How about going to six days, and adding a $5 bill; or seven days, adding a 10; or eight, $20? And doing it repetitively, week after week? A seven day cycle would come out to about $850 a year; an eight day cycle, almost $1500…all this for
one cent +
five cents +
ten cents +
twenty-five cents +
$1 +
$5 +
$10 +
$20.
Let’s say that a single percent of Americans – only 3,000,000 people, 1% of a total of 300,000,000 – adopted the elementary schools five day plan, and followed through every day for an entire year. That would come out to over $300,000,000 dollars – all for $1.41 every five days. That’s serious money that could do a whole lot of good in a place like Haiti where a dollar a day is hard to come by, even for adults.
Give it some thought. And action.

Children at SOPUDEP School, Haiti, December 9, 2003

#155 – Dick Bernard: Haiti, a plea….

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December 8, 2003 – it was my second full day of my first trip to Haiti – we had spent a powerful and draining morning being briefed by ordinary Haitians, women and men, about the atrocities of the 1991-94 coup in Haiti. There were six of us. I had nothing to say. I was there to listen and to learn.
Our group leader had arranged for lunch for the entire group, and before we left we went around the circle of perhaps 20-25, simply to shake hands and thank the group for their hospitality. About two-thirds of the way around I extended my hand to a man, and he refused the handshake.
Experiences like that tend to stick with me. I have no idea why he singled me out (I was the only one of the group of four men and two women so treated). Perhaps I reminded him of someone, some white American, some terrible experience. I’ll never know.
Similarly, I remember a poolside luncheon later the next day at one of those fancy hotels in Petion-ville. We were being briefed by a supporter of then-President Aristide, who later took us around to a school and to a television station to meet other people. At the hotel, I noticed a solitary white man sitting quietly in a deck chair reading a book. I wondered who he was and why he was there. I didn’t ask and I’ll never know. I gather, though, that a white face in Haiti is a suspect face, with good reason.
So it is.
Years have now passed, and I’m far better informed than I was then, and I happen to be at the intersection of lots of electronic communication about what is happening in post-January 12 Haiti. I’m also ice-bound in the middle of the U.S., trying to help as best I can from here.
I know lots of people with lots of points of view, from total ignorance of Haiti (as was true with me seven years ago) to Haitians who are trying to find ways to work together within whatever system exists in the U.S., to others who, like that guy who refused to shake my hand that December day, just want US the hell out*.
I wish there were simple “one-size fits all” solutions. There aren’t.
A short while ago I started one of these blog posts with a sentence that we had raped, looted and pillaged Haiti for its whole 206 year history. Pretty harsh indictment, but not at all unreasonable. Someone I know responded and seemed miffed with my indictment of US (as in U.S, and we Americans): he really didn’t know any of the back story, apparently. I tried to inform him.
On the other side of the equation, I expressed “disappointment” about something sent by a prominent Haitian leader with a large list, and was told that I “insulted” the person (who I respect.) The rage is palpable and we probably deserve the rage. (My work career found me frequently in the position of being yelled at by one side or another, so I’m used to harsh comments. But, do bitter and angry comments help anything, any more than willful ignorance and misplaced trust? I don’t think so.)
The voiceless ones, represented by that guy who wouldn’t shake my hand, have desperate needs, and the needs will be very long-term.
Somehow we need to accept the fact that the U.S. is key to solutions to this catastrophe, and that there will be all manner of well-meaning and malicious attempts to help (or “help”, as in profiteering from the crisis.)
I think “boots on the ground” folks like Dr. Paul Farmer are in an excellent position to do some good, and know the political system very well. To me, Dr. Farmer has earned his credibility.
The guy in the circle that day in 2003 has also earned his credibility with me.
We need to listen to both sides, and to do what we can to make for a better Haiti, one that is founded on Justice, not dependent on Charity (there is a big difference.) My definition, from December 2003 is found at page 17 of my reflections when I returned.
* – there is more than a little logic behind the resentment of Haitians towards the U.S. See my short commentary at page 7&8 on White Rice, Pigs and Chickens, from my 2006 reflections after coming back from Haiti.

#153 – Dick Bernard: Haiti. Hope is on the Way?

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It can fairly be said that the place called Haiti, and the people called Haitians, have been raped, looted and pillaged by my “civilized” world for the entire 518 year history since Christopher Columbus and his men landed there (in the vicinity of today’s Cap Haitien) in 1492. An excellent primer on this history for me was Dr. Paul Farmer’s book, “The Uses of Haiti*“. (I initially thought that this book was still in print. Apparently it is not. The link provided here is to a discussion and critique of the book by someone I early became acquainted with and respect. Take a look, and read the review* all the way through.)
(Today, Dr. Paul Farmer is the most prominent “point person” for the U.S. and the United Nations on Haiti. He was appointed some months before the earthquake; and he has a long history in Haiti and among the Haitians. His Partners in Health is easily considered one of the very best destinations for donations to Haiti. His more recent book, Pathologies of Power remains available, and worth a look.)
It can be fairly said, I believe, that everyone of us in the developed West have grown up with an official and almost exclusively negative narrative about why Haiti is so poor. The essence of the narrative is that Haitians are incapable of running their own affairs: that their problems are their own fault, and that we in the developed world need to rescue them from their own incompetence. We are “the Great White Fathers”.
Historical narratives are developed and shared by people of influence, like leaders, or academics, who are in a position to convey their influence down to the commoners who are the pawns of history. The official story is the story written by the one in Power**. We are told what to believe, and tend to believe what we are told by people more “important” than we are. That is an elemental fact of life. Even Black Americans and Native Americans have absorbed a negative story about Haitians. It is a fiction which has come to be accepted as reality.
When my friend Paul Miller finally convinced me to travel with him to Haiti in 2003, I knew almost nothing about the place and its people. I came back committed to learn about the geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and Haiti. It has been an eye-opening and troubling experience.
Today, January 23, 2010, I feel for the first time since I darkened Haiti’s door December 6, 2003, that hope is truly on the way for Haiti, and along with the hope, some potential for long-term justice for the Haitian people.
There are a boat-load of serious problems beyond the earthquake: I read about them every day in commentaries never seen by the ordinary news consumer in this country. And you don’t undo over 500 years of exploitation overnight.
To those who look only backward at the abuse of a beautiful country and its beautiful, determined and tenacious people, I urge: don’t turn your back on the future and in effect walk only backwards with your eyes only on the awful past.
To those of my country men and women, especially those who share my whiteness, who believe only the official narrative, consider the possibility that you’ve been lied to, deliberately, and often, by most everybody. Crucial information has been tampered with, or left out of, the stories you’ve heard. Open your eyes as you walk forward, trying to help.
To both, consider the possibility of true dialogue, and a willingness to understand the other. Without such an intersection, all of the huge outpouring of money and caring and good intentions engendered by the earthquake of January 12, 2010, will be for naught…and we’ll slide back into the dismal reality that has prevailed over Haiti’s entire history.
Post note: Within the last few days the Twin Cities Daily Planet published a post of mine about the current situation in Haiti.
I have a website concerning Haiti which includes a comparative map and a timeline of significant historical events.
* The review relates to the original edition of the book, 1994; the book I read was the 2003 revised version which very likely dealt with some of the concerns Bob Corbett had with the first edition. To my knowledge, neither edition remains available.
** Quite by accident I was able to document one such occurrence with Haiti. Click on “Anatomy of an Official Lie” here .

#151 – Dick Bernard: Start Seeing Haiti

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I have watched the news about Haiti until I can’t watch much of it any more.
I ask you to be very, very attentive to Haiti long after the TV cameras leave and the fundraising appeals end, and we move on to other things, as we always do. Collectively, we Americans have a very short attention span.
This is truly a time to Start Seeing Haiti.
Here is a good graphic map of Port-au-Prince which was in Sunday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune. The neighborhood where my driver in 2003 lived, and in whose home we had our evening meal, is in the “shantytown” above Petionville. (If you follow the faultline till it is directly south of downtown Port-au-Prince, you’ll be in the approximate location of the hotel in which we stayed at the end of our trip to Haiti in 2006.) To get to that hotel, we travelled perhaps 10 miles more or less along the top of the mountain range beginning above Petionville. The hotel was, in Haitian terms, a luxury hotel. I would guess that hotel was severely damaged or destroyed a week ago. On that trip, we saw farmers working fields that were down slope, and passed villages perched on the mountain sides. We’ll probably never hear what happened there – it was just a place out in the country. Then, it was an idylllic if primitive pastoral scene – people in the fields with hoes…. Today?
I have been to Haiti twice: 2003 and 2006. In between, especially 2004-2007, I made a very strong effort to get very well informed about U.S. policy and our impact on Haiti over Haiti’s entire history as an independent Republic (206 years, beginning 1804). That trip to becoming informed was a troubling one…when one’s eyes are opened, sometimes you see uncomfortable things about yourself. That happened with me.
I am considered to be someone who knows something about the untold story about why Haiti has suffered for so long, and continues to suffer. I particularly resonate with this column by a long time and highly respected journalist here in the twin cities.
None of us know enough, at the moment, to be truly knowledgeable about what is going on, on the ground in Haiti. We see only fragments, and hear only bits and pieces.
We do know about the past. Suffice to say, U.S. history with Haiti goes back as far as President Thomas Jefferson and the 1804 U.S. Congress, and centers on slavery, and fear of a country, Haiti, whose slaves had successfully thrown off their chains and defeated France. We were, of course, a slave-nation then, and for many years later. (In too many ways, we still harbor these attitudes. They are an unfortunate part of what we are as a people.)
France, which held Haiti at the time of the slave revolt, has had its fingers in the destruction of the country since 1696 (it bankrupted Haiti as punishment essentially by extortion in the 1800s), and the Spaniards controlled Haiti before that (a guy named Christopher Columbus was first on the scene in 1492.) For a number of years I’ve had a timeline concerning Haiti-U.S. on my own website (there is one error: 1915-1934 should be the time we occupied Haiti). (My basic Haiti website, needs updating, but still includes much useful information.)
We Americans have much to be very ashamed of when it comes to our treatment of Haiti over the very long term. Haiti has been a human and physical resource to be exploited. That aspect is not, and will likely never be, talked about in the media that we Americans rely on for our daily news. (Frankly, I pay as much attention to what the media does not say, as to what it does. For example, I think there are hundreds of Cuban medical personnel now helping in Haiti, many who were there at the time of the quake; I hear not a word nor see a single image about them on our media. It is a forbidden part of the narrative, apparently.)
If you wish to learn more about Haiti and the US a good place to start is with American Dr. Paul Farmer’s books “The Uses of Haiti”. and “Pathologies of Power”, and visit his Partners in Health website, and read his biography, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. There are mountains of other pieces of information, but these are good places to start. Another heavily researched and recent book is Damming the Flood by Peter Hallward. IJDH (Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti) is an excellent website to visit and get familiar with.
Partners in Health is an excellent and reliable destination for relief $$’s. Cathy and I are most involved in Fonkoze , a major Haiti micro-finance institution. Fonkoze has branches through Haiti, but it is headquartered in PaP, and it too has suffered severe setbacks in all the ways other Haitian institutions have been damaged or destroyed. EVERYONE has suffered in this tragedy.
60 Minutes on CBS on Sunday had an excellent segment on Haiti.
The Haiti government, fragile to begin with, was essentially destroyed in the quake. Medical facilities and their personnel: destroyed and many dead. There is one major airport, and it has a single runway. Thank God the runway wasn’t damaged. Cap Haitien in the north has an airport, but too short a runway for the big planes, and (compared with our freeway travel) the relatively short trip between the two cities takes forever. To my knowledge there is a single direct motor route between the Dominican Republic and Port-au-Prince. We have ridden on a good part of this road in the pre-quake times: it took three to four hours to go about 60 miles and this was on a good day. It is heavily travelled and poorly maintained – it takes money to keep up infrastructure. Many roads are still blocked with debris and even bodies, and heavy equipment will really not come in until the ships bring it – the harbor facilities were damaged in the quake. Fuel is hard to come by.
It is impossible for us to imagine the desperate situation on the ground.
Most of the people of Haiti will be alive when this is all over, but what are they facing in the short and long term? Ultimately, the urban population will likely have to be largely evacuated, at minimum displaced, and Port-au-Prince essentially completely rebuilt. It is the world community, led by us, that will have to do the rebuilding. Image starting over with a city of 2,000,000 (the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul and suburbs is 3,000,000.) It will be a gold mine for the unscrupulous, and one hopes that disaster capitalism will be kept better in check than it was in Iraq. But it will be a place where lots of money will be made – and not by Haitians. (Another useful and troubling book: The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.) We can do right by Haiti this time. I hope we will, and then allow Haitians to build and restore their society and be full partners within the world community.
As I write, we know a lot, but we know only a tiny bit of the long-term implications of this disaster. Some of the best insights I’ve heard came from a Haitian kid who appeared to be in his 20s at a meeting we had on Saturday. Haitians are networked world wide. They are resourceful and inteligent, but they are going to need lots and lots of help and they’re going to need it for a long, long time.
Be with them in any way that you can.

#150 – Dick Bernard: "We're off to see the Wizard…."

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Last night, we listened to the magnificent Minnesota Orchestra as the front band for the 1939 classic film “Wizard of Oz”. It was a wonderful evening. I felt a bit guilty being there, given what has happened in Haiti in the last few days; on the other hand, we had these tickets for almost a year.
I did watch the film with new eyes last night. It remains a wonderful film with lots of positive messages for one who chooses to look for them. (In the lobby, at intermission, I noticed a poster borrowing from Robert Fulghum’s “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten“: “everything I need to know I learned in the Wizard of Oz“. A lot of simple truth there, I thought.)
I don’t remember when I first saw Wizard of Oz, but it was long after it was made. Even though I was born a year later than the film, in 1940, movies were a rare treat in my growing up life in the country.
Last night coincided closely with Martin Luther King’s birthday, and last night I looked at the casting for Wizard of Oz. I looked pretty intently. I do not recall a single face that looked unlike mine. The cast was, best as I could see, totally white.
That is how it was, then. If African-Americans had any roles at all, as in the famous Civil War epic Gone With the Wind produced about the same time, Negroes were kept in their proper subservient place, invisible or inferior; and if their role was important, whites in black face filled in just fine, if I remember rightly.
I describe a deeply ingrained American attitude. And, yes, it has played out in Haiti for its entire 206 year history as an independent Republic, right up until today.
Coincidentally, this past week I listened to a talking book, The Hornets Nest, Jimmy Carter’s first novel, an account of the Revolutionary War in the South, in the years 1770-1790. (The audio book was excellent, worth my time.)
Carter’s book outlines the tension and violence in the south often relating to whether or not there should be slaves, and how to deal with the native population. (One doesn’t need to read a book about what happened, but Carter effectively develops how the grass roots embrace of slavery and eradication of the native Indians evolved and became institutionalized.)
This afternoon I finished the fifth and last CD of the book, and in Carter’s epilogue, the final sentences recounted Thomas Jefferson’s reluctant but firm embrace of slavery as the only way to assure white dominance and continuation of the “American Way of Life.”
Carter in his last words also notes the official continuation of American slavery till the Civil War, and the separate-and-unequal prevalence to the present in our country.
It was Jefferson who was U.S. President in 1804 when Haiti’s slaves defeated the French and declared their independence from France, only the second free Republic in the western hemisphere. A free Haiti was an intolerable threat to our own United States, ourselves a slave state; meanwhile, the vanquished France successfully starved the infant Haiti Republic almost to death, with the U.S. standing by, and so it has gone for Haiti until the present day.
No wonder, some Haiti advocates wish us to be gone.
Our racial climate is different now, than it was in the time of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, but not so much.
The conversation about Haiti, spoken and unspoken, is dominated by racial attitudes that we have been brought up with.
There is an opportunity, in this time of horrible crisis in Haiti, to slowly begin to change the conversation.
I wonder who, or how many, will actually try to do so….
A bit more on Thomas Jefferson and his own personal attitudes here.
At my own website is a timeline of Haiti-American relations. (There is on error there; the U.S. occupied Haiti in 1915-34, rather than 1919). My general Haiti web address is here.

#145 – James Nelson: Reflections on the Copenhagen Climate Summit

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UPDATE January 8, 2010, by James Nelson: On December 17th, the day I left Copenhagen, a 22 minute film was debuted concerning wide scale revegetation in developing countries. They talk about trees but they primarily use shrubs and deep rooted grasses. The film is entitled “Hope in a Changing Climate“. The case studies are from China, Rwanda and Ethiopia. The narrator in some places coincidentally used almost word for word my talk the prior week in Copenhagen. I talked with people from Ethiopia and other parts of Africa. They were very supportive. The film link is here.
In the coming days, I will redo my trip report referencing this film. I am not exaggerating to say these concepts “rehabilitating degraded land” have been used with dramatic results here in Minnesota and other parts of the world and are very cost effective (utilizing surplus labor) for dealing with climate change. I received a great deal of encouragement in Copenhagen.
Posted by Jim Nelson, Jan 3, 2010: I spent 16 days in and around Copenhagen and observed and participated in the Climate Summit. Here is my summary report.
Modest but meaningful progress was made at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Copenhagen. It was exciting to participate in a small way in one of the most momentous and far-reaching issues of our time. I tried to contribute using my experience in business, civic organizations and horticultural activities. Most of all I tried to carefully listen learn and discern a response to these challenges.
The conference fell short of its goal of producing a world-wide binding treaty to limit green house gases but it did produce emission pledges by all major developed countries including for the first time the United States and China. Key elements of the Copenhagen Accord include overarching goals, fresh commitments of funding and new incentives to obtain the greatest impact on reducing greenhouse gases. New mechanisms for standard measurement and verification were strongly debated and only loosely agreed among major countries fearful of giving up sovereignty.
The paramount goal is to limit temperature increases of the earth’s surface by 2 degrees Celsius. This agreement calls for specific commitments from individual countries. Furthermore, there must be standard reporting and independent verification of each countries activity. Funding was a very contentious issue. In the end $30 billion was approved for the first 3 years and a goal was established to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020.
At Klimaforum 09, the People’s Climate Summit, civil society groups conducted a conference in parallel with the government deliberations. Here diverse groups from around the world manifested the unfolding climate change drama with compelling exhibits, publications and seminars. It was the UN Association of Denmark, part of the World Federalist Movement that provided the human face for the somber climate models and contentious policy debates.
Over several years, the Danish group has worked with UN groups from Brazil, India, Tanzania, Finland etc to assure that the voices of marginalized people were heard. They produced compelling panel discussions on the personal impacts of climate change. These long term changes extend far beyond normal patterns in variability in temperatures, frequency and intensity of rainfall. We learned these changes can be dangerous especially to poor nations or regions were food production is impacted, creating instability and ultimately triggering a migration of “climate refugees”.
At this conference it was my opportunity to propose a piece of the climate jigsaw solution puzzle. My grassroots solution to climate change focused on the unique properties of deep rooted native plants, to filter contaminants in water, prevent erosion, to counter the tendency to flood, to provide homes for wildlife and pollinators and especially the capability to sequester carbon deep in the soil. My presentation also focused on grassroots organizations that actively promote the regeneration of native plants and cultivate the future generations of people to value and expand that tradition. Many in the audience felt that my contribution was very applicable to developing countries with degraded landscape and underutilized workers.
Many leaders believe that we are heading for a serious climate issue unless we align economic activities with natural processes. If the political leaders were deciding “what” we must do to preclude severe climate problems, it was business leaders that illustrated “how” we are going to going to dramatically improve efficiency in a carbon constrained world. Midway through the conference, during a pause in the negotiations, the business community hosted “Bright Green” where 170 leading clean-tech companies showcased innovative technologies: windmills, smart electric grids, biocatalysts for new fuels and many innovative carbon sparing technologies. Just as the revolution in information technologies fueled the growth of industry and jobs in the current generation, the transformation to a less intensive/energy economy could propel growth for the next generation.
Climate change has strong but differential effect on people within and between countries and regions and between this generation and future generations. We need to continue to strongly advocate for strong legally binding climate treaties. We need to insist that agreements contain effective international organizations capable of orchestrating global and enforcing solutions. A strong legal framework will give businesses the regulatory certainty to make investments in new jobs and technologies to make the needed improvements.
We need to renew our commitments to Citizens for Global Solutions and other vital civic organizations to assure that the voices of those least capable of coping with climate change can be heard and answered.
He can be reached at kdjnelsonATgmail.com

#130 – Dick Bernard: "the gods must be crazy"

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December 13, 2003, I arrived back from Haiti, all imbued with idealism, but pretty certain that Haiti’s democratically elected government would be deposed, though not sure how or by whom. I had met a lot of people who were standing by President Aristide, even though it was clear that his government was being starved out of existence, unable to really accomplish any of his goals for lack of resources. He and his government had been marked for extinction.
January 11, 2004, the St. Paul Pioneer Press printed a column of mine, which Common Dreams still archives, and which speaks for itself here.
As time went on, it became more and more clear to me that the United States, in alliance with Canada and France, was out to get rid of Haiti’s elected leader and his entire Lavalas party. This ultimately happened late at night February 29, 2004.
A week before the coup was accomplished in Haiti, distinguished Knight-Ridder senior military correspondent Joseph L. Galloway wrote a column appropriately headlined “If U.S. returns to Haiti, get the job done“. Essentially he endorsed the 1915 U.S. “solution” for Haiti, in which the U.S. Marines began their occupation and control of the country for 19 years “Good men and true, and they took and pacified the entire country with a loss of only three Marines killed and 18 wounded” was the essence of his story. He appeared to support the Bush administrations decision to restore democracy by (effectively) destroying the existing democracy (which he referred to as a dictatorship – interesting how words can ‘sing’.)
Haitians of course have a different spin on the reality of those 19 years from 1915-34, and all the years before and after, including the coup d’etat of February 29, 2004, and its fore- and after-effects. But who cares about that? Old news…. Most recently, Aristide’s Lavalas has been denied standing as a political party in upcoming elections for supposedly technical reasons.
The 2004 coup did not bring peace and prosperity to Haiti. Less than a month after President Aristide was safely out of the country, Haiti disappeared as news in the U.S.
In May, 2006, Mr. Galloway and I had a brief e-mail correspondence about the current situation in Haiti. He had just retired from Knight-Ridder, and said, after defending his earlier comments, that “I’ve been going to America’s wars for 41 years…from Vietnam 1965 to Iraq January, 2006. I am not going to study war anymore. Instead, I shall study peace.”
About Haiti, he said “what I said and meant [in the February 22, 2004, column] was that if we went in again we should be prepared to stay and help rebuild a nation and educate a new generation of Haitians to a different kind of politics and governance than they have endured for centuries now…nobody seems willing to invest what is needed to make Haiti something other than a nation of poor people ruled by a very tiny oligarchy.”
Truth be told, U.S. troops scarcely touched Haitian soil during and after the 2004 coup. Nation-destruction was accomplished by U.S. Aid to anti-government de-stabilization folks, while the legitimate Haitian government was economically starved to death.
After the coup, the United Nations, through “Peace-keeping” forces, became and remains the U.S. surrogate in Haiti. It is far too early to tell what changes in direction will come from the Obama administration after eight years of a Bush foreign policy. I have heard that there is now an immense embassy in Haiti, an enduring symbol of American pre-eminence in that still desperately poor country.
I bring this up, now, since most recently Mr. Galloway has argued against U.S. continuing engagement in Afghanistan (here). He is now extolled as a hero of sorts on the Left.
I would like to believe that his motives are pristine and sincere, that he ‘beat his sword into a plowshare” and “won’t study war no more”, but like the Kalahari Bushman who found an empty Coke bottle in the desert, and couldn’t conceive of what in the world it could mean, I’m not sure where (or if) what he says and what he means intersect. I feel like the Bushman and that Coke bottle on the desert floor: “the gods must be crazy”*.
What I see, now, as the “gods” are the “chattering class” – talking heads of all ideological stripes – who are attempting to establish their own version of reality. Left, Right, makes no difference whatsoever.
For now, Mr. Galloway is my sample worthy of study. And he’s not coming across as very real. He is highly respected, deservedly so. I’m hoping that he truly had a conversion of heart in 2006. (I tried to meet him in person in D.C. in May, 2006, but it was a close call…didn’t happen. I’ll hope to get this writing to him where he now resides.)
Meanwhile, I stand by my comments in my blog post on December 1, 2009. The ice is thickening here….
* – Some video clips from the 1980 film “The gods must be crazy” are available on YouTube, for anyone interested.

#124 – Dick Bernard: The Ice on the Pond

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In a couple of hours President Obama will deliver an important address on Afghanistan at The U.S. Military Academy at West Point NY. As is usual with these kinds of addresses, every body on every side knows everything about what is going to be said tonight, and is already, and will continue, to interpret what the address means from their viewpoint.
“The White House” knows this going in, and also knows essentially what the basically quiet “American people” are waiting to hear, and also what its long term objective is, and the President will deliver a carefully crafted and coherent message. In fact, the site of the speech, West Point, is part of the essential message: “we support our brave men and women who serve our country”. And it will be a genuine message.
I’ll watch the speech, and I’m interested in the words, but, truth be told, I’m far more interested in what is not so visible, in fact, what is not visible at all to most of us. It is what is below “the ice on the pond”.
In my neck of the woods, I have just begun to see the first ice forming on the ponds on my walking route. At this moment, it is still coming and going – the temperature has not been reliably below freezing*. Likely, permanent winter ice will happen soon and remain until sometime late in April, 2010. For about five months, we will not see water, other than the frozen shell which hides it.
Most of we citizens engage in a frustrating exercise of only watching the political “ice” from the shore. That is all we do (or are allowed to do). Only certain people are allowed out on that ice, to drill holes to ascertain how thick the ice is, etc. These people are political and media insiders, all with agendas of their own; often competing agendas. They shout out competing stories of what they see below the ice.
We spectators on the shore can see the ice. But we know little else, other than what we are told.
From my perspective, there is a lot of positive stuff going on below the apparently thickening of the ice in the war in Afghanistan (and in other arenas as well). The Obama administration is about making positive change.
Contrary to most of what I hear, I feel there are fresh ideas – fresh water – circulating under the visible ice. Every now and then little pieces of evidence surface, but I can sense that a change in direction is happening, slowly but surely.
I’ll listen to the Presidents words an hour or so from now. But mostly I’ll be watching for the usually subtle and quiet messages in the much longer term.
Positive change is happening. It just isn’t happening as fast as we would like. I’ll do what I can to help direct that change. That’s all I can do.
* – And speaking of change: I had a rule of thumb for years, here, that the first permanent snow of winter came in Thanksgiving week. This November, for the first time in memory, there was no measurable snow in this metropolitan area for the entire month. Evidence of climate change, or just nice fall weather?

#118 – Annelee Woodstrom: A Reflection for Peace on Armistice (Veterans) Day

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Note: Anneliese Solch, later to become Annelee Woodstrom, grew up in the small community of Mitterteich in Adolf Hitler’s Germany.  She was 7 years old when Hitler came to power in 1933, and was drawn to the exciting things that might be available to her if she became part of the Hitler Youth.  Her parents refused her request, and they never became Nazis or supporters of Hitler.  In the below segment from her book, “War Child: Growing up in Adolf Hitler’s Germany”, Annelee recounts a conversation with her Uncle Pepp, a “Main Street” businessman in Mitterteich.  (Mitterteich then and now was just a few miles from the border of present day Czech Republic, and after the War also a few miles inside West Germany.  It’s population was about 5,000.)
After the war, in 1947, Annelee married Kenny Woodstrom of Crookston MN, one of the soldiers who liberated her town.  They were married 51 years, till his death in 1998.  They, and Annelee, today, live in Ada MN.  #mce_temp_url#.
A previous post about Annelee is found at this blog at September 20, 2009.
Annelee Woodstrom, October 31, 2009: Veterans Day is coming up, and I certainly will remember it’s function.  Wouldn’t it be much better though if we could celebrate World Peace Day?  However, according to my Uncle Pepp, our wish for peace will probably never happen during our lifetime.  Uncle Pepp’s words and thoughts sadly are as applicable to our efforts for world peace as they were when I heard them from him in 1944.
From WAR CHILD: pages 122-23:
“As I arrived at the bakery, Aunt Nanni said, “Anneliese, if you are looking for Pepp, he is in his office  he will see you.”
I knocked softly.  Uncle Pepp opened the door and motioned to the big chair.
“What can I do for you?”
“Nothing.  I came to say good-bye.”
“So good-bye it is”, Uncle Pepp mumbled.
His voice and demeanor startled me.  “If you are busy, I’ll leave.”
He pointed at the chair again.  “You just sit there, and I will tell you when you can leave.”
Resting his chin in his hands, he looked at me, pondering.  “Everybody comes and tells me, ‘I am leaving.’
So you’ll be leaving too.  You should be home with your mother, but you are out there, getting bombed and shot at just like the men.  His gaze went past me.  “They went, but most of them didn’t come back.  The ones who did come home are crippled for life in one way of another.  Tell me for what?”
He nodded.  “Oh, yes, for the 1000 Year Reich.  What a Reich it is.  It started with a few crazy men and they’ve led and lied until everyone followed into abysmal destruction of humanity.  We hollered and screamed and went with them.  Now, we drown in our own blood.  How they have channged us.”
Uncle.  He didn’t hear me, and I didn’t dare to move as he went on.  “they didn’t change us, we did that ourselves.  Now, I expect they will hold everyone accountable.  He shook his head.  “All my life I tried to do right.  Then in one minute, I ruined it all.  Just because Karl joined the party and didn’t tell me, I pushed him into this damn war.  Now he is fighting in France, doing God knows what?  Killing, fighting, or running to save himself.  he shouldn’t have joined the Nazi Party without telling me and I should have signed.  Now nothing is the same.  How he and I have changed.
I had never seen Uncle Pepp like this.  I got up and gingerly placed my hand on his shoulder.  “It wasn’t your fault!  It is the war,” I said.  They would have taken Karl anyway.  Everybody has to go to war.  I bet that after this one there won’t be any more wars because there isn’t anyone left to fight.”
He laughed bitterly.  You would think so.  We learn a lot in a lifetime, but no one in the world learns about keeping peace.  Every time there is a war, they say it is for some cause and then we will have peace forever.  The human race is the dumbest species there is.  For thousands of years legions of people have fought and maimed each other for one cause or another.  They took land from their so-called enemy.  When you look around, you see that years later they gave it back.  Never mind the corpses underneath the land the young were told to conquer.”
Uncle Pepp’s eyes bored into mine.  “You think this war is the last war?  Anneliese, don’t mind my laughing.  Some day you may have a son who will get his draft notice to fight another war…again they’ll promise you.  This is the last of all wars.  On the other side there will be a mother who will have to send her son for the same reason  to stop war.  What we have not yet learned is the simple truth.  Wars lay the seed and breed another, more horrible war than the one before.”
Uncle Pepp came close to me.  “I always told your papa you should have been his first born, but I am glad you are not.  Maybe you will make it through this war.  You will, if you are lucky and have a say about it.”  He kissed me on the forehead.  “Now go, and do come back, you hear me?”
He walked away from me and sighed.  “Tell your mama Mrs. Beer heard last night that Otto died of his wounds in Russia.  It’s not official, but a soldier who was lucky enough to be transferred out sent word to them.  Now that’s her second son who didn’t make it home.  He waved, walked out and shut the door quietly.
I sat still, thinking about what Uncle Pepp had just said.  My heart ached for Uncle Pepp because I knew he hurt.  But I knew there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.  Just like the war going on all around us, I thought.  We couldn’t do anything about that either because if you did, you were shot anyway.
POST NOTE:  At the time of this conversation with her uncle Pepp, Anneliese was about 16 years of age and assigned to work as a telegrapher in the city of Regensburg.  Her father, who had refused to join the Nazi Party, had been drafted into the German Army.  He was home for a leave near the end of 1943, then was never heard from again.  His last child never knew his father.  They believe he died a prisoner in Russia, but this has never been confirmed.

#115 – Dick Bernard: Learning about South Asia from a South Asian….

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Last week I was invited to one of those events that have hard and fast ground rules.  In this one, a prominent speaker speaks; the condition the listeners are asked to accept is to not breach confidentiality.  In some senses it is a very reasonable rule: a person would like some reasonable chance to be somewhat open and honest without inordinate concern of being misquoted, or quoted at all for that matter.  For the individuals privy to the information, the time can be very well spent.  Such sessions help to inform ones opinion.  These happen all the time, everywhere.
The downside is pretty obvious: only a tiny few have the opportunity to hear the insights.  At this particular gathering I was one of 22 enjoying a country club breakfast and informed comment.   (Five were women.)
Our speaker was eminently qualified: formerly (and at separate times) a very high military, and also an elected, official in his major south Asian country.  He was very well informed about south Asia, and very interesting as well.  But I’m not about to violate the rules, and tell you what his opinion was, or even what the questions were, save for the one I asked.
The questions were thoughtful, as were the answers.  In the eternal chess game that is international geopolitics there is never a black and white situation.  Behind the rhetoric is a never easy reality.
I had an opportunity to ask my question, and since it’s my question, I can bring it up, here, and then answer it myself without betraying the speakers response….
I observed that a recent poll – “our peculiar way of doing referendums on public opinion” – suggested that a distressingly large percentage of Americans, regardless of party preference, seem okay with bombing Iran.  What did our speaker think of that, I asked.  He addressed the question very well, but, as I say, I won’t tell you what his answer was.
But I can tell you what my answer – my reason for asking the question – is.
South Asia is a pretty big piece of geography.  The big countries are Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.  There are several smaller entities, and of course Russia and China are generally in the neighborhood as well.
When I got home I checked my trusty almanac.  Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan together have about one-third the land area, and one-third the population of the United States.  Toss Pakistan and India into the kettle and you’re up to a U.S. size territory with four times our population.
And here we sit at home, saying “bomb, bomb Iran” when we couldn’t manage our splendid little war in the smallest of the three “hot” countries listed above.  It’s as if we look on war as some video game; that somebody out in Fargo can bomb, bomb Afghanistan with a drone, and get the bad guys to wise up and come out of their caves with their hands up.  It worked for the John Wayne crowd….
Collectively we seem not to have a clue.
I thought my time was very well spent at the session.  I only wish everybody would have the chance.  One of the big problems in our society is that there is an anointed group of “big boys” (they’re usually still boys) who play the global chess.  They are upstream from the folks I was sitting with last week, but they, too, discuss and debate theories and ideas and gain perspective.  The lucky citizen elects leaders who’ll be willing to listen; the unlucky elects leaders who only tell.  We’ve had both types in recent years.  There is a big difference.
At about the same time I was having my coffee and eggs, reports were on about President Obama saluting the caskets of the fallen as they came back from Afghanistan, and Secretary of State Clinton having frank conversations in Pakistan with journalists and students and the government.  I thought both Obama and Clinton were class acts.
To the bombs and bullets crowd, Obama and Clinton are wimpy; to the peace types, they’re war mongers.
We take what we can, and work for better.
Thank you, source who cannot be named, for the invitation!  And thanks, too, speaker who is anonymous.   You did a great job!