Bad Days for Newsrooms—and Democracy

Posted on Jul 21, 2008

AP photo / Mark Lennihan

Rupert Murdoch, news tycoon and the nation’s leading employer of shrill ideologues, soap-boxes before Wall Street Journal employees who know that, no matter what the plunger from down under has to say, the good times are gone.

By Chris Hedges

The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.

All these forces have combined to strangle newspapers. And the blood on the floor, this year alone, is disheartening. Some 6,000 journalists nationwide have lost their jobs, news pages are being radically cut back and newspaper stocks have tumbled. Advertising revenues are dramatically falling off with many papers seeing double-digit drops. McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, has seen its shares fall by 77 percent this year. Lee Enterprises Inc., which owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is down 84 percent. Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today, is trading at nearly a 17-year low. The San Francisco Chronicle is now losing $1 million a week.

The Internet will not save newspapers. Although all major newspapers, and most smaller ones, have Web sites, and have had for a while, newspaper Web sites make up less than 10 percent of newspaper ad revenue. Analysts say that although Net advertising amounts to $21 billion a year, that amount is actually relatively small. So far, the really big advertisers have stayed away, either unsure of how to use the Internet or suspicious that it can’t match the viewer attention of older media.

Newspapers, when well run, are a public trust. They provide, at their best, the means for citizens to examine themselves, to ferret out lies and the abuse of power by elected officials and corrupt businesses, to give a voice to those who would, without the press, have no voice, and to follow, in ways a private citizen cannot, the daily workings of local, state and federal government. Newspapers hire people to write about city hall, the state capital, political campaigns, sports, music, art and theater. They keep citizens engaged with their cultural, civic and political life. When I began as a foreign correspondent 25 years ago, most major city papers had bureaus in Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Moscow. Reporters and photographers showed Americans how the world beyond our borders looked, thought and believed. Most of this is vanishing or has vanished.

We live under the happy illusion that we can transfer news-gathering to the Internet. News-gathering will continue to exist, as it does on this Web site and sites such as ProPublica and Slate, but these traditions now have to contend with a new, widespread and ideologically driven partisanship that dominates the dissemination of views and information, from Fox News to blogger screeds. The majority of bloggers and Internet addicts, like the endless rows of talking heads on television, do not report. They are largely parasites who cling to traditional news outlets. They can produce stinging and insightful commentary, which has happily seen the monopoly on opinion pieces by large papers shattered, but they rarely pick up the phone, much less go out and find a story. Nearly all reporting—I would guess at least 80 percent—is done by newspapers and the wire services. Take that away and we have a huge black hole.

Those who rely on the Internet gravitate to sites that reinforce their beliefs. The filtering of information through an ideological lens, which is destroying television journalism, defies the purpose of reporting. Journalism is about transmitting information that doesn’t care what you think. Reporting challenges, countermands or destabilizes established beliefs. Reporting, which is time-consuming and often expensive, begins from the premise that there are things we need to know and understand, even if these things make us uncomfortable. If we lose this ethic we are left with pandering, packaging and partisanship. We are left awash in a sea of competing propaganda. Bloggers, unlike most established reporters, rarely admit errors. They cannot get fired. Facts, for many bloggers, are interchangeable with opinions. Take a look at The Drudge Report. This may be the new face of what we call news.

When the traditional news organizations go belly up we will lose a vast well of expertise and information. Our democracy will suffer a body blow. Not that many will notice. The average time a reader of The New York Times spends with the printed paper is about 45 minutes. The average time a viewer spends on The New York Times Web site is about seven minutes. There is a difference between browsing and reading. And the Web is built for browsing rather than for reading. When there is a long piece on the Internet, most of us have to print it out to get through it.

The rise of our corporate state has done the most, however, to decimate traditional news-gathering. Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., General Electric and Viacom control nearly everything we read, watch, hear and ultimately think. And news that does not make a profit, as well as divert viewers from civic participation and challenging the status quo, is not worth pursuing. This is why the networks have shut down their foreign bureaus. This is why cable newscasts, with their chatty anchors, all look and sound like the “Today” show. This is why the FCC, in an example of how far our standards have fallen, defines shows like Fox’s celebrity gossip program “TMZ" and the Christian Broadcast Network’s “700 Club” as “bona fide newscasts.” This is why television news personalities, people like Katie Couric, have become celebrities earning, in her case, $15 million a year. This is why newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are being ruthlessly cannibalized by corporate trolls like Sam Zell, turned into empty husks that focus increasingly on boutique journalism. Corporations are not in the business of news. They hate news, real news. Real news is not convenient to their rape of the nation. Real news makes people ask questions. They prefer to close the prying eyes of reporters. They prefer to transform news into another form of mindless amusement and entertainment.

A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.

We are cleverly entertained during our descent. We have our own version of ancient Rome’s bread and circuses with our ubiquitous and elaborate spectacles, sporting events, celebrity gossip and television reality shows. Societies in decline, as the Roman philosopher Cicero wrote, see their civic and political discourse contaminated by the excitement and emotional life of the arena. And the citizens in these degraded societies, he warned, always end up ruled by a despot, a Nero or a George W. Bush.

http://www.chomsky.info/debates/20060324.htm

Some of my favorites:

Austin, Tex.: From a sociolinguistic perspective, do you think that the way that the US conveys messages is affecting the perception of the US negatively in the international community? If so, what would you suggest to government officials to keep in mind as they shape public statements?

Noam Chomsky: It's not a matter of public relations and rhetorical style but of actions. It's the actions and policies that have left the US government remarkably isolated, feared and often hated to an extent with no historical precedent. International polls show that very clearly, in the past few years.

Washington, D.C.: I've read a lot of your works and i can't figure out where exactly to locate you in terms of political philosophy: social democrat, socialist, communist? One useful barometer would be to know if you believe in a right to private property? if, yes, what are the limits of that right?

Noam Chomsky: The terms have been so debased that they are hardly usable. I think a decent society should protect rights to private property within limits, but not concentrations of private power that infringe on the freedom and rights of others, including exploitation of labor, and that convert any democratic forms into what have been called sometimes "hierarchical democracies," like ours, in which some have vastly greater influence over public policy than others. Spelling all of this out is a complex matter that raises many issue and problems that are impossible to address here.

Lancaster, U.K: What do you feel are the limits to 'free speech' given the arguments recently over racial hatred and religious intolerance?

Noam Chomsky: My feeling is that the Supreme Court reached a reasonable standard of protection of speech in the 1960s, a standard higher than any other country in the world, to my knowledge. In brief, speech should be protected up to participation in imminent criminal action. So if you and I go into a store to rob it, and I say "shoot," that's not protected. Like all judicial decisions and legislation, this leaves plenty of gray areas, including many of great significance that are rarely discussed: advocacy of imminent war crimes, such as aggression, for example. I think we would all agree that such speech should be protected, despite the often horrific consequences, but it's worth noting that that stretches the doctrine to its limits.

Washington, D.C.: Do you believe that Latin America can be successful in developing alternatives to Washington Consensus neoliberal policy and do you believe that Globalization is a real thing as often portrayed by writers like Thomas Friedman?

Noam Chomsky: The term "globalization," like most terms of public discourse, has two meanings: its literal meaning, and a technical sense used for doctrinal purposes. In its literal sense, "globalization" means international integration. Its strongest proponents since its origins have been the workers movements and the left (which is why unions are called "internationals"), and the strongest proponents today are those who meet annually in the World Social Forum and its many regional offshoots. In the technical sense defined by the powerful, they are described as "anti-globalization," which means that they favor globalization directed to the needs and concerns of people, not investors,financial institutions and other sectors of power, with the interests of people incidental. That's "globalization" in the technical doctrinal sense. Latin America is now exploring new and often promising paths in rejecting the doctrinal notions of "globalization," and also in the remarkable growth of popular movements and authentic participation in the political systems. How successful this will be is more a matter for action than for speculation.

What Is Globalization? - Noam Chomsky

Free Market Fantasies by Noam Chomsky 1/5

A very bad loss yesterday. Really fucking sucks. I love this little man's ability to tell the venom truth with laughter as an end result. He was a genius (bio)-- the fucker knew every damn subject available. At 71 an ardent vegetarian died of heart failure? I mean come on how the fuck does that happened?!

Amy Goodman comments on him

Uprising! mp3 excerpts on religion/human rights

2008_06_24_carlin.mp3

DemocracyNow!

google news aggregate

village voice remembers

washington post

washington post 2

“We were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free, so they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto of this country ought to be? You give us a color, we’ll wipe it out.”

The Populist UprisingPosted on Jun 5, 2008

By David Sirota

American history is the history of populist uprisings. From the Revolutionary War to the coalfield wars, from labor organizers to anti-tax crusaders, from the New Deal to the current conservative era, backlashes to the status quo have defined every major political era. These uprisings have given us candidates from Goldwater to Dean, and presidents from Roosevelt to Reagan—and the populist uprising that delivered Barack Obama the Democratic presidential nomination means history could be forged once again.

What are populist uprisings? Loosely defined, they are a welling up of anger toward the established order—revolts that are often the precursor to a full-fledged social movement. The uprising against inequality during the Great Depression fueled the labor movement and the New Deal, which raised wages and created the middle class. The uprising against Jim Crow laws in the 1960s became the civil rights movement, which made America more equal. The uprising against liberalism during the late 1970s became the conservative movement of the 1980s, which deregulated the economy and fed the military-industrial complex.

It is that rebellion three decades ago that tells us we are indeed experiencing another uprising.

Just like the late 1970s, America currently faces the telltale signs of all insurrections: an economic emergency, a financial meltdown, an energy crisis and a national security quagmire.

Political analysts say this is bad news for the right because George W. Bush sits atop today’s mess, and conservatives have responded by running away from the president and by attempting to channel the outrage into their old anti-tax, anti-immigrant, anti-government agenda. But that misunderstands what has changed.

According to Gallup’s survey data, the public has not only lost confidence in the political system, as it did in the late 1970s, but also in corporations. In 1979, one in three Americans told Gallup’s pollsters they had confidence in big business. By 2007, a little less than one in five expressed the same confidence. In 1979, almost two out of three citizens said they had faith in banks. Today, only two out of five say the same thing.

This is the real problem for a conservative movement that has become a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America. Unlike 1980, when Ronald Reagan rode the conservative uprising to a landslide victory, the country is not looking for a movement that gets the government to back off big business, nor are we looking for politicians who pretend the Enrons and Bear Stearnses are victims. This uprising is searching for a movement that gets big business back under control and leaders who are serious about aiming “law and order” rhetoric not at dark-skinned people, but at the royalists whose greed is driving the economy into the ground.

As I found in reporting my new book, “The Uprising,” some already recognize this new political topography. For instance, New York’s Working Families Party has become a powerful grassroots force for economic justice in Wall Street’s backyard. Unions have boosted their membership by the largest margin in a quarter-century. Shareholder activists are finding more support for initiatives that challenge corporate misbehavior. Even some Republicans like Mike Huckabee have bashed CEOs and berated lobbyist-written trade policies.

Whether this ferment becomes a transpartisan social movement will depend on a number of questions. Will the Democratic Party stop demoralizing its grassroots base and break free of its moneyed faction that gave us travesties like NAFTA? Will mavericks like Huckabee reshape the GOP? And most importantly, is the presidential election hype going to trick Americans into believing candidates are social movements, rather than one of many vehicles for them?

The answers will determine whether this is a fleeting uprising of ineffective protest or a movement about wielding power—yet another forgotten moment or, finally, a historic one.

David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, “The Uprising,” will be released this month. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network—both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.

The following is the lecture given at Beirut University, it runs for an hour.

The following is a preview of the documentary "Reel Bad Arabs" mentioned above.

Various links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reel_Bad_Arabs

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/10/19/reel_bad_arabs_how_hollywood_vilifies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi1ZNEjEarw

-->"planet of the arabs" 9min montage of the worst in Hollywood cinema

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tCLjFwEOWs

-->a montage showing various Arab artists

AMY GOODMAN: —you look at the protest, you look at the invasion, you look at the occupation, you look at war, and you say it’s all of a piece, one reinforces the other. Can you talk about that?

SLAVOJ ZIZEK: No, it’s not so much that I was against the protests. I myself participated in protests. I just do not share the enthusiasm of some of even big European intellectuals, like Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas, who saw in that widespread movement of protest almost a birth of the new civil society movement in Europe. What bothered me is the way the protest was in a way parasitic upon—upon—OK, the other guys, those in power who wanted the war, how they legitimized each other.

For me, that protest was part of what I see as the main failure. But it’s not a subjective failure. It’s in the situation of modern left, which all too often for me adopts this rather comfortable moralizing position of we condemn, we criticize, but like we can’t do anything more, so this safe moralizing position, which is why, as I like to emphasize, I was in Great Britain, in United Kingdom in that point. And what did strike me is how, after the big protests, both sides appeared satisfied in a strange way. The organizers of demonstrators made their point: you see the majority is behind us, people oppose war, we made our point. But silently, they knew they didn’t stop the war, nothing. Blair government, the other side, was also satisfied. You see what an open society is: even when a country goes to war, we can—and again, the best answer, I think, was provided unintentionally by George Bush when he visited at that time UK. I remember, when asked by journalists, “How do you comment on big protests against you?” he said, “I totally support them, because, you see, that’s why we are going to Iraq, so that things like this, massive protest against the government, so that things like this could happen only—will happen also in Iraq.” So, of course, this was either a bad joke or hypocrisy or whatever you want. But there is a truth in it. Everyone, in a way, all the sides, felt satisfied. And this is what often worries me, this—how should I put it?—secret, symbiotic relationship. Those in power like a certain type of moralistic protest, which does nothing.

And again, I think that even—of course, everybody likes them Zapatistas in Mexico—that even Zapatistas fell a little bit into that trap. At the beginning, they were a little bit of a serious threat. Then when their—this famous anonymous leader, Subcomandante Marcos, then he made the choice of playing this, how should I call it, moral authority, you know, and at that point making comments on what is wrong in Mexican society. From that point on, everybody loves him now, you know? Everybody—oh, yes, he’s our moral consciousness, and so on and so on.

But again, I’m not simply reproaching the left for it, because, how to put it, of course now then there is the cruel question: but what can the left do? What can you effectively do? So I’m not saying we shouldn’t be doing this. I’m just saying—what I’m saying is basically one simple thing. I repeat it in all my talks, and so on. It’s fashionable to make fun of Fukuyama, End of History, but even the majority of today’s left is effectively, if I may make an adverb, Fukuyamaists. Basically, isn’t it that most of us leftists silently believe capitalism is here to stay, parliamentary democracy is what we [inaudible], so the problem is simply how to make it work better? Our ultimate horizon is, again, in the same way as we were talking about socialism with a human face, global capitalist democracy with a human face. And for me, the key question is, is this enough?

The hit PBS show The Hippy Gourmet takes viewers around the globe to explore local, healthy cuisines. The show is a global sensation, airing across the U.S. and in-flight international airlines such as Lufthansa and Swiss Air. Now in a cookbook packed with over 150 recipes, the Hippy Gourmet shows how you can make these easy, delicious dishes using freshly-grown ingredients, in your own home. These vegan, vegetarian, and pescatarian meals will transform your eating experience--and change the world for the better, one meal at a time.

Before co-creating the Hippy Gourmet show, James Ehrlich founded his own successful media and technology company. James has produced television segments for major networks and has also dedicated a great deal of his creative energy towards documentaries that are especially focused on wildlife and endangered habitats.
Hippy Gourmet homepage: www.HippyGourmet.com

This event took place on May 6, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.

http://www.i-maginemedia.com/vegrev7bm.mov

A huge colorful worker's parade In the Ukraine.

Indonesians put on a show as they dressed like slaves and carry their master Corruption.

Russians celebrate with gusto.

Istanbul Police crack down on the celebrations.

German police fighting with left-wing protesters.

In Zurich protesters blew bubbles at riot police.

Meanwhile in the US, workers continued their drudgery not realizing the significance of the day.
The man in the picture below when asked on the significance of the day said,
"What's that?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7378305.stm

Microcredit is just one example of how a business approach can help alleviate poverty when we move beyond the idea that business by definition has to mean making financial profit for the owner.We need social businesses to couple the human heart to the capitalist system. This is a sure way of meeting needs that either remain unmet or are met extremely inadequately through the efforts of philanthropy, charity, or welfare. Traditional philanthropy and nonprofits generate a social gain, but they do not design their programs as self-sustaining business models. A charitable dollar can be used only once. A dollar invested in a self-sustaining social business is recycled endlessly.

--http://muhammadyunus.org/content/view/95/128/lang,en/

This next quote for me describes how greed capitalism can be restrained and thus create what I would consider True Development!

Yet when Yunus explains how he wants to get from here to there, he rejects conventional capitalism. His book is primarily devoted to promoting something he calls "social business," in which investors seek no monetary profit, but rather get only their initial financial capital returned. They would thus "profit" more by getting the satisfaction of helping others.

It's a noble vision, but I'm pretty sure that the reason all those cell phones are getting into the hands of the poor worldwide is because for-profit companies are working hard to put them there. And I'm a disciple of C.K. Prahalad. His book "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" argues persuasively that companies can make healthy profits and also help the world's poor.

Yunus rejects Prahalad's argument outright. "No, the poor are not a tool to make money," he snaps. "They are a market you need to help. Rich people should not make money out of the poor people."

--http://muhammadyunus.org/content/view/133/128/lang,en/

How it all went down:

In 1973 YUNUS had started a Rural Economics Program at the university which focused equally on teaching and applied research, with students going out into the villages to do their research. This was the first time in a Bangladesh university that such a program had been tried. To YUNUS Jobra offered an ideal case-study because all government information on tubewells had indicated that once a tubewell was sunk, productivity would increase enormously. Why had this not happened?

YUNUS suggested a public meeting in the village to discuss the situation. He and his students quickly learned that the reason the tubewell was not being utilized was bickering within the village. Each person using the tubewell was supposed to pay his share for the diesel fuel to operate the pump, but some used it without paying, and some claimed they had paid but received no water. Those few who planted and harvested rice had suffered so much from the bitterness and infighting that after two years they refused to use the well again. They suggested the government remove it.

Since he had gone to a great deal of trouble to obtain the tubewell, and the government had spent some Tk.200,000 installing it (the villagers paid nothing), YUNUS proposed an alternative the Tebhaga Khamar (three-share farm) plan. Each farmer would be given as much water, seed and fertilizer as he needed. At harvest time the farmer would divide his harvest into three: one-third to go to the landlord, one-third to the farmer himself, and one-third to the committee which would have borrowed money to provide the necessary inputs. The committee, chosen by the villagers, would sell its share of the rice, pay back the money borrowed, and finance the next crop. If there was a surplus the committee could share it among the villagers who had participated in the plan.

Many questions were asked and more doubt expressed than enthusiasm. The villagers were interested in the possibility of profit, but wanted no part of a loss. YUNUS therefore offered to take personal responsibility for a loss, but emphasized he was doing so only because he was sure the plan would work. He asked the people to consider the idea and meet again in a week's time.

He was living on the campus by then, and during the following week there was a steady stream to his house of the poorest people in Jobra. They had not been at the original meeting, but had heard about the plan and were willing to try it; they had nothing to lose.

The second village meeting was very well attended and the landlords agreed to accept one-third of the crop, instead of the usual one-half; YUNUS insisted on having a written agreement so there could be no reneging at harvest time. After more questions and explanations, the villagers agreed to try the plan.

YUNUS went to the university branch of Janata, a commercial bank, and arranged for a personal loan to cover the operation costs; he borrowed Tk.40,000, which he later increased to Tk.65,000, as more and more people joined the program when they saw others getting free agricultural inputs. YUNUS had planned to irrigate only 40 acres the first year, even though the tubewell was supposed to be able to supply 80 acres, because the soil was very porous and he wanted to be certain his plan would succeed. Thus when the number of acres under cultivation snowballed to 85, he warned the committee there might not be enough water. The committee members were not worried; for only Tk.1,000 more, they said, they could put a crossdam in a local stream which would flood the fields and provide the extra water needed, an option that had always been available to them but never tried. The dam was built, the crop was harvested and the yield tripled from 11 maunds (1 maund equals 40 kilograms) per acre to 33; the national average was 17. Everybody was very pleased with the results except YUNUS. When he went to the committee to get the money to repay the bank loan, he discovered that the committee had not collected enough rice to cover the debt; it was Tk.13,000 short. The landlords got their share, presumably because they were present every day at harvest time; the farmers took their own share and could not resist taking extra from the committee's third since YUNUS was not on hand to protect his interests. The committee suggested that YUNUS had not organized the collection properly and had trusted the people too much.

YUNUS used his own money to repay the bank and chalked it up to experience, but when the villagers asked him to head the committee the next season, he refused. He advised them on how to obtain a loan, introduced them to the bankers and insisted they handle further financing themselves. The committee thereupon devised a fool-proof system for collecting its third of the next harvest. The farmers would bring all the grain to the committee yard and give the committee its share before personal shares could be taken home.

The Tebhaga Khamar project was so successful that a year later the committee was able to buy an electric motor to replace the diesel engine for the tubewell, greatly reducing its operating cost because the village was already electrified. The crossdam was maintained, saving enough water to irrigate twice the expected area. The committee went on to purchase its own land, build godowns for storage and husking, and each year the profits have increased.

What YUNUS learned from the Jobra experiment became the basis of his approach to rural development:

1. Government solutions do not work on their own.
2. When the government gives outright, the recipient is not involved deeply enough to give full support or work to capacity.
3. Local problems should be solved by the community; many times the solutions are already known but not acted upon, e.g., damming the stream.
4. Local organizations (like the committee to carry out Tebhaga Khamar) can be very successful, but are most effective when they develop their own structure and rules. Attention must always be given to class structure, however, so that the wealthier and more powerful do not control the enterprise to the detriment of the poor.
5. The people who are most receptive to new ideas are those who have least to lose the landless poor, i.e., those who sell manual labor to survive. And since they are not tied to the land, they are mobile, enterprising and open to new ideas. He also learned that landlessness had risen in the "recent past" from 18 to 40 or 50 percent. When the local villagers who were landless were questioned, 252 families had become landless in their own lifetimes, compared to 89 in their fathers' end 18 in their grandfathers'.

When YUNUS published and discussed the results of Tebhaga Khamar in Jobra at conferences, officialdom expressed interest. Eventually the national government borrowed the idea, renamed it the Package Input Program (PIP) and ordered banks all over the country to provide loans for similar enterprises. Tebhaga Khamar in Jobra received the President's Award in 1978 for introducing innovative organization in agriculture. Unfortunately none of the PIPs developed a sustained, successful operation comparable to the Jobra experiment, probably because there was no arrangement for village participation in the decision making. The program had been decreed from above with a poor understanding of the concept.

YUNUS was active in the Bangladesh Economics Association and was one of the founders of the Chittagong Economics Association. Both organizations held annual conferences and published papers. In 1974 YUNUS tried to convince his fellow economists and the government that local problems should be handled at a local level where they were best understood, and that massive government structure imposed from the top down does not work. YUNUS advocated a village government to be responsible for village-related affairs such as food supply, employment, health and literacy. He suggested that this government, or gram sarkar, be comprised of two landless poor, two women, two well-to-do persons, two youths and two others from the professions, ten in all. The head of the government should be elected directly by all the villagers, and thus be responsible to all, and not to one interest group. The village should also produce a village book (gram boi) each year which would be a socioeconomic report and a development plan containing all the village statistics, and would be used in the village school.

He urged the need for new strategies and institutions, and used the example of food shortages. No results, he maintained, are gained from the Food Minister appearing on television, stating that there is a two-and-a-half million ton food shortage, and appealing for help from the citizens of Bangladesh. A villager who cannot count has no conception of two-and-a-half million tons, and therefore dismisses the problem, being sure that it is far beyond his ability to cope with. However, when the problem is approached on a much smaller scale, on the village level, it becomes manageable. A villager is aware that 30 or 40 of his neighbors survive from day to day, and he can imagine how much extra rice needs to be grown to provide for these people. YUNUS added that almost no effect is achieved by donations of food from abroad. The US$1.5 billion per year in foreign aid, he said, trickles down "about half an inch," when what it needs to do is "trickle down a mile to reach those for whom it is intended and who really need it." Moreover, far too many people spend time chasing the government and asking for things, when in fact local initiative can usually provide what is needed, and local initiative fosters pride and self-reliance instead of dependence. He urged, therefore, the introduction of local planning through village governments (gram sarkar) rather than central planning.

In 1975 President Zia Ur Rahman, who was looking for some way to reach the villages, talked with YUNUS. Zia became convinced that gram sarkar was a viable idea and began to try to convince his cabinet and new politicial party of its validity. Unfortunately he chose to create the village governments nationwide, by government decree, rather than by encouraging villages to develop their own organizations, with the national government giving help and support as needed. Although some were successful, most gram sarkars survived in name only. When Zia was assassinated in 1981 they were all abolished by the new regime.

At the Bangladesh Economics Association's meeting in 1976, "Self-Reliance" was proposed as the topic for the next convention. The subject interested YUNUS but he doubted that any proposals from government economists or academicians would be effective. He pointed out two problems: the definition of the term "poor," and the fact that no one at the convention, including himself, had any real knowledge of the poor and how they lived.

The international definition of "poor" has usually been "a small or marginal farmer," but in the context of Bangladesh, a small farmer is comparatively well-off. YUNUS felt that the automatic connection between the words "poor" and "farmer" was also incorrect. Not only were most of the truly poor landless, but 50 percent of them were women who were thus totally ignored.

He was bothered, too, by the notions that the contribution of the poor to society should be put as zero, that the poor were takers rather than producers, and that they lacked skills. Statistics on caloric intake and per capita income indicate that the poor should have disappeared long ago, but instead, the poor were exhibiting tremendous survival skills, and in fact were multiplying. These skills should be supported and encouraged, he argued, and even if the input of a poor person was individually very small, in view of their great numbers their effect could be enormous.

--http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Biography/BiographyYunusMuh.htm

=====

http://www.muhammadyunus.org/

http://www.bigthink.com/user/muhammad-yunus

http://www.savingcapitalism.com/capintro.pdf

=====

A lecture, teach-in, a voice, a simple annotation on what is love and how blessed are those who act out as such.

http://64.27.15.184/parchive/mp3/kpfk_080208_200200spaceways.mp3

Plus a series of awesome music that I love.

Enjoy,

MP

I'll will put up two new chapters every 2 weeks beginning today. I will also add the intended illustrations by Gibran and some of my own in allusion to the chapters presented.

Intro:

The Coming of the Ship

Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn onto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth.

And in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping, he climbed the hill without the city walls and looked seaward; and he beheld the ship coming with the mist.

Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul.

But he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him, and he thought in his heart: How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Too many fragments of the spirit have I scatterd in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a bruden and an ache.

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.

Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst.

Yet I cannot tarry longer.

The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark.

For to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a mould.

Fain would I take with me all that is here. But how shall I?

A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that give it wings. Alone must it seek the ether.

And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.

Now when he reached the foot of the hill, he turned again towards the sea, and he saw his ship approaching the harbour, and upon her prow the mariners, the men of his own land.

And his soul cried out to them, and he said:

Sons of my ancient mother, you riders of the tides, How often have you sailed in my dreams. And now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream.

Ready am I to go, and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind.

Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward,
Then I shall stand among you, a seafarer among seafarers.
And you, vast sea, sleepless mother,
Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream,
Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade,
And then shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.
And as he walked he saw from afar men and women leaving their fields and their vineyards and hastening towards the city gates.

And he heard their voices calling his name, and shouting from the field to field telling one another of the coming of the ship.

And he said to himself:

Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering?

And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn?

And what shall I give unto him who has left his plough in midfurrow, or to him who has stopped the wheel of his winepress?

Shall my heart become a tree heavy-laden with fruit that I may gather and give unto them?

And shall my desires flow like a fountain that I may fill their cups?

Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me?

A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?

If this is my day of harvest, in what fields have I sowed the seed, and in what unrembered seasons?

If this indeed be the our in which I lift up my lantern, it is not my flame that shall burn therein.

Empty and dark shall I raise my lantern,
And the guardian of the night shall fill it with oil and he shall light it also.
These things he said in words. But much in his heart remained unsaid. For he himself could not speak his deeper secret.

And when he entered into the city all the people came to meet him, and they were crying out to him as with one voice.

And the elders of the city stood forth and said:

Go not yet away from us.

A noontide have you been in our twilight, and your youth has given us dreams to dream.

No stranger are you among us, nor a guest, but our son and our dearly beloved.

Suffer not yet our eyes to hunger for your face.

And the priests and the priestesses said unto him:

Let not the waves of the sea separate us now, and the years you have spent in our midst become a memory.

You have walked among us a spirit, and your shadow has been a light upon our facs.

Much have we loved you. But speechless was our love, and with veils has it been veiled.

Yet now it cries aloud unto you, and would stand revealed before you.

And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

And others came also and entreated him.

But he answered them not. He only bent his head; and those who stood near saw his tears falling upon his breast.

And he and the people proceeded towards the great square before the temple.

And there came out of the sanctuary a woman whose name was Almitra. And she was a seeress.

And he looked upon her with exceeding tenderness, for it was she who had first sought and believed in him when he had been but a day in their city.

And she hailed him, saying:

Prophet of God, in quest for the uttermost, long have you searched the distances for your ship.

And now your ship has come, and you must needs go.

Deep is your longing for the land of your memories and the dwelling place of your greater desires; and our love would not bind you nor our needs hold you.

Yet this we ask ere you leave us, that you speak to us and give us of your truth.

And we will give it unto our children, and they unto their children, and it shall not perish.

In your aloneness you have watched with our days, and in your wakefulness you have listened to the weeping and the laughter of our sleep.

Now therefore disclose us to ourselves, and tell us all that has been shown you of that which is between birth and death.

And he answered,
People of Orphalese, of what can I speak save of that which is even now moving your souls?

------------

Chap. 1

Love

Then said Almitra, "Speak to us of Love."And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them.

And with a great voice he said:

When love beckons to you follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,

So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,

Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;

For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."

And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-5965670944815984616&hl=en]

And this is when my taxi driver told me what I now call, "The Law of the Garbage Truck."

Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. And if you let them, they'll dump it on you.

Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so.......
Love the people who treat you right.
Forget about the ones who don't.
Believe that everything happens for a reason.
If you get a chance, TAKE IT!
If it changes your life, LET IT!
Nobody said it would be easy...
They just promised it would be worth it. 

Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

*Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellowed [sic] Americans, *who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision.* There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954** [sic]; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence *in 1954* -- in 1945 *rather* -- after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China -- for whom the Vietnamese have no great love -- but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. *Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies.* What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call "VC" or "communists"? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than *eight hundred, or rather,* eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternat