Democratic Conversation

by Mark Beyer 

The airwaves and cyberpages hum with comments on Tibet’s domestic uprising against Chinese rule, repression, and their latest military crackdown against mostly (but not exclusively) peaceful demonstrations. The reporting is dutiful, the commentary sympathetic. But the Tibetans need neither dutiful nor sympathetic words. What they need is action.

But what can The West do? The European Union, the USA, Canada & Mexico, the lesser strength Latin American & African nations, all have economic ties to China because Chinese workers work for very little money. This makes the cost of goods to the world’s richer countries very cheap. Meanwhile, Chinese workers are treated no better than European and American workers of the 1870s when the Industrial Revolution was in its adolescence and government rulers enjoyed the graft that came with keeping workers ignorant, poor, enslaved to meaningless work.

What does China’s socio-political landscape have to do with Tibetan’s rioting? One of many answers to this question is the moral dilemma The West has in its answers to Chinese repression of Tibet. Oddly, some have claimed the world should boycott the Olympics this summer, to be held in Beijing, as punishment for China’s human rights abuses. Apparently, this is about the best any Western leader can put forward.

What should Western Powers do, otherwise? Should they go to war with China to free Tibet? This is a fine idea, but not practical. China has lots of nuclear weapons; even if we won, we’d lose.

Should The West stop buying Chinese products? This could be useful, and effective, however Western citizens (even those yelling the loudest for action) would feel the hurt, because most of what we buy is in fact produced in China. Just look at America’s largest employer, Walmart. Seventy percent of the shelved goods in Walmart are produced in China; if you take that away, Walmart fails, and America sinks even further into its present economic toilet bowl.

Should The West pull out all its money from Chinese banks and business ventures? Another fine idea, but also not practical; in this growing recession—nearing a financial meltdown—further money losses can only be catastrophic to Western economies (see last paragraph).

Umm, I’m about out of ideas here. War and money are the only possible effective penalties any country can place upon another. And since neither is practical or advisable in China’s case, The West can only stand aside to watch while yet another group inside yet another powerful country is beat down, imprisoned, murdered, marginalized.

This is the first shame: we have no ability to punish China because we are in fact party to that oppressive regime’s actions. We benefit every single day from Chinese oppression of its own people—and as we’ve seen in the past weeks, of Tibetans.

The second shame is, unfortunately, far more invasive. We Westerners, by taking the attitude of “looking out for No. 1,” have allowed ourselves to be compromised. We have elected—and re-elect—officials who rig the system to ensure they have the best chance to stay in power for decades; once in power, they tell us what we want to hear, say they are sorry when people lose their jobs, children get sent to illegal wars to die, meanwhile allowing big business to move unfettered through the economic fields upon which we the people are dutifully connected to—but not in partnership with—big business. When The People have money problems, the government throws them a bone—a natural and effective three-steps-forward-two-steps-back policy; when big business has money problems, the government uses The People’s tax dollars to bail them out. This is the very definition of economic oppression.

Those who think now I have mightily strayed from the Tibetan topic must think about this. China has ruled Tibet as its own state and province since its invasion in 1950. Yet we in The West still call that territory Tibet, as though it were still a real country.

Why do we do this?

Perhaps the very idea of Tibet as it once was appeals to us: Shangri-La, a place of peaceful life, simple life, employing a simple and worthwhile government.

by Mark Beyer 

What I think really doesn’t matter. Only, lets look at some facts on the largest issues of the 2008 presidential election.

If you vote for Sen. John McCain, you vote for $1 billion per week spent to fund George W. Bush’s Iraq occupation. Whatever else the Iraq occupation is and is not, the American taxpayer cannot fund this debacle for much longer without dire consequences to its solvency. McCain wants the country to fund the Iraq occupation “until we win” at seemingly any cost for XXX number of years. Essential, a vote for McCain is a vote for unending Bush-Cheney economic and military policies. This can’t be good for America.

If you vote for Hillary Clinton, you vote for a long battle, a likely losing battle, to create nationalized health care. Democrats don’t even agree on a health care plan, so do you think Republicans will vote to give underprivileged children health care? While Hands-Across-America health care is a good idea, one only needs understand that members of Congress get the best health care tax dollars can can buy (despite the fact that in 10-year’s time you will pay at least 20% of your income on health care) to see that they will not lose their benefits for the cost of your benefits. This is not good for America.

If you vote for Barack Obama, you vote for a relatively unknown, perhaps even “The Great Compromiser,” someone who will help push through watered down legislation in order to get anything at all passed given the near 50-50 split both houses of congress maintain. The Democrats want to compromise with Republicans; it’s evident from the last seven years of Republican control of Congress, the Executive and Legislative branches what Republicans want. And the Democrats? They can’t even stop the Iraq occupation, something they promised to do in the ’06 mid-terms. Consensus doesn’t appear to be their goal, or in their self interest, and Obama would be their leader. This hurts Americans.

The alternative to these three candidates? None. There exist no exceptions to the rule of Washington Politics this year. An unfortunate problem, since the USA needs sound leadership and decisive action for and against so many problems the country faces—the least of which is terrorism.

Of course, the future alternative is to reform the United States electoral and party system into a pluralist system. Under a plurality of parties, such as the country saw for nearly 100 years, the benefit to citizens was more input into the national political discussion. Grass-roots organizations, regional idea holders, environmental and social groups: these are built from people seeking progress, an evolution of policies that bring enduring prosperity and social justices to the country. America had such plurality in the mid-1800s and onward, up until about the Great Depression. Then, post WW II, the two-party system took hold. Laws were passed to ensure that small parties were elbowed aside from the national stage—and thus broader political debate.

Gerrymandering exists unchecked today. It divvies the political discussion (and money) between Dems and Repubs. We are now left with a two-party stranglehold given us by the very representatives who are supposed to represent all Americans. Has either done a good job for you? Congressional approval ratings hover in the mid-30% range. I think the people see politicians as greedy parasites who have formed a private club using tax dollars and contribution slush funds. The people are not wrong.

Reported in the March 2008 issue of Harper’s Magazine, is Congress’s unending, essentially unrestricted flow of contribution money that pays for congressional seat perks such as golf outings, meals, drinks, parties, world travel, and vacation junkets—all quid-pro-quo perks to ensure favorable legislation, despite denials from pols re biased voting records. Worse, contribution money pays the salaries of politicians’ family members for seats on this organization or that political action committee, or running a campaign. We’re not talking about salaries commensurate with ability, experience, or the job itself, but hundreds of thousands of dollars to do virtually nothing—answer some phones, talk with moneyed donors, smile.

This is the stuff of fiction to this American’s sensibilities. This is government rule and favoritism and graft we complain about when we read of Saudi Arabia’s 4,000 princes, each with his own palace. This is destructive government that ancient Athens crumbled under, what made Rome burn.

Should I be more upbeat? Should I sound less cynical? How about I just go with the flow, take the attitude “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” or “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” I don’t think American’s have come to this. American’s aren’t supposed to have let Caesars rule them.

by Mark Beyer

Any review of John Bolton’s “Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” could without great effort slump into ad hominem attacks of this former US Ambassador to the United Nations. In fact, I’m sure some will. Bolton is an easy target, given his inflammatory rhetoric about and disdain for the United Nations, “foreigners,” his former subordinates, or anyone else who has challenged his ideas for American supremacy. These ideas, it must be pointed out, would seem by his own words to be instituted at any costs to our republic. I won’t attack Bolton personally here; it’s enough to let the man’s words describe what kind of career policy maker and diplomat he has been.

On foreign affairs, Bolton is clear:

Foreigners, even some supposed allies, cannot be trusted, and the hostile ones (North Korea, Iran, the enemies of Israel, and others) will always cheat, will never abide by an agreement, and only understand pressure and force.

With such people there should be only sticks and hard words, no carrots, no rewards for good behavior, and no prolonged negotiations. Force always remains an option.

I wondered, while reading such remarks, how Bolton thought “foreigners” might view the United States when itself did not—or ceased to—abide by international agreements. As undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs in G.W. Bush’s first administration term, Bolton was in perfect place to abrogate many agreements. He devised the plan to withdraw the US from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, calling it “a Cold War relic that essentially precluded the US from developing national missile defense systems.” He was instrumental in quashing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear arms testing. Bolton also tried mightily, and with some success, to hamper a UN initiative to limit sales of small arms and light weapons, the preferred weapons of radicals, dictators, and mercenary killers around the world (one must remember that the United States stands in the top five of military weapons manufacture and sales worldwide, including to those who have come to harm us, including Iraq, Iran, Osama bin Laden (pre-Al Queada), the Taliban and North Korea). Or consider Bolton’s role in “unsigning” the United States’ agreement to establish the International Criminal Court ( falling short, however, of ratifying the Rome Statute, which served to set up the court): “My happiest moment at State” Bolton writes.

Evidently, an agreement is solid to Bolton only if he and like-minded ideologues have engineered them for the wholesale benefit of the United States alone. Bolton defends doing away with these treaties and agreements (remember, he has previously said foreigners and even allies “will always cheat” and “never abide by an agreement” ) by claiming, “We were simply rejecting inferior policies and agreements, and replacing them with greater American independence and fewer unnecessary constraints.”

And some people actually wonder why Iran and North Korea say they “need” to build nuclear weapons to forestall American hegemony and aggression towards them. Such wonderment is pig ignorance, in my opinion. Whatever else radical regimes might be, they do have eyes attached to their ideological convictions. When they see American military muscle on home turf, or next door, what they see are “foreigners” with hostile intentions. Ethics cut both ways. The worst of the outcome over such cheating and agreement breaking are years in the making—for all parties to these treaties and those observing from the sidelines. Suddenly I hear a resounding echo: You shall reap what you sow.

Yet, with all of his ideas laid out now for the public to read and understand, Bolton’s opinions should be taken seriously. I think they have merit—just not in this or the last century. We live in a much closer world community than that of the 19th Century, when such self-interest ideology was ubiquitous in the world.

Attacks on Bolton’s character came aplenty during his Senate confirmation hearings for the UN ambassadorship, and subsequently (following his confirmation defeat and, then, Bush’s arrogate insertion of Bolton in the post as a “recess appointment” when the Senate was on summer vacation) as the Ambassador to the institution for which he had previously and famously showered such hatred upon. For what Bolton said about the UN, he definitively put into action: upon landing in New York just a month before the UN’s 60th anniversary, when a summit meeting of heads of state and government was to take place, Bolton read and made 700+ amendments to the summit’s draft declaration—changes he considered vital to assuring the increased influence the United States should have on the UN, and reflect its self interests.

You see, Bolton didn’t care for the UN’s citation of the world’s problems, or the UN delegations, or the UN Secretariat, or the UN Secretary General, Koffi Annan. As might be expected, Bolton’s proposed changes caused resentment among a hundred or so countries, which proved to re-ignite quarrels that had already been successfully resolved. One amendment Bolton insisted upon was to strike any mention of the Millennium Development Goals to eradicate global poverty. Perhaps Bolton didn’t think poverty should be eradicated—God knows we don’t need any more people who can contribute to the global economy; or perhaps he didn’t think the UN’s structure of this goal was sound. He doesn’t say; nor does he offer a viable counter option to eradicating poverty. He does say this, however:

United States interests alone are to be considered paramount; the United Nations is only relevant insofar as it serves those interests.

America’s standing in the world fell dramatically under Bolton’s UN ambassadorship. Bolton held firm. Anyone who attacked Bolton’s character was, in my opinion, quite wrong. For Bolton in fact showed steal-core character by not folding to the pressures of pundits, “foreigners,” the diplomatic mission of the UN, and ultimately not to the Bush administration’s own softening on its original ideological plan for the United States’ policy toward its foes and friends across the globe.

Bolton quit his UN post in late 2006, when it became obvious that a new Senate confirmation hearing on his UN tenure would basically throw him out. Bolton claimed as his face-saving exit strategy the Bush administration’s weakening stance on hitherto unbridled unilateralism and softened stances against Iran and North Korea: he would better serve America’s interests by “keep firing” from outside government. Bolton now works with the American Enterprise Institute. He is yet seen as an expert on conservative government policy issues, and has been a guest on the Sunday morning political talk show circuit. Such expertise has given him the wherewithal to encourage Israel, recently (as quoted in The New York Sun during a conference in Herzliya) “that the Bush administration is unlikely to act to halt Tehran’s nuclear race, and he urged Jerusalem to strike militarily.” Yes, a very enterprising thought.

As far as Bolton’s warrior stance towards the world’s despotic regimes go, he has certainly not been eager to use his own brawn or blood (or his family’s) in efforts at regime change: he ducked out of service in Vietnam, even though he supported the war. He was attending Yale at the time, and dodging the draft was more practical than the inconvenience of fighting for one’s country, so he “wasn’t going to waste time on a futile struggle.” Instead, he joined the the National Guard, than an easy duty to escape combat (unlike the 45% of the US Iraq occupation force today composed of guardsmen). This echoes both George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s draft dodging schemes (Cheney said of his draft-dodging decision: “I had other priorities in the ‘60s than military service.”). Bravo! (Quick side note: John Bolton has a college-age (military-serving age) daughter who attends Yale. Funny how we haven’t seen her in fatigues storming some Baghdad hell-hole.)

Bolton so hates the UN, that in “Surrender Is Not an Option,” he never gives the organization credit for its advancement of peace and democracy. You don’t learn, for example, that the UN went into Iraq after the US invasion to establish the first Iraqi Governing Council; Bolton fails also to describe the UN’s organization of Iraq’s elections; and one grievous omission is that Sergio Vieria de Mello—a career diplomat with invaluable service to peace and reconciliation between parties worldwide—and 15 of his UN staff were killed by a truck bomb in August 2003. Did Bolton omit de Mello’s particularly bright service because Bolton so despised Secretary General Annan? We don’t know exactly, but some of his worst condemnations come at the expense of Koffi Annan, a person whom Bolton dismisses with the phrase “[he] was simply not up to the job”; a statement given without explanation or proof—and despite contradictory opinion by world leaders.

“Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” is a flawed book, not for Bolton’s convictions about America’s need for safety, defense, or its continued ability to operate within both spheres vis-a-vis the larger world stage. These are vital concerns and of the utmost importance to the United States; the US has proceeded since the post-World War II era to act according to its self-interest when it could not get other countries to agree on a solution to a given problem, just as other countries, allies and enemies alike, have so to acted in their self interest. There’s nothing new in this area; what is striking, however, is how Bolton—under the aegis of the Bush administration and with full backing—have either bullied and blackmailed countries into going along with “the American plan” or simply ignored outside opinion entirely. This is not diplomacy; this is imperialism.

The book is flawed because Bolton proves to be a mean spirited, if not wholly angry man. He continuously uses name-calling and ad hominem attacks, employing such pointless yet loaded terms as Matress Mice, Candle Lighters, The Weak-kneed, High Minded, The True Believers, Crusaders of Compromise, and Euroids. Hereby, Bolton shows a bitchy willingness to engage in slur-sloganeering used otherwise by (and to gather together) the far-right-wing base groups. Perhaps this is because he has not, ultimately, defeated his opponents.

Is this what we expect from a diplomat? I surely don’t hope so. The way Bolton (and the Bush administration) has treated the world’s governments—his abject arrogance of superiority coupled with a distinctive poverty of imagination to usher the world forward to a better place than war and power-struggles—make the sub-title of his book a more difficult process for those future, reasonable administrations to achieve.

by James Houda

Change. What is it? Do we just understand it better than its synonyms; how about “modification” or “alteration” for the future?

“We shall mutate your future!”

Now that’s a slogan I can get behind.

How does anyone truly effect change with those powerhouse slogans in mind? Change is not something that is easily embraced. The fear of
the unknown is enough to cause individuals to bury themselves in familiarity, watch old television shows, eat macaroni and cheese, vote
for the same sorts of people that we’ve voted for in the past. But look, instead, to the words of FDR, a truly inspirational speaker, who
said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” at a time of depression, hopelessness and impending chaos abroad. He meant, I think, fear of change.

It seems that the start of change should come from the rhetoric, words that move persons to look inside of themselves, words that cause one to re-think what they have come to believe to be true or right. Americans as a people have been blessed from time to time by nothing
so much as a well-formed paragraph—from Thomas Paine telling us that “These are the times that try mens’ souls,” to Abraham Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address, to FDR inspiring millions to great action during the Second World War. Words seem almost flimsy, meaningless, in the
face of real problems. However, they are the beginning of the process. We as individuals will each take something different from a turn of the phrase. Each will be motivated to a goal through different courses, to change, to lay the course, to find a new beginning. Does it start with the word “change”?

The people are responsible for the change itself. You, all of you reading this, must be the ones to dedicate yourselves to the direction that you feel is right, or leave society unaffected. A leader is only that, someone who gives voice to the will of the people. If there wasn’t dissatisfaction within the populous, then there would be no need for a shift. Each one of us is, in the end, an agent of change, the start of a new direction, the beginning of the discussion. We must not be silent in the face of wrongs and slights. We start by talking to the people near us and those that we meet, leading to the exchange of ideas. Conversation, individual conversations, one speech exchanged for another, creates the possibility of change. One has to be open to the idea that our own beliefs are not always right. Otherwise, there is no possible change.

Nowadays, there is a word that gets thrown around with some frequency, flip-flop, that has stifled the idea of changing ones opinion. This term should be ignored. The constant exchange of ideas can lead to a change in one’s opinion and belief, or at least generate new thought on a given subject. To give short shrift to differing ideas, even within one person, is the fear that is at the heart of being set in one’s ways.

The mind and thought process is like the human body itself, always evolving. Where would we be today if no one ever changed their mind about the world being flat? That the sun revolves around the earth? We could not soar in the the skies like a bird. Progress is impossible, social, scientific, cultural, without the open exchange, the ability to see new ways of doing, seeing, and thinking on a subject. What is needed is the courage to accept a new idea. Maybe this is one of the missing ingredients in the mix, courage, finding it in oneself to modify our own beliefs.

How truly transformational to all of us that we might not be right, that there are newer and better ways to approach a situation than what
we, to this point, have held as the absolute truth. What a nexus we would achieve in grasping change, to move forward in our development
as individuals, cultures, and races. Absolutism should be abandoned for reason—learned thought is just that: learned. All of us should
make every effort to be informed as much as possible on the topics of the day. When we have the courage to accept a different opinion, then we can move forward.

Do not fear change, or even changing your mind. Embrace it and make it your own. Become part of the discussion and not a roadblock to advancement. All change is difficult at first, yet most has proved over the course of time to have been for the better. So let us all make a difference by simply examining the way that we look at the information that is before us. This is the start of what is known as change.

Nearly half of the USA’s children start school in the middle of August. Another 12% begin before Aug. 14. The kids certainly feel this; their summer vacation has been cut short, and right now they often stand in summer mornings’ heat waiting for a bus, or else stand in summer afternoon’s blazing heat and ozone-poisoned air waiting for a bus. High school teens with jobs must either quit or cut back on hours. But they’ve all gotten used to this change, because kids are used to being told parents and government have their best interests in mind. And since they’ve gotten used to this routine, well, “What’s the difference?” some kids have said.

Parents helped create this roll-back start times trend across America several years ago, in conjunction with local school district boardmembers, firstly as a way to lessen the “down time” of learning (a phenomenon, especially for grammar school-aged kids, where several weeks of the new school year was spent on review of last year’s learned lessons before this year’s could be safely assumed it could take hold). Parents also agreed that an earlier start would help teachers prepare for state-mandated tests. Both changes have, by so many accounts, worked tremendously well, despite the ridiculous failure of George W. Bush’s farcical slap against education, No Child Left Behind.

Now, however, in a move that resembles the scatological demands of their children, parents are demanding of state legislatures to pass laws requiring the school year to start later in the summer, such as the week before or the day after Labor Day. And the parents have an ally in this demand: the tourism industry, who complain on two levels: they need teens who have jobs at amusement parks to work as long through the summer as possible, and they need parents (and kids) to attend these places for one last wallet-emptying vacation. Leave it to government to break what doesn’t need fixing because hysterical parents and money-grubbing industries want to dictate what’s important to children instead of allowing the education professionals that sit on school boards to determine well-balanced systems that can assist in maximizing our children’s learning potential.

(If you think these are liberal-minded states wanting this change, against all wishes of conservatives who WANT GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR LIVES, then think again: laws to push school start dates back to traditional dates have been enacted this year in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky … all hardly liberal ground, and all … ahem … possibly leading the list for the worst test scores per annum in the nation. And just to show only I’m biased towards educating our children, two liberal-territory states have also enacted such callous-to-learning laws: Michigan and Pennsylvania.)

Parents in these states have claimed they now do not like their vacation time with the children to be cut short. I have a question for these parents: Did you not think about this outcome when you first bitched to school boards to make this change? If not, then, honestly, this is your problem, not your children’s (who need the extra time), the school board’s (the professionals), or the legislature (always looking out for their paying constituents). Actually, your abject selfishness stems from a typical American problem: you don’t know what the hell you want until you see what you don’t want.

As for these state legislatures cow-towing to the tourism industry lobby/campaign money—let’s make this clear: politicians care only about who pays them off during the election season—the politicians have shown once again that kids don’t matter one Goddamn thought to them because kids don’t have money: they can only be exploited by others who make money.

This leaves a question for the tourism industry: Must everything really be about how much profit you make? No one begrudges a capitalist from making money, but on the backs of kids trying to save for the ever-dwindling potential to pay for college? Maybe more importantly, If you’ve lost your minimum-wage workforce, that’s your problem for starting a business where your sole purpose is to charge outrageous fees, concessions and admission prices on the backs of kids whom you don’t have to pay squat, don’t have to offer health benefits, and whom you use like near-slaves so you can make yourselves rich.

School boards are trying to talk sense into both parents and legislatures. Neither is willing to listen, as shown by this new trend to pass laws that effectively and for the long term handcuff any school board’s ability to administer education policy for the benefit of children and the effective teaching potential of educators. As for the kids, they seem to take these push-you-pull-me activities in stride, bless their hearts: “Just pick a time and stick with it,” one high-schooler told me. “Then let us learn.”