Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG0208E" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 08:22:48 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <20020828212321.85009.qmail@web13801.mail.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > I am very aware of Starhawk's politics and religious > beliefs and they are peppered throughout 5th Sacred > Thing to such a degree that it almost turned into self > parody. > > > Lyla Lyla, would you be able to explain more of what in the novel is particularly Starhawk as opposed to more commonly part of the neo-pagan movement? I would like to know how she is perceived from within the movement. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 23:14:13 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Julieanne Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020828095703.02882030@www.leeanne.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Firstly, jumping in late - this book did very little for me, although there were several sections that I thoroughly enjoyed on the level of an adventure story, but all that moralising and preachy eco-spirituality spoiled much of it for me. If that's utopia - I say 'Pass'. Excuse me while I puke, politely and with due respect for the environment of course. Also, I didn't find much of it that could be called 'feminist' - I'm not convinced that a social movement/religion/philosophy or whatever, can be labelled 'feminist' just because it is based on non-violence. Humanist, leftist maybe, and non-sexist perhaps - but that doesn't always equate with feminist. >Lee Anne wrote: >"Starhawk and Forrest just "radicalize" the >concept by neglecting to fuck the hero after the fighting is over, even >denying that the hero ever existed. Tch, tch." Similar to Lee Anne, I likewise was strongly reminded of formulaic stories depicting women waiting around for the hero, or heroes, to save them. In this cae, a whole community. For me, the 'turning point' was Bird's hour upon the stage when he heroically refused to shoot, and all his comrades then had a change of heart to quickly complete the victory. Male hero-worship, alive and well. I was quite annoyed by this, as all that maternal nurturing and healing and pouring of female energy into the soldiers did sweet FA to change them:) Yet another version of the subtle message that women should just keep on loving and nurturing, and sacrificing time, effort and energy into changing men's behaviour, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't do any good anyway - coz its the thought that counts:) Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside:) Again, as in so many stories - only male sacrifice has any value, only male suffering and angst-ridden navel-gazing can change the world. I thought it was just yet another version of young male godlet coming of age through temptation, suffering and sacrifice - just like Jesus in the desert. And obviously, we see his pain and angst and tend to identify with him, and all the scenes and stories of what was happening to women in the christian communities, are mostly trivialised. As for the relationships, polyamory and same-sex, or whatever - I found most of it all very shallow, and implausible in the book. I have known polyamorous relationships, one group of 5 (3 women & 2 men, with 2 children between them) who have lived in a group marriage style relationship for 15 plus years. But they don't go round preaching about it, coz it drives them nuts when people quite rudely ask questions about their sleeping arrangements like "Do you take turns, or just sleep in one big bed?". Another one is a long-standing lesbian triad relationship - who also don't like publicising their relationship. I found Starhawk's style on this score preachy and arrogant, and based on an assumption that regular fucking is somehow enlightened, spiritual, and necessary to human bonding. Intimacy and affection, without a prominent sexual component doesn't appear to be a part of Starhawk's universe. Obviously celibates, or people who just don't feel like it much of the time, or even introverted loners without a creative arty-farty bone (or green thumb) in their body, need not apply to this particular Utopia. One of the major things to piss me off though, was the description of the army and its actions. As a woman who has been interested in military strategic thinking, history and games all her life, (starting with playing chess as a child), simplistic, irrational and illogical descriptions like this one in Starhawks really annoy me, but unfortunately are very common. In any event, the army's tactics in the book, or lack thereof, totally destroyed any belief I might have been able to sustain in regard to the strategies of non-violent resistance. With an army that incompetent, no wonder they won:) However, given the spectacular stupidity of American military incidents in recent years, perhaps it isn't so far-fetched. Like the sub that decided to surface under a Japanese fishing boat, in a section of ocean, that must be one of the most trafficked on the planet - WOOPS!...or the "smart" missile on a Kuwaiti test range, that suddenly became "intellectually challenged" and blew up the command bunker .... WOOPS....or the Canucks under 'friendly fire'...WOOPS.... starting to sound like an army of Gomer Pyle clones:) But then again, I also wonder how portable Starhawks strategies would be outside of San Francisco? Would Iraqi women and children (and their soft-hearted liberal-minded brothers) be able to use such strategies when it comes to the sequel - Gulf War II? (**Coming Attraction** - Coming Soon to a TV screen near you.....) >Rosa Leah wrote: >>... As a vignette, I found that, among others, incredibly >>inspiring. Lee Anne wrote: >I personally found it nauseating. *Ditto* - I also found it insulting to the hundreds of thousands of people who have died in such ways... and are completely ignored and nobody considers their deaths "inspiring". I apologise if I offend some on the list, but I also find such arrogance (or ignorance perhaps) very characteristic of American nationalism, albeit one usually found the liberal leftist side of the political spectrum. Lastly, I hated the bees - but that's probably because I'm fatally allergic to them:)) Cheers - Julieanne:) PS: And Lee Anne - I love your style! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 10:35:28 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20020829231413.00e42190@pop.ozemail.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >Rosa Leah wrote: > >>... As a vignette, I found that, among others, incredibly > >>inspiring. > > Lee Anne wrote: > >I personally found it nauseating. > Julieanne wrote: > *Ditto* - I also found it insulting to the hundreds of thousands of people > who have died in such ways... and are completely ignored and nobody > considers their deaths "inspiring". Hundreds of thousands of people have died in programs of non-violent resistance deliberately conceived and calculated, with weeks of training involved, to focus a moral challenge on their attackers? Who are you talking about? The family in the story were not passive victims, but you seem to be treating them as such. I have no idea if the psychological dynamics Starhawk describes could have worked in the situation she creates. I think the essential element that makes non-violence work is publicity: the public shaming of people and governments who want to preserve a better image of themselves as civilized humans in the world's eyes - so it did not work in Tienanmen Square (but then even that was more spontaneous and less worked out than what Starhawk is trying to portray here), and it would not have worked historically against any number of dictatorial regimes who didn't give a damn what anyone thought and could keep them from knowing about it anyway. But in today's world, it could work in more cases than it is tried: I believe it could work well for the Palestinians against the Israelis, for example: but it has to be as well conceived and planned as a military campaign, it's like an advertising campaign, a huge piece of public theater, requiring at least as creative leadership and as disciplined performance by the rank and file as any army maneuver. Gandhi may be seen as a saint, but he was a master of public spectacle and the politics and calculation required for it. That is what Starhawk is trying to write about here, though without any media involvement - she was trying to do it solely to change the soldier's consciousness in the moment. I don't see that this (the public Gandhian version or the more private Starhawk version) has been tried much, and I certainly don't see that hundreds of thousands have died trying it. But I think it is inspiring: because I believe this could be the way that many disputes could be tackled in the future. If the Iraqis were capable of mounting such a theater against Bush's invasion, and could play it out on world TV, imagine what an incredible coup that would be, how that would turn the whole world even more against such adventurism? Osama bin Laden, whatever else he is, is an absolute master of the media image: the falling towers. Islam forbids images, but this is one point on which bin Laden and co are modern media types rather than fundamentalists. Of course Saddam couldn't organize this kind of nonviolent theater if his life depended on it - because he would lack credibility, unless he can stage a last minute conversion, resign from power, don sackcloth and ashes and ... The very idea is ludicrous. It's a tool for righteous and free populations, not, I hope, one that could ever be stage managed by a dictator. But that one might one day try, would only be to acknowledge that such theater has huge power potential to move public opinion. As I say, whether it could work in the circumstances of Starhawk's novel I don't know. But there are many many cases of soldiers turning on their officers in war: many US officers were killed by their men in Vietnam, I read recently in a mainstream military history. Julieanne's view that the novel portrays the ultimate fruitlessness of women's work by giving it all to a suffering male hero in my opinion is a complete misreading: war is largely men's work, and to persuade soldiers to change is largely a case of persuading men to change, and it was undoubtedly the women's influence in that SF society that had changed and prepared men like Bird to be able to do that. I see it thoroughly as a women's victory and a human victory, that the soldiers could be brought back to some level of humanity. You want women to do everything, win every battle alone, without having to deal with men? That's unrealistic. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 10:53:24 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rereading what I just wrote: > Osama bin Laden, > whatever else he is, is an absolute master of the media image: the falling > towers. Islam forbids images, but this is one point on which bin Laden and > co are modern media types rather than fundamentalists. Of course Saddam > couldn't organize this kind of nonviolent theater if his life depended on > it > I trust it was clear that by 'this kind of nonviolent theater' I was referring to Starhawk's or Gandhi's type not bin Laden's. My point about the twin towers was only that it was media theater, public spectacle, and that if the same kind of media savviness is used for nonviolent protests and moral theater, then these can become the way that many conflicts could be played out in future. Rather like in many animal species the males fight - but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public spectacle. Well, staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people fight. It is not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a different form of struggle. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 00:00:21 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rather like in many animal species the males fight - > but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public > spectacle. Well, > staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people > fight. It is > not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a different form of > struggle. > Dave Except that they still died, in TFST (the family) Maire > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 12:53 AM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > Rereading what I just wrote: > > Osama bin Laden, > > whatever else he is, is an absolute master of the media image: > the falling > > towers. Islam forbids images, but this is one point on which > bin Laden and > > co are modern media types rather than fundamentalists. Of course Saddam > > couldn't organize this kind of nonviolent theater if his life > depended on > > it > > > > I trust it was clear that by 'this kind of nonviolent theater' I was > referring to Starhawk's or Gandhi's type not bin Laden's. My > point about the > twin towers was only that it was media theater, public spectacle, and that > if the same kind of media savviness is used for nonviolent protests and > moral theater, then these can become the way that many conflicts could be > played out in future. Rather like in many animal species the males fight - > but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public > spectacle. Well, > staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people > fight. It is > not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a different form of > struggle. > Dave ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 11:17:37 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I got carried away. You're right. I had gone on to thinking about spectacles of nonviolence on TV - but I wonder how much the power of such things might not depend on deaths of the nonviolent demonstrators. A grisly thought. But still not as grisly as the alternative of war itself. Dave > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Maire > Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 10:00 AM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > Rather like in many animal species the males fight - > > but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public > > spectacle. Well, > > staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people > > fight. It is > > not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a > different form of > > struggle. > > Dave > > Except that they still died, in TFST (the family) > Maire > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 12:53 AM > > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > > > > Rereading what I just wrote: > > > Osama bin Laden, > > > whatever else he is, is an absolute master of the media image: > > the falling > > > towers. Islam forbids images, but this is one point on which > > bin Laden and > > > co are modern media types rather than fundamentalists. Of > course Saddam > > > couldn't organize this kind of nonviolent theater if his life > > depended on > > > it > > > > > > > I trust it was clear that by 'this kind of nonviolent theater' I was > > referring to Starhawk's or Gandhi's type not bin Laden's. My > > point about the > > twin towers was only that it was media theater, public > spectacle, and that > > if the same kind of media savviness is used for nonviolent protests and > > moral theater, then these can become the way that many > conflicts could be > > played out in future. Rather like in many animal species the > males fight - > > but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public > > spectacle. Well, > > staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people > > fight. It is > > not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a > different form of > > struggle. > > Dave > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 00:26:01 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit It's funny, Dave. Your argument reminds me of the same one that has been going on through my mind since I was abuot.. 11? albeit, in a far less sophisticated form (my one). It never seems to make *sense* to me that nations settle issues by force.. It seemed a logical alternative, to me, at that age, that, if nations were insistient on might=right, then why not stop at the level of fisticuffs? Or, what about the Darkovian charter- no long distance weapons. What makes a nation decide to strike the first blow? Particularly pertinent at the moment, with the big debate in Aus at the moment whethe or not Aus should support the US's first strike. It seems, somehow, that the mental age of a country is stuck at about three. Is it that the lowest common denominator (ie Hussein) has to set the pace? It always seemeed to me, that if we could have these rules of war, that regulated disposal of the dead, neutrality of medical workers and so on... then, dammit, why not one that said "we have to stop before anyone actually dies". Oh well. I guess my inability to figure it all out is why I'm not running things. It's all a mystery to me. Maire : ) > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 1:18 AM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > I got carried away. You're right. I had gone on to thinking about > spectacles > of nonviolence on TV - but I wonder how much the power of such > things might > not depend on deaths of the nonviolent demonstrators. A grisly > thought. But > still not as grisly as the alternative of war itself. > Dave > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Maire > > Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 10:00 AM > > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > > > > Rather like in many animal species the males fight - > > > but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public > > > spectacle. Well, > > > staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people > > > fight. It is > > > not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a > > different form of > > > struggle. > > > Dave > > > > Except that they still died, in TFST (the family) > > Maire > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > > > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > > > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 12:53 AM > > > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > > > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > > > > > > > Rereading what I just wrote: > > > > Osama bin Laden, > > > > whatever else he is, is an absolute master of the media image: > > > the falling > > > > towers. Islam forbids images, but this is one point on which > > > bin Laden and > > > > co are modern media types rather than fundamentalists. Of > > course Saddam > > > > couldn't organize this kind of nonviolent theater if his life > > > depended on > > > > it > > > > > > > > > > I trust it was clear that by 'this kind of nonviolent theater' I was > > > referring to Starhawk's or Gandhi's type not bin Laden's. My > > > point about the > > > twin towers was only that it was media theater, public > > spectacle, and that > > > if the same kind of media savviness is used for nonviolent > protests and > > > moral theater, then these can become the way that many > > conflicts could be > > > played out in future. Rather like in many animal species the > > males fight - > > > but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public > > > spectacle. Well, > > > staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people > > > fight. It is > > > not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a > > different form of > > > struggle. > > > Dave > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 08:49:52 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lyla Miklos Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Lyla, would you be able to explain more of what in > the novel is particularly > Starhawk as opposed to more commonly part of the > neo-pagan movement? I would > like to know how she is perceived from within the > movement. > > Dave Take a gander through Starhawk's official website. http://www.starhawk.org/ That'll probably answer your questions. Many times I have heard people who identify as Wiccan or Witches refer to Starhawk's brand of witchcraft as "Fluffy Bunny". I asked a panelist at a discussion at an SF Con to explain and qualify that statement. They said that because Starhawk is into women's only groups and feminist wicca she isn't keeping the balance of female and male energies that they felt were essential to the practice of witchcraft. They also claimed that Starhawk focuses on the positive energies and associations that are a part of the craft, but ignores the dark side that again is essential to the balance of life. Death and Birth are all part of a cycle that never ends. As are good and evil, male and female, light and dark . . . . you can't have one without the other. Think the episode of Star Trek when Kirk is split into two and he isn't complete without both his "good" and "bad" elements. Now I don't completely agree with this negative assesment of Starhawk's interpretation of the craft, but the "Fluffy Bunny" label has been used with her a lot by several wiccan groups and individuals that I have personally encountered. Again I say explore Starhawk's website to find out more about her and her politics. Lyla __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 12:13:20 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit There have been some very interesting and much discussed articles lately about the different approaches of the US and Europe to Iraq and to the world in general. See: http://www.cis.org.au/Events/JBL/JBL02.htm for one by Francis Fukuyama discussing one by Kaplan. They basically argue that Europe can afford to believe in 'the end of history', or the end of realpolitik and war, and its replacement by international organizations and symbolic fisticuffs and 'stop before anyone dies' rules, only because America is still protecting the advanced European experiment with real guns. Just as Americans arms saw off the Nazis, the Soviets and Milosevich, now American arms will save the Europeans from Islamo fascism. In other words, if someone like Saddam Hussein is still being so old fashioned and crude as to go to war (the lowest common denominator) someone has to be prepared to wage war against them. Real guns always win against symbolic fisticuffs, if the gunners don't care what the world thinks of them. Kaplan and other American conservatives see the Europeans as hypocritically self righteous to criticize the American hand that protects them. Andrew Sullivan http://www.andrewsullivan.com/main_article.php?artnum=20020811 argues this very forcefully: he even claims London and Paris would have had twin towers type horrors by now but for the US invasion of Afghanistan. That's highly debatable, but there's a lot to this point of view in general: the Europeans' complete failure to protect the Muslims in Serbia and Kosovo is an argument in favor of it. But it still doesn't justify an assault on Iraq, in my view, though that is another topic. I still think deterrence usually works (as an alternative to either appeasement and open war) with states like Iraq and North Korea; it's with non-state, loose networks like the supposed al-Qaida that it breaks down. If people just don't run by the same rules, then rule-based warfare is impossible, let alone rule-based alternatives to warfare. Dave > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Maire > Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 10:26 AM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > It's funny, Dave. Your argument reminds me of the same one that has been > going on through my mind since I was abuot.. 11? albeit, in a far less > sophisticated form (my one). It never seems to make *sense* to me that > nations settle issues by force.. It seemed a logical alternative, > to me, at > that age, that, if nations were insistient on might=right, then > why not stop > at the level of fisticuffs? Or, what about the Darkovian charter- no long > distance weapons. What makes a nation decide to strike the first blow? > Particularly pertinent at the moment, with the big debate in Aus at the > moment whethe or not Aus should support the US's first strike. It seems, > somehow, that the mental age of a country is stuck at about three. Is it > that the lowest common denominator (ie Hussein) has to set the pace? It > always seemeed to me, that if we could have these rules of war, that > regulated disposal of the dead, neutrality of medical workers and so on... > then, dammit, why not one that said "we have to stop before > anyone actually > dies". Oh well. I guess my inability to figure it all out is why I'm not > running things. It's all a mystery to me. > Maire : ) > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 1:18 AM > > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > > > > I got carried away. You're right. I had gone on to thinking about > > spectacles > > of nonviolence on TV - but I wonder how much the power of such > > things might > > not depend on deaths of the nonviolent demonstrators. A grisly > > thought. But > > still not as grisly as the alternative of war itself. > > Dave > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > > > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Maire > > > Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 10:00 AM > > > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > > > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > > > > > > > Rather like in many animal species the males fight - > > > > but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public > > > > spectacle. Well, > > > > staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people > > > > fight. It is > > > > not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a > > > different form of > > > > struggle. > > > > Dave > > > > > > Except that they still died, in TFST (the family) > > > Maire > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist > SF/Fantasy and > > > > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > > > > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 12:53 AM > > > > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > > > > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > > > > > > > > > > Rereading what I just wrote: > > > > > Osama bin Laden, > > > > > whatever else he is, is an absolute master of the media image: > > > > the falling > > > > > towers. Islam forbids images, but this is one point on which > > > > bin Laden and > > > > > co are modern media types rather than fundamentalists. Of > > > course Saddam > > > > > couldn't organize this kind of nonviolent theater if his life > > > > depended on > > > > > it > > > > > > > > > > > > > I trust it was clear that by 'this kind of nonviolent theater' I was > > > > referring to Starhawk's or Gandhi's type not bin Laden's. My > > > > point about the > > > > twin towers was only that it was media theater, public > > > spectacle, and that > > > > if the same kind of media savviness is used for nonviolent > > protests and > > > > moral theater, then these can become the way that many > > > conflicts could be > > > > played out in future. Rather like in many animal species the > > > males fight - > > > > but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public > > > > spectacle. Well, > > > > staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people > > > > fight. It is > > > > not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a > > > different form of > > > > struggle. > > > > Dave > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 01:11:57 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dave, that particular scene was very moving for me... (the death of the family). It seems that the horror is in their "offering" themselves for death- if they had died whilst running away or throwing rocks or whatever it would seem more.. commonplace? less of an impact, certainly. I think my thought processes were along the lines of.. well, although their deaths and manne of dying seemed shocking, moving etc, more people would have died if they ha not done so. Is it worse for one soldie to shoot 3 people, peacefully asking him to remembe their mother, sister etc, or 50 people who are resisting? Maire > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 1:18 AM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > I got carried away. You're right. I had gone on to thinking about > spectacles > of nonviolence on TV - but I wonder how much the power of such > things might > not depend on deaths of the nonviolent demonstrators. A grisly > thought. But > still not as grisly as the alternative of war itself. > Dave > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Maire > > Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 10:00 AM > > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > > > > Rather like in many animal species the males fight - > > > but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public > > > spectacle. Well, > > > staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people > > > fight. It is > > > not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a > > different form of > > > struggle. > > > Dave > > > > Except that they still died, in TFST (the family) > > Maire > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > > > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > > > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 12:53 AM > > > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > > > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > > > > > > > Rereading what I just wrote: > > > > Osama bin Laden, > > > > whatever else he is, is an absolute master of the media image: > > > the falling > > > > towers. Islam forbids images, but this is one point on which > > > bin Laden and > > > > co are modern media types rather than fundamentalists. Of > > course Saddam > > > > couldn't organize this kind of nonviolent theater if his life > > > depended on > > > > it > > > > > > > > > > I trust it was clear that by 'this kind of nonviolent theater' I was > > > referring to Starhawk's or Gandhi's type not bin Laden's. My > > > point about the > > > twin towers was only that it was media theater, public > > spectacle, and that > > > if the same kind of media savviness is used for nonviolent > protests and > > > moral theater, then these can become the way that many > > conflicts could be > > > played out in future. Rather like in many animal species the > > males fight - > > > but not to the death or even to injury, but more as public > > > spectacle. Well, > > > staging nonviolent spectacles could become the way that people > > > fight. It is > > > not the same as passivity, or refusal to fight - it's a > > different form of > > > struggle. > > > Dave > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 09:56:46 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 10:35 AM 8/29/02 -0400, Dave Belden wrote: >Julieanne wrote: > > *Ditto* - I also found it insulting to the hundreds of thousands of people > > who have died in such ways... and are completely ignored and nobody > > considers their deaths "inspiring". > >Hundreds of thousands of people have died in programs of non-violent >resistance deliberately conceived and calculated, with weeks of training >involved, to focus a moral challenge on their attackers? Who are you talking >about? The family in the story were not passive victims, but you seem to be >treating them as such. I think perhaps you're misreading Julieanne's comment, as well as mine. Oppressors using "theater" is old hat. Public executions are commonplace, indeed desirable from the standpoint of an army intending to terrorize a population. Victims using "theater," although I hesitate to trivialize an act of martyrdom so lightly is also old news. But it is not just hundreds of thousands, it is millions. Many millions have died during religious persecutions, the Roman "theater" of death, for example, where hundreds of thousands of Christians and Jews were murdered for the amusement of the Roman public; the Shoah of recent memory, where millions tried to die with dignity, making of their deaths a statement about the inhumanity of their murderers; the Inquisition, where thousands of women and men were tortured and murdered for their religious beliefs and practices but tried to die in the fullness of their faith; and on and on. But I wouldn't class Starhawk's example of this sort of "theater" with any of those examples among thousands during human history. What Starhawk does by imagining that such "theater" has never been done before, elevates her version of "non-violence" above all others, when in fact it is less focused and implausibly conceived. The Greeks used to have an actor drop down from a hidden trap door in the ceiling of the stage house when the plot got too sticky to figure out. This "deus ex machina" portrayed a god who magically straightened everything out before ascending once more "to the heavens." The miraculous conversion of a killer in FST is just such a contraption. If it were possible for such an event to occur, we would expect to find a number of guards and executioners at the death camps during WWII, during the Pol Pot/ Khmer Rouge massacres, during the "ethnic cleansing" of the former Yugoslavia, who experienced a life-changing apotheosis and turned to ahimsa, kindness to all life, in whatever form the local version of this concept might take. Oddly enough for Starhawk's hypothesis, we are not aware of any. The executioners seem to have been in actuality what we might have expected them to be, murderous men filled with hate who *enjoyed* killing "animals," or "criminals," or despised enemies. While they may well attempt to hide their involvement or lie about their actions when brought to justice, the reality of mass murder is that it is, in Hannah Arendt's words, banal. The killers go home and eat well, sleep well, and are tolerably pleasant neighbors. Eichmann said once, in an unguarded moment, "I shall laugh when I jump into the grave because of the feeling that I killed five million Jews." He was, in fact, proud of what he had done. I imagine he was equally proud of murdering European Gypsies, Catholics, and other undesirables but the subject didn't come up in that particular conversation. So Starhawk's "experiment" has, in fact, been tried many times before, and has failed. And more than that, the offering up of children as "theater" reminded me not so much of martyrdom, but of the children in Jim Jones' version of "theater" protesting the "invasion of his cultic world by "outsiders" who acted contrary to cult norms. We have the recent memory of hundreds of people going willingly to death, offering up their children as "examples" meant to shame the world. Yet, oddly, we remember this act as a tragedy, as a useless waste of life and, indeed, as mass murder. Here is a clear example of deaths meant to send a message, and the reaction of the civilized world was one of disbelief, horror, and grief. While Starhawk, and evidently you, seem to see worlds of difference between the actions of a group of people so firm in their belief that they drank deadly poison to show the world the strength of their convictions, even to the point of convincing their children to drink the deadly brew, I don't. I find the time spent in "carefully preparing" the family for their act of "theater" disquietingly similar to brainwashing, and the actions of the onlookers more similar to those of the "handlers" of suicide bombers, a cynical manipulation of naive belief to achieve a bloody purpose rather than principled resistance. I am not swayed by Starhawk's credulous description of the act any more than I am by the noble rhetoric employed in some circles to describe the "martyrs" who "attacked" a "symbol of American oppression" and brought down the WTC. While there have been many acts of real martyrdom through the ages, whereby adult humans suffer death nobly because they have no real choice, the "theatrical" deaths in FST were not up to those standards. If they were theater, they were cheap theater. In real life they would be murder and incitement to suicide and the onlookers should be sent to prison for their pornographic involvement in the making of a "snuff film." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 10:37:55 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 10:35 AM 8/29/02 -0400, Dave Belden wrote: >As I say, whether it could work in the circumstances of Starhawk's novel I >don't know. But there are many many cases of soldiers turning on their >officers in war: many US officers were killed by their men in Vietnam... Soldiers turn on officers who are trying to get them killed, and that rarely. Soldiers in Viet Nam were just trying to survive and "gung ho" officers who wanted to advance their careers by "heroically" sending their troops to death were fair game, but not their fellow soldiers. Soldiers never, to the best of my knowledge, turn on their own ranks because they experience a religious or moral conversion and are now horrified by their brutal comrades. Soldiering, believe it or not, is at best a noble profession in which a man, or woman, offers up his or her body in defense of his or her beloved home and fellow citizens. Soldiers are motivated, for the most part, by love and honor. Take the time to look at a regimental flag sometime, and notice the ribbons flying from the top of the staff. Each one of those ribbons represents a heroic action in which brave men and women fought and died. They are there because they mean *everything* to the men and women who serve in that body of patriots. They are placed at the top of that flagstaff because each member of that unit hopes to be worthy of being numbered among those comrades who laid down their lives in defense of their country. Remember Henry's speech to his men on St. Crispin's Day? "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" has a deep meaning to soldiers that civilians may have trouble grasping. Starhawk certainly doesn't "get it." Soldiering is a matter of life and death and it tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully. Soldiers do not, ever, turn on their comrades. To be sure, it's possible for an army to turn from its purpose, but a unit which incurs dishonor often prefers to disband than continue living with collective shame. The most severe collective punishment a modern army can mete out to a unit is to strip it of honors. By strange coincidence, that honor is usually referred to by the military as sacred. That's another thing I don't like about this book. It treats the army as if they were goons and nothing but. But such creatures are rare, not common, and it's difficult to imagine an American army, even after the devolution of civil society, being so removed from their traditions and sacred honor as to behave like the military stooges and strawmen in FST. "This story shall the good man teach his son; and Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remember'd; "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition; "And gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhood's cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day." William Shakespeare's, King Henry V Act IV, Scene III ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 10:45:23 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 12:13 PM 8/29/02 -0400, Dave Belden wrote: >very forcefully: he even claims London and Paris would have had twin towers >type horrors by now but for the US invasion of Afghanistan. That's highly >debatable... Actually, not. The technique of flying an airliner into a public monument was first contemplated and organized to target the Eiffel Tower in Paris. That attempt was thwarted years before the WTC effort succeeded. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 14:26:53 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020829084403.02887390@www.leeanne.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit You express yourself so well I feel more on your side of the argument than my own, after this. I completely agree with you that there have been innumerable martyrs, that Jim Jones was a horror, that young suicide bombers can be considered brainwashed, and so I can hardly disagree that the children in the TFST 'martyr' family can be so seen also. Your image of the onlookers as colluders in a snuff film is a ghastly and persuasive image. You may well be right, and I may be quite wrong, that the innumerable martyrs of history included many who coordinated attempts not 'just' to die with dignity, but to actually put into an effect a deliberate campaign to persuade their attackers of their humanity - you probably are right. But as I reflect on it, things don't seem to add up. You say martyrdom is only real if the person has no choice but to die. You feel that to choose to risk death in an act of unforced 'martyrdom' like that of the family in TFST is ersatz and horrible. But what if they had done as you suggested, and chosen instead to fight, and what if they had then died - would that have been any better? If the young suicide bombers of today are brainwashed, are the young freedom fighters of so many liberation struggles (let's say the Americans against the British), not equally brainwashed? Is anything a child or youth does autonomous? It seems to hinge more on the outcome: if the person, or the child, does something that saves many lives, even at the risk of their own, if they lose their own life in a bid to save many, and it actually does save many, do you then consider them heroes? The child who watches his mother raped and takes the gun or knife and kills her attacker - it has happened - is he not to be admired, even as we mourn what it may have done to him as well as to her? Or is he, too, brainwashed (into male heroics, a sense of the 'man's' responsibility etc.)? In the TFST case, I think it most hinges on your belief that the psychological dynamics didn't work in the novel - Ohnine's conversion was a deus ex machina - and indeed that such dynamics can not work, and never have in history. > If it were possible for such an event to occur, we would expect to > find a number of guards and executioners at the death camps > during WWII, during the Pol Pot/ Khmer Rouge massacres, > during the "ethnic cleansing" of the former Yugoslavia, who > experienced a life-changing apotheosis and turned to ahimsa, > kindness to all life, in whatever form the local version of this > concept might take. > > Oddly enough for Starhawk's hypothesis, we are not aware of any. If this is the case, then I think your argument is right. If it is impossible to shame members of an occupation force into siding with the occupied populace, then of course any attempt to do so that risks the lives of the occupied, especially the lives of children, is an ugly, stupid, unconscionable act. I am out of my historical depth here. But surely there are numerous cases of soldiers refusing to fire on the citizenry, and mutinies against officers for ordering such. What is basic training about, and all the indignities of de-individualizing the new soldier, and the severity of army punishments (shooting deserters etc.), if not because it is so hard to turn many men into obedient order takers? I would imagine that a few Nazi and Pol Pot guards were nauseated by what they did, and slunk away, got transferred to less troubling work - how can you be certain that none did? I seem to recall in the history of Christian martyrs Roman soldiers who joined their victims. This is a very important topic, and I would like to see some good research on it - perhaps you know of such. Just received your other posts: > Soldiers are motivated, for the most part, by love and honor. Goodness, did you ever see the film Culloden? Or read John Keegan's books on the Face Of Battle (was it?) or the qualities of military leadership? Soldiers are also motivated by fear and the consequences of disobedience. The wise commander of course tries to maximize the love and honor part of it, and all the trappings of regimental honors are part of the brainwashing - OK socialization - process. Certainly this helps make it possible for Scottish soldiers who might quibble about firing on their own citizenry to be transported to India to fire on theirs, for example, all for love and honor. You have a remarkably uncritical approach to armies, while having a hyper-critical approach to nonviolent campaigns against them. I agree with you that Starhawk's army is implausible, by the way - but so is her whole Steward society. But then not all armies are regimental either. If US society broke down as totally as she describes, anything was possible. There have been highly reluctant, poorly trained conscript armies. > Soldiers in Viet Nam were just trying to survive > and "gung ho" officers who wanted to advance their careers > by "heroically" sending their troops to death were fair game, > but not their fellow soldiers. How can you be sure those US soldiers in Vietnam 'only' wanted to survive - and that none of them also sympathized with the enemy's right to their own country and communist system? There was a lot of propaganda - or good sense - being talked about that in the anti-war movement, and various soldiers sympathized. It's not so clear-cut that some of them were not Ohnines. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 14:25:25 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 02:26 PM 8/29/02 -0400, Dave Belden wrote: >I reflect on it, things don't seem to add up. You say martyrdom is only real >if the person has no choice but to die. You feel that to choose to risk >death in an act of unforced 'martyrdom' like that of the family in TFST is >ersatz and horrible. But what if they had done as you suggested, and chosen >instead to fight, and what if they had then died - would that have been any >better? If the young suicide bombers of today are brainwashed, are the young >freedom fighters of so many liberation struggles (let's say the Americans >against the British), not equally brainwashed? I don't think so, although perhaps some were. I'm well aware that both patriotism and martyrdom can be, and often have been nuanced by bigoted assumptions of the part of participants. So Eichmann undoubtedly thought of himself as a martyr in the (failed) cause of German racial superiority. Certainly he is viewed as such by members of the Aryan Brotherhood and other White Supremacist groups who still revere Hitler's Reich and buy copies of Mein Kampf as inspirational reading. The suicide bombers in the middle east have several characteristics that would preclude them from being regarded as "just" martyrs, in my opinion. First that they target civilians, even deliberately seeking out children, instead of soldiers. Second that they are preyed upon and recruited by older men, often after severe traumas have occurred within their lives that makes them vulnerable to mortal exploitation. Third because their actions are un-Islamic, in that the Prophet spoke several times of the necessity to avoid taking innocent lives, and of protecting women and children above all. While they may hope for a martyr's reward, in the context of Islam they are deluded, I believe deliberately gulled by cynical handlers, and taken advantage of just as sexual predators target young people in similar situations. >Is anything a child or youth >does autonomous? It seems to hinge more on the outcome: if the person, or >the child, does something that saves many lives, even at the risk of their >own, if they lose their own life in a bid to save many, and it actually does >save many, do you then consider them heroes? The child who watches his >mother raped and takes the gun or knife and kills her attacker - it has >happened - is he not to be admired, even as we mourn what it may have done >to him as well as to her? Since such a child would be operating under tremendous emotional duress, and perhaps with the idea that an attack now might prevent another attack later, I think his or her action would be justified and perhaps laudable, but certainly tragic. It would be a mistake to base a theory on a child operating in a condition of post-traumatic stress. >Or is he, too, brainwashed (into male heroics, a >sense of the 'man's' responsibility etc.)? In the TFST case, I think it most >hinges on your belief that the psychological dynamics didn't work in the >novel - Ohnine's conversion was a deus ex machina - and indeed that such >dynamics can not work, and never have in history. I agree to your last assertion. Given the context as it was presented, the conversion of Ohnine was so unlikely and the process so distorted that my *judgement* of the act is influenced both by the likely outcome and by the fact that children were involved. That sort of behavior is reprehensible on the part of every adult involved. > > If it were possible for such an event to occur, we would expect to > > find a number of guards and executioners at the death camps > > during WWII, during the Pol Pot/ Khmer Rouge massacres, > > during the "ethnic cleansing" of the former Yugoslavia, who > > experienced a life-changing apotheosis and turned to ahimsa, > > kindness to all life, in whatever form the local version of this > > concept might take. > > > > Oddly enough for Starhawk's hypothesis, we are not aware of any. > >If this is the case, then I think your argument is right. If it is >impossible to shame members of an occupation force into siding with the >occupied populace, then of course any attempt to do so that risks the lives >of the occupied, especially the lives of children, is an ugly, stupid, >unconscionable act. I am out of my historical depth here. But surely there >are numerous cases of soldiers refusing to fire on the citizenry, and >mutinies against officers for ordering such. What is basic training about, Yes, of course. It is possible for armies to perform, or be ordered to perform, evil actions. And you're right that soldiers *have* refused to carry out monstrous acts, even when required to do so by irresponsible and cruel officers. Armies are, after all, human creations, and when things go wrong they can go terribly wrong. But soldiers are *required* to disobey unlawful orders. There are precious few "checks and balances" in any military system, but the courts martial and those conventions required by international treaty do serve as a check on otherwise limitless power. >and all the indignities of de-individualizing the new soldier, and the >severity of army punishments (shooting deserters etc.), if not because it is >so hard to turn many men into obedient order takers? I would imagine that a >few Nazi and Pol Pot guards were nauseated by what they did, and slunk away, >got transferred to less troubling work - how can you be certain that none >did? I seem to recall in the history of Christian martyrs Roman soldiers who >joined their victims. This is a very important topic, and I would like to >see some good research on it - perhaps you know of such. It is hard, and the proportion of men actually engaged in killing people in historic armies and battles has always been small. Most people fight best, and most forgivably, when attacked. And there *were* Roman soldiers who joined the ranks of the christians, most notably Saul of Tarsus (Paul) and Cornelius, a Roman Centurian. Paul was a Roman citizen, and the most likely route for a Jew from foreign parts to have become a citizen would be through service in the military. Indeed, if he was a citizen before such service he would likely have been drafted unless already rich enough to buy exemption. If this is the case, it's quite understandable that the early church would downplay his real association with Rome, since they were at the time attempting to reconcile themselves with the Roman State. Certainly the accounts of his early actions are distorted, since the Jewish synagogues operated under the rule of Roman law and had authority only to order floggings and other corporal and civil punishment to apostates but not the death described. The Great Sanhedrin had no such power, much less local rabbis. Capital punishment was reserved to the State and any person martyred in or around the Roman Middle East was put to death on orders of Rome, not the Jews. Much of the research that has been done on this topic is suspect, because it treats the "New Testament" accounts uncritically. But it does seem likely that christianity was a popular ground swell in the Roman Empire of the time, so it seems more likely that there were Roman soldiers who were already christians, or had been leaning toward christianity, who were moved to cast their lot with the martyrs after seeing the example of their faith and steadfast determination. Certainly the new religion was, at the time, denigrated as the religion of women, of slaves, and of common soldiers, all of whom could take strong egalitarian comfort from the teachings of this radical faith. While mystery religions had trod much the same ground before, they were, for the most part, targeted to the wealthy and middle classes. So Apuleius was an initiate of Isis, as was Caligula. >Just received your other posts: > > Soldiers are motivated, for the most part, by love and honor. >Goodness, did you ever see the film Culloden? Or read John Keegan's books on >the Face Of Battle (was it?) or the qualities of military leadership? >Soldiers are also motivated by fear and the consequences of disobedience. >The wise commander of course tries to maximize the love and honor part of >it, and all the trappings of regimental honors are part of the >brainwashing - OK socialization - process. Certainly this helps make it >possible for Scottish soldiers who might quibble about firing on their own >citizenry to be transported to India to fire on theirs, for example, all for >love and honor. You have a remarkably uncritical approach to armies, while >having a hyper-critical approach to nonviolent campaigns against them. Not really. The US Armed Forces are, I think, quite removed from the religious war that was the Jacobite pretension to the Throne of England. Cumberland, of whom you undoubtedly refer, has since been known as "The Butcher" from his dishonorable orders to slaughter prisoners and civilians in the aftermath of that battle. That particular battle was, in effect, a civil war made more bloody by the fact that the Jacobites were Scots and the Loyalists, who followed a Hanoverian (German) King were not. I believe I mentioned that armies can be corrupted when used against civilians. It was General William Tecumseh Sherman, I believe, who pioneered a similar campaign against civilians in our own Civil War. He too, has garnered similar opprobrium for his cruelty and incitement of the worst impulses in his troops. He too was responsible for long-lasting hatred on the part of the conquered peoples that distorted relations between the formerly warring sides that has lasted for a century and more. It was in large part his legacy that kept racism alive in the South long after the war was over, because the injustice of his actions rankled long after the logic of the Union cause might have persuaded people toward reconciliation. And I'm not at all uncritical of our own military, although most of my contempt is reserved for officers. I happen to think, for example, that indiscriminate bombing of civilians is a war crime, whether performed by plane or long range artillery. But this is a crime very difficult to prove, since the soldiers are rarely given a choice in the matter and must take their officer's word that they are engaging a "military target." These are easy words to say, especially when found to have killed large numbers of civilians after the fact, but our own bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was morally repugnant, in my opinion, however the powers that be may characterize the attack as having military necessity. >I >agree with you that Starhawk's army is implausible, by the way - but so is >her whole Steward society. But then not all armies are regimental either. If >US society broke down as totally as she describes, anything was possible. >There have been highly reluctant, poorly trained conscript armies. > > > Soldiers in Viet Nam were just trying to survive > > and "gung ho" officers who wanted to advance their careers > > by "heroically" sending their troops to death were fair game, > > but not their fellow soldiers. > >How can you be sure those US soldiers in Vietnam 'only' wanted to survive - >and that none of them also sympathized with the enemy's right to their own >country and communist system? There was a lot of propaganda - or good >sense - being talked about that in the anti-war movement, and various >soldiers sympathized. It's not so clear-cut that some of them were not >Ohnines. In the courts martial of those soldiers who were caught, and not all were, a common thread of officer "goofiness" emerges. While I can believe that there were a few, or even quite a few, sympathizers to Vietnamese nationalism among the troops, the actual instances of traitorous actions were *very* few. The one court martial that I'm aware of was that of PFC Robert Garwood, who as a prisoner of war was tortured and purportedly "went over to the other side." That case is problematic in the extreme, given the extreme duress suffered by Private Garwood, and he was acquitted of desertion to the best of my knowledge. His accusers were officers, quite possibly goofy officers. There are a mort of them, unfortunately. And although My Lai did happen, there were also US soldiers court martialed and sent to prison for similar crimes. Indeed, one officer was convicted, even for the My Lai incident, although the coverup saved most from justice. But once more, this was a war on civilians, and inevitably leads to the destruction of pride (one soldier shot himself in the foot during the My Lai incursion to avoid participating) and unit cohesion. That was one sorry ass excuse for a company of US soldiers and everyone knew it. The Army still feels shame over the incident, and it is reported that Desert Storm troops were told before battle, "No May Lais!" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 14:46:17 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Cynthia Childs Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU Dave Belden wrote: >>How can you be sure those US soldiers in Vietnam 'only' wanted to survive - >>and that none of them also sympathized with the enemy's right to their own >>country and communist system? There was a lot of propaganda - or good >>sense - being talked about that in the anti-war movement, and various >>soldiers sympathized. It's not so clear-cut that some of them were not >>Ohnines. Lee Anne Phillips wrote: > In the courts martial of those soldiers who were caught, and not > all were, a common thread of officer "goofiness" emerges. While > I can believe that there were a few, or even quite a few, sympathizers > to Vietnamese nationalism among the troops, the actual instances > of traitorous actions were *very* few. This is according to courts martial transcripts? If those soldiers had a hope in hell of getting acquitted, any lawyer worth their salt would have told them 'Don't go there' if they mentioned sympathy for the Vietnamese cause. Sympathy for ^Ñthe enemy^Ò won^Òt get you off a murder charge, acting in self-defense will. Law courts are not always about justice. . . ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 18:09:24 EDT Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Armies, civilians etal Comments: To: feministsf-lit@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I haven't had time to participate in this discussion, but in re armies and attacks on civilians, Uri Avnery recently had an excellent appeal to pilots who are dropping bombs on civilians in Palestine. If anyone wants a copy, I think you can probably find it by searching the Gush Shalom site, or under Avnery's name, on a search machine. I had it, but don't think I have the copy anymore.) On the topic of peace movements/antiviolence etal, "Inside the Maelstrom", leading article of the latest The Other Israel now available on the internet. http://members.tripod.com/~other_Israel/ed.html I received this hard copy, and haven't had a chance to read it through, but it's a very complete and excellent account by the Israeli peace movement of events in Israel/Palestine since March. Personally I think the experience of the Israeli peace movement is one of the most instructive at the moment in the arts of nonviolence under extremely difficult circumstances on all sides. I'd say more, but, no time just now.-Joy '68 "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 18:22:15 EDT Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: P.S. Comments: To: feministsf-lit@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Addendum to my previous post: the Israeli peace movement has more than a passing relevance to this discussion, since, if I am remembering correctly, Starhawk was at least for a time working with the international peace activists in Palestine. (As I said, I think it was her, and not someone else, whose posts from Jerusalem I read on other listserves recently, that deal with this subject). One of the things they were doing, for example, was staying with Palestinian families to try to prevent destruction of houses, and what killings they could (for example, staying with a deaf man, who might not hear orders to move and consequently be shot for being uncooperative). Without getting into the merits or faults of the novel, or her specific beliefs, I just want to mention that she has been involved in direct action nonviolent work in situations that were a bit more risky than crossing fences at nuclear power plants. -Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 18:29:44 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: P.S. Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <8d.1d6cb31e.2a9ff897@cs.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Addendum to my previous post: the Israeli peace movement has more than a > passing relevance to this discussion, since, if I am remembering > correctly, > Starhawk was at least for a time working with the international peace > activists in Palestine. (As I said, I think it was her, and not > someone else, > whose posts from Jerusalem I read on other listserves recently, that deal > with this subject). Her writings on this are available on her website, which Lyla pointed us to: > > Take a gander through Starhawk's official website. > > http://www.starhawk.org/ > Dave ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 15:46:58 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: <200208292146.g7TLkHf03089@quincy.ucdavis.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 02:46 PM 8/29/02 -0700, Cynthia Childs wrote: >Lee Anne Phillips wrote: > > > In the courts martial of those soldiers who were caught, and not > > all were, a common thread of officer "goofiness" emerges. While > > I can believe that there were a few, or even quite a few, sympathizers > > to Vietnamese nationalism among the troops, the actual instances > > of traitorous actions were *very* few. > >This is according to courts martial transcripts? If those soldiers had a >hope in hell of getting acquitted, any lawyer worth their salt would have >told them 'Don't go there' if they mentioned sympathy for the Vietnamese >cause. Sympathy for 'the enemy' won't get you off a murder charge, >acting in self-defense will. Law courts are not always about justice. . . To be sure, but the accounts were, for the most part, corroborated by soldiers *not* directly involved. I was, at the time, involved in what was called the peace movement but also had friends among the military. I've never been doctrinaire and always like to look at both sides. And there usually are two sides in real situations, since the silliest ideas mostly die a natural death before it comes to blows.. My girlfriend of the time was in the Navy and it was common knowledge that "fraggings" (from the practice of using untraceable fragmentation grenades to perform these acts of predation pressure on the goofy officer population) were directed at those who seemed likely to get one killed, as I stated. There was considerable sympathy for this among the rank and file, although officers were understandably somewhat less enthused. This was relatively uncommon, given the total numbers of troops and officers involved, but it is known that at least 600 officers and non-commissioned officers were assassinated, and there were 1400 other deaths "under mysterious circumstances." The most common reaction to callous or unreasonable officers was combat refusal, where the members of a company would simply refuse to go out on stupid missions. The Army kept most of these incidents quiet, but the wearing of peace symbols and black arm bands by combat troops became more and more common as the war dragged on and became steadily more unpopular among the civilians back home and the troops in the field. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 23:14:14 GMT Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: "Jeremy H. Griffith" Organization: Omni Systems, Inc. Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020829122245.025c40f0@www.leeanne.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Thu, 29 Aug 2002 14:25:25 -0700, Lee Anne Phillips wrote: >The Army still feels shame over the >incident, and it is reported that Desert Storm troops were told >before battle, "No May Lais!" The only problem with this view is that it ignores the reality of the Vietnam war in favor of the "official" version. In fact, My Lai was *not* exceptional, in terms of what was done to the civilian population. It was typical, a fact well established by the Winter Soldier Investigation back in January 1971: http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/ Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_entry.html (Do a Google search for "Winter Soldier" for lots more refs.) The Winter Soldier Investigation is not a mock trial. There will be no phony indictments; there will be no verdict against Uncle Sam. In these three days, over a hundred Vietnam veterans will present straightforward testimony-- direct testimony--about acts which are war crimes under international law. Acts which these men have seen and participated in. Acts which are the inexorable result of national policy. The vets will testify in panels arranged by the combat units in which they fought so that it will be easy to see the policy of each division and thus the larger policy. Each day there will be a special panel during the hours of testimony. Today, a panel on weaponry will explain the use and effects of some of the vicious and illegal weapons used in Vietnam. Tomorrow there will be a panel on prisoners of war composed of returned POWs, parents of a POW, American POW interrogators and vets who served in our own military stockades. Every witness throughout the three days will be available for cross-examination by the press after their initial statements and questioning by their fellow-vets who are acting as moderators. ... But we intend to tell more. We intend to tell who it was that gave us those orders; that created that policy; that set that standard of war bordering on full and final genocide. We intend to demonstrate that My Lai was no unusual occurrence, other than, perhaps, the number of victims killed all in one place, all at one time, all by one platoon of us. We intend to show that the policies of Americal Division which inevitably resulted in My Lai were the policies of other Army and Marine Divisions as well. We intend to show that war crimes in Vietnam did not start in March 1968, or in the village of Son My or with one Lt. William Calley. We intend to indict those really responsible for My Lai, for Vietnam, for attempted genocide. --Opening Statement of William Crandell, 1st Marine Division The main unusual aspect of My Lai was the fact that the events were so well publicized. Perhaps that's what those instructions to the Desert Storm troops were *really* about. And, of course, we don't have to look back to Vietnam to find many examples of US forces engaging in genocide. We don't even have to leave the US itself... ask any Native American. Or Hawai'ian. Starhawk is well aware of this history. In TFST, the point at which my suspension of disbelief totally snapped was indeed where Ohnine led half the army to attack the other half. (How would anyone in it know *which* other soldiers to shoot at? By race alone? Yeesh.) As Winter Soldier tells us, this is *not* what people who realize they have been in the wrong, acting as war criminals, ever do... --Jeremy H. Griffith http://www.omsys.com/jeremy/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 19:53:11 EDT Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lou Hoffman Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="part1_73.24ec8420.2aa00de7_boundary" --part1_73.24ec8420.2aa00de7_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 8/28/02 1:41:02 PM Central Daylight Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: > I personally find it far too difficult to fully engage with more than one > person on an intimate adult level but, what the heck, I'm willing to posit > that there are those so gifted in relationships and so saintly in their > personal lives that this is *possible* despite my own personal > encounters with the failed marriages and partnerships which seem > to inevitably follow. The only situations I'm aware of in which > "polyamory" seems to work is that of patriarchal polygamy, in which the > "master" essentially owns his wives, whose expectations do not seem > to include full agency or personhood, and a few rare instances of > polyandry, in which the actual system seems also patriarchal and > consists of joint ownership by brothers of one wife, more than one > being too expensive to support in the local economy. In neither case > does *love* have much to do with it. > > What I've actually *seen* in so-called "polyamorous" relationships > is usually one charismatic philanderer who manages to string along > several dupes or victims. When the victims finally realize that they've > been caught up in someone else's power trip, the relationships > dissolve and the core instigator moves on to another series of > shallow flirtations and callow sexual conquests disguised as the > "next step in the evolution of human potential." > > But then I've probably lived too long to be less than cynical > and I can't remember ever being quite as starry-eyed as belief > in such a system would require. Quite probably there exist > astonishing counterexamples that I, unluckily, haven't happened > to run across of loving triads, quadrads, and n-ads who have > grown old together in loving harmony and gracious mutual > admiration and consideration. > > Whether or not Starhawk was able to portray polyamorous relationships well, doesn't mean polyamorous relationshipsin the real world deserve this kind of sarcasm. Yes, some poly relationships end poorly. So do a lot of monogamous relationships. Lou, 20 years poly, neither saintly nor gifted "If I pass for other than what I am, do you feel safer?" Lani Kaahumanu, 1994 --part1_73.24ec8420.2aa00de7_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 8/28/02 1:41:02 PM Central Daylight Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes:


I personally find it far too difficult to fully engage with more than one
person on an intimate adult level but, what the heck, I'm willing to posit
that there are those so gifted in relationships and so saintly in their
personal lives that this is *possible* despite my own personal
encounters with the failed marriages and partnerships which seem
to inevitably follow. The only situations I'm aware of in which
"polyamory" seems to work is that of patriarchal polygamy, in which the
"master" essentially owns his wives, whose expectations do not seem
to include full agency or personhood, and a few rare instances of
polyandry, in which the actual system seems also patriarchal and
consists of joint ownership by brothers of one wife, more than one
being too expensive to support in the local economy. In neither case
does *love* have much to do with it.

What I've actually *seen* in so-called "polyamorous" relationships
is usually one charismatic philanderer who manages to string along
several dupes or victims. When the victims finally realize that they've
been caught up in someone else's power trip, the relationships
dissolve and the core instigator moves on to another series of
shallow flirtations and callow sexual conquests disguised as the
"next step in the evolution of human potential."

But then I've probably lived too long to be less than cynical
and I can't remember ever being quite as starry-eyed as belief
in such a system would require. Quite probably there exist
astonishing counterexamples that I, unluckily, haven't happened
to run across of loving triads, quadrads, and n-ads who have
grown old together in loving harmony and gracious mutual
admiration and consideration.



Whether or not Starhawk was able to portray polyamorous relationships well, doesn't mean polyamorous relationshipsin the real world deserve this kind of sarcasm. Yes, some poly relationships end poorly. So do a lot of monogamous relationships.

Lou, 20 years poly, neither saintly nor gifted

"If I pass for other than what I am, do you feel safer?"
Lani Kaahumanu, 1994 --part1_73.24ec8420.2aa00de7_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 17:25:52 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: Armies, civilians etal Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: <46.2cd5578c.2a9ff594@cs.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 06:09 PM 8/29/02 -0400, Joy Martin wrote: >I received this hard copy, and haven't had a chance to read it through, but >it's a very complete and excellent account by the Israeli peace movement of >events in Israel/Palestine since March. Personally I think the experience of >the Israeli peace movement is one of the most instructive at the moment in >the arts of nonviolence under extremely difficult circumstances on all sides. >I'd say more, but, no time just now.-Joy '68 I'd agree that their experience is instructive, although I believe they tend to lean toward a single-victim and single aggressor theory that distorts the total history of the region. As do the Israelis as a whole, although to describe the Israelis as single-minded about anything would be a gross distortion. There is considerable support within Israel of a negotiated settlement with the indigenous Arabs. There hasn't been a similar level of support from the Arabs, to their sorrow and shame, although there are *some* believers in peace. This empowers the right wing in Israel just as our own experience on September 11th does our own right wing. We have both of us been harmed by this tilt toward the right. The Israelis and the Arabs living in what was once Palestine are both victims of the last great period of Western colonialism. They were, for the most part, treated cavalierly by the British as UK political needs dictated. And now they're stuck with each other like two cats in a sack, and must perforce learn to live with each other or quarrel forever. Both are victims of anti-semitism in the broadest sense. The Jews were essentially driven out of Europe and the Arab portions of the Middle East and wound up in what is now Israel because that's where the Western Powers wanted them. Those same Western Powers didn't give a damn about the Arabs, at least those in "Palestine," because they had nothing to bargain with. It was too darned bad but them's the breaks. A lot of our own population was driven out of Europe for various reasons, taking away other people's land in the process. That's what happens when peoples move. I should reveal here that I'm partly Jewish, although not halachicly so, despite a very loose affiliation with a very Reform Judaism, and have *some* vested interest, but I'm also part Cherokee, and have considerable sympathy for *all* the victims of white colonialism. But it irritates me that US nationals who have no other connection to the conflict seem to feel qualified to criticize and condemn one side and not the other. Both are guilty of excess, and the current tactics reflect rather badly on the Arabs. Although there have been atrocities and looting by *some* Israeli soldiers, many of those caught at it have been court martialed and sent to prison. For the most part, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) has tried to maintain what they term "purity of arms." What this means is that, unlike the USA, they have consciously sent ground troops into harm's way rather than "carpet-bombing" as is mentioned in the article. The Arabs, on the other hand, have been deliberately targeting civilians, an atrocious and bloody strategy which is likely to blight their hopes for years to come. They haven't punished anyone for these crimes. I deliberately avoid the use of the word "Palestinian" not because I deny that indigenous Arabs exist but because the word is loaded and fuzzy. Half of historic Palestine is now Jordan, a country comprised of about two thirds ethnic "Palestinians." So in one sense there is already a "Palestinian" state, the part that was split off from Palestine proper and became first Transjordan and then, more concisely, Jordan. The West Bank was captured during the "1967 War" not from the "Palestinian" Arabs, those who actually lived there, but from Jordan, which had annexed that area of the West Bank now magically transformed by some into the nascent "Palestinian State," historic Judea and Samaria, from what was left of "Palestine." Gaza was similarly annexed by Egypt, so the pre-1967 score was roughly Israel 2, Jordan 1, Egypt 1, "Palestinians" 0. There has never been a "Palestinian" state, at least not in the last few thousand years or so. "Palestine" has always been owned by *someone*, either the Caananites, the Philistines (from whom comes the name), the Romans, the Arabian empires, the Turkish empires, the British empire, and so on. The Palestinian Arabs are going to have to deal with this fact honestly if they ever hope to have *anything*. They have just as valid a claim to huge chunks of Jordan (and don't think the Hashemite rulers the British installed to rule over "Transjordan" don't know it) as they do to huge chunks of Israel. They're probably not going to get either one. That's the reality on the ground although I commend to anyone who cares the possibility of agitating in Jordan to partition the state and give at least a part of it back to the indigenous inhabitants. The Hashemite rulers of Jordan are not actually from around there, but from what is now Saudi Arabia. Of course it's far more dangerous to agitate in Jordan than it is in Israel, a democratic nation, so perhaps the protestors are motivated at least in part from a mere lack of courage. It's always easier to protest against the safe "good guys" than it is to demonstrate against the baddies, who are quite likely to imprison or kill "principled" protestors. Lest we start fulminating about "justice," that concept is a very slippery thing when dealing with nations. The American Indians and other native peoples have a valid claim to the entirety of North and South America; how soon do you think they're going to get either continent back? How actively are we working toward this result? If anyone would like to deed any real property under their control over to the native peoples from whom it was stolen, please let me know and I'll put you in touch with the rightful owners. A similar offer applies to any inhabitant of Australia, New Zealand, "French" Polynesia, or other colonialized nations who would like to cease being receivers of stolen property and return it to the original and moral owners. And no country is free from such conquest. Spain has its Basques, who have been brutally suppressed, as well as Catalonia, which struggles less for freedom; Britain has the north of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and various islands; Germany Schleswig-Holstein, Russia a big chunk of what used to be Finland; France both Normandy and Gascony, which have had an uneasy relationship to the "whole" in historical memory; and so it goes. All these countries find it very easy to tell others what to do but find insurmountable difficulties when faced with similar situations at home. Indeed, all of Europe seems to have been stolen from either the Picts or the Celts by someone or another. Shall we tell the current Europeans to go back to the steppes around the Black Sea and give the whole kit and caboodle back to what's left of the Celts? We seem to have mislaid the Picts so that option's out. Most countries find it very difficult to "devolve." We had a conniption fit when the Confederacy tried to partition the USA; should we allow anyone who wants to to secede from the Union and form an independent state? To ally with a more congenial host country? A case can be made for severing the western states, California, Washington, and Oregon, from the USA and joining Canada; should we be able to? Should Quebec be able to secede from Canada and form its own country? What about the First Nations inhabitants of Quebec? Do they get a veto? Should they own the entire province? We drove the Mexicans out of large chunks of the American Southwest; should they *all* be able to come back, including their many descendents? Heck, we won't even honor the treaties we signed with Mexico after our war of aggression against it, nor give back the Hawaiian Kingdom to its owners. And please don't think we're about to start. It ain't happening. Where the heck does "justice" start anyway? And, more importantly, where does it end? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 20:50:30 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: Armies, civilians etal Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020829155302.00a8f830@www.leeanne.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > Indeed, all of Europe seems to have been stolen from > either the Picts or the Celts by someone or another. > Shall we tell the current Europeans to go back to the > steppes around the Black Sea and give the whole kit > and caboodle back to what's left of the Celts? The Celts aren't the originals either. They came from West Asia also, I believe, and stole the land from their forerunners, who I guess they called 'the little people', perhaps the original racist put down. Even the native Americans took over this land from the original animal inhabitants, many of whom it is now believed they hunted to extinction: horses, mammoth etc. Perhaps no people is untouched by being either oppressor or victim at some point. There are definitely fashions in who is to be blamed most at any one time for injustice, though, and I find it very disturbing that so many Europeans, especially, are so ready at this point to blame the Israelis, while keeping quiet about Arab atrocities. Your piece was eloquent as always, and the insight about Jordan a new one to me: very interesting. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 17:59:14 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: <3e17a253.1469624267@mail.telocity.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 11:14 PM 8/29/02 +0000, Jeremy H. Griffith wrote: >The only problem with this view is that it ignores the reality >of the Vietnam war in favor of the "official" version. In fact, >My Lai was *not* exceptional, in terms of what was done to the >civilian population. It was typical, a fact well established I don't believe it, although I agree that other such incidents probably occurred. "Typical" is a strong word that I think overstates the case. There was too much "My Lai," to be sure, but it would be impossible to cover up such a wholesale descent into murderous mob action by the hundreds of thousands of decent men and women who served there. Or are the women who served as nursing and support staff exempt from charges of rape and murder? By this account, we should immediately seek out every Vietnam veteran and lock them up, since they are obviously unfit to remain in polite society. I think not. I've already stated that armies turned on civilians degenerate, which was the root cause of My Lai and other atrocities, but most people, even men unlucky enough to be conscripted into a war they didn't like and didn't support, don't take out their anger and pain on civilians. What *did* happen in Vietnam was huge problems of alcohol and drug dependency, just as we see here in persons without hope stuck in miserable living conditions and performing hateful jobs. Of course there were violent individuals, even violent groups, just as we see in the inner city today, but to indite the flower of an entire generation because of a relatively few instances of criminal behavior is excessive and unfair. Why is it ok to demonize soldiers? Such sentiments would be instantly condemned as racist if leveled against any ethnic group; why is it less bigoted to paint soldiers with such a broad and unsympathetic brush? Holders of this viewpoint seems to believe, although rarely articulate, that people as a whole are mostly scum, with only a few rare exceptions worthy enough to be fit company for paragons of virtue such as themselves. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 18:21:49 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: Armies, civilians etal Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 08:50 PM 8/29/02 -0400, Dave Belden wrote: >The Celts aren't the originals either. They came from West Asia also, I >believe, and stole the land from their forerunners, who I guess they called >'the little people', At the time they were called Ligurians and Iberians, descended probably from the neolithic cultures that took the place away from the Neanderthals. The Basque people are actually among the original Homo sapiens inhabitants of Europe, and would have to stand in for the Picts if we wanted to give the British Isles and Western Europe back to the original owners. You're right about the Celts, although in Roman times they were pretty much the cat's pajamas in France and the "British" Isles. The Celts wiped out the Etruscans, who used to own northern Italy, and then moved on to conquer most of SW Europe. They too were pushed to the edge of the map and held out only in the farthest west and north. These things happen... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 22:30:22 EDT Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Armies, civilians etal Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 8/29/02 7:28:41 PM Central Daylight Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << they tend to lean toward a single-victim and single aggressor theory that distorts the total history of the region. >> they the Israeli peace movement ? Ya know, as I said, the Other Israel 'Inside the Maelstrom' article is an excellent recap of the last , what, 6 months. Anyone wanting to read it will find a useful and informative article. http://members.tripod.com/~other_Israel/ed.html As for the history of the last few thousand years and who is right and who is wrong about everything under the sun ...I'll pass on that. -Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 02:49:14 GMT Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: "Jeremy H. Griffith" Organization: Omni Systems, Inc. Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020829173246.02623870@www.leeanne.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Thu, 29 Aug 2002 17:59:14 -0700, Lee Anne Phillips wrote: >Why is it ok to demonize soldiers? Such >sentiments would be instantly condemned as racist >if leveled against any ethnic group; why is it less >bigoted to paint soldiers with such a broad and >unsympathetic brush? It's called "being realistic". Just read the WSI testimony. And I do *not* demonize the soldiers; I go by what they say, in their own words. If you will not be bothered looking at those words, uttered by men deeply troubled by what they had experienced directly there, then spare us the rhetoric. >Holders of this viewpoint seems to believe, although >rarely articulate, that people as a whole are mostly >scum, with only a few rare exceptions worthy enough >to be fit company for paragons of virtue such as >themselves. This sort of ad-hominem argument is really beneath you, Lee Anne. What it *does* accomplish is to hold up a mirror to your own pronouncements. Clearly, to you, I (and anyone else who disagrees with you?) am easily dismissed as an arrogant, judgmental fool. No, I do not consider *anyone* scum... not even the real war criminals, who drew us into that mess and still run this country. And most others... But there are many, many tortured, misguided, and misled people who deserve to hear more truth than is told in mass media. Listen to the soldiers, Lee Anne. Hear their stories, and take them into your heart... --Jeremy H. Griffith http://www.omsys.com/jeremy/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:33:37 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Julieanne Le Comte Subject: Re: Armies, civilians etal Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia , FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Since we are talking about war and armies and civilians et al, and it is also a feminist book dicussion group, some list-members may be interested in a new book, which was recently published, as in a week or two ago: "September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives" Its a large international anthology of essays and other stuff, from both prominent feminists, lawyers and activists of various kinds, as well as many pieces by mainstream women, and artists etc from about a dozen countries, including Afghanistan. You can order it on-line from Spinifex Press at: http://www.spinifexpress.com.au Cheers - - Julieanne This message was sent through MyMail http://www.mymail.com.au ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 12:33:40 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020829095839.0289fcd0@www.leeanne.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lee-Anne wrote: That's another thing I don't like about this book. It treats the army as if they were goons and nothing but. But such creatures are rare, not common, and it's difficult to imagine an American army, even after the devolution of civil society, being so removed from their traditions and sacred honor as to behave like the military stooges and strawmen in FST. Sigh. So, if Starhawk had placed the book anywher else, it would have been totally believable. I found this above rather strange. Just because the action takes place on soil that is now America, that hardly means that there is still any connection with any of America's institutions etc etc. The rapidity of the changes that SH posits is a little hard to accept. The changes *overall* in the entire structures of the people now living in what was formely America. Given the changes the SH alleges, obviously the army would have no connection with today's... Anyway, really, while it may be hard for a person with warm feelings for the military to accept SH's depiction, I imagine it's extrmely easy for most people. Countless examples from "real life" (and not just of the military) combine, for me anyway, to make SH's army swallowable. I think if you *wanted* a good army, you could easily create one. Maire ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 12:33:44 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing - OT, example of military standing down Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020829095839.0289fcd0@www.leeanne.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Lee Anne Phillips > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 3:38 AM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > At 10:35 AM 8/29/02 -0400, Dave Belden wrote: > >As I say, whether it could work in the circumstances of > Starhawk's novel I > >don't know. But there are many many cases of soldiers turning on their > >officers in war: many US officers were killed by their men in Vietnam... > > Soldiers turn on officers who are trying to get them killed, > and that rarely. Soldiers in Viet Nam were just trying to survive > and "gung ho" officers who wanted to advance their careers > by "heroically" sending their troops to death were fair game, > but not their fellow soldiers. > Just thoguht I would tell you about my uncle. My uncle served in Vietnam. Befor Vietnam, befor the war even started, he trained as an officer in Duntroon, and was intent on a military career. When the war started and my uncle was sent over there, it seems he had a change of heart. He refused to kill anyone. Faced, I suppose, with the realism of death, horror of war, he refused to follow orders, refused to pick up a weapon. He argued that it contravened the commandment- thou shalt not kill. He was sent home forthwith. Once in Australia, he was made much of- though I don't know whethe public sympathys were with or against him- he spoke on current affairs shows, and so on. I'm not drawing any conclusions from this story, just thought I would tell you. Maire ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 12:33:41 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing may be OT- example of "successful matrydom" Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020829084403.02887390@www.leeanne.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > And more than that, the offering up of children as "theater" reminded > me not so much of martyrdom, but of the children in Jim Jones' > version of "theater" protesting the "invasion of his cultic world by > "outsiders" who acted contrary to cult norms. We have the recent > memory of hundreds of people going willingly to death, offering > up their children as "examples" meant to shame the world. Yet, > oddly, we remember this act as a tragedy, as a useless waste of > life and, indeed, as mass murder. I just wanted to say something. I think that what SH's family did does work. It is working in Australia at the moment. Thousands of men, women and childrn are incarcerated in concentration camps in the desert, waiting to see if they will be given refugee status. Australian public wre totally unsympathetic, most especially after Sept 11, and the recent govt rode into power on the strength of the issue- "we will decide who comes into our country, and how" blah blah. I cant even begin to descrive how viley this issue has been treated. For example, the govt declared that Afghan mothers were throwing their children into the water to be photographed to gain public support (from a people smuggling boat in danger of sinking off the Aus coast). However, the tide is slowly turning.. for months, people- and children- going on hunger strikes in the camps, rioting, and sewing their- and their children's- mouths up were cited as more examples of the barbarity of these people. After a while, it just doesnt wash. Finally, the anti- illegal alien/ refugee mood has begun to crumple with shame. People can no longer stomach the treatment of people- families with children included- who ar so desperate that they are killing themselves in massive numbers, sewing their children's mouths shut, etc. The attitude of a people trained by their leaders to be unsympatheic and hard, can change. I think that especially crucial to the process, is that there be a "human face" for the people (army or whoever), that they can identify with- for Australians, 2 Afghan boys who escaped the camp and told their story- for SH's army, the family that offered themselves up. Maire ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 23:58:04 EDT Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Armies, civilians etal Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 8/29/02 7:28:41 PM Central Daylight Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << But it irritates me that US nationals who have no other connection to the conflict seem to feel qualified to criticize and condemn one side and not the other. >> Okay, I'll say something here, even though I'll probably regret it (not for saying it, but because it's likely a waste of time). I don't know which US nationals you are referring to, but I've lived in the Middle East and the US nationals I correspond with daily all have, and we're quite familiar with the history thank you...I really get tired of being preached to, especially about subjects I could spend a lot of timing picking apart, but...it's not time I want to spend. Not here, not now, possibly not ever. A lot of people are working very hard day in and day out to try to reach a just peace in the Middle East. It's a conflict rife with bitter ironies. Talk is cheap. Talk that takes truncated catalogues of historical 'facts', shakes them up together, and claims some lesson to be learned from it, is ...worse than uninformative.Give me Uri Avnery, who brings his searing ethical intelligence to bear from the heart of the darkest days! I am so very grateful for his and Gush Shalom's steadfast voice, crying though it be in the wilderness.-Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 12:58:40 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: OT displacement WAS Armies, civilians etal- Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 10:51 AM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] Armies, civilians etal > > > > > > Indeed, all of Europe seems to have been stolen from > > either the Picts or the Celts by someone or another. > > Shall we tell the current Europeans to go back to the > > steppes around the Black Sea and give the whole kit > > and caboodle back to what's left of the Celts? > > The Celts aren't the originals either. They came from West Asia also, I > believe, and stole the land from their forerunners, who I guess > they called > 'the little people', perhaps the original racist put down. Even the native > Americans took over this land from the original animal > inhabitants, many of > whom it is now believed they hunted to extinction: horses, mammoth etc. > Perhaps no people is untouched by being either oppressor or victim at some > point. There are definitely fashions in who is to be blamed most > at any one > time for injustice, though, and I find it very disturbing that so many > Europeans, especially, are so ready at this point to blame the Israelis, > while keeping quiet about Arab atrocities. Your piece was eloquent as > always, and the insight about Jordan a new one to me: very interesting. I would point to the example of the Australian Aboriginals, who lived in balance with natur for 40 000 years. Only interference I can think of, is taming the dingo, and they used fire to create larger grass lands in one area, to inc. numbers of kangaroos. Maire > Dave ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:05:19 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think if you *wanted* a good army, you could easily create one. Maire err.... by that, I mean, "if you *wanted* a GOON army" Maire ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 21:52:53 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: <3e18da37.1483932121@mail.telocity.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 02:49 AM 8/30/02 +0000, Jeremy H. Griffith wrote: >On Thu, 29 Aug 2002 17:59:14 -0700, Lee Anne Phillips > wrote: > > >Why is it ok to demonize soldiers? Such > >sentiments would be instantly condemned as racist > >if leveled against any ethnic group; why is it less > >bigoted to paint soldiers with such a broad and > >unsympathetic brush? > >It's called "being realistic". Just read the WSI >testimony. And I do *not* demonize the soldiers; >I go by what they say, in their own words. If you >will not be bothered looking at those words, uttered >by men deeply troubled by what they had experienced >directly there, then spare us the rhetoric. Oh my. The Winter Soldier Investigation was started by people with one particular axe to grind. It is by no means unbiased and doesn't take into account the *many* Vietnam veterans who were and remain proud of their service under extremely difficult conditions. The WSI deliberately excluded *those* men and women and dismissed all arguments contrary to their views. And indeed, if you read my posts in their entirety, you may discover that I know this already. I was an active protestor of the war in Vietnam, worked with the American Friends Service Committee to counsel draft resistors and conscientious objectors, counseled servicemen trying to claim late CO status, participated in direct action to convince conscientious objectors shipped off to "conch camps" in the Sierras to work for the same wages paid to convict fire crews that their incarceration there was illegal and the wages paid a violation of US law, which specified that COs must be paid the "prevailing wage," and both sought and provided funds for young men who chose to flee to Canada rather than help prosecute this largely unjust war. I'm particularly proud of some of my anti-war and CO-support pamphlets. But I don't hold one-sided views about anything, and refuse to demonize people who didn't agree with me at the time, or even people who came later to agree but were violently opposed at the time. I believe that some of my work served to sway opinions precisely because it wasn't one-sided and didactic, and could honor many honest responses to the war without demanding that anyone accept a "party line." I may even have saved a few lives. Who knows? The WSI accuses US forces of committing war crimes after carefully explaining that it was impossible to fight that particular war without committing such crimes. Actually, *appearing* to commit such crimes, although the distinction is difficult, but is inherently dishonest. This is not to say that war crimes were not committed; they were. But they were not "typical" and were, at least until the very end of our involvement, not even common. The more the war got out of control and the worse the provocation, the more things *did* get out of hand. People are human after all, and reach breaking points based on their own limitations and psychology. You can't judge the behavior of people under enormous stress using quite the same standards as you do the man next door watering his lawn. Where a soldier in mortal danger might reasonably throw a hand grenade toward any sudden noise, one might properly castigate a neighbor who did the same. The WSI ignores the fact that the tactics used by guerilla fighters, not wearing uniforms and using a civilian populace as human shields, are also war crimes under the Geneva Convention. And in fact, by willingly hiding soldiers, by providing intelligence, *many* Vietnamese civilians also violated the laws of war and were subject to *legal* summary justice on the battlefield by any soldier. You can't have it both ways. Either you follow the rules of war or those rules don't fully apply. If a "soldier" hides among civilians and fails to wear a uniform, he is a spy, assassin, or saboteur and his hidden presence on the battlefield, which might put civilians in danger, is a capital war crime. Any civilian casualties which result from that action are chargeable to the soldier or army which adopts such illegal tactics, not the army wearing regular uniforms and trying to abide by the rules, which is forced to fire upon civilians in order to neutralize a real or imagined threat. Most of the actual war crimes in that war were committed, on a daily basis, by the North Vietnamese. We ourselves committed many crimes, not least of which was the wanton destruction of trees and crops, the means to life itself, but this is not a war crime, surprisingly enough, only bal taschit, a violation of moral law, but systematically pursued. And the longer the war went on, the worse it got. But it was precisely this point, that the war had turned into a war of extermination directed *toward*, if not exactly *at* the entire populace of Vietnam, which made it politically impossible to continue. As I said before. The North's tactics, although illegal under the laws of war, were very shrewd. By callously placing their civilian population in harm's way, they made it impossible for a civilized society to continue prosecuting the war. And we *were* civilized. For the most part at least. That's ultimately why we left. If we were quite as bad as some make out, we could simply have murdered everyone, brought in replacement citizens, and been there still. That's precisely what we did with the American Indians, what the Romans did to Gaul (more or less), and the Hebrews did to the Canaanites. All these populations were decimated to the extent that whole tribes disappeared and only a few remain, tattered remnants of once thriving cultures. Except for the Canaanites, of course, who seem to be not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead. Last I looked the Vietnamese were still around and still living in their very own country. This is not the expected outcome of a truly tyrannical war. Not that they didn't have the right to live there in the first place. It was our meddling in the aftermath of WWII that brought the French back, and led directly to our involvement in that profoundly stupid war. Ho Chi Minh modeled the Vietnamese Constitution directly after our own, was (prior to our involvement in the war) a great admirer of the USA and its people. If our government had been run by people even a little less paranoid and stupid we could probably have helped create the first Southeast Asian democracy and changed the course of history in wonderful ways, instead of the sorry mess of brutal dictatorships and corruption we left in our wake throughout the region. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 22:11:14 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 01:05 PM 8/30/02 +1000, Maire wrote: >I think if you *wanted* a good army, you could easily create one. >Maire >err.... by that, I mean, >"if you *wanted* a GOON army" OK, I accept that. We do, after all, have quasi-armies of goons calling themselves skinheads and white power groups in this country. There are even a few in LA although their power base seems to be somewhat further in toward the middle of the country. But what the heck, if you wanted goons they're easy enough to come by almost anywhere. Maybe Starhawk's army recruited from prison gangs. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 14:51:22 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020829220628.00a24ac0@www.leeanne.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit (lee anne, sorry to be a pain, most people ar in prison because they have drugs problems, not becuse they ar violent, despite the medias depictions. 80% of people in Aus prisons are there for drug-related crime) Just an issue close to my heart. Maire > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Lee Anne Phillips > Sent: Friday, 30 August 2002 3:11 PM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] The Fifth Sacred Thing > > > At 01:05 PM 8/30/02 +1000, Maire wrote: > >I think if you *wanted* a good army, you could easily create one. > >Maire > >err.... by that, I mean, > >"if you *wanted* a GOON army" > > OK, I accept that. We do, after all, have quasi-armies of > goons calling themselves skinheads and white power groups > in this country. There are even a few in LA although their > power base seems to be somewhat further in toward the > middle of the country. But what the heck, if you wanted > goons they're easy enough to come by almost anywhere. > Maybe Starhawk's army recruited from prison gangs. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 00:42:40 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Julieanne Subject: Re: OT displacement WAS Armies, civilians etal- Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:58 PM 30/08/02 +1000, Maire wrote: >I would point to the example of the Australian Aboriginals, who lived in >balance with natur for 40 000 years. Only interference I can think of, is >taming the dingo, and they used fire to create larger grass lands in one >area, to inc. numbers of kangaroos. I'm not sure that living in balance with nature can be implied, or assumed to be a good thing anyway, and it also depends on how you define "balance" - and, just as an aside - aborigine is the correct noun, aboriginal is an adjective. but then the Australian continent is the hottest and driest and flattest continent on earth. The surrounding ocean is also the poorest in fish stocks, and is probably why we alone have twice the sea boundary of other countries, and tend to get very nasty and play naval shooting practice with Indonesian fishing boats, poaching in our northern and western waters. The three major deserts in Australia are all more than twice as large as the Sahara, nine of the ten most common snake species are the 9 most poisonous on the planet, and so on. Apart from some spectacular pockets of exceptions, its one of the least hospitable parts of nature on earth outside of the polar regions- probably because it was not affected by the last 2 ice ages, so had no glaciation and is almost eroded down to bedrock. Its possibly why it was the last to be colonised by both early homo sapiens, and more modern colonising disaporas - and even in the most recent colonisation, the only people who came were forced to be here because they were the poorest dregs of the poverty-stricken streets of urban Ireland and England, and then only because it was the "last place on earth"! I can see those first aborigines coming over the northern land bridges and lamenting "Oh..shit..." Although there has been recent evidence of greater than 40,000 years (closer to 60) - that is still very recent to Europe and Asia, which supported humanity for much longer than that. And we are still very sparsely populated - only 19.5 million - and over 9 million, nearly half - live in just 2 major cities. Around 80% of Australia's population live in 10 large cities, 9 of which are on the coast - Australia is a nation of urbanites and commuters on rush-hour freeways and road rage at traffic-lights, visiting the beach on weekends....and most have never seen a kangaroo, just the ubiquitous grey wallabies on their childhood family camping holidays to a nicely manicured and tamed state reserve park a few hours drive out of those cities. Per head of capita, Australians are the most overseas travelled in the world, and never see much of their own city let alone the country (or a real kangaroo) - we also tend to be the world's greatest restaurant goers for some unknown reason. Our idea of multi-culturalism seems to be sipping chardonnay, while stirring the Thai red curry, and nibbling on a lebanese felafel, and agonising over baklava or lychees with Japanese green tea ice-cream for dessert - with much of our restaurant dinner conversation from our inner-city restaurant with the great city skyline or harbour view and fantastic Moroccan coffee - discussing the pros and cons of reconciliation with aborigines, and damage to our unique environment which we can't be bothered seeing, coz LA or London is much nicer this time of year. But I agree Maire, those awful images of the prisoner camps way out at Woomera have spoiled some Oz appetites in recent times, (and lets face it, most Australians wouldn't know where Woomera is or how to spell it, if it wasn't for the reffos) - but I may be just cynical, but the majority who were sucked in by the refugee=terrorist rhetoric to move the last election, were older retired people, usually conservative anyway (and who tend to be concentrated in marginal electorates) and some urban lower working-class peoples who are struggling and see an influx of refugees as a threat to jobs etc. Also - never forget the large rural gerrymander in Australia - they may only be 20-25% of the population out there in the bush - but their vote is worth 3 of a city-sider. As for the aborigines firing of the eastern forests, which were replaced by grasslands - that wasn't a small feat, and resulted in a wide swathe from Queensland to Victoria/SA.....and is now our major wheatbelt and breadbasket - like the great prairies of north americas. But it was done to drive forest game into the open for hunting, but constant firing never allowed full regrowth, hence it turned into scrubland, or what is called savannah in Africa. Secondly, it wasn't kangaroos, they always lived mostly in the central inland areas - coastal roos aren't kangaroos at all, but wallabies....eg Skippy wasn't a "bush kangaroo" but an Eastern Grey Rock Wallaby. Also, the dingo was a native canid of SE Asia, and was imported with the aborigines, (and hence were as foreign as foxes and rabbits), and so were tamed long before arriving in Australia, but later became extinct in Asia. Nothing new there, many peoples have domesticated dogs. We have no way of knowing how the early aborigines affected or changed the environment, or whether those changes were positive or negative, its possible the dingo was responsible for eradicating some species, and was as dangerous as feral foxes are now, but it just took a few centuries for a new "balance to nature" to assert itself. Its also possible the firing of the eastern forests gave advantage to some species, but killed others, it might have helped change the Murray-Darling river system to become more arid and reduce waterflow without a supporting forest ecosystem to aid in water catchment and retention. Most human peoples have been responsible for environmental degradation - just early peoples did not have had the tech to do it so rapidly or efficiently as we can today. The Middle East is a good case in point - once the cradle of civilisation and the birth of at least one major agricultural civilisation supporting rather large centralised populations - but much of it is now desertified. There is much evidence of the early peoples of the Americas were continually forced to migrate south, simply because of famines due to over-farming in one region after another. One region in central america has been shown to have had 3 major settlements over a millennia or 2. Each time this valley grew to a population of about 25,000 people over a couple of centuries - they died out or moved away due to famines. The valley would lay fallow for a couple of centuries....then again, some group moved in, settled down, grew in prosperity and number...only to die out again, when they outstripped the valleys resources to support them. Having plenty of room to move always helped - if our ancestors screwed up one region by over-farming or hunting out all the local game.....well..they could always move onto the next. But eventually, we came to find the next valley over the ridge was already occupied, but we couldn't go back - this was the best valley for miles around. Well..competition for resources is also part of the "balance of nature" - whether we are competing with a bunch of bats or bears for cave-sites or with another bunch of hominids for a permanent water-supply - then conflict breaks out - and lets all be civilised and mature and negotiate an equitable sharing arrangement probably didn't happen that often. Even amongst neighbouring tribes of native Americans, there were bitter conflicts before white colonisation - I recall when reading the story of Lewis and Clark, that one gentle friendly but small tribe they stayed with, were on the edge of being wiped out by aggressive neighbours, or facing the prospect of being absorbed and merged into one or other of the larger tribes. But we are all long past the point of being able to move on anymore, like Lee Anne mentions in regard to Palestine-Israel being "two cats in a bag" - almost all countries/continents now have at least two and sometimes several "cats in a bag" - and in some countries like France, the increase in conflict and shifts to the right-wing are quite pronounced as they have large populations of arabic peoples who have been resident for several generations. Cheers - Julieanne ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:03:48 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020829220628.00a24ac0@www.leeanne.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 10:11 PM 8/29/2002 -0700, Lee Anne Phillips wrote: >At 01:05 PM 8/30/02 +1000, Maire wrote: >>I think if you *wanted* a good army, you could easily create one. >>Maire >>err.... by that, I mean, >>"if you *wanted* a GOON army" > >OK, I accept that. We do, after all, have quasi-armies of >goons calling themselves skinheads and white power groups >in this country. There are even a few in LA although their >power base seems to be somewhat further in toward the >middle of the country. But what the heck, if you wanted >goons they're easy enough to come by almost anywhere. >Maybe Starhawk's army recruited from prison gangs. Though I find many of the book's details implausible or overly convenient, I have to give the author credit for building up the disaffection of the troops. She makes it very clear that large numbers of soldiers were in the army only because that was their one option besides prison (usually for crimes like stealing water). Most of them stay instead of deserting because they are afraid they will die without the immuno-boosting drugs the army feeds them. Once Madrone discovers a way to wean them from the drugs, many more are willing to turn on their captors. Race tensions and generally poor treatment by their officers are also highlighted more than once. Given the setting as the author described it, it doesn't seem that odd that the invading forces broke down the way they did. Why the Stewards were stupid enough to send this poor excuse for an army north to begin with is another question. ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://therem.net/ Listening to: The Chemical Brothers -- Surrender "I've built my white picket fence around the Now, with a commanding view of the Soon-to-Be." -- The Tick ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 10:03:33 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Sandy Cronin Subject: Re: OT displacement WAS Armies, civilians etal- Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20020831004240.00e40b20@pop.ozemail.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Secondly, it wasn't kangaroos, > they always lived > mostly in the central inland areas - coastal roos > aren't kangaroos at all, > but wallabies.... I'm sorry, but I don't understand. It sounds like you're trying to say that the red kangaroos (Macropus Rufus) are the only "true kangaroos" and that anything else that looks like them is really a wallaby. According to this: http://www.innvista.com/taxonomy/mammals/macropod.htm and every other taxonomy I can find, the eastern greys are always referred to as kangaroo, not wallaby, and they are in parks a few hours from Sydney (I know, I saw a bunch when visiting last year). Whether a species in the family Macropodidae is called a kangaroo or wallaby at this point seems to be more up to tradition than anything else, there's no real taxonomic distinctions, except that *generally* the larger ones are called kangaroo (with the exeption of the rat kangaroos), and the smaller are called wallaby. Captain Cook most definintely was not in the "central inland areas" of Australia when he got the name "kangaroo" from the natives for the first macropod he saw. -Sandy __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 07:02:30 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: OT displacement WAS Armies, civilians etal- Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20020831004240.00e40b20@pop.ozemail.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Julieanne, let me point out *immediately*, that Aboriginals, HATE teh term aborigine. They prefer to be known as Aboriginals... as in Australians, Americans, and so on. That is an important point. I seem to live in teh same country as you, but can't tell from your post. I live in Brisbane- we had a dead wallaby outside our house a few weeks ago, go into any park and you will see koalas in the trees. Don't project your own experience onto all Australians, thanks. Australia is *massively* more diverse than you seem to realise- I'm quite astonished that you think: e unknown reason. > > Our idea of multi-culturalism seems to be sipping chardonnay, while > stirring the Thai red curry, and nibbling on a lebanese felafel, and > agonising over baklava or lychees with Japanese green tea ice-cream for > dessert - with much of our restaurant dinner conversation from our > inner-city restaurant with the great city skyline or harbour view and > fantastic Moroccan coffee - discussing the pros and cons of reconciliation > with aborigines, and damage to our unique environment which we can't be > bothered seeing, coz LA or London is much nicer this time of year. No offence, that is astoundingly .. the percentage of people who can afford to eat out in inner-city restaurants is extremely low, the vast majority have never been overseas, huge amounts of people actually live *out* of cities, believe it or not.. that may be *your* lifestyle, its probably the lifestyle of another 5% at most of Australians. Why don't you try your version of multiculturalism on someone living in Marrickville, or Eastwood, or Brighton. It's hard for me to even read the post of someone who corrects the term Aboriginal with aborigine, and then goes on with this elitist crap= oh, but its not elitist if everyone is doing it, eh? How many Aboriginals do you bump into in those inner-city restuarants with teh fabulous sky-line? Maire > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Julieanne > Sent: Saturday, 31 August 2002 12:43 AM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] OT displacement WAS Armies, civilians etal- > > > At 12:58 PM 30/08/02 +1000, Maire wrote: > > >I would point to the example of the Australian Aboriginals, who lived in > >balance with natur for 40 000 years. Only interference I can think of, is > >taming the dingo, and they used fire to create larger grass lands in one > >area, to inc. numbers of kangaroos. > > I'm not sure that living in balance with nature can be implied, or assumed > to be a good thing anyway, and it also depends on how you define "balance" > - and, just as an aside - aborigine is the correct noun, aboriginal is an > adjective. > > but then the Australian continent is the hottest and driest and flattest > continent on earth. The surrounding ocean is also the poorest in fish > stocks, and is probably why we alone have twice the sea boundary of other > countries, and tend to get very nasty and play naval shooting > practice with > Indonesian fishing boats, poaching in our northern and western waters. > > The three major deserts in Australia are all more than twice as large as > the Sahara, nine of the ten most common snake species are the 9 most > poisonous on the planet, and so on. Apart from some spectacular > pockets of > exceptions, its one of the least hospitable parts of nature on earth > outside of the polar regions- probably because it was not affected by the > last 2 ice ages, so had no glaciation and is almost eroded down > to bedrock. > > Its possibly why it was the last to be colonised by both early homo > sapiens, and more modern colonising disaporas - and even in the > most recent > colonisation, the only people who came were forced to be here because they > were the poorest dregs of the poverty-stricken streets of urban > Ireland and > England, and then only because it was the "last place on earth"! > > I can see those first aborigines coming over the northern land bridges and > lamenting "Oh..shit..." > Although there has been recent evidence of greater than 40,000 years > (closer to 60) - that is still very recent to Europe and Asia, which > supported humanity for much longer than that. > > And we are still very sparsely populated - only 19.5 million - and over 9 > million, nearly half - live in just 2 major cities. Around 80% of > Australia's population live in 10 large cities, 9 of which are on > the coast > - Australia is a nation of urbanites and commuters on rush-hour freeways > and road rage at traffic-lights, visiting the beach on > weekends....and most > have never seen a kangaroo, just the ubiquitous grey wallabies on their > childhood family camping holidays to a nicely manicured and tamed state > reserve park a few hours drive out of those cities. Per head of capita, > Australians are the most overseas travelled in the world, and never see > much of their own city let alone the country (or a real kangaroo) > - we also > tend to be the world's greatest restaurant goers for some unknown reason. > > Our idea of multi-culturalism seems to be sipping chardonnay, while > stirring the Thai red curry, and nibbling on a lebanese felafel, and > agonising over baklava or lychees with Japanese green tea ice-cream for > dessert - with much of our restaurant dinner conversation from our > inner-city restaurant with the great city skyline or harbour view and > fantastic Moroccan coffee - discussing the pros and cons of reconciliation > with aborigines, and damage to our unique environment which we can't be > bothered seeing, coz LA or London is much nicer this time of year. > > But I agree Maire, those awful images of the prisoner camps way out at > Woomera have spoiled some Oz appetites in recent times, (and lets face it, > most Australians wouldn't know where Woomera is or how to spell it, if it > wasn't for the reffos) - but I may be just cynical, but the majority who > were sucked in by the refugee=terrorist rhetoric to move the last > election, > were older retired people, usually conservative anyway (and who tend to be > concentrated in marginal electorates) and some urban lower working-class > peoples who are struggling and see an influx of refugees as a threat to > jobs etc. Also - never forget the large rural gerrymander in Australia - > they may only be 20-25% of the population out there in the bush - > but their > vote is worth 3 of a city-sider. > > As for the aborigines firing of the eastern forests, which were > replaced by > grasslands - that wasn't a small feat, and resulted in a wide swathe from > Queensland to Victoria/SA.....and is now our major wheatbelt and > breadbasket - like the great prairies of north americas. But it was done > to drive forest game into the open for hunting, but constant firing never > allowed full regrowth, hence it turned into scrubland, or what is called > savannah in Africa. Secondly, it wasn't kangaroos, they always lived > mostly in the central inland areas - coastal roos aren't kangaroos at all, > but wallabies....eg Skippy wasn't a "bush kangaroo" but an Eastern Grey > Rock Wallaby. > > Also, the dingo was a native canid of SE Asia, and was imported with the > aborigines, (and hence were as foreign as foxes and rabbits), and so were > tamed long before arriving in Australia, but later became extinct in Asia. > Nothing new there, many peoples have domesticated dogs. > > We have no way of knowing how the early aborigines affected or changed the > environment, or whether those changes were positive or negative, its > possible the dingo was responsible for eradicating some species, > and was as > dangerous as feral foxes are now, but it just took a few centuries for a > new "balance to nature" to assert itself. Its also possible the firing of > the eastern forests gave advantage to some species, but killed others, it > might have helped change the Murray-Darling river system to become more > arid and reduce waterflow without a supporting forest ecosystem to aid in > water catchment and retention. > > Most human peoples have been responsible for environmental degradation - > just early peoples did not have had the tech to do it so rapidly or > efficiently as we can today. The Middle East is a good case in point - > once the cradle of civilisation and the birth of at least one major > agricultural civilisation supporting rather large centralised > populations - > but much of it is now desertified. There is much evidence of the early > peoples of the Americas were continually forced to migrate south, simply > because of famines due to over-farming in one region after another. One > region in central america has been shown to have had 3 major settlements > over a millennia or 2. Each time this valley grew to a > population of about > 25,000 people over a couple of centuries - they died out or moved away due > to famines. The valley would lay fallow for a couple of centuries....then > again, some group moved in, settled down, grew in prosperity and > number...only to die out again, when they outstripped the valleys > resources > to support them. > > Having plenty of room to move always helped - if our ancestors screwed up > one region by over-farming or hunting out all the local > game.....well..they > could always move onto the next. But eventually, we came to find the next > valley over the ridge was already occupied, but we couldn't go back - this > was the best valley for miles around. Well..competition for resources is > also part of the "balance of nature" - whether we are competing with a > bunch of bats or bears for cave-sites or with another bunch of > hominids for > a permanent water-supply - then conflict breaks out - and lets all be > civilised and mature and negotiate an equitable sharing arrangement > probably didn't happen that often. Even amongst neighbouring tribes of > native Americans, there were bitter conflicts before white > colonisation - I > recall when reading the story of Lewis and Clark, that one gentle friendly > but small tribe they stayed with, were on the edge of being wiped out by > aggressive neighbours, or facing the prospect of being absorbed and merged > into one or other of the larger tribes. > > But we are all long past the point of being able to move on anymore, like > Lee Anne mentions in regard to Palestine-Israel being "two cats > in a bag" - > almost all countries/continents now have at least two and > sometimes several > "cats in a bag" - and in some countries like France, the increase in > conflict and shifts to the right-wing are quite pronounced as they have > large populations of arabic peoples who have been resident for several > generations. > > Cheers - > Julieanne ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 10:45:49 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Julieanne Subject: Re: OT displacement WAS Armies, civilians etal- Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:02 AM 31/08/02 +1000, you wrote: >Dear Julieanne, let me point out *immediately*, that Aboriginals, HATE teh >term aborigine. They prefer to be known as Aboriginals... as in Australians, >Americans, and so on. That is an important point. I seem to live in teh same >country as you, but can't tell from your post. I live in Brisbane- we had a >dead wallaby outside our house a few weeks ago, go into any park and you >will see koalas in the trees. Don't project your own experience onto all >Australians, thanks. Australia is *massively* more diverse than you seem to >realise- I'm quite astonished that you think: Yes, they do hate the term aborigine, and they don't like aboriginal much either - they prefer indigenous in officialese - but they are also very, very diverse too - And no, it isn't my lifestyle - and never has been - I was being sarcastic or making a cartoon caricature or satirical or tongue-in-cheek or sending-up or shit-stirring about a group of Australians I personally don't identify with - I'm sorry if it came over a way I didn't intend. I was born in Snowy River country, not far from the Victorian snowfields - my father was French-Canadian - but halfbreed native american, his mother was full Agonquin tribe. My mother was English from a poor midlands coal-mining village. Neither of my parents had more than a Grade 6 education. Though born in the mountains, and spending the firs bit of childhood and school years in rural Victoria, I spent most of my later childhood in far western NSW in isolated outback communities - poor rural working-class, so poor we did live with the blacks. Fringe-dwellers. But my native American blood often told in the summer, when me and siblings would often darken. I recall in the 1960s, my brother and I being herded into the back of a police ute with many other kids. We kids had all been swimming and playing in the Murrumbidgee River, diving for freshwater mussels - when the police rounded us all up - thinking we were all aboriginal kids. In those days, some of the local aboriginal communities were still semi-nomadic, and were being rounded up to be shipped to reserves. My parents weren't impressed when they found out my brother and I had been taken as well. But having been raised a country kid - I did my fair share of shooting roos, and having emus for backyard pets, and eating rabbits when there was no money. My fist paid job at 13 was mustering sheep, up there on my first stockhorse with akubra and .22. I moved to Sydney when I finished high-school, (thanks to Gough Whitlam I and one brother were the only 2 of 6 kids able to finish high-school) and amongst many other things - later spent nearly 2 years bumming around Oz in all sorts of places, from working on prawn trawlers in the far north - to a strange few months working in the H.I.M. (Hammersley Iron Mines) in the Pilbara region of northern WA. That was interesting - 8 young women serving meals in the single men's mess halls - with 1500 mining men - although 8 young white women had it tough, my heart still breaks 20 years later to be powerless and silent witness to the abuse of black women from the nearby aboriginal reserve. The bastards wouldn't even give the women a lift home, but would dump them nightly from the back of H.I.M utes. That was 1980 - maybe things have changed now. After going back to Sydney and a brief period on the streets - been there, done that, bought that T-shirt in the gutters of Kings Cross (no dead wallabies there) and attempting to return to Uni which I had earlier dropped out of- I later married and had 2 children, but was deserted, left destitute in inner-city Sydney at 25 with 2 babies in nappies, one still breastfeeding. The second one, my daughter, was born at home in an inner-city Sydney terrace house - with a pair of midwives, one indigenous, the other Dutch-born, and they are still my closest friends. That area of Sydney then, before gentrification, was mostly Greek, Turkish, Lebanese etc but also Jewish - I gave my son an unusual name - but only later did I find out that it was a common Jewish name, when going to local play-groups, other women would automatically assume I was Jewish. Because of my unusual colouring, I have often been mistaken for anything from aboriginal to Greek to Jewish! I've never been sure of what culture or ethnic group I should identify with. To complicate matters, my parents were socialist/communist in philosophy, they never legally married, and never had us kids baptised etc - my father in particular was violently opposed to all religions and threatened a local Anglican priest with a shotgun who visited after I innocently told him in a school scripture class that I hadn't been christened. After Sydney, my options were limited as a young destitute single mother - the outer suburban State housing welfare ghettos didn't appeal - so I moved to Canberra to stay with my mother who had then recently retired to canberra from the outback. I've been here ever since, but was able to complete my Uni degree started several years before, majoring in biological sciences, and subsequently able to work and live in a more professional educated middle-class atmosphere - able to afford the leafy suburbs with dead wallabies, native birds in the garden, possums in the roof, and enjoy the occasional chardonnay beside the barby:) *wink* :)- I was also able to later travel overseas, and on one occasion, was able to take my children to Canada to visit my father's side of my extended family - both the French-speaking and native american families (although I notice canadians tend to call them 'First Nations'). My own kids have now grown up now, but during the teen years - for several years I fostered kids, and remain active as a volunteer in local community groups working with street kids - I fostered mostly young girls escaping sexual/physical abuse - one of the indigenous ones, has called me mum since she was 11, and is very much a part of our family. Indeed, she is now 19 and just last weekend moved back home after 18 months away on the NSW north coast working as an indigenous childcare worker with communities up there:) The same weekend, my youngest daughter moved away from home into her first Uni student group household. As for work, I started off in Environment Australia performing ecological/biological environmental impact assessments on new tourist developments - but for much of the last 10-12 years I have worked in federal govt health department in various subject matter areas, and most recently the Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. I travel a lot around Oz, doing site visits with hospitals both metro and remote, and Aboriginal Medical Services. As a sideline, I have enjoyed sci-fi since I was a teenager - and write occasionally, had a few short stories published over the years - but its never been more than a hobby, with the need to work fulltime all these years. Sorry to waffle so long, but thought perhaps some background might help unruffle some of the budgie feathers flying around:) Cheers - - Julieanne:) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 01:19:47 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Topicality Reminder Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Though I appreciate the fact that several recent messages have been marked "OT", I'd like to remind everyone that this is the "On Topic" list and if a message is off topic it shouldn't be sent here. Personal email or the other list, "Feminist SF", would be more appropriate fora. Thank you. ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://therem.net/ Listening to: The Chemical Brothers -- Surrender "I've built my white picket fence around the Now, with a commanding view of the Soon-to-Be." -- The Tick ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 15:04:58 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: OT displacement WAS Armies, civilians etal- Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20020831104549.00e3e670@pop.ozemail.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Julieanne... ahh.. I am sorry- I didn't realise that you were being tongue in cheek, my error entirely. From that POV, I can see the humour in what you were saying. I also found what you were saying about Aust ecological history and so on very informative. Btw, you have kind of a similar background to me.. certain aspects of it anyway. I'm sorry for being snippety... the internet can be particularly triggering to my short fuse, I think.. perhaps in 10 years or so we will have devloped a really good emotional shorthand to describe the state of mind that seems to be so necessary to accompany the typed word and prevent misunderstandings. Maire > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Julieanne > Sent: Saturday, 31 August 2002 10:46 AM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] OT displacement WAS Armies, civilians etal- > > > At 07:02 AM 31/08/02 +1000, you wrote: > >Dear Julieanne, let me point out *immediately*, that > Aboriginals, HATE teh > >term aborigine. They prefer to be known as Aboriginals... as in > Australians, > >Americans, and so on. That is an important point. I seem to live > in teh same > >country as you, but can't tell from your post. I live in > Brisbane- we had a > >dead wallaby outside our house a few weeks ago, go into any park and you > >will see koalas in the trees. Don't project your own experience onto all > >Australians, thanks. Australia is *massively* more diverse than > you seem to > >realise- I'm quite astonished that you think: > > Yes, they do hate the term aborigine, and they don't like aboriginal much > either - they prefer indigenous in officialese - but they are also very, > very diverse too - And no, it isn't my lifestyle - and never has been - I > was being sarcastic or making a cartoon caricature or satirical or > tongue-in-cheek or sending-up or shit-stirring about a group of > Australians > I personally don't identify with - I'm sorry if it came over a > way I didn't > intend. > > I was born in Snowy River country, not far from the Victorian snowfields - > my father was French-Canadian - but halfbreed native american, his mother > was full Agonquin tribe. My mother was English from a poor midlands > coal-mining village. Neither of my parents had more than a Grade > 6 education. > > Though born in the mountains, and spending the firs bit of childhood and > school years in rural Victoria, I spent most of my later childhood in far > western NSW in isolated outback communities - poor rural working-class, so > poor we did live with the blacks. Fringe-dwellers. But my native American > blood often told in the summer, when me and siblings would often > darken. I > recall in the 1960s, my brother and I being herded into the back of a > police ute with many other kids. We kids had all been swimming > and playing > in the Murrumbidgee River, diving for freshwater mussels - when the police > rounded us all up - thinking we were all aboriginal kids. In those days, > some of the local aboriginal communities were still semi-nomadic, and were > being rounded up to be shipped to reserves. My parents weren't impressed > when they found out my brother and I had been taken as well. But having > been raised a country kid - I did my fair share of shooting roos, and > having emus for backyard pets, and eating rabbits when there was no money. > My fist paid job at 13 was mustering sheep, up there on my first > stockhorse > with akubra and .22. > > I moved to Sydney when I finished high-school, (thanks to Gough Whitlam I > and one brother were the only 2 of 6 kids able to finish high-school) and > amongst many other things - later spent nearly 2 years bumming > around Oz in > all sorts of places, from working on prawn trawlers in the far north - to > a strange few months working in the H.I.M. (Hammersley Iron Mines) in the > Pilbara region of northern WA. That was interesting - 8 young women > serving meals in the single men's mess halls - with 1500 mining men - > although 8 young white women had it tough, my heart still breaks 20 years > later to be powerless and silent witness to the abuse of black women from > the nearby aboriginal reserve. The bastards wouldn't even give > the women a > lift home, but would dump them nightly from the back of H.I.M utes. That > was 1980 - maybe things have changed now. > > After going back to Sydney and a brief period on the streets - been there, > done that, bought that T-shirt in the gutters of Kings Cross (no dead > wallabies there) and attempting to return to Uni which I had earlier > dropped out of- I later married and had 2 children, but was deserted, left > destitute in inner-city Sydney at 25 with 2 babies in nappies, one still > breastfeeding. The second one, my daughter, was born at home in an > inner-city Sydney terrace house - with a pair of midwives, one indigenous, > the other Dutch-born, and they are still my closest friends. That area of > Sydney then, before gentrification, was mostly Greek, Turkish, > Lebanese etc > but also Jewish - I gave my son an unusual name - but only later > did I find > out that it was a common Jewish name, when going to local play-groups, > other women would automatically assume I was Jewish. Because of my unusual > colouring, I have often been mistaken for anything from > aboriginal to Greek > to Jewish! > > I've never been sure of what culture or ethnic group I should identify > with. To complicate matters, my parents were socialist/communist in > philosophy, they never legally married, and never had us kids baptised etc > - my father in particular was violently opposed to all religions and > threatened a local Anglican priest with a shotgun who visited after I > innocently told him in a school scripture class that I hadn't been > christened. > > After Sydney, my options were limited as a young destitute single mother - > the outer suburban State housing welfare ghettos didn't appeal - so I > moved to Canberra to stay with my mother who had then recently retired to > canberra from the outback. I've been here ever since, but was able to > complete my Uni degree started several years before, majoring in > biological > sciences, and subsequently able to work and live in a more professional > educated middle-class atmosphere - able to afford the leafy suburbs with > dead wallabies, native birds in the garden, possums in the roof, and enjoy > the occasional chardonnay beside the barby:) *wink* :)- I was > also able to > later travel overseas, and on one occasion, was able to take my > children to > Canada to visit my father's side of my extended family - both the > French-speaking and native american families (although I notice canadians > tend to call them 'First Nations'). > > My own kids have now grown up now, but during the teen years - for several > years I fostered kids, and remain active as a volunteer in local community > groups working with street kids - I fostered mostly young girls escaping > sexual/physical abuse - one of the indigenous ones, has called me > mum since > she was 11, and is very much a part of our family. Indeed, she is now 19 > and just last weekend moved back home after 18 months away on the > NSW north > coast working as an indigenous childcare worker with communities > up there:) > The same weekend, my youngest daughter moved away from home into > her first > Uni student group household. > > As for work, I started off in Environment Australia performing > ecological/biological environmental impact assessments on new tourist > developments - but for much of the last 10-12 years I have worked in > federal govt health department in various subject matter areas, and most > recently the Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. I > travel a lot around Oz, doing site visits with hospitals both metro and > remote, and Aboriginal Medical Services. As a sideline, I have enjoyed > sci-fi since I was a teenager - and write occasionally, had a few short > stories published over the years - but its never been more than a hobby, > with the need to work fulltime all these years. > > Sorry to waffle so long, but thought perhaps some background might help > unruffle some of the budgie feathers flying around:) > > Cheers - > - Julieanne:) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 21:42:50 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: The Fifth Sacred Thing Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020830124125.02958fa0@impop.bellatlantic.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable At 01:03 PM 8/30/02 -0400, Janice E. Dawley wrote: Though I find many of the book's details implausible or overly convenient, >I have to give the author credit for building up the disaffection of the >troops. She does indeed. I probably dismissed this assertion too easily because it would, as pointed out later in the post, be stupid on the part of the LA authorities. But such an army is a straw man, impossible to believe in realistically. Perhaps in the days of galley slaves there was a use for the dregs of society in warfare, but modern warfare using troops, unlike a street gang with a few dozen members, requires disciplined soldiers who can be counted on to perform as expected. Training a soldier requires enormous sums of money and expensive materials, neither likely to be plentiful in a post-apocalyptic world. In a world such as this, one would expect that only the most disciplined troops would be used, since even if men cost nothing, the arms and training they require are very dear. And Starhawk perhaps forgets that, if the army had been as disaffected and fragile as she implies, even the slightest show of resistance would probably have sent them packing, saving countless lives. Poorly-motivated troops are notorious for desertions under fire and other cowardice. But she wants it both ways, impossibly powerful and impossibly weak at one in the same time. And despite the fickle fragility of the LA army as portrayed in FST, I still reject the "non-violent" witnessing which horrified Bird. There is little evidence that such tactics work in actuality, except in *very* special circumstances. The *only* real successes of non-violent action have been those undertaken against relatively humane democratic states. LA seems to have been neither. So the reaction of the British to news of General Dyer's firing into a crowd of non-violent resisters in which almost 400 persons were killed resulted in Dyer being court martialed and fired was in many ways unique. This one incident instilled a feeling of revulsion toward unbridled use of the military against civilians into the British public which has lasted to this day. But the LA Stewards and their Army were *not* the British. Nor, when it comes to that, were anyone else. The British, for all their faults, stand almost alone in their recent relatively humane treatment of former colonies and polite exit when finally convinced that they weren't wanted. This, of course, applies only to the last fifty years or so as a glance at the history of Ireland will show. And it should be remembered that the British had always claimed that they had been a civilizing influence on India, whatever the Indian non-violent movement achieved in the way of virtue. And so it seems to have been. When the British left, India plunged into a horrible morass of formerly-repressed racial, religious, and other violence which left more than four millions dead. George Orwell addressed non-violence in relation to one of its most famous proponents, Gandhi, in 1949, just a few years after WWII. "In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: "What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?" I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the "you're another" type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer's Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi's view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which "would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence." After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way." "But one should, I think, realize that Gandhi's teachings cannot be squared with the belief that Man is the measure of all things and that our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the only earth we have. They make sense only on the assumption that God exists and that the world of solid objects is an illusion to be escaped from." http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/ghandi.htm =93Hitler,=94 Gandhi said, =93killed five million Jews. It is the greatest= crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher=92s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs=85 It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany=85 As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.=94 http://die_meistersinger.tripod.com/gandhi9.html Luckily, Starhawk's vision of non-violence did not have the same results as did Gandhi's.