In Ruckus [Vol. 7, Iss. 4, February 2004]

I never met Rachel. Indeed, the first time I ever heard of her was on the day of her death. Today, her name evokes instant recognition with anyone even mildly involved with human rights. Rachel died under an Israeli bulldozer in Palestine.

We hear about deaths every day. 20 000 people die in an earthquake in Iran – “Wow!” “That’s a lot, eh!?”. Seven more US soldiers down in Iraq – “Hey, are we over the September 11 total yet?” (Like faceless statistics? Check out http://www.iraqbodycount.net). I have nothing more to say about how and why Rachel died. I want to talk a little, instead, about how she lived.

Rachel grew up nearby: in the acclaimed hippie hangout of Olympia, Washington. I decided to go there and try to fit a personality to the pretty and determined face I’d seen on pro-Palestinian posters all over the U-District.

Needing to wake up and pull myself together, I decide I might as well do some interviews outside and inside Rachel’s favorite coffee shop. (Not a Starbucks. Rachel hated Starbucks. Ruckus hates Starbucks). “The Evergreen girl? I’ve heard of her …” “I didn’t know her personally, but …”. Most people in Olympia have heard of Rachel. Yet, I was surprised at how few people on the streets knew more than just the bare details. Ignorance and complacency: one of Rachel’s greatest exasperations, and one she shares with activists worldwide. Her death seems to have switched depressingly few people on to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, even in her hometown.

Hanging around the Capitol Building, pretending to do the tourist thing, my mind filled with thoughts about Rachel. There’s a large statue with the inscription:

“Greater Love

Hath No Man Than This

That A Man

Down His Life

For His Friends”

What made Rachel care? What is it that makes people look through the bullshit, through the constant barrage of SUV ads and FOX-NEWS and CNN and compulsory pledges of allegiance at school?

Is it family? Driving through fields of green to Rachel’s house. A great place to grow up, I think to myself. The kind of place where parents still forget to lock their doors when taking their kids for short hikes through the nearby mountains. I spend some time listening to the unconcerned chatter of water birds in a nearby estuary from the veranda, as Rachel did many times.

Checking out photos of Rachel growing up. Playing naked on the beach. Pink ballerina. Wrestling with her older brother. On top of the World Trade Center with her dad, wind blowing through her hair.

Interviewing her parents. My eyes catch the titles of books and journals on Palestine on the glass coffee table. Books that weren’t lying there a year ago.

It takes me less than 5 minutes to get emotional. Anyway, they’ve had too many professional interviews already. Forget professionalism. Crying together with her mother whilst looking over the last photos ever taken of Rachel. Walking back to the car from her house, having trouble walking straight. I’m not cut out for this job. I’ll stick to stories on countries, not people, I tell myself.

At Rachel’s old school. A project by eleven-year old Rachel in 5th grade makes me smile for the first time in a while: “I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a children’s author, a distance runner, a poet,
a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman president.”

Driving back through the foggy streets of downtown Olympia. Students of Rachel’s age playing guitar and singing out of the back of VW busses in parking lots which smell of weed rather than exhaust fumes.

Rachel had a good life. A warm and tight family. She knew she didn’t need to ask permission to go to Palestine, and could always count on support from back home. Not everyone in Gaza or the West Bank has a return ticket.

Understand – Rachel didn’t want to die. She was no suicide bomber. She was a 23-year-old girl who cared about life and people, and would let her mother pay for expensive sushi once in a while. Top marks in school. Serious about life and the things she believed in, but able to let loose with those who knew her. A listener. Unlike the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) bulldoze-operator, she was not “just following orders”. A hero? If that’s what you make of her. It’s what she makes of you that matters. Now perhaps more than ever.

Activism does not mean starting your life from scratch. Activism means thinking about stuff that matters.

“I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make
comics for my co-workers. But I also want this to stop.” -Rachel Corrie

In Ruckus [Vol. 7, Iss. 4, February 2004]

Tibet – the roof of the world. A land of mountains and monks, where crumbling forts larger than the Husky stadium dot the dry landscape. One can explore the icy plateau for weeks, drinking from partially frozen streams, encountering only a handful of yak salt caravans and Tibetans on horseback. An immensely religious place, where the average impoverished Tibetan family still donates a large part of its meager monthly income to the nearest monastery. Once considered the indomitable spiritual center of the world, Tibet is now a buffer zone controlled by China – strategically useful during the sporadic clashes with adjoining India.

Anyone visiting Tibet expecting to find a bloody civil war pitting robed Buddhists with ceremonial swords against wave after human wave of Chinese soldiers will be disappointed. Chances are, in fact, that you wouldn’t see that many Tibetans at all (assuming the border guards even let you in, of course).
A highly successful repopulation campaign has insured that over half of Tibet’s population now consists of ethnic Chinese.

Most businesses are Chinese-owned. Mandarin, not Tibetan, is the compulsory language taught at schools. Banking, newspapers, television, education, and government bureaucracy are all little different from that encountered elsewhere in China.

It is in the countryside, away from the shiny new high-rise buildings and army checkpoints, that one can still taste the true Tibet. Mind you, the authorities are less than enthusiastic about foreign visitors roaming freely outside the neatly designated tourist region centered on Tibet’s former capital – Lhasa. Get caught, and you can expect to have your passport ripped up in front of your eyes and pay your way out on the earliest flight.

Manage to break out of the tourist circle, and you’ll see what all the fuss is about (Ruckus’ international correspondents always travel with two passports, by the way). Graveyards of stumps greet you where Tibet’s majestic forests once stood. Tibet’s turquoise highland lakes, whose effluent provides water for three quarters of our planet’s population, have become chemical dumping grounds. Uranium and Iridium mining operations, the size of Green Lake, scar the shades of purple and yellow. And everywhere are the surviving remains of Buddhist temples and monasteries which once characterized – nay, defined, Tibetan life – now fading into the dust.

Destruction of culture and language, rape of the environment, unsustainable short-term policy making… in short, the Chinese government is doing exactly what ‘capable’ governments have been doing to their weaker neighbors ever since the advent of agriculture. Life, wouldn’t you agree, is largely a matter of perspective?

To Liberate or To Occupy, That is the Question

The Bad Yellow Occupation Version:

October 1950. Some 40 000 PLA (Peoples Liberation Army = Chinese) troops cross the Drichu river into Tibet. A few Tibetans on horseback, wielding outdated muskets, provide negligible resistance. Within days the Chinese occupation of Tibet is complete. Human rights abuses abound! No democracy or freedom! Religious suppression! The CIA sets up a secret camp in Upper Mustang in northern Nepal, training partisan Tibetan freedom fighters. The desperate measure of western goodwill fails.

The Liberation from Evil Western Influence Version:

October 1950. After centuries of oppression, the Tibetan people are finally liberated from the evil clutches of feudal life. The threatening influence of the colonial powers – most notably the US and Britain – can finally be stamped
out. The end of a highly class-based hierarchical society! Equality for all! Long live chairman Mao! The CIA starts training imperialist terrorists over the border in Nepal, but the strength of the people – not to mention helicopter gunships and the help of the corrupt Nepalese government – win the day.

Whatever version you decide to go with, one thing is certain: Nobody noticed. Nobody cared. The world’s attention was focused firmly on Korea, where General MacArthur crossed the 38th parallel on the very same day of the invasion. The well-known mantra of the Buddha of Compassion, Om Mani Pad Ma Hum, is supplanted by Mao Tsetung wan sui.

What about all those peace-loving boys and girls at the United Nations? The matter would have been completely ignored if it wasn’t for an obscure representative from El Salvador bringing the matter to the forefront. (Trust those damn South Americans to always stand up for what’s right instead of focusing on the issues! They’re going to want to design their own trade policies next – imagine!) Thankfully, the Tibet situation was thrust back into obscurity by the British representative to the General Assembly: “the Committee [does] not know exactly what [is] happening in Tibet nor [is] the legal position of the country very clear”. Well, jolly good, that’s the end
of that, then…

The chaos and destruction of the 1966 Cultural Revolution also spread to Tibet, and the consequences of which are still clearly visible today. The revolution translated as a heightened struggle against the remaining old feudal practices. Red Guards roamed the cities and villages, demanding, amongst other things, that: (1) All observance of religious festivals be abolished; (2) People destroy all photos of the Dalai Lama; (3) No one recite prayers; (4) All monasteries and temples – save a handful protected by government – be converted for general public use; and (5) ‘Feudal practices’, which includes throwing parties and exchanging gifts, be abolished.

Ruckus travel advice #001-A(i): “Never, ever, ever photograph military personnel”

Tibet Today

Fifty years is a long time. On the whole, Tibetans are probably better off than Aboriginals in Australia, Hottentots in South Africa and Native Americans in the US. China has proven itself remarkably capable at assimilating new peoples and territories peacefully and quietly – more so than perhaps any other empire in history. Furthermore, the last few centuries in particular have seen the steady export of Chinese culture to all corners of the globe. Chinatowns are blossoming everywhere, from Seattle to Singapore to Sydney. The real question raised by Tibet and its sovereignity, and the Ruckus question of the month, is: would you prefer to live in a world with (1) China; (2) the U.S.; or (3) both simultaneously as the dominant superpower? If it’s any conciliation, it’s unlikely that you’ll have any say in the matter.

In Ruckus [Vol. 7, Iss. 4, February 2004]

George Dubya Bush (a.k.a. ‘Baby Bush’) is one of the best things to have ever happened to this country. Please, give me a chance to elaborate before skipping over to the section on democratic candidates or chucking this month’s copy of Ruckus into the nearest Mixed Paper™ recycling bin in disgust.

Look – the world has never been more awake! The largest peace protests in history, from Amsterdam to Bangkok to the roof of the Sydney Opera House. A rapidly growing global network of environmentally and morally active citizens. Growing awareness of Western-backed atrocities in the Middle-East and elsewhere. Brazilian airline pilots that dare give US hegemony the finger. Worldwide, people are rethinking the way their lives and their governments are screwing over their brothers and sisters on the other side of the globe. And all largely thanks to Dubya and his buddies!

Alright, people, I realize that traveling today is more dangerous for you than ever before. Hell, even the age-old trick of sticking Canadian flags onto your backpacks isn’t going to help you now! I know Dubya is the first president since Hoover who actually managed to eliminate more jobs than create them. I’m also all too aware that your government is in the red for 3.02 x 1012 dollars (the fact that I’m forced to resort to scientific notation here should be some indication of how serious the national debt is. Good thing the US$, thanks to Ol’ Dubya, is hardly worth anything anymore, hey!).

So the economy is in shambles, the world hates Americans, the United Nations and everything it stands for has been irreparably raped, your government has started making nukes again, and people will soon start using your famed Greenbacks™ as toilet paper or to get their fireplaces going. And that, of course, is still the good news…

…but please bear with me on this. Voting for some temporary grassroots green-haired spliff-smoking hippie might make you feel real warm and fuzzy inside for four or even – if you’re lucky – eight years. Perfect. Just long-enough for the next brainless right-wing oil-lobby-supported yoyo to take over and finally get rid of those damn Canadians who’ve been clandestinely amassing huge quantities of Biological Weapons right across the border.

(If only we’d found just one Mad WMD Cow™ in Iraq to appease those damn liberals, eh? Colin Powell: “This CIA satellite photo, taken just 20 miles outside Baghdad, clearly shows a mad cow. Gentleman, we have found the smoking gun” (ecstatic applause). But I digress.)

Dubya is not the root of the problem. I mean, come on, he’s way too backward to deserve any credit for most of the present administration’s blunders. My point is that even electing a whole century-worth of democrats is not going to improve your grandchildren’s lives. (Even if you do somehow manage to stamp out the true legacy of Dubya’s reign, which will lie in the judiciary rather than in the executive or legislative branch. That’s where the power’s really at. Did anyone else notice the Federal, D.C. and other Circuit courts filling up with hard-line conservatives? Under the current system, it’ll take decennia to kick those guys out!)

The problem, rather, lies with the deeply anchored class-based society and suffocating two-party system that today shackles America. An intricate feedback system in which corporate media and atrocious standards of pre-collegiate education intertwine to give the illusion of a full spectrum of ‘democracy’ with just two end-members: republicans and democrats. Right-wing and right-wing without the strawberries. Will the real Gee Dubya please stand up? – George Washington would have been ashamed. Read any of Jefferson’s work and you’ll inevitably find yourself asking: “What the hell happened!?”

Democracy indeed. Vote and forget. You’ve done your duty. Go ahead, spend the equivalent of another presidential term blamelessly shopping for cheap groceries after finishing your daily job at the bank, taking the dog for a walk on Saturdays and cleaning your car on Sundays. While your CO2 is screwing up the planet, the Dole™ bananas you buy and the Starbucks® latté you sip are destroying the lives of thousands and your government is killing – indirectly or directly, I don’t care – the people upon whose very shoulders your welfare has come to rest.

WAKE THE FUCK UP! DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE YOU DESERVE YOUR FANCY NEW DVD PLAYER BECAUSE YOU WORK HARDER THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD!? HUH!? TRY WAKING UP ON WEEKENDS AT 5 AM AND WALKING 5 MILES BAREFOOT TO YOUR 5 CENTS-AN-HOUR JOB AT THE NIKE® FACTORY OR SPILLING BLOOD FROM YOUR CUT HANDS INTO A CAN OF TUNA IN A CANNING FACTORY, DESPERATE TO MAKE THE QUOTA!

Vote for Dubya. He’s our only hope.

Turning and turning in
the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all convictions, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Y.B. Yeats – “The Second Coming”