The Humanist Newsletter - among friends of universal humanism in Asia-Pacific Vol II, Number 25 - June 2009
The Humanist Newsletter
- among friends of universal humanism in Asia-Pacific
Vol II, Number 25 - June 2009
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Page 1 - EDITORIAL
Page 2 - World March for Peace and Non-Violence
Page 2 - Towards A Non-Violent World
Page 3 - Tehran - revamping the image
Page 8 - The Koreas - Balanced Response
Page 8 - Maybe We Should Take The North Koreans At Their Word
Page 10 - Burma
Page 12 - Sri Lanka
Page 13 - World March officially launched in Costa Rica
Page 14- Contact information
Editorial,
The World March for Peace and Non Violence continues to gather supporters and at this time an endorsement campaign is underway and it’s not just the VIPs that are called - everyone is called!
Readers will have noticed I indulged myself quite thoroughly in the Tehran conference on Gaza in the previous newsletter, well here’s the other side to that story, my personal experience of Tehran. I place the writing here to congratulate Iran on its elections - whatever the outcome. Wonderful to see the Iranian people so joyful in the street - thanks again to Al Jazeera.
Problems persist in Myanmar, with the Karens chased out of their homelands, adding to the country’s plight with the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group of the Northern Arakan State of Western Myanmar. Also, Aung San Su Chi still battling the military government. Myanmar is the only country to have a Buddhist army - though Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese government mandated army is axiomatically Buddhist but without misusing the good name of the Buddha!
The good news from India is the peaceful countrywide elections where our valiant Humanist Party candidates did their best and as a new political party, advanced in those areas contested as they worked for the future. Well done lads.
No good news from Pakistan but surely the people of this tough country are getting fed up with the factionalism and we look forward to the moment of grand reconciliation among its diverse groups. If ever there was a country needing the approach of active non-violence it’s Pakistan.
Afghanistan and Iraq are both suffering from the direct effects of housing foreign troops but at least the former has a touring cricket team which is always a good sign.
North Korea is something like a rat in a cage, a hungry rat. The country’s leader is still caricatured in the media and no one has a kind word for the country and the binding image is one of goosestepping youth armies but don’t kid yourself, under each mandated uniform is a human soul reaching out!
Tony Henderson
Editor
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World March for Peace and Non-Violence
“So that the voices of millions who yearn for peace can be heard as they call for the end of war and all forms of violence.”
Begins in New Zealand October 2, 2009 and concludes in the South American Andes Mountains, January 2, 2010.
World Without Wars - and without violence
International co-ordinator Rafael de la Rubia
rafael@marchamundial.org
www.marchamundial.org
www.theworldmarch.org
http://worldwithoutwars.in/
http://www.worldmarchhongkong.org/
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Towards A Non-Violent World
Localised version of David Roberts writing
HUMARTS at aol.com
Did you know violence isn’t just “physical violence” – but that there
are many other forms of violence to be aware of?
Economic Violence
i.e. - Acts of using others or taking advantage of others for economic
gain ** Paying people as little as possible – otherwise cheating workers
** Lack of medical coverage caused by a ‘corporate for- profit’ health
care system ** Lack of real opportunities for betterment, which keep
people in poverty ** The mentality of entitlement ** Privatizing and
selling natural resources such as water (which belong to all people) **
Deceptive hidden fees and interest rates which cheat people ** etc.
Psychological Violence
i.e. - Verbal abuse (degrading others, etc.) ** Acts of rejecting,
excluding, or judging others ** Intimidation/threats put upon others **
The pervasive violence depicted in many movies and on T.V. ** Intrusive
advertising everywhere you go (being ‘sold to’ constantly) ** Imposing
one’s beliefs or values onto others ** Discrimination in all it’s forms **.
Physical Violence
i.e. - Any type of physical harm done to another ** Wars (and moreover,
the underlying belief that physical violence is a valid method for
problem solving) ** Domestic violence ** Torture ** Excessively spanking
children **.
Racial/Cultural Violence
i.e. - Discrimination based on race or skin colour or culture ** The
disregarded poverty and low standard of living millions suffer owing to
lack of opportunities ** When people of various ethnicities or races are
looked down upon as less human ** Injustices which derives from the
rejection of certain cultural customs and norms ** When opportunities
are withheld because of racial or cultural factors **.
Religious Violence
i.e. - A position which rejects as invalid, beliefs and points of view
which differ from one’s own ** Religious wars ** Teachings which promote
guilt ** Intolerance against non-believers or those of other faiths **
Excluding others based on religious belief **.
Sexual Violence
i.e. - Inequality (pay and others) based on gender or sex partner
preference ** Manipulative marketing of physical beauty as a desirable
aspiration and value ** Rape and other forms of controlling others using
sexual means ** Suppressing or demonizing sex as something “dirty” or
“evil” ** Sexual slavery ** Seduction of another for selfish ends **.
The window of opportunity opening onto a non-violent world is wide now.
This opening takes place when we all do our part and spread the message
of non-violence to others.
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Tehran - revamping the image
By Tony Henderson
Iran is more than an enigma today, mention travel to this country and people draw back in alarm. Telling my new found friends in Tehran that, they were quite saddened, quite perplexed. After having been there, me too!
I had hitch-hiked from Tehran to Calais in 1966 but all my memory held by 2009 was the wonderful tea served in glasses, a free cup of coffee by a city shop owner who ushered me into her premises, and being so kindly treated at the old caravanserai en route by thumb to Turkey.
So, keen to explore and fill in the gaps, I decided to walk on the return journey from the first appointment I had made instead of taxiing - back to the Laleh International Hotel. That was from the eastern end of Taleghani Avenue a couple of blocks above the downtown area around Imam Khomeini Square and Tehran Bazaar. It was twilight time.
Office buildings were mostly three or four storeys high and the tree-lined streets were neat and tidy. Typically, banks and airlines and unknown-to-me product and company names sang out occasionally between the regularity of glass fronted blocks. The city had a modern look - where was the ancient Persia of my imagination? I later read it had been knocked down by the country’s shallow thinking modernisers following WWII.
While the centre of the city houses the government ministries and headquarters, the commercial centres are located toward Vali Asr Street (ex-Pahlavi Street), on Taleghani Avenue where I meandered, and Beheshti Avenue, all further north.
On launching out on my walk the difference from sitting in a taxi was refreshing, hitting the street, excited at the new sights and sounds. The first side-street off Taleghani Avenue led the eyes right up toward the Alborz Mountains and what a sight for someone living in the tropics - snow. The mountains were covered with pristine white snow.
There was the occasional shop here and there, small restaurant, a mini-mart, a dried fruit-and-nuts shop, and I was beginning to think what a quiet city when I came upon a much more lively area around an intersection. The lights revealed arcades of shops, brightly lit corridors leading to shopping malls with mobile phone stalls abundant, fast food eateries, tea houses, confectionery stores and much more, all that is usually found in a city. The populace buzzed!
Bakers shops had patiently queuing people lining the adjoining street, citizens wanting fresh breads for the evening meal - huge flat-breads that hung over the arms of those leaving the shop. Some joined further queues at bus stops with those armfuls of warmth in the just slightly chilly airs - 12 degrees centigrade - a bit warm I was told for the first week of March.
Families buy one of the four regional types of flat breads, Sangak, Barbari, Taftoon or Lavash, made in small bakeries spread all over the town. Each household buys only the quantity they can eat for that day. “Give me my daily bread,” makes a lot of sense in this culture.
I must have gone off track as I passed through Palestine Square (Khaboon Felistine) and found an alluring English bookstore full of philosophical and religious tombs, too heavy to cart off, but they looked worth having just to sit on a shelf with their gold embossed hard-cover jackets.
All the women wore a conservative covering, hijab, but faces were shown and with the fashionable young, quite a wealth of hair. While this dress code is today too easily spoken of in relation to the practices of Islam it has been around since pre-Islam times in Arab cultures. I did not see niqab, the face veil, other than on the muttawwa, the morality and dress-code monitors. Pairs of ominous darkly-attired muttawwa stood at busy intersections maintaining decorum simply by their presence.
While in Islamic countries and in public this covering is enforced by the muttawwa, in Iran the covering cloak, often referred to as a chador, also comes in contemporary models like caftans, cut from light, flowing fabrics of crepe, or georgette, and chiffon. Styles differ according to region, with embroidery on black or brightly coloured, with a variety of artworks as decoration.
The men dressed pretty much as they do anywhere, some younger lads sported spiky hair, earrings and tattoos, hailing from their stalls as they tried to eke out a living selling trinkets. The smarter young women wore make-up and had bewilderingly large mascara highlighted eyes.
I approached two girls on realising I was a bit lost and asked my way and one of them kindly led me toward my destination, asking questions inquisitively all the way. Reaching a junction she stopped and began hailing a cab so I continued on with a wave and it was only much later she caught up with me as I was entering a media exhibition, attracted by the crowds. She breathlessly informed me that the cab she had chased was for me... I had not understood. Anyway, there she was again.
We toured the exhibition before walking on to the Laleh Hotel where I bade her goodnight. I could have asked her to take tea but didn’t want to unwittingly bring her into any problem. I was new in this land and felt caution was the better play - she was strong charactered, intelligent, educated and refreshingly forward.
Second day
My programme kept me busy enough over the next few days but getting to and fro from the meeting venues introduced me to different areas of Tehran.
The city has a poor public transportation network. Buses and metros do not cover all areas of the city so those with the cash are obliged to either use private cars or hire taxis. This creates severe traffic congestion, and pollution. This latter is a problem because Tehran is hemmed in to the north by the Alborz mountain range that acts as a barrier against the humid Caspian winds. Thermal inversions trap Tehran's polluted airs and the lack of humidity and cloud cover make Tehran a really sunny city. A photo-chemical effect makes the pollution even worse.
Following the programme there was a visit to the Holy Shrine... That’s how it was termed, and it turned out to be the Holy Shrine of Imam Khomeini, a most impressive building even when under refurbishment (or was it still under construction?). This thoroughly modern mausoleum is part of a large complex that includes shops, a bank and restaurants.
This final resting place of the revolutionary cleric Imam Khomeini is around 35 kilometres south of the capital on the main road to Qom, Iran's second holiest city after Mashad. The devotion to the Imam is remarkably evident on any day of the week and on the occasion of my visit, with prayers led by the grandson of Imam Khomeini, Ayatollah Hassan Khomeini, this feeling of reverence was even more readily felt.
Ayatollah Khomeini (born 24 September 1902 - died 3 June 1989) was a senior Shia Muslim cleric, Islamic philosopher and the political leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran which saw the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran. Following the Revolution, Khomeini became the country's supreme leader, the paramount political figure of the new Islamic Republic, and remained so until his death. He was named Time's Man of the Year in 1979 and also one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the 20th Century. He was also a Sufi poet with published works.
Iran is the only Shi’ite Muslim regime in the world with 89 percent of its population Shi’ite. Freedom of worship is, however, guaranteed in the constitution.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners arrive each June 4, the anniversary of Khomeini's death in 1989, just as the commemorations are taking place in Hong Kong for the Tiananmen students and workers killed in that debacle. At lest one eminent writer has proposed the Iranian Revolution as the first non-violent revolution of Asia. As the actions exemplified the first sustained defiance by unarmed masses against tanks and guns of an autocratic state. Writer Mr Suroosh Irfani says such defiance became a model for non-violent revolutions in Eastern Europe that unravelled autocratic states and the Soviet bloc a decade later. Adding that” “... it is therefore intriguing that rather than a prototype for Muslim countries, the Iranian revolution was universalised by melding with the Eastern European experience of non-violent revolutions, unleashing the dynamics of urban mass movements from below.”
Nearby is the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, which includes the graves of around 200,000 victims of the Iran-Iraq War (1990-98). The Tehran Metro Line 1 takes pilgrims to Haram-e Motahar Station for access to both the Holy Shrine of Imam Khomeini and Behesht-e Zahra. Incidently, in the same direction lies Imam Khomeini International Airport, 50 kilometres (31 miles) out.
The mainstay Islam in Iran is Shia while the Sunnis in Iran are mainly composed of ethnic minorities that tally up at: for the Kurds 5 million, 60% Sunni; Baluchis 1.5 million, 90% Sunni; Turkmen 1 million, 90% Sunni; Persian Gulf Arabs 200 000 to 300 000, 90% Sunni, so out of total population of 70 million, around 5 to 6% are Sunni.
Sufism
Long attracted to Sufism through its refined and anecdotal writings I was intrigued on hearing that the Great Imam had a link to Sufism - Islamic mysticism, quite unorthodox and to a degree frowned upon by stricter Muslims. In the words of a Darqawi (lineage) Sufi teacher Ahmad ibn Ajiba, Sufism is: "a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one’s inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits."
While all Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to God and will become close to God in Paradise - after death and after a "Final Judgment" - Sufis also believe that it is possible to draw closer to God and to more fully embrace the Divine Presence in this life.
Thus, the chief aim of Sufis is to seek the pleasing of God by working to restore within themselves the primordial state of fitra, as described in the Qur'an. This term can be taken as meaning 'innate human nature', ‘primordial nature’ and ‘innate disposition’, very much like the concept of Buddha Nature under the get-it-now style of the Zen Buddhists.
In this state one is entirely in-tune with God and nothing one does defies God, as all is undertaken for love of God. Another consequence of fitra is abandoning all notions of dualism, including the concept of having an individual separate self, and in that to make real, or realize, Divine Unity.
Its science or the techniques relate to the conditioning of the lower self (the I or ego) and the way of purifying or cleansing this lower self of any evolution-destroying traits, while developing instead what is useful - whether or not this process of cleansing and purifying ‘the heart’ is in time rewarded with esoteric knowledge.
This can be seen within Sufism in terms of two basic types of law, an outer law concerned with actions, and an inner law concerned with the human heart. The outer law consists of rules pertaining to worship, transactions, marriage, judicial rulings, and criminal law - what is usually referred to as Sharia. The inner law of Sufism consists of rules about reconciliation, the transformation of problematic tensions and climates and negative dispositions while simultaneously building a Self that is clear minded and wholesome, coherent with reality.
Sufi poets have brought some condemnation on themselves by writing about Love of God under the poetical pretext of intoxication: “Drink until the turbans are all unbound; Drink until the house like the world turns around,” Hafez, Sufi poet of the 14th century.
Third Day
One evening a gang of us took a taxi to Darakeh, just north of Tehran, an escape from the hustle and bustle of downtown where the boot-and-rucksack youth reminded me of Keswick in the English Lake District. Not the scenery, the youth. The taxi driver played Yas, a radical pop-punk group that is not over appreciated by the Ayatollahs but ‘dug’ by many others. The taxi driver was ‘driving on the wrong side of the morality police’ in the safety and freedom of his cab.
The place offered genuine hikes into bare topped mountains yet without any feeling of leaving the city. The path started from a swathe of road terminating a city street that only gradually petered out till the city suburbs were left behind to offer views of bare ravines and a gushing stream that led the way to the top between ridges and peaks.
Traders of sweetmeats hailed from both sides of the walk proffering various wares and goodies for the holidaying crowd. Then were teahouses, also restaurants. Tehranis strolled in the fresh mountain airs, picnicked on carpeted platforms with hubbly-bubbly pipes (nargile or sheesha) and bought Darakeh's fresh fruits and vegetables.
Easy driving distance from Tehran too is a further mountain retreat, a ski resort. Tochal, which lies at over 3,700 metres (12,200 ft) at its highest 7th station. The resort was completed in 1976 shortly before the overthrow of the Shah. There is a eight kilometre (five mile) gondola lift which covers a huge vertical rise. Tochal's peak is 4,000 metres - 13,125ft, an altitude higher than any of the European resorts. From the Tochal Peak there is a spectacular view of the Alborz range, including the 5,671 metre (18,606 ft) high Mount Damavand, a dormant volcano.
Fourth Day
On the fourth day is was time to shop and where else but in the famous bazaars! The bazaars seemed to have played a similar role as the working-class areas in socialist revolutions in that at the time of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 the protagonists received strong backing from the bazaar traders. On the other hand, the bazaar is also viewed as a force of conservatism in Iranian society, providing strong links between the clergy and middle-class traders. As one of the most important bazaars in the country, the Tehran Grand Bazaar was a centre of pro-revolutionary feeling and finance.
Several reasons are given as to why the bazaar class worked hard to help advance the revolution but a strong one is that the regime of the monarch Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was strongly disliked by the bazaaris. These traders were getting left behind as the country industrialised and they feared their status in society was under threat.
Thus, the Grand Bazaar in Tehran was a hotbed of support for the revolution, which positioned itself opposite the pro-Western monarchy. Even today, the Grand Bazaar continues in the main to support the establishment, particularly as conservative political forces have often adopted a low tax, laissez-faire approach to bazaaris.
The Grand bazaar is still an important place of commerce for Tehranis, Iranians, travelling merchants and - increasingly - tourists. However, a lot of the old trade and finance has moved downtown, leaving the bazaar less important than in early years. But for an amazing variety of household commodities and traditional goods, the bazaar is the place to go and is the market for watches and local jewellery it is growing, most likely for the benefit of tourists. The bazaar sees the peak of its business at midday and between 5 and 7 in the evening.
During and after shopping came eating
Taking tea at the Iran Tar was charming, a tea-house on the Valias-Engalab intersection. Just like the morning tea at the hotel, no need for sugar or milk, Iranian tea is surely the world’s most perfect tea. The tea-house, or chaikhune, is a place of tradition where in rural areas only men will be found, sitting on the carpeted floor, with Iranian music as background sipping from glasses the strong, black tea and smoking the nargile. However, the Iran Tak was a more modern affair with a variety of teas and tables in alcoves, an area was reserved for bands to play.
A carpet shop appealed and the workmanship was so fine - and the cost per carpet so far out of reach. These were works of art, depictions of divine maids lolling across sofas, idyllic scenes, almost amorous paintings in silk.
Iran has the finest of the world's turquoise semi-precious stone and this is mined from the deposits in Northeastern Iran at a section of the Ali-Mersai mountain range, outside of the city of Mashhad, the capital of Khorasan Province. The much sought after Robin's Egg Blue with few or no streaks is among the most valuable of opaque gemstones. It was no surprise to learn that turquoise is the national gem.
Lunch was great, our ‘pal-on-government-loan’ Muhammad took us for the very low-key but friendly Abgousht stew, called dizi. The other patrons in the eatery were blue-collar workers, the joint was clean if ramshackle, the waiter lots of fun. It seemed to be special fun showing us newcomers the procedure.
We were each given a pot of stew, a bowl and a plunger. You put the plunger in the stew and pour the gravy off into the bowl. The bread was torn up into pieces and dumped in the gravy and extracted laden with the lovely juices - that was a starter. Side plates of onions and slices of lemon. A drink was ordered - doogh, a yogurt drink. Then the plunger was used to mash down the remains in the stew pot and that was dumped into the bowl and eaten with the fresh flat breads, hot out of the ovens, the same as those that go straight to the waiting customers of bakers on their way home. The word bread in Farsi is Naan.
On the topic of food, Iranian’s eat the fluffiest of white rice, often topped with saffron rice, possibly dressed with best butter to accompany the likes of luleh kabab (minced and rolled meat) and kabab barg (cubed and marinated meat). Grilled tomatoes and fresh herbs garnish dishes or the common onion and limes. Most well known from Iran is chela kabab and the secret to that dish lies in marinating the meat - in onion juice and sometimes in yogurt for a day or two. Shish Kabab came every evening at the formal dinners - broiled Iamb on the skewer, and Tas Kabab, baked lamb, served in gravy-deep dishes straight from the oven.
Breakfasts were sublime - fresh goat-milk cheeses in thick cuts with bite-sized so-tasty tomatoes, large olives, yogurt sauces, wide-brimmed dishes of fruit compote taken in dollops and lashing of honey.
All the above were or seemed to be available at a fabulous restaurant called Dalun Deraz on Amirabad Street. A tad expensive but over the evening hours three different bands played. The hand-clapping bobbing-heads-in-unison audience were mostly groups of girls on birthday bashes, also family groups. The whole evening through the bands played, people shouted requests, joined in the songs and we all ate about the best food in the world, laughing along with the Real Iran.
Pre-Islamic Days
Zoroastrianism was the main religion in Iran until the Arab conquest brought in Islam. Initiated by Zoroaster, who is said to be born 550 BC in present-day Afghanistan, it was the earliest religion to propose an omnipotent, invisible god, which took representation as an eternally burning flame in Zoroastrian temples.
The Ateshkadeh (Zoroastrian Fire Temple) is in the city of Yazd, that is located in the eastern part of central Iran situated on the high, desert plateau that forms much of the country. Zoroastrians have always been populous in Yazd, even now about ten percent of the town's population adhere to this ancient religion. The primary belief circles around the dualism of Light and Dark, Good and Bad, with the intervention in the world of Man of a free will to choose.
Special ventilation structures, called badgirs, are a feature of this old city, seen on the outer roofs as a high structure under which, in the interior of the building, there is a small pool of cooling water. These are the prototypes of modern passive air conditioning systems with their energy saving merits, ideal for desert regions.
Zoroastrian symbolism is still very much alive and the Iranian New Year, No Ruz, Iran's most important festival, is celebrated on the spring equinox and is descended directly from the original 2,500 year old Zoroastrian festival.
A facet of the Zoroastrian culture that is always seen as an enigma are the Temples of Silence. Till recently these towers were used as burial sites where corpses were picked clean by vultures. A priest would sit with the bodies which were placed in a seated position, and watch to see which eye the vultures picked out first. If it was the right eye, the soul faced a promising future. However, if it was the left eye, it symbolized a pretty grim afterlife. Such towers were used in Iran up until the Islamic Revolution in 1979. In India’s Mumbai the rites continue among the Parsees - though the Iranian link is not fostered by that Indian group.
Iranian Jews
Despite the problematic political rhetoric against Israel, the Jewish faith continues to withstand the ravages of cultural change in Iran with the largest community of Jews in the Muslim Middle East with a population of around 25,000. This is likely because the cycle of wars has been between Israel and Arabs, not Persians. There are more than a dozen synagogues in Tehran. In Isfahan five or more synagogues cater to 1,200 Jews and the community has been present at that place, around Palestine Square, for 3,000 years.
Another instance of the Jewish connection is Esther's Tomb in Hamedan, the most important Jewish pilgrimage site in Iran. Jews believe that the sarcophagus contains the body of Esther, the Jewish wife of Xerxes I, who was responsible for organizing the first Jewish emigration to Persia in the 5th century BC. At one time Hamedan was a melting pot for various faiths. Today there are less than 50 Jews in the city, practising their faith in the minuscule synagogue attached to the site. On December 9, 2008, Iranian news outlets reported that the tomb of Mordechai and Esther, heroes of the Purim Saga, ‘would now be under official government protection and responsibility’.
The mausoleum of BuAli Sina is Hamedan's city icon. Better known to the west as Avicenna, the famous philosopher-physician of 11th century Iran. BuAli Sina produced the medical encyclopedia Canon Medicinae used in European universities till the 17th century.
The week went by at such pace, filled with new people, foods, and experiences - that I didn’t even have time to leave Tehran for the famed Isfahan - the provincial capital located in the centre of the country - but only a short flight from Tehran. Isfahan Province is noted for its personalities, writers, poets and imminent figures who were born and brought up or went to live in the territory. The west is familiar with the likes of Omar Khayyam and Rumi but Hafez and Saadi are just as influential literary figures of Iran.
Further afar is Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire during the Achaemenid dynasty. This city is situated 70km northeast of the modern city of Shiraz, in the Fars Province, of modern Iran.
Another day, another travel!
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The Koreas
unpublished Letter to the Editor, South China Morning Post.
Balanced Response
Dear Editor,
The only kind of ‘balanced response’ (see, Edgy Pyongyang needs balanced response by Greg Torode, 28 May 2009) that will lead to a peaceful resolution to the North Korea problem is sincere and truthful engagement with the North Korean regime.
The North Korean leadership and the people of North Korea are fearful and distrustful of the West, of South Korea too because of its strong ties to the US and those US soldiers that are so far from home with all their guns pointing at the North.
The presence of those foreign troops is like a red flag to a bull, fact or fiction. The South Korea military can stay off North Korean military advances without that provocative support. Those US troops should leave the peninsular, that would defuse tensions immediately.
With that opening of the door negotiations can begin with the question to the North Korean leadership: what do you want?
Clearly those sanctions will have to be lifted, normal commerce has to allowed and free interchanges from the ‘western’ side have to be offered.
The West is in the position of power and as such needs to bring that signalling dove of peace. Fear is the real obstacle. The West, if unafraid and without subversive agenda, has to put out.
North Korea is cornered and thus dangerous, and it does not know how to move. Stymied on all fronts that isolated regime needs an opening. Send those boys and girls home because the only balanced response is a human response!
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Notes by the Editor of Tikkun - on Korea...
[It is hard to know how to react to the pious lecturing of the US media and government to North Korea. The US has thousands of nukes and has them positioned all around the world to enforce the will of the American empire. The US is the only country on earth that has ever used nuclear weapons in war. What exactly gives the US the moral right to be lecturing North Korea or even Iran on who should or should not have nuclear weapons - except our chutzpah and our military power? But why does the media also continually speak in this same language of offended righteousness, when it is the US, not North Korea, which has just caused the deaths of over a million Asians in Iraq, the displacement into refugee status of another 3 million, and many more who have been wounded? ... neither do we have much sympathy for other regimes like those in Pakistan or Russia or Israel that have nuclear weapons already. Perhaps we might be more effective in preventing proliferation of these weapons were we to try the Strategy of Generosity instead of the strategy of domination. And yes, it is the strategy of domination if the US agrees to negotiations, but meanwhile proclaims 'we will not take ANY OPTION off the table' meaning we may use our own nuclear power to back up an assault on other countries if our negotiations don't give us what we are asking for! We've tried the domination strategy with Bush, and it didn't work. How about trying the Global Marshall Plan and the Generosity Strategy?]
Maybe We Should Take The North Koreans At Their Word
Pyongyang has consistently said that its nuclear weapons are intended to deter aggression. And, indeed, they do.
By Tad Daley
Tad Daley is the Writing Fellow with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Nobel Peace Laureate disarmament advocacy organization. His first book, Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World, is forthcoming from Rutgers University Press in January 2010.
Shortly after North Korea exploded its second nuclear device in three years on Monday morning, it released a statement explaining why. "The republic has conducted another underground nuclear testing successfully in order to strengthen our defensive nuclear deterrence." If the Obama Administration hopes to dissuade Pyongyang from the nuclear course it seems so hell bent on pursuing, Washington must understand just how adroitly nuclear arms do appear to serve North Korea's national security. In other words, perhaps we should recognize that they mean what they say.
From the dawn of history until the dawn of the nuclear age, it seemed rather self-evident that for virtually any state in virtually any strategic situation, the more military power one could wield relative to one's adversaries, the more security one gained. That all changed, however, with Alamogordo [US military research base] and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the Cold War's long atomic arms race, it slowly dawned on "nuclear use theorists" - whom one can hardly resist acronyming as NUTS - that in the nuclear age, security did not necessarily require superiority. Security required simply an ability to retaliate after an adversary had struck, to inflict upon that opponent "unacceptable damage" in reply. If an adversary knew, no matter how much devastation it might inflict in a first strike, that the chances were good that it would receive massive damage as a consequence (even far less damage than it had inflicted as long as that damage was "unacceptable"), then, according to the logic of nuclear deterrence, that adversary would be dissuaded from striking first. What possible political benefit could outweigh the cost of the possible obliteration of, oh, a state's capital city, and the leaders of that state themselves, and perhaps more than a million lives therein?
Admittedly, the unassailable logic of this "unacceptable damage" model of nuclear deterrence - which we might as well call UD - failed to put the brakes on a spiraling Soviet/American nuclear arms competition that began almost immediately after the USSR acquired nuclear weapons of its own in 1949. Instead, a different model of nuclear deterrence emerged, deterrence exercised by the capability completely to wipe out the opponent's society, "mutually assured destruction," which soon came to be known to all as MAD. There were other scenarios of aggression - nuclear attacks on an adversary's nuclear weapons, nuclear or conventional attacks on an adversary's closest allies (in Western and Eastern Europe) - that nuclear weapons were supposed to deter as well. However, the Big Job of nuclear weapons was to dissuade the other side from using their nuclear weapons against one's own cities and society, by threatening to deliver massive nuclear devastation on the opponent's cities and society in reply. "The Department of Defense," said an Ohio congressman in the early 1960s, with some exasperation, "has become the Department of Retaliation."
Nevertheless, those who engaged in an effort to slow the arms race often employed the logic of UD in their attempts to do so. "Our twenty thousandth bomb," said Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the Manhattan Project that built the world's first atomic weapons, as early as 1953, "will not in any deep strategic sense offset their two thousandth." "Deterrence does not depend on superiority," said the great strategist Bernard Brodie in 1965. "There is no foreign policy objective today that is so threatened," said retired admiral and former CIA director Stansfield Turner in 1998, "that we would … accept the risk of receiving just one nuclear detonation in retaliation."
Consider how directly the logic of UD applies to the contemporary international environment, to the twin nuclear challenges that have dominated the headlines during most of the past decade, and to the most immediate nuclear proliferation issues now confronting the Obama Administration. Because the most persuasive explanation for the nuclear quests on which both Iran and North Korea have embarked [Editor Tony: I do not see why Iran is included with North Korea in this writing and can only presume the writer is heeding the US media hype with too little distance] is, indeed, the notion that "deterrence does not depend on superiority." Deterrence depends only an ability to strike back. Iran and North Korea appear to be seeking small nuclear arsenals in order to deter potential adversaries from launching an attack upon them - by threatening them with unacceptable damage in retaliation.
Neither North Korea nor Iran could hope to defeat its most powerful potential adversary - the United States - in any kind of direct military confrontation. They cannot repel an actual attack upon them. They cannot shoot American planes and missiles out of the sky. Indeed, no state can.
However, what these countries can aspire to do is to dissuade the American leviathan from launching such an attack. How? By developing the capability to instantly vaporize an American military base or three in Iraq or Qatar or South Korea or Japan, or an entire U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf or the Sea of Japan, or even an American city on one coast or the other. And by making it implicitly clear that they would respond to any kind of assault by employing that capability immediately, before it's too late, following the venerable maxim: "Use them or lose them." The obliteration of an entire American military base, or an entire American naval formation, or an entire American city, would clearly seem to qualify as "unacceptable damage" for the United States.
Moreover, to deter an American attack, Iran and North Korea do not need thousands of nuclear warheads. They just need a couple of dozen, well hidden and well protected. American military planners might be almost certain that they could take out all the nuclear weapons in these countries in some kind of a dramatic lightning "surgical strike." However, with nuclear weapons, "almost" is not good enough. Even the barest possibility that such a strike would fail, and that just one or two nuclear weapons would make it into the air, detonate over targets, and result in massive "unacceptable damage" for the United States, would in virtually any conceivable circumstance serve to dissuade Washington from undertaking such a strike.
In addition, it is crucial to recognize that Iran and North Korea would not intend for their nascent nuclear arsenals to deter only nuclear attacks upon them. If the entire nuclear arsenal of the United States disappeared tomorrow morning, but America's conventional military superiority remained, it still would be the case that the only possible military asset that these states could acquire, to effectively deter an American military assault, would be the nuclear asset.
The "Korean Committee for Solidarity with World Peoples," a mouthpiece for the North Korean government, captured Pyongyang's logic quite plainly just weeks after the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003. "The Iraqi war taught the lesson that … the security of the nation can be protected only when a country has a physical deterrent force …" Similarly, a few weeks earlier, just before the Iraq invasion began, a North Korean general was asked to defend his country's nuclear weapons program, and with refreshing candor replied, "We see what you are getting ready to do with Iraq. And you are not going to do it to us."
It really is quite a remarkable development. North Korea today is one of the most desperate countries in the world. Most of its citizens are either languishing in gulags or chronically starving. And yet - in contrast to all the debate that has taken place in recent years about whether the United States and/or Israel ought to launch a preemptive strike on Iran - no one seems to be proposing any kind of military strike on North Korea. Why not? Because of the mere possibility that North Korea could impose unacceptable damage upon us in reply.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about UD is that it seems every bit as effective as MAD. North Korea today possesses no more than a handful of nuclear warheads, and maintains nothing like a "mutual" nuclear balance with the United States. In addition, the retaliation that North Korea can threaten cannot promise anything like a complete "assured destruction." To vaporize an American carrier group in the Sea of Japan, or a vast American military base in South Korea or Japan, or even an American city, would not be at all the same thing as the "destruction" of the entire American nation - as the USSR was able to threaten under MAD.
And yet, MAD and UD, it seems, exercise deterrence in precisely the same way. Astonishingly, it seems that Washington finds itself every bit as thoroughly deterred by a North Korea with probably fewer than 10 nuclear weapons as it did by a Soviet Union with 10,000. Although UD hardly contains the rich acronymphomaniacal irony wrought by MAD, it appears that both North Korea and Iran intend now to base their national security strategies solidly upon it.
There is very little reason to suppose that other states will not soon follow their lead.
President Obama, of course, to his great credit, has not only made a nuclear weapon-free Iran and North Korea one of his central foreign policy priorities, he has begun to chart a course toward a nuclear weapon-free world. In a groundbreaking speech before a huge outdoor rally in Prague on April 5th, he said, "Today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." (Unfortunately, he followed that with the statement that nuclear weapons abolition would not "be achieved quickly, perhaps not in my lifetime," suggesting that neither he nor the nuclear policy officials in his administration fully appreciate the magnitude and immediacy of the nuclear peril. Do they really think the human race can retain nuclear weapons for another half century or so, yet manage to dodge the bullet of nuclear accident, or nuclear terror, or a nuclear crisis spinning out of control every single time?)
The one thing we can probably say for sure about the prospects for universal nuclear disarmament is that no state will agree either to abjure or to dismantle nuclear weapons unless it believes that such a course is the best course for its own national security. To persuade states like North Korea and Iran to climb aboard the train to abolition would probably require simultaneous initiatives on three parallel tracks. One track would deliver foreign and defense policies that assure weaker states that we do not intend to attack them, that just as we expect them to abide by the world rule of law they can expect the same from us, that the weak need not cower in fear before the strong. Another track would deliver diplomatic overtures that convince weaker states that on balance, overall, their national security will better be served in a world where no one possesses nuclear weapons, rather than in a world where they do-but so too do many others. And another track still would deliver nuclear weapons policies that directly address the long-simmering resentments around the world about the long-standing nuclear double standard, that directly acknowledge our legacy of nuclear hypocrisy, and that directly connect nuclear non-proliferation to nuclear disarmament.
The power decisively to adjust all those variables, of course, does not reside in Pyongyang or Tehran. It resides instead in Washington.
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Burma
Thousands Fleeing Burmese Army in Karen State
05 June 2009
The Burma Campaign UK today called on the British government to take urgent action as more than 2,000 ethnic Karen civilians flee from the Burmese Army and their allies.
Ler Per Her, a camp for internally displaced people just inside Burma in Karen State, is being evacuated today as around a thousand soldiers from the Burmese Army and its allies, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), move into the area. The camp is in the Pa’an district of Karen State, on the Thailand Burma border. The Burma Campaign UK has visited the camp twice this year, hearing first hand testimony of abuses committed by the regime.
Ler Per Her has around 1,200 people who have already had to flee their villages because of human rights abuses and attacks by the Burmese Army and DKBA. The camp itself has twice been forced to relocate after previous attacks. After the last attack it moved closer to a base of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), which has provided protection for the camp. The KNLA is the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU), which opposes military rule.
At the start of June the Burmese Army and DKBA began using people as slave labour to carry military equipment. The Burmese Army and DKBA have moved significant new numbers of troops into the area to prepare for a new military offensive. The Karen Human Rights Group estimates more than 700 villagers have been forced to flee for fear of being used as slave labour or caught up in fighting.
The Burmese Army now has troops and military equipment stationed within range of the Ler Per Her camp. It is expected they will begin military operations to take the area tomorrow. The area is currently controlled by the pro-democracy group the Karen National Union. The Burmese Army wants to take the land as part of its strategy to destroy all opposition to its rule, and offers the DKBA lucrative border trade deals to carry out attacks on its behalf.
The 1,200 people from Ler Per Her are now camped on the Thailand side of the Moei River, they have limited food and shelter.
“Once again the international community is silent as thousands of people flee attacks by the Burmese Army,” said Zoya Phan, International Coordinator at Burma Campaign UK. “The British government must start speaking out about the situation in Eastern Burma. They must urgently provide aid, and also demand that the United Nations organise a Commission of Inquiry into the war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed against my people. They must also work for a global arms embargo.” Zoya Phan has twice herself been forced to flee attacks by the Burmese Army.
There are already around 150,000 people from Burma in refugee camps in Thailand, and around half a million internally displaced people in Eastern Burma, which has levels of poverty and disease equivalent to the worst conflict hit African country. More than 3,300 villages in Eastern Burma have been destroyed in the past 15 years.
For more information contact Zoya Phan on 020 7324 4710
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World March website launched in Simplified Chinese
China | May 30, 2009
Chinese becomes the 24th language to be uploaded on the World March website.
http://www.theworldmarch.org/index.php?secc=news&acc=verid&newsid=75
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Sri Lanka
Humanist International
Nothing above the human being
No one human below another...
Sudhir Gandotra
Spokesperson for New Humanism in Asia-Pacific
Date: 13 April 2009
PRESS RELEASE
The Humanist International and its signatories, acting through the regional spokespersons here signed, call on the people of Sri Lanka, no matter to which ethnic group they are by birth linked, to see clearly the great need for Peace and Non Violence to come to their country.
We call on the people to make their voices heard above the calamitous din of war in this call and not allow the violent ones, the powerful groups, those in charge of the military operations, to have the final say.
Do not wait for the UN, or the USA, or India. But yes internationalise this sorry aberration. Your moribund press already decimated by state terrorism cannot really help in this moment but has to be rebuilt from the grass roots up. We recall a very recent case where the editor of The Sunday Leader newspaper and veteran journalist, Lasantha Wickrematunge (51), was shot by an ‘unidentified gunman'.
Now the battling Tamils are cornered and in their midst are innocent civilians yet no quarter is shown for their plight. There is no victory possible under these circumstances, only suffering for all. And, there is no free press to tell this story.
The military chiefs are intent on some final cleansing sweep but surely they must understand that the least seed left to grow in those fields of revenge will grow like garden weeds and no amount of vigilance will suffice to uproot the remnant dark aspirations.
Call it a day and allow some minor pride for your sworn enemies; relieve those innocent bystanders of their unfortunate plight. Complete annihilation will not win anyone's heart.
Sad to state, giving exception to the standard interpretation of the Buddha's first precept demanding non-violence and non-harm (ahimsa), both the Theravada monks and Buddhist lay people have been implicated in the persecution and violence in this Sri Lankan ethnic-regional conflict and civil war.
This war has raged over the decades under the rule of a series of undemocratic yet voted-in governments, supported by the mostly Buddhist Sinhalese, and, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) organization based in the mostly non-Buddhist Tamil minority of a Hindu persuasion.
Thus it is left to the humanists of the world to bring their voice to the table of death, seeking to re-lay the cloth with the brightness of hope and we do this knowing that so many of the people of Sri Lanka want peace, want non-violence in all of their affairs - just like any human group anywhere in the world.
Who will start the healing process from the bottom of this deep pit of human feeling? Which body of good souls will speak for those who have not spoken, who could not speak?
Do not wait, act now, engage in all processes. Not to lie in front of the heavy rumbling cart but to push from the sides so it changes direction. Push that awkward cart onto the safer plains of ordinary life, away from militarisation, guns and uniforms. Call and activate for involvement and participation, for minority rights, for the government to govern for the country as a whole, for transparency and a free and open press.
We are with you as you can see.
Sudhir Gandotra
Spokesperson for New Humanism in Asia-Pacific
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World March officially launched in Costa Rica
Costa Rica San Jose | June 07, 2009 05:42
In a presentation to 80 people on the 6th of June The World March was officially launched in Costa Rica, the first country in the world to constitutionally abolish its army.
Despite the torrential rain that fell during the afternoon and evening, the WM was launched with a great atmosphere and the participation of local cultural groups.
Presenting the March were; Dr. Lizbeth Quesada, Public Defender, Martín Callisaya, Bolivian Ambassador to Costa Rica, Francisco Cordero from the Friends for Peace Centre, Diego Ugarte, President of World without Wars and José R. Quesada, Humanist spokesperson for Costa Rica. The event was covered by 2 national media channels.
Costa Rica, is a example of how the WM objectives can be made a reality. On December 1, 1948, President José Figueres Ferrer abolished the country's army after victory in the civil war in that year. In a ceremony in the Cuartel Bellavista, Figueres broke a wall with a mallet symbolizing the end of Costa Rica's military spirit. In 1949, the abolition of the military was introduced in Article 12 of the Costa Rican Constitution.
The budget previously dedicated to the military now is dedicated to security, education and culture; the country maintains Police Guard forces.
Unlike its neighbours, Costa Rica has not endured a civil war since 1948.
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The Humanist Association of Hong Kong newsletter
Want to receive this newsletter among friends of the new universalist humanism regularly? Email: tonyhen @ humanist.org.hk
Further information
Full membership of the Humanist Movement means a commitment to actively help in spreading the new humanist message under the general head of Humanize the Earth and participate in the Financial Collect (twice a year, Jan-June)
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These amounts are payable in December and June, twice a year. In this way we are independent and need not accept donations for our administration costs - whereas, the Humanist Association of Hong Kong for example can be supported by external funds (membership fee HK$50 a year, due January - no charge for HM members).
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- among friends of universal humanism in Asia-Pacific
Vol II, Number 25 - June 2009
**********************************************************
Page 1 - EDITORIAL
Page 2 - World March for Peace and Non-Violence
Page 2 - Towards A Non-Violent World
Page 3 - Tehran - revamping the image
Page 8 - The Koreas - Balanced Response
Page 8 - Maybe We Should Take The North Koreans At Their Word
Page 10 - Burma
Page 12 - Sri Lanka
Page 13 - World March officially launched in Costa Rica
Page 14- Contact information
Editorial,
The World March for Peace and Non Violence continues to gather supporters and at this time an endorsement campaign is underway and it’s not just the VIPs that are called - everyone is called!
Readers will have noticed I indulged myself quite thoroughly in the Tehran conference on Gaza in the previous newsletter, well here’s the other side to that story, my personal experience of Tehran. I place the writing here to congratulate Iran on its elections - whatever the outcome. Wonderful to see the Iranian people so joyful in the street - thanks again to Al Jazeera.
Problems persist in Myanmar, with the Karens chased out of their homelands, adding to the country’s plight with the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group of the Northern Arakan State of Western Myanmar. Also, Aung San Su Chi still battling the military government. Myanmar is the only country to have a Buddhist army - though Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese government mandated army is axiomatically Buddhist but without misusing the good name of the Buddha!
The good news from India is the peaceful countrywide elections where our valiant Humanist Party candidates did their best and as a new political party, advanced in those areas contested as they worked for the future. Well done lads.
No good news from Pakistan but surely the people of this tough country are getting fed up with the factionalism and we look forward to the moment of grand reconciliation among its diverse groups. If ever there was a country needing the approach of active non-violence it’s Pakistan.
Afghanistan and Iraq are both suffering from the direct effects of housing foreign troops but at least the former has a touring cricket team which is always a good sign.
North Korea is something like a rat in a cage, a hungry rat. The country’s leader is still caricatured in the media and no one has a kind word for the country and the binding image is one of goosestepping youth armies but don’t kid yourself, under each mandated uniform is a human soul reaching out!
Tony Henderson
Editor
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World March for Peace and Non-Violence
“So that the voices of millions who yearn for peace can be heard as they call for the end of war and all forms of violence.”
Begins in New Zealand October 2, 2009 and concludes in the South American Andes Mountains, January 2, 2010.
World Without Wars - and without violence
International co-ordinator Rafael de la Rubia
rafael@marchamundial.org
www.marchamundial.org
www.theworldmarch.org
http://worldwithoutwars.in/
http://www.worldmarchhongkong.org/
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Towards A Non-Violent World
Localised version of David Roberts writing
HUMARTS at aol.com
Did you know violence isn’t just “physical violence” – but that there
are many other forms of violence to be aware of?
Economic Violence
i.e. - Acts of using others or taking advantage of others for economic
gain ** Paying people as little as possible – otherwise cheating workers
** Lack of medical coverage caused by a ‘corporate for- profit’ health
care system ** Lack of real opportunities for betterment, which keep
people in poverty ** The mentality of entitlement ** Privatizing and
selling natural resources such as water (which belong to all people) **
Deceptive hidden fees and interest rates which cheat people ** etc.
Psychological Violence
i.e. - Verbal abuse (degrading others, etc.) ** Acts of rejecting,
excluding, or judging others ** Intimidation/threats put upon others **
The pervasive violence depicted in many movies and on T.V. ** Intrusive
advertising everywhere you go (being ‘sold to’ constantly) ** Imposing
one’s beliefs or values onto others ** Discrimination in all it’s forms **.
Physical Violence
i.e. - Any type of physical harm done to another ** Wars (and moreover,
the underlying belief that physical violence is a valid method for
problem solving) ** Domestic violence ** Torture ** Excessively spanking
children **.
Racial/Cultural Violence
i.e. - Discrimination based on race or skin colour or culture ** The
disregarded poverty and low standard of living millions suffer owing to
lack of opportunities ** When people of various ethnicities or races are
looked down upon as less human ** Injustices which derives from the
rejection of certain cultural customs and norms ** When opportunities
are withheld because of racial or cultural factors **.
Religious Violence
i.e. - A position which rejects as invalid, beliefs and points of view
which differ from one’s own ** Religious wars ** Teachings which promote
guilt ** Intolerance against non-believers or those of other faiths **
Excluding others based on religious belief **.
Sexual Violence
i.e. - Inequality (pay and others) based on gender or sex partner
preference ** Manipulative marketing of physical beauty as a desirable
aspiration and value ** Rape and other forms of controlling others using
sexual means ** Suppressing or demonizing sex as something “dirty” or
“evil” ** Sexual slavery ** Seduction of another for selfish ends **.
The window of opportunity opening onto a non-violent world is wide now.
This opening takes place when we all do our part and spread the message
of non-violence to others.
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Tehran - revamping the image
By Tony Henderson
Iran is more than an enigma today, mention travel to this country and people draw back in alarm. Telling my new found friends in Tehran that, they were quite saddened, quite perplexed. After having been there, me too!
I had hitch-hiked from Tehran to Calais in 1966 but all my memory held by 2009 was the wonderful tea served in glasses, a free cup of coffee by a city shop owner who ushered me into her premises, and being so kindly treated at the old caravanserai en route by thumb to Turkey.
So, keen to explore and fill in the gaps, I decided to walk on the return journey from the first appointment I had made instead of taxiing - back to the Laleh International Hotel. That was from the eastern end of Taleghani Avenue a couple of blocks above the downtown area around Imam Khomeini Square and Tehran Bazaar. It was twilight time.
Office buildings were mostly three or four storeys high and the tree-lined streets were neat and tidy. Typically, banks and airlines and unknown-to-me product and company names sang out occasionally between the regularity of glass fronted blocks. The city had a modern look - where was the ancient Persia of my imagination? I later read it had been knocked down by the country’s shallow thinking modernisers following WWII.
While the centre of the city houses the government ministries and headquarters, the commercial centres are located toward Vali Asr Street (ex-Pahlavi Street), on Taleghani Avenue where I meandered, and Beheshti Avenue, all further north.
On launching out on my walk the difference from sitting in a taxi was refreshing, hitting the street, excited at the new sights and sounds. The first side-street off Taleghani Avenue led the eyes right up toward the Alborz Mountains and what a sight for someone living in the tropics - snow. The mountains were covered with pristine white snow.
There was the occasional shop here and there, small restaurant, a mini-mart, a dried fruit-and-nuts shop, and I was beginning to think what a quiet city when I came upon a much more lively area around an intersection. The lights revealed arcades of shops, brightly lit corridors leading to shopping malls with mobile phone stalls abundant, fast food eateries, tea houses, confectionery stores and much more, all that is usually found in a city. The populace buzzed!
Bakers shops had patiently queuing people lining the adjoining street, citizens wanting fresh breads for the evening meal - huge flat-breads that hung over the arms of those leaving the shop. Some joined further queues at bus stops with those armfuls of warmth in the just slightly chilly airs - 12 degrees centigrade - a bit warm I was told for the first week of March.
Families buy one of the four regional types of flat breads, Sangak, Barbari, Taftoon or Lavash, made in small bakeries spread all over the town. Each household buys only the quantity they can eat for that day. “Give me my daily bread,” makes a lot of sense in this culture.
I must have gone off track as I passed through Palestine Square (Khaboon Felistine) and found an alluring English bookstore full of philosophical and religious tombs, too heavy to cart off, but they looked worth having just to sit on a shelf with their gold embossed hard-cover jackets.
All the women wore a conservative covering, hijab, but faces were shown and with the fashionable young, quite a wealth of hair. While this dress code is today too easily spoken of in relation to the practices of Islam it has been around since pre-Islam times in Arab cultures. I did not see niqab, the face veil, other than on the muttawwa, the morality and dress-code monitors. Pairs of ominous darkly-attired muttawwa stood at busy intersections maintaining decorum simply by their presence.
While in Islamic countries and in public this covering is enforced by the muttawwa, in Iran the covering cloak, often referred to as a chador, also comes in contemporary models like caftans, cut from light, flowing fabrics of crepe, or georgette, and chiffon. Styles differ according to region, with embroidery on black or brightly coloured, with a variety of artworks as decoration.
The men dressed pretty much as they do anywhere, some younger lads sported spiky hair, earrings and tattoos, hailing from their stalls as they tried to eke out a living selling trinkets. The smarter young women wore make-up and had bewilderingly large mascara highlighted eyes.
I approached two girls on realising I was a bit lost and asked my way and one of them kindly led me toward my destination, asking questions inquisitively all the way. Reaching a junction she stopped and began hailing a cab so I continued on with a wave and it was only much later she caught up with me as I was entering a media exhibition, attracted by the crowds. She breathlessly informed me that the cab she had chased was for me... I had not understood. Anyway, there she was again.
We toured the exhibition before walking on to the Laleh Hotel where I bade her goodnight. I could have asked her to take tea but didn’t want to unwittingly bring her into any problem. I was new in this land and felt caution was the better play - she was strong charactered, intelligent, educated and refreshingly forward.
Second day
My programme kept me busy enough over the next few days but getting to and fro from the meeting venues introduced me to different areas of Tehran.
The city has a poor public transportation network. Buses and metros do not cover all areas of the city so those with the cash are obliged to either use private cars or hire taxis. This creates severe traffic congestion, and pollution. This latter is a problem because Tehran is hemmed in to the north by the Alborz mountain range that acts as a barrier against the humid Caspian winds. Thermal inversions trap Tehran's polluted airs and the lack of humidity and cloud cover make Tehran a really sunny city. A photo-chemical effect makes the pollution even worse.
Following the programme there was a visit to the Holy Shrine... That’s how it was termed, and it turned out to be the Holy Shrine of Imam Khomeini, a most impressive building even when under refurbishment (or was it still under construction?). This thoroughly modern mausoleum is part of a large complex that includes shops, a bank and restaurants.
This final resting place of the revolutionary cleric Imam Khomeini is around 35 kilometres south of the capital on the main road to Qom, Iran's second holiest city after Mashad. The devotion to the Imam is remarkably evident on any day of the week and on the occasion of my visit, with prayers led by the grandson of Imam Khomeini, Ayatollah Hassan Khomeini, this feeling of reverence was even more readily felt.
Ayatollah Khomeini (born 24 September 1902 - died 3 June 1989) was a senior Shia Muslim cleric, Islamic philosopher and the political leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran which saw the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran. Following the Revolution, Khomeini became the country's supreme leader, the paramount political figure of the new Islamic Republic, and remained so until his death. He was named Time's Man of the Year in 1979 and also one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the 20th Century. He was also a Sufi poet with published works.
Iran is the only Shi’ite Muslim regime in the world with 89 percent of its population Shi’ite. Freedom of worship is, however, guaranteed in the constitution.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners arrive each June 4, the anniversary of Khomeini's death in 1989, just as the commemorations are taking place in Hong Kong for the Tiananmen students and workers killed in that debacle. At lest one eminent writer has proposed the Iranian Revolution as the first non-violent revolution of Asia. As the actions exemplified the first sustained defiance by unarmed masses against tanks and guns of an autocratic state. Writer Mr Suroosh Irfani says such defiance became a model for non-violent revolutions in Eastern Europe that unravelled autocratic states and the Soviet bloc a decade later. Adding that” “... it is therefore intriguing that rather than a prototype for Muslim countries, the Iranian revolution was universalised by melding with the Eastern European experience of non-violent revolutions, unleashing the dynamics of urban mass movements from below.”
Nearby is the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, which includes the graves of around 200,000 victims of the Iran-Iraq War (1990-98). The Tehran Metro Line 1 takes pilgrims to Haram-e Motahar Station for access to both the Holy Shrine of Imam Khomeini and Behesht-e Zahra. Incidently, in the same direction lies Imam Khomeini International Airport, 50 kilometres (31 miles) out.
The mainstay Islam in Iran is Shia while the Sunnis in Iran are mainly composed of ethnic minorities that tally up at: for the Kurds 5 million, 60% Sunni; Baluchis 1.5 million, 90% Sunni; Turkmen 1 million, 90% Sunni; Persian Gulf Arabs 200 000 to 300 000, 90% Sunni, so out of total population of 70 million, around 5 to 6% are Sunni.
Sufism
Long attracted to Sufism through its refined and anecdotal writings I was intrigued on hearing that the Great Imam had a link to Sufism - Islamic mysticism, quite unorthodox and to a degree frowned upon by stricter Muslims. In the words of a Darqawi (lineage) Sufi teacher Ahmad ibn Ajiba, Sufism is: "a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one’s inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits."
While all Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to God and will become close to God in Paradise - after death and after a "Final Judgment" - Sufis also believe that it is possible to draw closer to God and to more fully embrace the Divine Presence in this life.
Thus, the chief aim of Sufis is to seek the pleasing of God by working to restore within themselves the primordial state of fitra, as described in the Qur'an. This term can be taken as meaning 'innate human nature', ‘primordial nature’ and ‘innate disposition’, very much like the concept of Buddha Nature under the get-it-now style of the Zen Buddhists.
In this state one is entirely in-tune with God and nothing one does defies God, as all is undertaken for love of God. Another consequence of fitra is abandoning all notions of dualism, including the concept of having an individual separate self, and in that to make real, or realize, Divine Unity.
Its science or the techniques relate to the conditioning of the lower self (the I or ego) and the way of purifying or cleansing this lower self of any evolution-destroying traits, while developing instead what is useful - whether or not this process of cleansing and purifying ‘the heart’ is in time rewarded with esoteric knowledge.
This can be seen within Sufism in terms of two basic types of law, an outer law concerned with actions, and an inner law concerned with the human heart. The outer law consists of rules pertaining to worship, transactions, marriage, judicial rulings, and criminal law - what is usually referred to as Sharia. The inner law of Sufism consists of rules about reconciliation, the transformation of problematic tensions and climates and negative dispositions while simultaneously building a Self that is clear minded and wholesome, coherent with reality.
Sufi poets have brought some condemnation on themselves by writing about Love of God under the poetical pretext of intoxication: “Drink until the turbans are all unbound; Drink until the house like the world turns around,” Hafez, Sufi poet of the 14th century.
Third Day
One evening a gang of us took a taxi to Darakeh, just north of Tehran, an escape from the hustle and bustle of downtown where the boot-and-rucksack youth reminded me of Keswick in the English Lake District. Not the scenery, the youth. The taxi driver played Yas, a radical pop-punk group that is not over appreciated by the Ayatollahs but ‘dug’ by many others. The taxi driver was ‘driving on the wrong side of the morality police’ in the safety and freedom of his cab.
The place offered genuine hikes into bare topped mountains yet without any feeling of leaving the city. The path started from a swathe of road terminating a city street that only gradually petered out till the city suburbs were left behind to offer views of bare ravines and a gushing stream that led the way to the top between ridges and peaks.
Traders of sweetmeats hailed from both sides of the walk proffering various wares and goodies for the holidaying crowd. Then were teahouses, also restaurants. Tehranis strolled in the fresh mountain airs, picnicked on carpeted platforms with hubbly-bubbly pipes (nargile or sheesha) and bought Darakeh's fresh fruits and vegetables.
Easy driving distance from Tehran too is a further mountain retreat, a ski resort. Tochal, which lies at over 3,700 metres (12,200 ft) at its highest 7th station. The resort was completed in 1976 shortly before the overthrow of the Shah. There is a eight kilometre (five mile) gondola lift which covers a huge vertical rise. Tochal's peak is 4,000 metres - 13,125ft, an altitude higher than any of the European resorts. From the Tochal Peak there is a spectacular view of the Alborz range, including the 5,671 metre (18,606 ft) high Mount Damavand, a dormant volcano.
Fourth Day
On the fourth day is was time to shop and where else but in the famous bazaars! The bazaars seemed to have played a similar role as the working-class areas in socialist revolutions in that at the time of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 the protagonists received strong backing from the bazaar traders. On the other hand, the bazaar is also viewed as a force of conservatism in Iranian society, providing strong links between the clergy and middle-class traders. As one of the most important bazaars in the country, the Tehran Grand Bazaar was a centre of pro-revolutionary feeling and finance.
Several reasons are given as to why the bazaar class worked hard to help advance the revolution but a strong one is that the regime of the monarch Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was strongly disliked by the bazaaris. These traders were getting left behind as the country industrialised and they feared their status in society was under threat.
Thus, the Grand Bazaar in Tehran was a hotbed of support for the revolution, which positioned itself opposite the pro-Western monarchy. Even today, the Grand Bazaar continues in the main to support the establishment, particularly as conservative political forces have often adopted a low tax, laissez-faire approach to bazaaris.
The Grand bazaar is still an important place of commerce for Tehranis, Iranians, travelling merchants and - increasingly - tourists. However, a lot of the old trade and finance has moved downtown, leaving the bazaar less important than in early years. But for an amazing variety of household commodities and traditional goods, the bazaar is the place to go and is the market for watches and local jewellery it is growing, most likely for the benefit of tourists. The bazaar sees the peak of its business at midday and between 5 and 7 in the evening.
During and after shopping came eating
Taking tea at the Iran Tar was charming, a tea-house on the Valias-Engalab intersection. Just like the morning tea at the hotel, no need for sugar or milk, Iranian tea is surely the world’s most perfect tea. The tea-house, or chaikhune, is a place of tradition where in rural areas only men will be found, sitting on the carpeted floor, with Iranian music as background sipping from glasses the strong, black tea and smoking the nargile. However, the Iran Tak was a more modern affair with a variety of teas and tables in alcoves, an area was reserved for bands to play.
A carpet shop appealed and the workmanship was so fine - and the cost per carpet so far out of reach. These were works of art, depictions of divine maids lolling across sofas, idyllic scenes, almost amorous paintings in silk.
Iran has the finest of the world's turquoise semi-precious stone and this is mined from the deposits in Northeastern Iran at a section of the Ali-Mersai mountain range, outside of the city of Mashhad, the capital of Khorasan Province. The much sought after Robin's Egg Blue with few or no streaks is among the most valuable of opaque gemstones. It was no surprise to learn that turquoise is the national gem.
Lunch was great, our ‘pal-on-government-loan’ Muhammad took us for the very low-key but friendly Abgousht stew, called dizi. The other patrons in the eatery were blue-collar workers, the joint was clean if ramshackle, the waiter lots of fun. It seemed to be special fun showing us newcomers the procedure.
We were each given a pot of stew, a bowl and a plunger. You put the plunger in the stew and pour the gravy off into the bowl. The bread was torn up into pieces and dumped in the gravy and extracted laden with the lovely juices - that was a starter. Side plates of onions and slices of lemon. A drink was ordered - doogh, a yogurt drink. Then the plunger was used to mash down the remains in the stew pot and that was dumped into the bowl and eaten with the fresh flat breads, hot out of the ovens, the same as those that go straight to the waiting customers of bakers on their way home. The word bread in Farsi is Naan.
On the topic of food, Iranian’s eat the fluffiest of white rice, often topped with saffron rice, possibly dressed with best butter to accompany the likes of luleh kabab (minced and rolled meat) and kabab barg (cubed and marinated meat). Grilled tomatoes and fresh herbs garnish dishes or the common onion and limes. Most well known from Iran is chela kabab and the secret to that dish lies in marinating the meat - in onion juice and sometimes in yogurt for a day or two. Shish Kabab came every evening at the formal dinners - broiled Iamb on the skewer, and Tas Kabab, baked lamb, served in gravy-deep dishes straight from the oven.
Breakfasts were sublime - fresh goat-milk cheeses in thick cuts with bite-sized so-tasty tomatoes, large olives, yogurt sauces, wide-brimmed dishes of fruit compote taken in dollops and lashing of honey.
All the above were or seemed to be available at a fabulous restaurant called Dalun Deraz on Amirabad Street. A tad expensive but over the evening hours three different bands played. The hand-clapping bobbing-heads-in-unison audience were mostly groups of girls on birthday bashes, also family groups. The whole evening through the bands played, people shouted requests, joined in the songs and we all ate about the best food in the world, laughing along with the Real Iran.
Pre-Islamic Days
Zoroastrianism was the main religion in Iran until the Arab conquest brought in Islam. Initiated by Zoroaster, who is said to be born 550 BC in present-day Afghanistan, it was the earliest religion to propose an omnipotent, invisible god, which took representation as an eternally burning flame in Zoroastrian temples.
The Ateshkadeh (Zoroastrian Fire Temple) is in the city of Yazd, that is located in the eastern part of central Iran situated on the high, desert plateau that forms much of the country. Zoroastrians have always been populous in Yazd, even now about ten percent of the town's population adhere to this ancient religion. The primary belief circles around the dualism of Light and Dark, Good and Bad, with the intervention in the world of Man of a free will to choose.
Special ventilation structures, called badgirs, are a feature of this old city, seen on the outer roofs as a high structure under which, in the interior of the building, there is a small pool of cooling water. These are the prototypes of modern passive air conditioning systems with their energy saving merits, ideal for desert regions.
Zoroastrian symbolism is still very much alive and the Iranian New Year, No Ruz, Iran's most important festival, is celebrated on the spring equinox and is descended directly from the original 2,500 year old Zoroastrian festival.
A facet of the Zoroastrian culture that is always seen as an enigma are the Temples of Silence. Till recently these towers were used as burial sites where corpses were picked clean by vultures. A priest would sit with the bodies which were placed in a seated position, and watch to see which eye the vultures picked out first. If it was the right eye, the soul faced a promising future. However, if it was the left eye, it symbolized a pretty grim afterlife. Such towers were used in Iran up until the Islamic Revolution in 1979. In India’s Mumbai the rites continue among the Parsees - though the Iranian link is not fostered by that Indian group.
Iranian Jews
Despite the problematic political rhetoric against Israel, the Jewish faith continues to withstand the ravages of cultural change in Iran with the largest community of Jews in the Muslim Middle East with a population of around 25,000. This is likely because the cycle of wars has been between Israel and Arabs, not Persians. There are more than a dozen synagogues in Tehran. In Isfahan five or more synagogues cater to 1,200 Jews and the community has been present at that place, around Palestine Square, for 3,000 years.
Another instance of the Jewish connection is Esther's Tomb in Hamedan, the most important Jewish pilgrimage site in Iran. Jews believe that the sarcophagus contains the body of Esther, the Jewish wife of Xerxes I, who was responsible for organizing the first Jewish emigration to Persia in the 5th century BC. At one time Hamedan was a melting pot for various faiths. Today there are less than 50 Jews in the city, practising their faith in the minuscule synagogue attached to the site. On December 9, 2008, Iranian news outlets reported that the tomb of Mordechai and Esther, heroes of the Purim Saga, ‘would now be under official government protection and responsibility’.
The mausoleum of BuAli Sina is Hamedan's city icon. Better known to the west as Avicenna, the famous philosopher-physician of 11th century Iran. BuAli Sina produced the medical encyclopedia Canon Medicinae used in European universities till the 17th century.
The week went by at such pace, filled with new people, foods, and experiences - that I didn’t even have time to leave Tehran for the famed Isfahan - the provincial capital located in the centre of the country - but only a short flight from Tehran. Isfahan Province is noted for its personalities, writers, poets and imminent figures who were born and brought up or went to live in the territory. The west is familiar with the likes of Omar Khayyam and Rumi but Hafez and Saadi are just as influential literary figures of Iran.
Further afar is Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire during the Achaemenid dynasty. This city is situated 70km northeast of the modern city of Shiraz, in the Fars Province, of modern Iran.
Another day, another travel!
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The Koreas
unpublished Letter to the Editor, South China Morning Post.
Balanced Response
Dear Editor,
The only kind of ‘balanced response’ (see, Edgy Pyongyang needs balanced response by Greg Torode, 28 May 2009) that will lead to a peaceful resolution to the North Korea problem is sincere and truthful engagement with the North Korean regime.
The North Korean leadership and the people of North Korea are fearful and distrustful of the West, of South Korea too because of its strong ties to the US and those US soldiers that are so far from home with all their guns pointing at the North.
The presence of those foreign troops is like a red flag to a bull, fact or fiction. The South Korea military can stay off North Korean military advances without that provocative support. Those US troops should leave the peninsular, that would defuse tensions immediately.
With that opening of the door negotiations can begin with the question to the North Korean leadership: what do you want?
Clearly those sanctions will have to be lifted, normal commerce has to allowed and free interchanges from the ‘western’ side have to be offered.
The West is in the position of power and as such needs to bring that signalling dove of peace. Fear is the real obstacle. The West, if unafraid and without subversive agenda, has to put out.
North Korea is cornered and thus dangerous, and it does not know how to move. Stymied on all fronts that isolated regime needs an opening. Send those boys and girls home because the only balanced response is a human response!
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Notes by the Editor of Tikkun - on Korea...
[It is hard to know how to react to the pious lecturing of the US media and government to North Korea. The US has thousands of nukes and has them positioned all around the world to enforce the will of the American empire. The US is the only country on earth that has ever used nuclear weapons in war. What exactly gives the US the moral right to be lecturing North Korea or even Iran on who should or should not have nuclear weapons - except our chutzpah and our military power? But why does the media also continually speak in this same language of offended righteousness, when it is the US, not North Korea, which has just caused the deaths of over a million Asians in Iraq, the displacement into refugee status of another 3 million, and many more who have been wounded? ... neither do we have much sympathy for other regimes like those in Pakistan or Russia or Israel that have nuclear weapons already. Perhaps we might be more effective in preventing proliferation of these weapons were we to try the Strategy of Generosity instead of the strategy of domination. And yes, it is the strategy of domination if the US agrees to negotiations, but meanwhile proclaims 'we will not take ANY OPTION off the table' meaning we may use our own nuclear power to back up an assault on other countries if our negotiations don't give us what we are asking for! We've tried the domination strategy with Bush, and it didn't work. How about trying the Global Marshall Plan and the Generosity Strategy?]
Maybe We Should Take The North Koreans At Their Word
Pyongyang has consistently said that its nuclear weapons are intended to deter aggression. And, indeed, they do.
By Tad Daley
Tad Daley is the Writing Fellow with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Nobel Peace Laureate disarmament advocacy organization. His first book, Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World, is forthcoming from Rutgers University Press in January 2010.
Shortly after North Korea exploded its second nuclear device in three years on Monday morning, it released a statement explaining why. "The republic has conducted another underground nuclear testing successfully in order to strengthen our defensive nuclear deterrence." If the Obama Administration hopes to dissuade Pyongyang from the nuclear course it seems so hell bent on pursuing, Washington must understand just how adroitly nuclear arms do appear to serve North Korea's national security. In other words, perhaps we should recognize that they mean what they say.
From the dawn of history until the dawn of the nuclear age, it seemed rather self-evident that for virtually any state in virtually any strategic situation, the more military power one could wield relative to one's adversaries, the more security one gained. That all changed, however, with Alamogordo [US military research base] and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the Cold War's long atomic arms race, it slowly dawned on "nuclear use theorists" - whom one can hardly resist acronyming as NUTS - that in the nuclear age, security did not necessarily require superiority. Security required simply an ability to retaliate after an adversary had struck, to inflict upon that opponent "unacceptable damage" in reply. If an adversary knew, no matter how much devastation it might inflict in a first strike, that the chances were good that it would receive massive damage as a consequence (even far less damage than it had inflicted as long as that damage was "unacceptable"), then, according to the logic of nuclear deterrence, that adversary would be dissuaded from striking first. What possible political benefit could outweigh the cost of the possible obliteration of, oh, a state's capital city, and the leaders of that state themselves, and perhaps more than a million lives therein?
Admittedly, the unassailable logic of this "unacceptable damage" model of nuclear deterrence - which we might as well call UD - failed to put the brakes on a spiraling Soviet/American nuclear arms competition that began almost immediately after the USSR acquired nuclear weapons of its own in 1949. Instead, a different model of nuclear deterrence emerged, deterrence exercised by the capability completely to wipe out the opponent's society, "mutually assured destruction," which soon came to be known to all as MAD. There were other scenarios of aggression - nuclear attacks on an adversary's nuclear weapons, nuclear or conventional attacks on an adversary's closest allies (in Western and Eastern Europe) - that nuclear weapons were supposed to deter as well. However, the Big Job of nuclear weapons was to dissuade the other side from using their nuclear weapons against one's own cities and society, by threatening to deliver massive nuclear devastation on the opponent's cities and society in reply. "The Department of Defense," said an Ohio congressman in the early 1960s, with some exasperation, "has become the Department of Retaliation."
Nevertheless, those who engaged in an effort to slow the arms race often employed the logic of UD in their attempts to do so. "Our twenty thousandth bomb," said Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the Manhattan Project that built the world's first atomic weapons, as early as 1953, "will not in any deep strategic sense offset their two thousandth." "Deterrence does not depend on superiority," said the great strategist Bernard Brodie in 1965. "There is no foreign policy objective today that is so threatened," said retired admiral and former CIA director Stansfield Turner in 1998, "that we would … accept the risk of receiving just one nuclear detonation in retaliation."
Consider how directly the logic of UD applies to the contemporary international environment, to the twin nuclear challenges that have dominated the headlines during most of the past decade, and to the most immediate nuclear proliferation issues now confronting the Obama Administration. Because the most persuasive explanation for the nuclear quests on which both Iran and North Korea have embarked [Editor Tony: I do not see why Iran is included with North Korea in this writing and can only presume the writer is heeding the US media hype with too little distance] is, indeed, the notion that "deterrence does not depend on superiority." Deterrence depends only an ability to strike back. Iran and North Korea appear to be seeking small nuclear arsenals in order to deter potential adversaries from launching an attack upon them - by threatening them with unacceptable damage in retaliation.
Neither North Korea nor Iran could hope to defeat its most powerful potential adversary - the United States - in any kind of direct military confrontation. They cannot repel an actual attack upon them. They cannot shoot American planes and missiles out of the sky. Indeed, no state can.
However, what these countries can aspire to do is to dissuade the American leviathan from launching such an attack. How? By developing the capability to instantly vaporize an American military base or three in Iraq or Qatar or South Korea or Japan, or an entire U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf or the Sea of Japan, or even an American city on one coast or the other. And by making it implicitly clear that they would respond to any kind of assault by employing that capability immediately, before it's too late, following the venerable maxim: "Use them or lose them." The obliteration of an entire American military base, or an entire American naval formation, or an entire American city, would clearly seem to qualify as "unacceptable damage" for the United States.
Moreover, to deter an American attack, Iran and North Korea do not need thousands of nuclear warheads. They just need a couple of dozen, well hidden and well protected. American military planners might be almost certain that they could take out all the nuclear weapons in these countries in some kind of a dramatic lightning "surgical strike." However, with nuclear weapons, "almost" is not good enough. Even the barest possibility that such a strike would fail, and that just one or two nuclear weapons would make it into the air, detonate over targets, and result in massive "unacceptable damage" for the United States, would in virtually any conceivable circumstance serve to dissuade Washington from undertaking such a strike.
In addition, it is crucial to recognize that Iran and North Korea would not intend for their nascent nuclear arsenals to deter only nuclear attacks upon them. If the entire nuclear arsenal of the United States disappeared tomorrow morning, but America's conventional military superiority remained, it still would be the case that the only possible military asset that these states could acquire, to effectively deter an American military assault, would be the nuclear asset.
The "Korean Committee for Solidarity with World Peoples," a mouthpiece for the North Korean government, captured Pyongyang's logic quite plainly just weeks after the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003. "The Iraqi war taught the lesson that … the security of the nation can be protected only when a country has a physical deterrent force …" Similarly, a few weeks earlier, just before the Iraq invasion began, a North Korean general was asked to defend his country's nuclear weapons program, and with refreshing candor replied, "We see what you are getting ready to do with Iraq. And you are not going to do it to us."
It really is quite a remarkable development. North Korea today is one of the most desperate countries in the world. Most of its citizens are either languishing in gulags or chronically starving. And yet - in contrast to all the debate that has taken place in recent years about whether the United States and/or Israel ought to launch a preemptive strike on Iran - no one seems to be proposing any kind of military strike on North Korea. Why not? Because of the mere possibility that North Korea could impose unacceptable damage upon us in reply.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about UD is that it seems every bit as effective as MAD. North Korea today possesses no more than a handful of nuclear warheads, and maintains nothing like a "mutual" nuclear balance with the United States. In addition, the retaliation that North Korea can threaten cannot promise anything like a complete "assured destruction." To vaporize an American carrier group in the Sea of Japan, or a vast American military base in South Korea or Japan, or even an American city, would not be at all the same thing as the "destruction" of the entire American nation - as the USSR was able to threaten under MAD.
And yet, MAD and UD, it seems, exercise deterrence in precisely the same way. Astonishingly, it seems that Washington finds itself every bit as thoroughly deterred by a North Korea with probably fewer than 10 nuclear weapons as it did by a Soviet Union with 10,000. Although UD hardly contains the rich acronymphomaniacal irony wrought by MAD, it appears that both North Korea and Iran intend now to base their national security strategies solidly upon it.
There is very little reason to suppose that other states will not soon follow their lead.
President Obama, of course, to his great credit, has not only made a nuclear weapon-free Iran and North Korea one of his central foreign policy priorities, he has begun to chart a course toward a nuclear weapon-free world. In a groundbreaking speech before a huge outdoor rally in Prague on April 5th, he said, "Today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." (Unfortunately, he followed that with the statement that nuclear weapons abolition would not "be achieved quickly, perhaps not in my lifetime," suggesting that neither he nor the nuclear policy officials in his administration fully appreciate the magnitude and immediacy of the nuclear peril. Do they really think the human race can retain nuclear weapons for another half century or so, yet manage to dodge the bullet of nuclear accident, or nuclear terror, or a nuclear crisis spinning out of control every single time?)
The one thing we can probably say for sure about the prospects for universal nuclear disarmament is that no state will agree either to abjure or to dismantle nuclear weapons unless it believes that such a course is the best course for its own national security. To persuade states like North Korea and Iran to climb aboard the train to abolition would probably require simultaneous initiatives on three parallel tracks. One track would deliver foreign and defense policies that assure weaker states that we do not intend to attack them, that just as we expect them to abide by the world rule of law they can expect the same from us, that the weak need not cower in fear before the strong. Another track would deliver diplomatic overtures that convince weaker states that on balance, overall, their national security will better be served in a world where no one possesses nuclear weapons, rather than in a world where they do-but so too do many others. And another track still would deliver nuclear weapons policies that directly address the long-simmering resentments around the world about the long-standing nuclear double standard, that directly acknowledge our legacy of nuclear hypocrisy, and that directly connect nuclear non-proliferation to nuclear disarmament.
The power decisively to adjust all those variables, of course, does not reside in Pyongyang or Tehran. It resides instead in Washington.
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Burma
Thousands Fleeing Burmese Army in Karen State
05 June 2009
The Burma Campaign UK today called on the British government to take urgent action as more than 2,000 ethnic Karen civilians flee from the Burmese Army and their allies.
Ler Per Her, a camp for internally displaced people just inside Burma in Karen State, is being evacuated today as around a thousand soldiers from the Burmese Army and its allies, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), move into the area. The camp is in the Pa’an district of Karen State, on the Thailand Burma border. The Burma Campaign UK has visited the camp twice this year, hearing first hand testimony of abuses committed by the regime.
Ler Per Her has around 1,200 people who have already had to flee their villages because of human rights abuses and attacks by the Burmese Army and DKBA. The camp itself has twice been forced to relocate after previous attacks. After the last attack it moved closer to a base of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), which has provided protection for the camp. The KNLA is the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU), which opposes military rule.
At the start of June the Burmese Army and DKBA began using people as slave labour to carry military equipment. The Burmese Army and DKBA have moved significant new numbers of troops into the area to prepare for a new military offensive. The Karen Human Rights Group estimates more than 700 villagers have been forced to flee for fear of being used as slave labour or caught up in fighting.
The Burmese Army now has troops and military equipment stationed within range of the Ler Per Her camp. It is expected they will begin military operations to take the area tomorrow. The area is currently controlled by the pro-democracy group the Karen National Union. The Burmese Army wants to take the land as part of its strategy to destroy all opposition to its rule, and offers the DKBA lucrative border trade deals to carry out attacks on its behalf.
The 1,200 people from Ler Per Her are now camped on the Thailand side of the Moei River, they have limited food and shelter.
“Once again the international community is silent as thousands of people flee attacks by the Burmese Army,” said Zoya Phan, International Coordinator at Burma Campaign UK. “The British government must start speaking out about the situation in Eastern Burma. They must urgently provide aid, and also demand that the United Nations organise a Commission of Inquiry into the war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed against my people. They must also work for a global arms embargo.” Zoya Phan has twice herself been forced to flee attacks by the Burmese Army.
There are already around 150,000 people from Burma in refugee camps in Thailand, and around half a million internally displaced people in Eastern Burma, which has levels of poverty and disease equivalent to the worst conflict hit African country. More than 3,300 villages in Eastern Burma have been destroyed in the past 15 years.
For more information contact Zoya Phan on 020 7324 4710
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World March website launched in Simplified Chinese
China | May 30, 2009
Chinese becomes the 24th language to be uploaded on the World March website.
http://www.theworldmarch.org/index.php?secc=news&acc=verid&newsid=75
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Sri Lanka
Humanist International
Nothing above the human being
No one human below another...
Sudhir Gandotra
Spokesperson for New Humanism in Asia-Pacific
Date: 13 April 2009
PRESS RELEASE
The Humanist International and its signatories, acting through the regional spokespersons here signed, call on the people of Sri Lanka, no matter to which ethnic group they are by birth linked, to see clearly the great need for Peace and Non Violence to come to their country.
We call on the people to make their voices heard above the calamitous din of war in this call and not allow the violent ones, the powerful groups, those in charge of the military operations, to have the final say.
Do not wait for the UN, or the USA, or India. But yes internationalise this sorry aberration. Your moribund press already decimated by state terrorism cannot really help in this moment but has to be rebuilt from the grass roots up. We recall a very recent case where the editor of The Sunday Leader newspaper and veteran journalist, Lasantha Wickrematunge (51), was shot by an ‘unidentified gunman'.
Now the battling Tamils are cornered and in their midst are innocent civilians yet no quarter is shown for their plight. There is no victory possible under these circumstances, only suffering for all. And, there is no free press to tell this story.
The military chiefs are intent on some final cleansing sweep but surely they must understand that the least seed left to grow in those fields of revenge will grow like garden weeds and no amount of vigilance will suffice to uproot the remnant dark aspirations.
Call it a day and allow some minor pride for your sworn enemies; relieve those innocent bystanders of their unfortunate plight. Complete annihilation will not win anyone's heart.
Sad to state, giving exception to the standard interpretation of the Buddha's first precept demanding non-violence and non-harm (ahimsa), both the Theravada monks and Buddhist lay people have been implicated in the persecution and violence in this Sri Lankan ethnic-regional conflict and civil war.
This war has raged over the decades under the rule of a series of undemocratic yet voted-in governments, supported by the mostly Buddhist Sinhalese, and, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) organization based in the mostly non-Buddhist Tamil minority of a Hindu persuasion.
Thus it is left to the humanists of the world to bring their voice to the table of death, seeking to re-lay the cloth with the brightness of hope and we do this knowing that so many of the people of Sri Lanka want peace, want non-violence in all of their affairs - just like any human group anywhere in the world.
Who will start the healing process from the bottom of this deep pit of human feeling? Which body of good souls will speak for those who have not spoken, who could not speak?
Do not wait, act now, engage in all processes. Not to lie in front of the heavy rumbling cart but to push from the sides so it changes direction. Push that awkward cart onto the safer plains of ordinary life, away from militarisation, guns and uniforms. Call and activate for involvement and participation, for minority rights, for the government to govern for the country as a whole, for transparency and a free and open press.
We are with you as you can see.
Sudhir Gandotra
Spokesperson for New Humanism in Asia-Pacific
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World March officially launched in Costa Rica
Costa Rica San Jose | June 07, 2009 05:42
In a presentation to 80 people on the 6th of June The World March was officially launched in Costa Rica, the first country in the world to constitutionally abolish its army.
Despite the torrential rain that fell during the afternoon and evening, the WM was launched with a great atmosphere and the participation of local cultural groups.
Presenting the March were; Dr. Lizbeth Quesada, Public Defender, Martín Callisaya, Bolivian Ambassador to Costa Rica, Francisco Cordero from the Friends for Peace Centre, Diego Ugarte, President of World without Wars and José R. Quesada, Humanist spokesperson for Costa Rica. The event was covered by 2 national media channels.
Costa Rica, is a example of how the WM objectives can be made a reality. On December 1, 1948, President José Figueres Ferrer abolished the country's army after victory in the civil war in that year. In a ceremony in the Cuartel Bellavista, Figueres broke a wall with a mallet symbolizing the end of Costa Rica's military spirit. In 1949, the abolition of the military was introduced in Article 12 of the Costa Rican Constitution.
The budget previously dedicated to the military now is dedicated to security, education and culture; the country maintains Police Guard forces.
Unlike its neighbours, Costa Rica has not endured a civil war since 1948.
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Note: the Humanist Movement and its organisms are Humanist without necessarily being Humanitarian - that is, we are not a charity. Material from this newsletter may be freely reprinted with this attribution: Source: Humanist Newsletter - Hong Kong, or the bylined writer.
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E-mail: tonyhen @ humanist.org.hk - Web: http://home.pacific.net.hk/~tonyhen/
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