Terrorism Needs a Stronger Deterrent

We citizens of America agree:

We want a strong, secure country. Some of us also want all the world's citizens to live in peace and have resources to provide for themselves. A few of us see the two as deeply connected. We believe this ancient conservative idea from Jesus - "Do unto others as you would that they should do to you."

Our nation has been obsessed with a foreign policy do to other nations precisely what we don't want done to us. We want it done on their soil, not ours. It's amazing how so many citizens and media pundits believe it's just fine to make the nations of the world fear us. It's not just because Jesus disagreed that it's not working.

Famine, wars, insurgencies, terrorism and even genocide are driving the nations of the world frantic. Hopelessness is rampant. That's the hotbed of terrorism. That's where the "war on terrorism" should have begun, with more powerful, non-lethal weapons against what menaces human beings.

Remember our world before 9/11/2001?

Nine years ago this past Sunday evening I was in China. Bonnie and I just wanted to get a good night's sleep as we knew our preparation for the following day of instruction was fraught with uncertainty.

I had just dozed off when the phone rang. I fumbled, and my sleepy mind accidentally substituted my newly learned "hue" for "hello." Our colleague, a fellow English instructor from our Foreign Language Department at XiHua University, got right to the point.

"Are you watching the evening news?" he asked.

"No, I was in bed," I said.

"I am very sorry, but you must turn on the news (CCCTV English), something terrible has happened in your country," he said.

"Wow, what arrogance! This must be something," I thought, but did not say it.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"Your nation has been attacked. A large building in New York City is on fire," he told me.

"Attacked? How?" I still didn't believe him.

"Some terrorists commandeered a passenger plane and crashed it into the World Trade Center, killing themselves and all the passengers."

Immediately I thought of the "War of the Worlds" broadcast on radio decades ago. I thought of the virtual reality special affects of Star Wars, etc.

"Listen, we have hoaxes like this in the US. This is too preposterous to be true. Let's look at this in the morning." I did not turn on the TV.

An hour later the phone rang again. It was the Communist Party Head of the Foreign Affairs Department, in charge of our security. He told me it was two buildings, two passenger planes, thousands of people had lost their lives, and the Pentagon was also being attacked. The United States was at war, he said. They were concerned we would want to return to the USA immediately.

I finally woke up and agreed to watch the news. I told him I would return his call in a few minutes.

Distrusting Chinese TV, I turned on the computer. I found ABC news, the only non-Chinese news source not regularly blocked by Chinese censors. Yes, it was real.

He called back. I told him I suspected our placement organization, Mennonite Partners in China, would support us staying in China all the more since the attack. No, we were not at all convinced we should immediately return home.

We were amazed the next few weeks with the outpouring of sympathy from students, our colleagues, and even the university president.

In the next weeks I heard the words of students, echoed from other nations, "This tragedy has brought us together with America. Through 9/11 you understand now what we have been going through."

Remember? Our TV media focused on a few hateful extremist Palestinians demonstrating and celebrating after 9/11, with a "serves them (the USA) right" attitude.

But our Chinese students heard the Palestinians who abhorred the violence and celebrated their hope of new solidarity with America. Not being in the US, I got the information that people such as the Palestinians were celebrating hope that America would practice justice, economic fairness, and the end economic blockades and military occupations.

Our media, loyal to our government, deleted this information. It was available from international news sources.

Our President's statement the following week to "…do what it takes," nurtured the media-driven perception: foreign anger at America is spawned by hate of our democracy, jealousy of our economy, and disagreement with our basic values and religious beliefs. So the Iraq war was prepared and justified with this and other false understandings. Bombing began, the invasion was launched, and our students' statements of support gave way to distrust, suspicion, and outright hatred of the president and our foreign policy. Being in China became less pleasant.

Some Resources on a non-lethal, more powerful war on terrorism:

Central Asia Intitute

Victim Offender Reconciliation Program

Human Rights Watch

The Internationalist Magazine

The Third Side at Harvard Law School

Jimmy Carter's peace center

Kroc institute Notre Dame

Peace Corps

Greenpeace

There are hundreds more.

 

All major religious have peace centers established for research and practice of waging peace in human conflict.  Search on line, for example "Peace Judaism"

 

Nearly all major universities have centers for the scientific study of peace and human conflict research.  Search on line "graduate peace studies"

 

Many of these centers are relatively new, but the research and practice itself dates back to well before Jesus of Nazareth, 30 AD, probably the world's most important peace activist. Look up the word Irene Bible in a Greek language lexicon, or peace Jesus in English.

--

David Graber

Want a phobia?

 Try thistle-o-phobia!

Wars need phobias. They are built on seeing human cultures, politics or religions as dangerous weeds in the flora and fauna of one's own national interests. 

Consider my phobia against Canadian thistle. This phobia became apparent to me because of the recent Islam-o-phobia and the polls demonstrating the power of talk media to spread this bigotry. I think my phobia is less of a hazard to human life on this planet. Now grown into bigotry, it can stay right here on the back 40, out of reach of media pundits.

I have thistle-o-phobia. I wanted to be tolerant and let nature take its course, trusting competing species to out-argue the thistles. But I'm just about to the point of believing the only good thistle is a dead thistle. I let one or two encroach on the economy of my best soil and it's like creeping socialism. Whole colonies have sprung up, crowding out my good intentions for this ground.

Last year, armed with liberation theology, I was determined not to pursue war on thistle-ism. I heard goats and sheep are natural and effective deterrents to thistle ideology, and hoped to try them out on this ground. I would rather harness these local critters with specialized equipment and experience to deal with this vermin. I did not want war.

But there's a problem.

Any livestock on this new pasture will compact the soil. Their hooves and teeth will damage the viability of the forage species I planted. At the same time, thistles just love compact soil with poor oxygen and near-anaerobic conditions. They thrive on ground that stresses out other plants. So, until my hopes for this ground are established with strong enough roots systems so grazers can neither pack the soil nor pull my choice forage species up by the roots, I need to wait. But two weeks ago I grew impatient. I almost got split-hoof critters tramping around in areas that are hotbeds for radical thistle infestation.

Don't get me wrong; I still believe intensive grazing is the best approach. I still believe that ultimately, with good forage competition and healthy soil, diverse quality perennial forages will out-compete even the worst weeds. But it will now have to wait for the supportive environment of a healthy soil and plant economy with established root systems.

Thistles have gotten out of hand. This ideology has taken over five acres and is encroaching on four more. Areas the size of a baseball diamond and larger are now a total thick carpet of evil green. No good forage species could possibly, on it's own, survive in this hostile environment.

So today I committed myself to a war to end the war against thistles. That doesn't mean I will use a scorched earth strategy and try to punish the entire plant population into oblivion. That could backfire, sowing the seeds for more war.

I have just purchased enough herbicide specially formulated to cover the size of my total thistle infestation. I rented the county weed control sprayer, and will take advantage of the unique capacity of Canadian thistles late in the summer to pump carbohydrates into their root systems, building rhizomes that bud and shoot up sprouts in the spring. As the thistles pump the carbohydrates into the roots my herbicide will ride along, in time destroying the thistle root networks. The plant above ground may stay green for weeks. But each warm day will allow the poison into the rhizomes in the roots, gradually killing the whole colony.

I have confidence in this strategy. I tried it last year this time on an intensive colony about three yards by 12 yards on the north border of our back 40. After frost, I seeded orchard grass seed directly into the still-green thistles. This spring, the orchard grass germinated and is still growing. The thistle colony is totally gone. I won one!

My neighbor said it right. Each year the herbicide marketers come up with a new sure-fire approach to the Canadian thistle problem. Each year we see a new outbreak and have to buy the new product. It's been a decades long addiction. The thistles don't care, Monsanto and the other chemical companies win, and the farmers? Well, they lose. Is there a way to win thistle battles? I've put together wisdom and information of the ones who claim the least expertise: local seasoned farmers. I think they are most trustworthy.

Here on the back 40, I enjoy feeding my thistle-o-phobia with my own aggressive defenses. I have no time to watch the media pundits feeding our nation's current Islam-o-phobia.

http://www.bighorncountynews.com/

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT