|
There comes a time when it becomes necessary to rise up and take action against an injustice. In many cases, the injustice is based on philosophical differences, such as the protest over the confiscation of Diminuendo, Loyola University's student literary magazine, by university officials:
The student editors chose to publish sexually-explicit drawings to illustrate their recent issue devoted to the topic of sex, which they said was a taboo topic at the Jesuit school. Editor in chief Bre Kidman had asked the magazine's adviser, dean of students Jane Neufeld, to review it. Neufeld declined, saying, "I'm not going to censor you." The Rev. Richard Salmi, Loyola's vice president for student affairs, said the issue should have been reviewed ahead of time, particularly because the students offered to show it to Neufeld. Neufeld since has resigned as adviser.
This is a relatively tame object of protest, especially when compared to the "Panties for Peace" campaign, co-ordinated by an activist group based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
The campaign is "a serious attempt" to allow ordinary women to express their outrage at the failure of international diplomacy to apply pressure on the Burmese military regime's response to democracy demonstrations led by Buddhist monks. Activists are sending female underwear to Burmese embassies in the UK, Thailand, Australia and Singapore. One group sent 140 pairs to the Burmese embassy in Geneva.
Said Jackie Pollack, a member of the Lanna Action for Burma Committee:
Superstitious junta members believe that any contact with female undergarments - clean or dirty - will sap them of their power. They believe that touching a woman's pants or sarong will make them lose their strength.
But even this exasperated outburst is tame when compared to an act of ultimate persoanl sacrifice such as that performed before the world by Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on June 11, 1963.
David Halberstam wrote:
I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.
Halberstam, David, p. 211, The Making of a Quagmire, New York: Random House (1965)
In English and Vietnamese, a monk repeatedly declared into a microphone, "A Buddhist priest burns himself to death. A Buddhist priest becomes a martyr."
Jones, Howard, p. 268, Death of a Generation, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-505286-2 (2003)
Police who tried to reach him could not break through the circle of Buddhist clergy. One of the policemen threw himself to the ground and prostrated himself in front of Thich Quang Duc in reverence. The spectators were mostly stunned into silence, but some wailed and several began praying. Many of the monks and nuns, as well as some shocked passers-by, prostrated themselves before the burning monk.
Karnow, Stanley, p. 297, Vietnam: A history, New York: Penguin Books, ISBN 0-670-84218-4 (1997)
Why would someone decide to take this step? Perhaps the answer most accessible to Western minds would be that of Asian-American Kathy Change, who burned herself to death on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania on October 22, 1996. Messages delivered to The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily Pennsylvanian explained her motive:
My moral principles prevent me from doing harm to anyone else or their property, so I must perform this act of violence against myself. .... The attention of the media is only caught by acts of violence.
It took the flaming deaths of several more Buddhist monks before the Vietnamese Army staged a coup against the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem to prevent the population of the country - as much as 90% Buddhist - from rising up against them, an action which would have delivered control of the country to northern opponents.
Several Americans - Alice Herz on March 16, 1965, Norman Morrison on November 2, 1965, Roger Allen LaPorte on November 9, 1965, Florence Beaumont on October 15, 1967, and George Winne, Jr. on May 11, 1970 - a week after the Kent State Massacre, all attempted to end the violence of the Vietnam War by following the philosophy of Kathy Change rather than violate their personal beliefs against harming another human being.
Such self-sacrifice in the name of higher ideals didn't die with the Vietnam War, as demonstrated by Malachi Ritscher, who lit himself on fire in view of the Kennedy Expy. in Chicago on November 3, 2006 to protest the war in Iraq.
On Saturday -- exactly one year after his death -- two dozen people came downtown to Federal Plaza to protest the war and honor his life. They also read from the "mission statement" he left behind. "If I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world," reads one passage.
That world is becoming even more oppressive with American corporations selling away the freedom of people all over the world in the name of profit. Michael Likosky, a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and author of "Law, Infrastructure and Human Rights," (Cambridge University Press) and Michael Shtender-Auerbach, managing director and founder of Social Risks, LLC, wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle on November 2, 2007:
The U.S. foreign policy of "peaceful evolution" encourages the democratization of authoritarian regimes ... through constructive commercial engagement; that is, the promotion of free market capitalism abroad.
However, some American companies promote and reinforce authoritarian capitalism and suppress democratic movements. When our high-tech firms engage in such behavior abroad, they undermine a basic tenet of our foreign policy. The question is: How endemic is corporate-facilitated authoritarianism?
Congress called in the general counsels of four of our leading high tech firms - Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo - to account for their collaboration with the Chinese government. In the course of events, it became clear that the problem in the high-tech sector was not isolated but endemic.
Are we genuinely concerned with the wider social harm of some transnational commerce? If so, what public or private institutions - domestic, foreign or international, or combination thereof, are the appropriate ones to assess and mitigate transnational high technology social risk? Whether de facto or de jure, our companies are our foreign policy organs. American hi-tech companies - Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Cisco - may not fly an American flag, but Chinese citizens, and others, may see it otherwise.
The reason for this may well be defined by a BuzzFlash reader, who said:
America couldn't dominate the rest of the world if they were democracies, their people would refuse to go along. When we've expanded our empire, it's been by backing tyrants that dictate to their subjects how it will be. Somoza, Marcos, Trujillo, The Shah of Iran, Sharon, the list is nearly endless. The phrase goes "he may be a sonofab!tch, but he's OUR sonofab!tch".
So what happens when "OUR sonofab!tch" gets his coat tails ignited as is currently happening to the Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf? Blogger Juan Cole set the stage, and some of his readers extended the metaphor:
Juan Cole: The Bush administration had been attempting to get Musharraf to take off his uniform and cohabit as president with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who has been allowed back into the country. But all that it accomplished was to set the stage for a major confrontation between the civilian political parties and the military.
At 2:50 PM, Anonymous said...
I think the U.S. administration's desire to have Benazir Bhutto in the picture has less to do with bringing democracy to Pakistan, but rather to have someone in leadership who is willing to cooperate with U.S. interests in every way; a puppet, in other words. (While Bhutto has already agreed to allow U.S. military incursions into Pakistan, Musharraf has firmly rejected any such operations in the past.)
At 8:43 PM, Anonymous said...
Judging by the US muted reaction (considering they are supposedly democracy merchants,) I would say that the USA is complicit. It is difficult to believe that the general would do such things with no green light from Washington. There must have been some Islamists' angle to it.
At 8:48 PM, kooshy said...
anybody thinks that this foreign policy comes out of a democratic country that peruses the will of it’s people is either dishonest or has know knowledge of what kind of bubble he or she is being raised in.
Such has to be the case with New York Senator Charles Schumer and California Senator DINO Dianne Feinstein pledging to support the confirmation of Bush lackey Michael Mukasey as attorney general. This betrayal of all values that are traditionally American led former conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan to express his frustration in a manner short of self-destruction:
The rule of law no longer has any party to defend it. We live under the lawless protectorate we deserve. And such lawlessness is always the result when cowards refuse to confront bullies. This is how democracies perish.
The American people have a long ways to go before self-sacrifice involves taking someone with you - as is the daily occurrence across the globe - in response to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney attempting to impose Transnational Corporate values on sovereign nations with large petroleum reserves. But as the economy collapses from their irresponsible mismanagement of the American Commonweal, and as the people of the US cease to have much to lose, can we state with certainty that such actions won't appeal to more than those whose outlook in life is so corrupted that nothing matters to them but ending it all?
Let's hope that we never have to find out.
It's past time to emulate Network's Howard Beale and shout, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
Do it. Then do it again. And again, And again, until it is an automatic statement. Give it every time someone asks you how you are.
Then explain why. |