Commentary

I liked tea

For an immigrant, everything tastes, sounds, and feels a little different from “home” — a place that seems farther away for the nomad with each passing day.


Author Radhika Sharma performs a ceremony on her sister-in-law’s groom during a wedding in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, in April 2004.

I often find myself mired in thought comparing and contrasting my new life in the United States to my life in India. Recollections and epiphanies come to me during mundane dinners, at supermarket checkout counters — even during spiritual discourses.

Each month I struggle to do justice to my position as a reluctant and informal ambassador, hoping fervently that as I vocalize my observations about both cultures I also reawaken and clarify my rather murky sense of self and identity.

Almost every week I struggle to explain fuzzy existential and far removed issues to folks back home: Why do Americans complain about housework despite having so many timesaving appliances? Why does the immigrant Indian community celebrate Diwali (The festival of lights) on weekends? Why this? Why that?

And almost each day, while I drink tea by myself, I remind myself to enjoy the richness and aroma of the tea and try to avoid listening to the voice playing in my mind: “You liked tea because it signified something. Does it still?”

That voice in my head repeats provocatively. Teatime was my time with my mother and brother; time spent relaxing, time spent bonding, time stolen from the onslaught of life’s perpetual errands.

In my early months as an immigrant, my lunches and teas would get the better of me — leaving me depressed, sometimes tearful, missing home. That doesn’t happen anymore. I am happy that a symptom has faded away, but has the disease, this looped drama, playing in my mind?

Disease is the state of being ill at ease. But on a cynical day, I feel that the word is synonymous with the state of being an immigrant. As my sense of powerlessness grows, I often marvel at the illusion I used to have that I could decide the degree of my assimilation and separation. Now that seems nearly impossible.

My first few months went by in a blur. “Learn this.” “Get here.” “Get there.”

Perhaps a part of it has now been accomplished. I know the difference between a Macy’s and a Nordstrom. I have trained my tongue to pronounce “schedule” the way the American ear likes to hear it. I laugh delightedly on jokes by American stand-up comedians. I have started reveling in the inescapable “Do-it-yourself” philosophy of my adopted country.

Yet I often wonder that in this process of learning, how much did I unlearn and how much more do I have to go? Each time this fear strikes, I try, in vain perhaps, to control the process of my adaptation — to never forget where I came from, to become only so much of an insider that I understand the issues of this new land while still remaining the outsider who can offer a fresh perspective.

The other day someone said to me: “So, you’ve been here for awhile. You should be well adjusted by now.”

I guess I am. With each passing year and each subtle adjustment I make, I become interesting fodder “back home” for extended family and acquaintances to analyze. An aunt hugs delightedly and tells me that she is so happy that I am still the same. An acquaintance spots a few of my “American” mannerisms within 10 minutes of association. They are both right. And wrong. For the truth is always somewhere in between.

For me, and perhaps for many others like me, the intangible fallouts of immigration started kicking in only after I seemed to have successfully wrestled with the tangible fallouts of immigration. After the mad rush to make sense of the system had subsided. After you have learned to drive on the freeway, navigate the healthcare system, and much more, you realize that your phone calls to extended family start feeling increasingly threadbare.

You rely on old memories and idiosyncrasies to craft conversations. And as soon as you set the telephone receiver down, you ruminate on this greater vision immigration has unexpectedly ushered. Longing alternates with pragmatism and then, perhaps, at parties with others who chose to live in the United States, you ponder the pros and cons.  Depending on your mood, you let one place win over the other.

Like characters in a novel which take on a life of their own, eluding the grasp of their creator, so too is the effect of this new geography. When blissful ignorance yields to unsettling realities, the mind grasps for acceptance of the new reality.

I rationalize. “Let us be grateful,” a voice inside me whispers. After all, this is a great century to be a nomad, a wanderer or an immigrant, as my older friends reassure me. Email, voice mail, snail mail, Web cam.

True, short of touch, I am there, wherever I want to be, deluding me into thinking that I know what is going on in that place I once called home. And should my longing get unbearable, the airport is barely an hour away!

Twenty-four hours on a Transpacific flight is all that that separates me from a once-lived world and a new world that gives me the seductive opportunity and the infrastructure to do cutting edge professional work. But one weekend as I got back from my first writers’ conference, I thought, “How lovely if this would happen in India!”

But it doesn’t. Not right now. And that is among the many reasons why I continue to stay.

This cutting-edge work wreaks havoc on my heartstrings, while giving me nebulous fears and joys. A little bit of geography and a boundless chasm of the mind keep the different pies of my circle apart. And only I know how exquisitely different each pie in my circle is. I know how my days are a crazy mish-mash of feelings. Sometimes I feel completely at home and wonder why we need to stick labels onto feelings like belongingness, while at other times, when I am forced to deal with prejudice, discrimination, and explain life choices like being a writer who writes in English, I wonder, “Why am I here?”

Each day I learn that nostalgia is like an uninvited guest who never really bids goodbye, and every couple of days when you open some closet in your heart, you will find it hiding there, waiting to pounce on you. And then it hits me that these feelings will not go away, and that I have no words with which to dress them.

Our adjustment to geography is unfortunately not as well defined as the geography itself. No matter how much we might try to keep in touch, to prop up our understanding of cities and scenarios miles away through the written word and the spoken word, there simply can be no substitute for our physical experiences. There’s no substitute for the here and now.

Radhika Sharma (left) visits San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge with her husband’s aunt, Sangeeta Sharma (far right), and Sangeeta’s daughters Nikita and Kareena in the summer of 2002. (photo by Nikhil Sharma)

With each month that I stay an immigrant I know more people in my new land. With each year that I stay away my nucleus in India shrinks to a highly dense mass. I see myself in my English friend who longs for London (“home”) the moment she sets foot in the San Francisco airport, yet feels strangely unsettled in London and wishes she could go (“home”) to San Francisco.

I see myself in my Indian friend who must buy Indian handicrafts when her craving for colors gets insatiable. I see myself in my Polish friend who prays for an alternative to seemingly interminable flight journeys. I see myself in my younger friend who has just discovered the joys of hopping on a fast-moving train from San Francisco to San Jose. Our names might be different. Our faces unique. Yet our secrets are the same. Despite the pitfalls, the world is our playground. All of us homeless and all of us home.

A few days ago I caught myself getting irritated at a jaywalker while I drove my car in my California suburb and remembered my unconditional acceptance of traffic chaos in my hometown of Jodhpur, India. I christened it “selective acceptance.” For immigrants thrive and struggle with this sense of a bifurcated identity that lets them create different switches in their minds. Switches that are turned off and on depending on their viability to the present moment.

Still, there are many other nameless mental switches longing to be named. Perhaps I could have devoured books on language and come up with some feeble attempts at categorizing them. But my purpose is not to see a few self-coined words as a part of the lexicon. My hope is to see a time when we will have a large working vocabulary on immigration coined by our collective experiences. For that is when its nebulous halo will get slightly better coordinates.

If we are to deepen our discussion, if we must ensure that the richness which our “diversity” has injected into the system, is not submerged into some dense mass of homogeneity, then we must take care to articulate and encapsulate all the insights our immigrant status has bestowed upon us. The mere act of such acknowledgement will reassure those newly uprooted and alone while opening the eyes of the non-immigrant to a world they shall then perceive with far greater empathy.

We must articulate the loss of a once familiar language, the joy of occasionally hearing a word once commonplace and reveling in all its contours and nuances, the reluctance of being put in a ambassadorial position (“So what exactly does this symbol signify …?”).

Physical distance places a slow, corrosive dilution on our relationships. The gain and loss of friends. Missed weddings. The resigned acceptance of an Internet-discovered home remedy as woeful substitute to a grandmother’s, which, physical proximity allowed, would be passed down through the generations.

Otherwise, those who have vicariously shared these experiences shall attempt, as they do now, to dissect and condense our imagery to fit the conformed dimensions. Reducing to caricature our struggles with a new language, new neighbors, and new workplaces; always focusing on the tangible, the easily perceptible; and tidily neglecting the harder and more elusive aspects of our journeys.

Language is fluid, and at times an imperfect tool. But let us not make it a highly imperfect one due to laziness. And while we find words to convey the gamut of emotions that well up inside us when we hop from one flight to another, all the while hoping to capture the creases on those faces standing across the terminal for posterity, we must understand that we measure our losses by their absences. We must accept that our quantification of our losses has stemmed out of a consciousness of their absences.

Nevertheless, those absences have been gifts, enriching our perceptions. The piercing pain of those losses and the richness of our gains is what we must more adeptly articulate.

When we choose to name something, we acknowledge its presence. We cannot describe or deal with what we do not know or will not admit. Loss and abundance have innumerable shades.

But it is time we added a few more shades to our palette. One word at a time. And even though there may be times when our hearts ache, we must chose to remember that this is a great time to be a nomad.

STORY INDEX

PEOPLE >

Profile of a young immigrant author
URL: http://www.masslive.com/living/republican/index.ssf?/base/living-0/1082452771112062.xml

A link to various immigrant authors (with bibliographies of their work)
URL: http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Contents.html#Authors

Commentary >

NPR’s audio piece on the immigrant experience
URL: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3075005

Radhika Sharma’s perspectives on immigration in India Currents
URL: http://www.indiacurrents.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=7cc0e622759345fb7373b739077e5726
http://www.indiacurrents.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=d8f17cfd5b64be9c5fc5e969ee9bff19

A potpourri of the various facets of American immigration
URL: http://immigration.about.com/
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/pages/listmigratiodo.html

KQED FM San Francisco weeklong dedication to new Americans
URL: http://www.kqed.org/programs/program-archive.jsp?progID=RD62&ResultStart=121&ResultCount=10&type=radio

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News

Seduced by the Stars and Stripes?

For a few months, it seemed policy differences between the United States and Canada had thawed and a new relationship was blossoming. But June's election expressed a lack of confidence in Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Liberal Party, leaving President George Bush’s plans for a continental missile defense shield hanging in the balance.


(Illustration by David Benque)

Sharing the world’s longest undefended border, Canada and the United States have benefited from a long history of peaceful and friendly relations, including more than 80 treaty-level defense agreements, more than 250 memoranda of understanding between the two defense departments, and approximately 145 bilateral forums in which defense matters are discussed. Yet, in recent history, during the George W. Bush/Jean Chrétien years, this relationship endured difficulties: from the recently resolved trade dispute over softwood lumber tariffs; to the banning of Canadian beef exports after a single case of mad cow disease; to the gaffe that resulted in the firing of Chrétien’s aide, Françoise Ducros, who called Bush a “moron.”

The cooling between Ottawa and Washington reached an icy low when Canada declared its steadfast opposition to the war in Iraq, and refused to partake in the war effort. Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, made it very clear how “disappointed” Bush was with Canada’s decision.

However, after Chrétien retired in December 2003, and Canada’s new Prime Minister Paul Martin took the helm, relations had begun to thaw. A priority was placed on improving bilateral relations, including expediting discussions on Canada’s participation in the missile defense system (MDS). In a nation with a long and proud history of being pacifist and non-antagonistic, this seemed to mark a divisive shift in policy, which could have drastically altered Canada’s peaceful standing in the world.

Then, six months after taking office, Martin was forced to fight for reelection and win his own mandate to govern with the confidence of the Canadian people. The election took place amongst widespread public anger and disillusion over corrupt practices in the Liberal Party after Auditor General Sheila Fraser found that the Liberal government had funneled $100 million of taxpayer money into the coffers of Liberal-friendly advertising agencies in the forms of fees and commissions.

At the June 28 elections, Martin’s party won, but only narrowly, gaining 135 out of 308 seats in parliament. Being 20 seats short of a majority means that the party will have to compromise their agenda and collaborate on policy with the other stakeholders in parliament: the Conservatives on the right, the New Democratic Party (NDP) on the left, and the pro-sovereignty, yet largely left, Bloc Québécois Party. Teetering in the balance is whether America will gain financial and logistical cooperation in its vision of a continental missile defense system, or have the door shut in its face.

The benefits of public apathy

As early as November 15, 2003, the day after Martin’s coronation ceremony in Toronto, he stressed Canada’s eagerness to participate in discussions on the Bush administration’s missile defense system, saying: “We’re talking about the defense of North America. Canada has to be at the table.”

Martin’s priority of improving bilateral relations moved up the echelons of parliament, with the establishment of a permanent cabinet committee and a House of Commons committee on Canada-United States relations. Member of Parliament Scott Brison, who defected from the Progressive Conservative Party to the Liberals, was appointed to this portfolio. When Brison ran unsuccessfully for the Progressive Conservative Party leadership in spring 2003, he advocated a far-reaching partnership with the United States for the creation of a “seamless border.”

In the past, Canada’s position on the missile defense system has wavered from outward opposition to meek caution. Although bilateral talks proceeded between Canada’s former Defense Minister John McCallum, who served in Chrétien’s cabinet, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2003, they were highly secretive and substantial results were not revealed. One reason for the silence may have been the widespread disinterest among average Canadians.

In February, when I asked random people in Toronto’s diverse neighborhoods about their thoughts on Canada’s role in the missile defense system, most told me that they hadn’t heard anything about it, or that the topic didn’t interest them. Yet no one wanted to be quoted as an “uninformed” person.

A 28-year-old student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, who plans to teach high school in the fall, asked to remain anonymous and admitted that he doesn’t follow politics very closely. Queried about his country’s change in stance, he said: “I don’t know anything about the missile defense system. I don’t recall seeing a single newscast on this almost sci-fi thing that you’re describing.” When I asked him if he thought Canada should collaborate with the United States, he flatly replied: “I guess it would depend on how serious the threat would be. I don’t know.”

A residential youth worker who was attending a Valentine’s Day party, Michelle Hadida, 25, agreed that the subject hasn’t caught the attention of most Canadians. “Not many people know what’s going on,” she said. “You don’t hear about [the missile defense system] in the news. Usually people will flick on the 6 o’clock or 11 o’clock news for a quick update of what’s going on in the world, and because they’re not being exposed to this on the news, the chances of them looking it up on their own time is very slim.”

Under cover of public apathy, the issue had gained momentum in Ottawa. Canada’s most recent Defense Minister, David Pratt opposed the Chrétien government’s refusal to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq. However, he just lost his seat in parliament with his district of Nepean-Carlton, just outside of Ottawa, falling to Conservative Pierre Poilievre on Election Day.

Pratt was seen as more hawkish than his predecessor, John McCallum. In commenting on Pratt’s appointment to Defense and what could be expected, John Ibbitson of The Globe and Mail called him “a firm believer in the need for Canada to sign on to the continental missile defense system” and  “as Americanophillic as a Liberal can get.” With Pratt’s ouster, Canadians are now left in suspense, waiting to see whether Martin’s new appointment to the defense portfolio will follow Pratt’s lead and cozy up to the Americans or put more distance between the two neighbors.

Margaret Rao shows her solidarity with the New Democratic Party’s opposition to the missile defense shield by holding up one of the Party’s advertisements. Rao, who lives in Toronto, thinks most Canadians wouldn’t go along with plans for Canada to participate in this feat if the issue were more publicized.

Doubting Thomases

Back in February, activists like Margaret Rao, 51, a theologian, and mother of three young adult daughters, were worried about the public’s lack of knowledge. Seated at her home in Toronto’s little Italy neighborhood, Rao clutched an ad by the NDP outlining her party’s opposition to the missile defense system. “Paul Martin knew whom he was choosing [in appointing Pratt to the defense portfolio]. It’s already skewed towards making friends with the States,” she said. “We need to have a national debate on this. I think most Canadians wouldn’t go along with this — especially if we got the facts out.”

The facts Rao thought Canadians would take exception to include the highly questionable effectiveness of the system, in which a sensor in space discovers an object headed for the United States, ground-based infrared sensors and radar systems track it, and the United States launches a missile to intercept it. If the system worked, it would give the United States the power to protect itself from incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMBs), whether launched without intent, or from what the Bush administration has commonly referred to as “rogue states,” such as Iran and North Korea, which is predicted to develop the capacity to launch a missile towards the United States by 2005.

If it worked — there’s the rub. Such things also worry Alex Carter, 27, a post-graduate journalism student at Ryerson University in Toronto. In between classes, Carter took a moment to express his doubt. “I haven’t heard anything about it possibly working,” he said. “It just seems like a waste of money, so until they can prove that it works and prove that there’s a threat, then I think we’d be doing it only to appease the Americans.”  

Although the United States has a long history of researching the viability of ballistic missile defense systems dating back to the 1940s, no definitive results have been yielded. President Richard Nixon briefly deployed a system in the mid-1970s that was then abandoned due to technical difficulties. President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) of the 1980s revived the concept of ballistic missile defense. Essentially, SDI was based on exotic, futuristic space technologies and ambitiously geared towards countering the entire nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union. Due to technological problems, high cost-estimates, and the end of the Cold War, the initiative was never implemented.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, some see missile defense as unjustifiable. Such is the opinion of 24 year-old artist Krystal Ann Kraus, who has been banned from entering the United States due to rallies she’s attended in opposition to U.S. free trade agreements with the Americas. Unwinding with a Smirnoff Ice at an Irish pub in the upscale Yonge and Eglinton area of Toronto, she felt that a clear threat to justify pursuit of such an endeavor did not exist.

“It’s silly to think that we should spend our resources and energy in tax dollars in fighting some weird, almost ‘cartoonish’ type of character, like power rangers taking over space,” she said. “Altron’s not the enemy. Most poor nations can’t even dream about occupying that realm. It’s an area of the rich, and the rich are going to control it because they’re the ones with the funds to get up there.”

The Council for a Livable World, a U.S.-based organization advocating arms control, points to an analysis prepared by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in which two official reports five years apart reached a remarkably similar conclusion, affirming that missile defense deployment is “a rush to failure.”

The Center for Arms Control compared a 1998 study issued by a panel headed by former Air Force Chief of Staff Larry Welch and a report released by the General Accounting Office (GAO) in June 2003. Both reports suggest that political pressures are driving the missile defense program, leading to premature deployment of an inadequately tested system. The GAO report explains: “Because of time pressures, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), must include components that have not been demonstrated as mature and ready for system integration into a particular element …Testing to date has provided only limited data for determining whether the system will work as intended in 2004.”

Fear makes friends

In the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton agreed in principle to the need for a missile defense system, in terms of policy, he sought to remain consistent with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. Intended to set limits on defensive missile systems, the ABM Treaty is credited for what has been approximately 30 years of nuclear stability around the world. However, under pressure from members of Congress, the National Missile Defense Act was passed in 1999, allowing for the deployment of a missile defense system as soon as technologically possible.

Then in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, amid a climate of fear, Bush scrapped the ABM Treaty on December 13, 2001, and gave an impassioned speech. Of the historic treaty, he said: “It hinders our government’s ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks. I cannot and will not allow the United States to remain in a treaty that prevents us from developing effective defenses.”

Thus in 2002, the United States began work on adding components to allow for layered and overlapping missile defense coverage. On December 17, 2002, Bush announced the United States would deploy an initial operational ballistic missile defense (BMD) system for the defense of North America by the fall of 2004. Costs, already totaling $91 billion on the missile defense system over the past two decades — with exorbitant spending by successive Republican- and Democrat-led administrations — will continue to rise as progress is made.

While an understanding exists which exempts Canada from bearing any costs of the system as long as it allows its airspace to be used, this principle has recently been called into question. On Sunday, February 22, 2004, in a Question Period segment on CTV News, former Defense Minister Pratt refused to rule out the possibility that Canada would make a cash contribution.

York University Law student Stephen Tolfo, 24, feels that it’s in Canada’s best long-term interest to be complicit, regardless of any associated costs. A long-standing supporter of bilateral defense arrangements, he’s adamant that people need to remember there is a real threat. “Bush knows what he’s talking about, and as Canadians, we can’t afford to sit out and expect the Americans to take care of us when something goes wrong,” he said. “We need to be pro-active. The key is that it’s a defense system, not an offense system.”

An additional pressure is the fear that Canada’s role in the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which was established in 1958 to monitor and defend North American airspace, would be diminished if it doesn’t sign on. Already, progress on the discussions has resulted in an agreement in principle that MDS operations would be placed under the auspices of NORAD, providing that Canada endorses the controversial system.

Protecting Canada or gaining points with the United States?

On February 5, 2004, the C. Warren Goldring Annual Lecture on Canada-United States relations at the Royal Ontario Museum in the heart of downtown Toronto drew a distinguished crowd of guests, including representatives from numerous conglomerates and Canada’s largest banks that line the city’s financial center on Bay Street. In a lecture theater filled to capacity, Leon Panetta, Clinton’s former chief of staff, delivered a speech, “The Challenge in Washington: Governing by Leadership or Crisis.”

Panetta, like many others, is concerned with the effectiveness of the system. Asked how legitimate the threat posed by so-called rogue states is and what, if any, role Canada should play in the initiative, Panetta cautioned: “Ultimately, I think we do have to be concerned about what can happen with terrorism and the weapons that can be used. But I do believe right now, that to embark on a missile defense system with all the costs associated with it, and with the questionable technology that’s involved with it, would not be in our interest.”

“Let’s be careful,” he warned,  “particularly at a time of a $500 billion annual deficit, in throwing more money at systems that ultimately can be proven as unable to protect our security.”

Despite such warnings from experienced statesmen, there is strong support for the pursuit of a missile defense system from influential corporations on both sides of the border who stand to make money from it. Pressure on the Canadian side comes from Canadian aerospace companies and business lobby groups such as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which has set up a CEO Action Group to push for closer business and military ties with the United States. Derek Burney, chief of staff to former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and current president of CAE Inc., is seen as a key stakeholder. His company is already supplying U.S. aerospace and defense giant Boeing with software systems for the missile defense system.  

While corporations are behind it, the government’s possible public expenditure on the system has Canadian citizens expressing concern. Advocating a social justice agenda, Barry Weisleder, of the activist oriented NDP Socialist Caucus, feels “it’s an incredibly lavish waste of funds.” Demonstrating outside the Israeli Consulate on Bloor Street West in opposition of the controversial wall that Israel is erecting in the occupied West Bank, he lamented: “There’s no evidence that such a system is even capable of bringing down a barrage of incoming missiles; but even if it were, it’s an attempt by the U.S. to seize control — not only of planet earth, but also of outer space. What an incredible waste of money at a time when hospitals and schools are crumbling and social programs are depleted and people are dying in the cold outdoors for lack of housing. It’s just an abomination.”

Professor Ron Stagg, chair of Ryerson University’s history department, is concerned that “the issue hasn’t been debated to the extent that it should in a democratic society like Canada.” This viewpoint was echoed in a May 2003 segment of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio Commentary broadcast. Steven Staples, a military analyst with the Ottawa-based Polaris Institute, an organization that promotes principles of social justice in grassroots organizations, pointed out one of Martin’s shortcomings on the missile defense program: “He doesn’t talk much about missile threats to Canada. Instead, he seems to talk about improving relations with the Americans.”

This point has been a crucial one for a substantial amount of Canadians who see the threat to the North American continent as largely elusive. Richard Gwyn, an acclaimed Canadian political affairs writer, argues, “The missile defense program itself, is the dumbest military idea since the French nobles at Agincourt put on such heavy armor they couldn’t move in their saddles. It will provide an unworkable defense — even rigged tests most often fail against a non-existent threat. What ‘rogue state’ is going to commit suicide by lobbing one missile, even if it actually had it, at Washington?”

Paul Hamel, of Science for Peace, a Canada-based organization concerned about issues of peace, justice, and the environment, is concerned that Canada’s decision will hinge on appeasing the Americans, and become a make-up gesture for the government’s refusal to support the war in Iraq. “I think that the definitive goal of blindly signing on to such a useless and unjustified endeavor is simply to patch up relations with our neighbors south of the border who, quite frankly, still hold a grudge against us,” he said.

Similarly, Linda McQuaig, a Toronto-based author and political commentator, also sees the politics of appeasement at play here. She writes, “If Ottawa does join the missile project, it will undoubtedly insist that the decision had absolutely nothing to do with appeasing Washington, that we — entirely on our own — came up with the idea of abandoning Canada’s longstanding commitment to international arms control.”

Canadians becoming more … American?

McQuaig presents a compelling argument. After all, Canada is a founding member of the Missile Technology Control Regime that was established in 1987 as a means to counter the threat of weapons of mass destruction proliferation by controlling the transfer of missile equipment, material, and related technologies. Canada was also instrumental in the development of the 2002 Hague Code of Conduct against ballistic missile proliferation, the first multilateral agreement that established principles regarding ballistic missiles.

Scott Peterson, 42, a former stockbroker and current journalism student at Ryerson University, feels that Canada’s role in the missile defense system is highly problematic. “I think it breaks a lot of treaties we have. I think it’s isolationist and protectionist in a global society and I think it’s just wrong,” he said.

Moreover, concern exists over how support for the missile defense system will threaten and reverse hard fought gains in the struggle to ensure that nations comply with non-proliferation policies. Llyod Axworthy, a former Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister and current director and CEO of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Colombia, and Michael Byers, a professor of law and director of Canadian Studies at Duke University, write, “There’s good reason to think that support for BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] would curtail Canada’s foreign policy options. In fact, it would entail an abrupt change in our policy on the non-proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction, moving from a model of multilateral regulation and cooperation to a confrontational approach based on the threat of force.”  

Furthermore, a majority of Canadians feel that Canada, popularly labeled “a decaffeinated version of the United States” by Canadian political commentator Charlotte Gray, should struggle to level out the playing field with the United States to better assert itself as an independent nation with distinct values.

In an article featured in Maclean’s magazine on February 9, 2004, titled “Hope you Lose, eh,” an exclusive poll found that a mere 15 percent of Canadians support Bush’s re-election in November 2004. Jonathon Gatehouse wrote, “Despite a spate of polls showing a broad desire for improved relations with the United States after the often rocky Chrétien years, there is a sense that this administration isn’t one we want to do business with.”

Barry W. Cook of Toronto personified this concern in the opinion/editorial section of The Globe and Mail on November 19, 2003. Just as Martin was set to take the reins of government, he expressed apprehension over the extent to which U.S. influence permeates Canada. He wrote, “Canada is about to retire a Prime Minister and gain a CEO [referring to Martin’s business background] … Here’s hoping the head office of Canada (Limited) is not Washington, nor its chairman in Crawford, Texas.”

Such an editorial points to a popular cultural divide that many Canadians feel. The question remains whether they will demand that distinct policies be adopted in order to affirm Canada’s traditional commitment to the principles of multilateralism, disarmament, peace, and the rule of law. Yet perhaps Jonathon Gatehouse of Maclean’s put it perfectly when he wrote, “In Canada, there is still no surer kiss of death for a politician than caving into American pressure.”

With the policy-making authority of the Liberals being drastically curtailed in light of the recent election, Martin is now in the unique position of looking left or right as he vies for unabashed cooperation from the other parties in Parliament in order to stay in power and pass legislation.

While Jack Layton, leader of the NDP, affirmed that he would continue his vigorous campaign against Canada’s participation in the missile defense system, along with Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québécois Party, whose platform also opposed such collaboration, Martin may have to look towards the Conservative Party, Canada’s version of what in effect is the “Republicans-lite” for support. Its leader, Stephen Harper, is the only politician who campaigned vociferously in support of Canada’s participation in Bush’s pet project.

After a hotly contested race, Martin and Harper may end up forming an uncanny alliance on the issue of missile defense. The two dignified politicians who spent much of their time on the campaign trail trading insults and jabs may end up standing shoulder to shoulder with one another, gazing south with stars and stripes in their eyes.

STORY INDEX

ORGANIZATIONS>

Department of National Defense and Canadian Forces
URL: http://www.forces.gc.ca

United States Department of Defense
URL: http://dod.mil

Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars
URL: http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=1420

Council for a Livable World
URL: http://www.clw.org

Liu Institute for Global Issues
URL: http://www.ligi.ubc.ca

Science for Peace
URL: http://scienceforpeace.sa.utoronto.ca

Brookings Institute
URL: http://www.brookings.edu

“

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MAILBAG: The marrying kind


Instead of getting into a debate about gay marriage, let’s take a moment to examine what the debate raging across America tells us about the status of gays and lesbians.

First, let’s make sure when we’re talking about gay marriage, we’re talking about the same thing. The NLGA primer defines it as … okay, just check out the primer.
The highlights: “Advocates for the right to marry seek the legal rights and obligations of marriage, not a variation of it.” Gays and lesbians who want to marry want to be seen as equal participants in society – not variations.    

On to the debate. Gay marriage was supposed to be ultra-divisive. Many on the left predicted it would jeopardize Democrats’ chance at the White House. A few on the right proposed a Constitutional amendment to ban the marriages, an amendment that’s about to come up for Congressional debate.

Back to my original question: What does the debate – in this case, opposition to gay marriage – say about American attitudes toward gays and lesbians? Does it mean Americans oppose equal participation and rights for members of the gay community? The same CNN/USAToday/Gallup survey that found increased support for the anti-gay marriage amendment in May also found “A modest increase in the number of Americans who support giving gay couples some (my emphasis) of the legal rights that heterosexual couples enjoy.”

Moderates are leaning toward granting gays and lesbians “some” as opposed to “all” rights. So many on the left hail gay marriage as a victory. They celebrated ceremonies in San Francisco and Cambridge even as Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney commandeered marriage licenses and threatened clerks. Yeah, yeah, it’s emotional, a triumph of visibility, especially for older couples who have endured decades of bigotry.
        
No one may respect them the morning after, but on their wedding day, they can be happy. Which is fine, if you belong to the school that says it doesn’t matter what the rest of the country thinks/says, or as The Village Voice newlywed Richard Goldstein says, “You can have your wedding cake and eat it, too. Marriage is what you make of it, not what it makes of you.”

But of course it matters. And that’s why I think this debate is so telling. Because gay marriage came out of the closet in 2004, 35 years after Stonewall, and America is shocked. America doesn’t know what to do. Unless gays and lesbians have money, look straight, and tread softly, they cannot live the good life. So far, the wedding debate only underlines how little we’ve changed. What Carl Wittman argued in his 1971 “Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto” is still true: ”The system we’re under now is a direct oppression and it’s not a question of getting our share of the pie. The pie is rotten.”

—Anonymous

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Squeaky wheels


In the stead of viable solutions, dismay has pervaded most media coverage of California’s juvenile justice system. The two most recent youth inmate suicides, combined with documented human rights violations occurring at California youth correctional facilities nicknamed “gladitorial schools”, have caught the eye and fired the imagination of the California public.

Fortunately, popular response to this coverage has been equally dramatic.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle references a recent protest which compared Iraqi prisoner and youth offender abuse. Candid criticism voiced by former California youth inmates fuels the demands by California activists for the closure of the California Youth Authority (CYA). In the words of former San Francisco youth inmate Will Roy: “You can’t build something effective on top of something rotten.”

After months of awareness that the CYA must transform its “corrections model” currently at work, Californians are only just beginning to envision successful alternatives.

On July 1, Missouri’s youth prison program made the front page of the Los Angeles Times for its innovative, nurturing approach that yields results. Only 30 percent of detained youth return to prison in Missouri, while California is making headlines for its 90 percent recidivism rate. Jenifer Warren presents an angle in her Thursday article, “Spare the Rod, Save the Child,” as unusual as it is elegant, shifting the spotlight from what California is doing wrong toward what Missouri has done right. In Missouri,

“[I]nmates, referred to as ‘kids,’ live in dorms that feature beanbag chairs, potted plants, stuffed animals and bunk beds with smiley-face comforters. Guards – who are called ‘youth specialists’ and must have college degrees – go by their first names and don’t hesitate to offer hugs.”

The usual suspicions abound toward the application of Missouri’s program to California’s system. California’s Undersecretary of Youth and Adult Corrections, Kevin Carruth, is one such skeptic: “Everything I hear about Missouri tells me its program works great for the population they have, but our demographics are very different.”

The drama of the situation is compounded by potential financial threat looming on the horizon. Though gang-related homicides across the country have increased 50 percent over the last five years, proposed cutbacks in state and federal funding endanger California’s at-risk youth programs. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger may terminate $134 million, two-thirds of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Family funding for juvenile prevention and probation, in the upcoming year. In addition, a recent White House proposal would cut 40 percent next year in the federal Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grant, from which California received $4.7 million in 2004. The grant would be eliminated entirely by 2005 if the proposal passes.

In the face of all these obstacles, Missouri’s Youth Penal System Chief Mark Steward’s words and presence must not be underestimated. They attest that a failing system can be completely overthrown and redesigned, with excellent results:

“The old corrections model was a failure; most kids left us worse off than when they came in. So we threw away that culture, and now we focus on treatment, on making connections with these guys and showing them another way. It works.”

As for Caruth’s doubts, Warren writes: “Steward said he believes that his state’s success can be replicated in California, despite the different mix of offenders.”

Time is of the essence; action is essential. The proven success of Missouri’s system may be the best tool California has to reshape a system that cannot be ignored. And thanks to alternative coverage presented by visionary journalists like Jenifer Warren, solutions emerge where only complaints existed before.

—Michaele Shapiro

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Does “October Surprise” cast Pakistan in lead?


It is alleged that in the months leading up to the 1980 election between Ronald Reagan and incumbent Jimmy Carter that representatives of the Reagan campaign conspired to postpone the release of the hostages held by Iran until after the October election. This “October Surprise,” it is said, helped propel the so-called “Great Communicator” into the White House. Could it be that we’re in for another surprise this October?

The thought of our foreign policy being reduced to mere props in a domestic electoral play is deeply disturbing. But if an article in The New Republic holds water, that’s exactly what we’re looking at. It alleges that Pakistani security officials have been instructed by U.S. officials to deliver HVTs [high value targets] such as Osama bin Laden on specific days timed to coincide with the October election.          

The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs [high value targets] by the election. According to one source in Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), “The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections.” Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations — according to a recently departed intelligence official, “no timetable[s]” were discussed in 2002 or 2003 — but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, “The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections.” (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan’s Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to 10 years.)

A third source, an official who works under ISI’s director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed TNR that the Pakistanis “have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must.” What’s more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: “The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq’s] meetings in Washington.” Says McCormack: “I’m aware of no such comment.” But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July” — the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

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Living by the hour


It’s no secret that the Bush administration hasn’t been a friend to the economy — at least not to the people who occupy the lower rungs of the economy.

In light of Bush’s reign of poverty, John Kerry has proposed increasing the minimum wage — which has remained at $5.15/hour since 1997 — to $7/hour by 2007.

Many people working in low-wage jobs often can’t get 40 hours/week. But for those who do manage to get 40 hours/week for all 52 weeks of the year, this increase translates into a meager annual income of $13,680 before taxes. In many instances, that salary is not accompanied by health insurance. And just imagine if you were a single parent with children to support …

Pay close attention to Kerry’s suggestion that increasing the minimum wage to $7/hour “would provide a family with enough money to buy ten months of groceries or pay for eight months of rent.”

His statement is a good indicator of the need to put living wage laws at the top of the national agenda. As Kerry’s statement implies, working full-time for $7/hour doesn’t guarantee a year of groceries or rent. The fact is that about 60 percent of workers in the United States earn less than $14/hour — before taxes. Most of these people only get by if they team up with another breadwinner. So even with this seemingly drastic minimum wage increase, single mothers and others without a second wage earner would still be forced to choose between food and shelter and working multiple jobs. Either way, they and their families will be forced to endure emotional and physical stress that is unsustainable over the long-term.

In her critically acclaimed book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich terms this unenviable predicament “acute distress.” What might be minor inconveniences for some can put such low-wage workers out of some much-needed money — or even cost them their jobs. The result, sadly, is that many hardworking people have no choice but to eat one meager meal a day, toil in spite of illness, avoid going to the doctor when they have acute problems, work two or three jobs just to make ends meet — even sleep in their cars or on the street.

Unfortunately, increasing the minimum wage still won’t drastically alter the predicament faced by these people. While the proposed $1.85 increase is an important first step, it’s not enough. Not only is it important for low-wage workers to vote this year to ensure that they elect the man supporting the wage increase, but it’s also important for those who don’t have to sleep in their cars to push for a wage that allows for a sustainable lifestyle.

We’re not talking Armani suits here — just enough food for a year and enough to pay the rent and get health care as needed.  

If we don’t push for more livable wages, two things are nearly certain: we’ll be paying exorbitant amounts as a nation (and as individual taxpayers) for welfare and Medicaid, and the poverty rate will continue to climb as the cost of living rises across the country.

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For whom the bells toll


Life would be much easier if I could add my parents to my health insurance benefits.

I’m not married. I don’t have children. When I get my insurance papers in the mail, I look wistfully at the section that asks if I have any dependents. I plan to be taking care of my parents eventually, if I’m lucky and they live long enough. If what I did during the day could contribute directly to the well-being of the most important people in my life, I would approach work from a completely different standpoint.

In the United States, married heterosexual couples receive many financial and legal benefits which are denied to other equally interdependent pair relationships. As American University law professor Nancy Polikoff points out in an article for The Washington Blade:

“…[M]arriage is the wrong dividing line for these benefits. A young man caring for the woman who raised him should be able to cover her on his health insurance; two older sisters who pool their economic resources should not fear that the death of one will require the other to sell their home to pay estate taxes.”

A week ago, Polikoff spoke on an NPR program supporting the validity of these alternate types of pair relationships. It wasn’t until I looked her up on the Internet that I understood how similar the issues being debated in the gay community are to my own concerns about federal recognition of benefit-sharing in care-giving relationships.

In his article “Marriage: Mend it, Don’t End it,” Dale Carpenter argues for marriage. “No other relationship can quite replicate that signal,” Carpenter writes; relationships sanctified by marriage have both history and tradition on their side. In addition, the inherent expectation of endurance of marriage relationships gives the state motive to invest in marriage, conferring the benefits that make life so much easier.

Carpenter would like alternative relationships to receive benefits, but his fears overshadow his hopes:

“Polikoff probably assumes that abolishing marriage means everyone would get its goodies. At last, health care for all! Don’t bet on it. The more likely outcome is that standard marital benefits would be eliminated or reduced to help pay for benefits accorded to the newly recognized relationships. The social investment in former marriages would decrease, diminishing the return we all get from that bygone institution.”

A February article in The Advocate, “Marriage vs. Civil Unions? There’s No Comparison,” argues that a 1996 federal ban preventing gay couples from receiving “hundreds of federal marriage benefits” has left the marriage institution as the only tool gays could use to challenge that ban.

Some argue that civil unions are an equivalent substitute for marriage and that “all the rights and benefits would apply.” Polikoff disagrees, pointing out that while marriages are recognized worldwide, civil unions are not internationally recognized as an equivalent union. She writes in her article, “An End to All Marriage”:

Gay marriage will move us in the wrong direction if it limits legal recognition to married couples only.

Lesbian and gay marriage-rights activists counter criticism of their efforts by saying that the right to marry will provide a choice to gay and lesbian couples: Those who embrace the institution will have the opportunity to enter it, while those like me who find fault with it can simply choose not to marry.

This choice-based rhetoric contains an enormous fallacy. When the state gives one type of relationship more benefits and legal support than others, there is inherently some coercion and free choice is impossible.

The website www.relationshipllc.com, which advocates limited liability companies as “the new marriage model,” cites Polikoff as arguing that “organizing society around sexually connected people is wrong; the more central units are dependents and their caretakers.” Alternatives to marriage are growing, thanks to supply and demand. I don’t know whether the law or the economy is to thank for it.

It’s sad on the one hand to find that the issue of sharing benefits affects a significant part of our population, but on the other, it’s heartening to know the momentum is building in different camps. Our rights today are the direct result of the responsibilities those before us have taken on and followed through, sometimes with the knowledge that they wouldn’t live to enjoy the results in their lifetime. They must have hoped to leave the world a better place than the one they found.

Whether or not the question is as simple as whether to marry or not, the bottom line is the freedom to do so and choice. As Americans, we enjoy more rights than many other people in the world, a few of those being the right to travel, to relocate, to develop and share personal opinions, and to investigate and challenge the system that previous generations have set up for us.

—Michaele Shapiro

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Fahrenheit 9/11


Michael Moore has recently been both pilloried and feted, and in all of the furor over Fahrenheit 9/11, a number of critics have glossed over one of the more beneficial aspects of the film — its power to spark reasoned and informed debate.  

Writing in The New York Times, A.O. Scott states that Fahrenheit 9/11 “is many things: a partisan rallying cry, an angry polemic, a muckraking inquisition into the use and abuse of power. But one thing it is not is a fair and nuanced picture of the president and his policies.”

A.O. Scott is correct; Moore’s film certainly isn’t nuanced, nor is it meant to be. Fahrenheit 9/11 is more like an editorial than a documentary; it is clever, opinionated, researched, and affecting. It reminds us of the circus of the 2000 elections and the confused battle for Florida, highlights some of President Bush’s most offensively incompetent moments, and documents the human cost of the war in Iraq. Moore’s research and analysis is not exhaustive or comprehensive, but it is provocative.

While the factual and educational merit of the film is debatable, it would be a shame if Fahrenheit 9/11 served only as an anti-Bush film and a hollow and tired talking point for liberals and democrats. Fahrenheit 9/11 should act, at the very least, as a springboard for informed public debate about the American war in Iraq. Our understanding of the war in Iraq should not be limited to the sensationalized news flashes on CNN and Fox; to digest only those sound bites is to fail to see the larger historical context of America’s and George W. Bush’s relationship with the Muslim world and with the leaders in the region. While Fahrenheit 9/11’s box office earnings are impressive — the film grossed approximately $21.8 million in its first three days — let’s hope the film isn’t just preaching to the converted.

—Mimi Hanaoka

  

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Big Brother China


As impractical and as menacing as is seems, the Chinese government has issued regulations that allow the country’s mobile phone service providers to monitor all of the text messages sent and received in the country. Given that approximately 300 million Chinese mobile phone users sent over 220 billion text messages in 2003, Beijing’s latest edict is staggering both in its scope and in the damage it will do to the freedom of communication and the dissemination of news in China.

While these regulations are targeted towards identifying pornographic and the somewhat vague concept of “fraudulent content,” the Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders reports that a Chinese company involved in marketing one of the text message monitoring systems stated that “false political rumors” and “reactionary remarks,” will also be under observation.

According to Venus Info Tech, a company that sells the message monitoring software to Chinese mobile phone service and message providers, certain key words and combinations of those key words may generate an automatic alert, which will be sent to the police. China Mobile Corporation, which controls 65 percent of the Chinese mobile phone market, will implement the new and Orwellian regulations. During this past week, the government forced 20 message service providers to close shop as a punishment for insufficiently monitoring inappropriate messages.  
  
As Beijing was gleefully stifling freedom of expression and the spread of information, the residents of Hong Kong staged an enormous pro-democracy protest. On Thursday, July 1, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in Hong Kong to express their fury at Beijing’s recent decision that the citizens of Hong Kong will not be able to directly elect their leader next year. The protest was held on the seventh anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese rule; while Beijing called on the people of Hong Kong to take the opportunity to celebrate the anniversary of the handover, approximately 530,000 people — although estimates range anywhere from 200,000 to 680,000 people — marched peacefully in the 95 degree heat. The scope of the demonstration is made all the more impressive by the fact that the population of Hong Kong is a mere 6.8 million. Given that the new mobile phone regulations will target political dissent, it is precisely this kind of political demonstration and expression of discontent that is under threat.    

China’s decision to police private text messages is troubling not only because it is anathema to the concept of a free and safe exchange of ideas, but also because text messaging has proven to be profoundly influential; when the Chinese authorities attempted to cover up the SARS outbreak in 2003, it was the millions of private text messages that were sent that alerted the populace to the outbreak and exposed the government’s cover-up of the epidemic. According to The New York Times, “Text messages have also generated popular outrage about corruption and abuse cases that had received little attention in the state-controlled media.” In a nation where the media is scrupulously monitored, these new mobile phone regulations are dangerously close to choking off the last and private outlet for the exchange of ideas and the dissemination of news.    

—Mimi Hanaoka

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Happy 4th of July, Marlon


I first met Marlon Brando in my 12th grade English class, when our teacher screened The Island of Dr. Moreau one afternoon for the whole grade. It was disastrous, the kind of movie meant to be screened solely for horny high school students more interested in the opportunity to turn off the lights than watch a film.  

So, it’s not surprising that my relationship with Marlon got off to a rocky start. We didn’t meet again until college, when my housemate threw a Godfather marathon and somewhere around the same time, I watched A Streetcar Named Desire in film class. It’s hard to resist the combination of the two when viewed in close proximity: Brando’s iconic performances defined masculine sex and power for generations. If my high school English teacher had chosen carefully, he’d have had a much more attentive audience.

Brando passed away on Thursday at the age of 80. He leaves behind a legacy that separates screen acting from before Brando and after Brando, forever changing American cinema.

Like most American icons, we use Brando as malleable subject material, with infinite capacity to contain our myths and metaphors. David Thomson’s editorial in The New York Times today posits Brando as an ever-changing symbol of America’s identity confusion. It’s a tempting analogy — as Thomson writes:

At the end, he was huge, stranded, nearly alone, his life littered by the needs (or the appearance) of more and more children, and by what was reported as near penury.

Brando’s film career as simile for the ascent and plateau of the American empire isn’t a seamless fit, but it seems particularly timely as we celebrate our country’s heady birth and debate its current position (particularly if you too have seen The Island of Dr. Moreau, one of Brando’s later films). As Thomson suggests, we want our country to fulfill its potential and capitalize on its early triumphs.  Even when we celebrate our nation’s diversity of opinion and voice, we sometimes wish it would stop being so argumentative and divisive, and start acting heroic.

—Laura Louison

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The newest way to ‘click and save’


On any given day, I receive at least one or two emails from the Democratic Party, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, James Carville, or some other democratic bigwhig. I’m not quite sure why I receive these, though I know I didn’t start receiving them more than a few months ago when the push for the 2004 election began. Much of the time, these emails concern fundraising for the Kerry campaign. Today the email I received concerned fundraising to stop the genocide occuring in the Sudan.

Is it wrong that I find that a bit peculiar? Do I want the genocide to continue? No. Do I think that we’re not doing enough to speak out about it and to intervene and end the violence? Yes. But is asking for money the answer? I’m not too sure about that. Sure, any peacekeeping operations that the United Nations send to the Sudan will require considerable funds, so money will be necessary. But have we accepted the “just click here to donate” trend reigning in our inboxes at the cost of actually acting? Is there a risk that donating money — whether it’s to stop the genocide in Iraq or to fund the Kerry campaign — is just another form of whitewashing, a means to a redeem ourselves, to suggest we’ve done our job and helped others?

It seems that while funding is necessary for most campaigns in today’s world, we have to figure out a way to help those suffering with something more than the swipe of a pen or the click of a computer key. After all, all of the money in the world won’t secure the political will necessary to stop the violence. With the suffering in the Sudan increasing by the day, we don’t have long to figure this one out.

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The making of a personal war


Earlier in the year, I wrote a review of E.L. Doctorow’s millennial novel, City of God. Tonight, I watched a movie with the same title. It depicts a completely different place and time, but the story reverberates just as deeply as Doctorow’s depictions of the struggle for life in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation.

The movie is Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles’s City of God (2002). It is a harrowing journey into the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro. Take a look at the sensationalized trailer from Miramax that totally misrepresents the movie (well not totally — it has some of the elements, but completely misrepresents the narrative structure and style — that’s Hollywood folks!). The critics for once recognized a powerful piece of filmmaking, and even regular film viewers enjoy the film as can be seen by the reviews at Netflix and Amazon.  

The movie is beautifully filmed, and the story is both riveting and important — I highly recommend it. However, even more important, and sadly ignored, is a documentary, News From a Personal War, directed by Katia Lund (who is also credited as co-directing City of God), that is included on the DVD version. This is a searing look at the favelas now and the continuing cycle of violence and corruption involving police, dealers, dwellers, and increasingly, outsiders. It is powerful in that it is a glimpse into the corruption of state power, the desperation of crime/violence, and how violence breeds more violence. As an American, I kept thinking of our own situations in our own cities where the inner cities are run down, the citizens (dwellers) rightfully distrustful of an uncaring at best, more often willfully brutal or dishonest law enforcement system (go ahead, scoff — study the history of police brutality in Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Chicago, San Diego, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, etc.), and disadvantaged poor youths choosing between menial jobs with little respect and the illusionary glamour of criminal activities. This is an extremely important documentary because Lund was (amazingly) able to follow and interview special forces police, their officers, favela residents, favela dealers, their young initiates, and incarcerated gang members.  Everyone speaks with a complete candor, absent in the US, about the social structure that has led to the desperate lives of the favela residents. A high-ranking police officer even gives an enlightening dissertation on what the true role of the police is in preserving the status quo for the elites and what role brutal violence plays in suppressing possible resistance from those who are being exploited/oppressed. Please watch this important documentary and show it to others!

—Michael Benton

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personal stories. global issues.