Random Harvest?

By Marguerite Finn

I wasn’t sure whether to write this column or not – but it is an important story and it should be told. Last week I attended a meeting in Norwich and learned for the first time about the outlawed and persecuted Falun Gong movement in China. So I looked into it some more and found out some very disturbing facts about which we all should be aware. What follows is what I understand to be the case. It has not been possible to obtain the view of the Chinese Embassy here because I did not want to risk the confidentiality and vulnerability of my sources of information.

What is Falun Gong? The short answer is that Falun Gong is a spiritual practice based on truth, compassion, tolerance, and includes five sets of meditative exercises. In July 1999, the communist regime in China began persecuting people who practiced it – by which time its practitioners numbered about one hundred million.

Falun Gong is quintessentially Chinese – an ancient self-improvement practice whose roots stem from China’s 5000-year-old cultural traditions. It combines the practices of meditation, special techniques of breathing and slow moving qigong exercises and emphasises morality and the cultivation of virtue through its central tenets of Truthfulness, Tolerance and Compassion.

Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation, practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to better mental and physical health and, ultimately, spiritual enlightenment. It was first introduced into China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi. The practice spread quickly by word of mouth, as people saw the lives of those around them changing for the better. Sickly grandmothers were transformed into the epitome of health. Couples nearing divorce saved their marriage. The impact extended beyond the immediate family circle. Policemen who learned Falun Gong would stop taking bribes and workers would stop stealing from their factories. Members of the Chinese Communist Party started taking it up. The party recognised that better health for the community would mean less drain on the state budget for medicine and health care. It was considered to have a stabilizing influence on society ( http://www.faluninfo.net/).

So what went wrong? When Li Hongzhi gave his first public seminar in May 1992, he presented Falun Gong as part of a “centuries-old tradition of cultivation” but he suggested that the purpose of the practice should not primarily be physical health, nor the development of extraordinary powers, but rather it should be to purify one’s heart and attain spiritual salvation. Adherents of Falun Gong were encouraged to abandon negative thoughts, desires and behaviours such as greed, profit, lust, killing,violence, theft, deception, jealousy etc. They also refrained from drinking alcohol, smoking or drug taking, with the aim of refining the body into a higher form. The Chinese Government and the Communist Party took fright at the movement’s popularity and started to portray it as a religious sect or cult with “superstitious” views and saw it as a potential threat, outside of its control.

One day in 1999, some 15,000 Falun Gong practitioners took part in a demonstration to complain about some press reports that were unfavourable to the movement. They quietly sat down on the pavement and surrounded a government compound called Zhongnanhai in the centre of Beijing, which housed the places of residence and work of the Chinese leadership. Premier Zhu Rongji agreed to see a delegation from the protestors and instructed three members of staff to hear their complaints more fully. By 9pm that evening, the protestors had quietly made their way home. They did not shout slogans, carry banners or give out leaflets.The protest had been peaceful and non violent throughout. It is reported that they even collected their litter before they left. Nevertheless, many of them were arrested in the following days and taken to labour camps to be‘re-educated’. This was because one Chinese high-ranking official and former head of the Communist Party, by the name of Jiang Zemin, felt that Premier Zhuhad dealt with the protestors too leniently and he initiated a programme of persecution. Jiang Zemin forced officials at all levels to participate in eradicating Falun Gong.

Thousands of people were imprisoned and tortured for their belief and continue to be so to this day. A special government department called the “610 office” was set up to oversee and co-ordinate the persecution. Using the media and internet, the 610 office organised a propaganda campaign against a “heritical organisation” and the rhetoric in the state-run press escalated to include charges that Falun Gong was colluding with foreign,"anti-China" forces – no doubt helped by the fact that the Falun Gong founder, Li Hongzhi, in 1997 applied for asylum in New York and left China for good.

In the years since the suppression campaign began, the Falun Gong adherents have emerged as a prominent voice in the Chinese dissident community, advocating greater human rights and an end to the Communist Party rule. So it seems that the Chinese Government’s bizarre over-reaction brought about the one thing they feared most – political dissent on a large scale.

But, there is an even darker side to this story – and it concerns the harvesting of human organs for use in transplants. Organ transplanting in China is a booming trade. The numbers of organ transplants performed in China – and the speed at which organs become available – has raised international concern about the source of organs. The Chinese Communist Party admits that organs are harvested from executed prisoners – but insist that they have given their consent.

The practice is now so widespread and streamlined that enquirers are promised a transplant within one or two weeks –as opposed to the many months and even years that it takes in Western countries. To be able to do this, they have to have access to a huge stock of living organ “donors”. There is mounting evidence that thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs, which are sold and transplanted at enormous profit. The perpetrators are officials of the Chinese Communist Party acting in collaboration with surgeons, prison authorities and military officials. The recipients are predominantly those travelling internationally for health care. Strong circumstantial evidence points to adherents of Falun Gong being arrested in their tens of thousands in order to correct their way of thinking. When they are arrested they are given blood tests, ultra scans, and extensive medical tests – the results of which are recorded on a data base. This testing is not to their benefit as most are subsequently tortured for their belief – but blood matching is critical to organ donation.

Since 2006, witnesses have come forward and several international investigations have been carried out – the most widely publicised has been the report entitled “Bloody Harvest” http://organharvestinvestigation.net/ by two Canadian lawyers, David Matas and David Kilgour and another by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Dr Manfred Nowak. Both investigations concluded that somewhere in the range of 40,000 to 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been killed in this way from 2000 to 2006. An international group of doctors, including transplant surgeons, have formed an organisation “Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting” (DAFOH) to protest the practice and promote ethical practices in medicine. (www.dafoh.org). It is important to remind ourselves that, as Human Rights Watch said in a statement: “None of the tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners detained, arrested or convicted, have been held in connection with violent actions or threats of violence. Instead, their “crime” is their belief in Falun Gong.”

These innocent victims are being held without trial in labour camps until their blood happens to match that of a prospective organ transplant recipient. The Falun Gong prisoner is then taken away and his organs are removed while he/she is still alive. Their bodies are quickly cremated to cover up the traces of organ removal.

The DAFOH are examining the fact that the distinction between life and death has been redefined, specifically for the benefit of transplantation. They say: “For heart transplantation to succeed, death has had to be redefined as brain death.Transplantation unquestionably pushed the boundaries of what doctors would and would not do and, in turn, society accepted the new definitions. For multiple organ donation to be achieved, something that would have been horrific in another time became not only tolerable but laudable under the new rules. The blunting of our visceral responses and the redefining of ethical boundaries are steps that could lead us, if we are not careful, to the ethicists’ slippery slope and must be recognized as such.”

If you think that the horrific situation in China could never happen here, I would like to mention a small article that I found at the bottom of page 16 in The Guardian on Saturday 28^th July 2012. It said that the: “NHS moots a shake-up of organ transplant rules” and went on to say that the NHS is considering prolonging the lives of people who have no chance of surviving in order to harvest their organs. They are also thinking of making people opt out rather than in to the donor register– meaning that they would presume consent to organ removal unless people have actively opted out. It seems that the Welsh assembly has formally adopted this possibility.

One sentence sent a shiver up my spine. It talked about “New financial rewards for intensive care units for every organ they provide”. This conjured up a vision of market-driven competition between hospitals to reach targets for the number of organs harvested. Ethically, we could be standing on the tip of a very slippery slope.

The subject needs much debate and openness. We may not start persecuting Falun Gong in the UK, but the public needs to be constantly vigilant where the question of medical ethics is concerned. And of course, there is the other ethical question about using transplants to prolong life, when there are already too many of us on this planet – but that is a column for another day!

Some other sites of interest are: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/nine-commentaries-on-the-communist-party-introduction-225078.html

http://www.nla.gov.au/benjamin-perry/the-past-present-and-future-of-falun-gong

http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/cult-that-is-falun-gong.html

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

Sing if you’re glad to be gay

By Lee Marsden

It is now over thirty years since the Tom Robinson Band invited everyone to "sing if you're glad to be gay, sing if you're happy that way". In a withering condemnation of discrimination, prejudice and indeed violence against gay people endemic within British society, Robinson invited us to celebrate rather than castigate homosexuality. The succeeding decades have witnessed a significant shift in attitudes and acceptance of difference within society. Today homosexuality has been decriminalised and civil partnerships introduced, 'queer bashing' has diminished as a favoured pastime for drunken louts uncertain of their masculinity. Even the police force, so heavily criticised by Tom Robinson back in 1978, has transformed to be awarded, in a recent Stonewall survey, five of the top twenty places as the most gay-friendly employers in the country.

And yet for all this progress, discrimination and prejudice do still exist and these advances can not be taken for granted. They are threatened by religious fundamentalists such as the now discredited Iris Robinson who spoke for many evangelical Christians, far beyond Ulster's shores, when she described homosexuality as an abomination. The tired platitude that Christians are enjoined to "love the sinner but hate the sin" obscures the reality that evangelicals hate the 'sinner' and the 'sin', and the 'sinner' knows it.

The renewed interest by the two main political parties in 'promoting the family' serves as a code for social engineering, which favours the nuclear family over divorcees, single parents and gay people through weighting the tax system in favour of those who pursue 'conventional' lifestyles. An incoming conservative government will enter office with previous form in discriminating against gay people, a third of the shadow cabinet, including David Cameron, have voted against at least one piece of gay rights legislation.

The combination of vocal religious intolerance and pro-family rhetoric should not be allowed to role back progress in advancing gay rights, which includes adoption and same sex marriage, which is now legal in Canada, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. Mexico and Portugal look set to add to the list later this year. In the United States, same sex marriage has been legalised in five states. Religious opponents of such legislation are pledged to overturn this and their success in doing so in California last year is now the subject of court proceedings that could see the issue going all the way to the Supreme Court.

For gay people in much of the Muslim majority world and in African countries, dominated by evangelicals, life is as hard as ever. In Malawi and Uganda homosexual acts are illegal and punishable by up to fourteen years imprisonment. Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza, a gay couple recently 'married' in Malawi face humiliating medical examinations to determine whether their relationship has been consummated, confirmation of which will lead to lengthy prison sentences. In Uganda, a bill before the parliament to increase the sentence for gay sex from fourteen years to life imprisonment, and the death penalty if one of the partners has HIV/AIDS, is only being delayed due to international pressure, from Gordon Brown among others, on Ugandan President Museweri.

As we enter the second decade of the twenty first century, equality and respect for people of all sexual persuasions should be taken for granted. Sadly, homophobic hate crimes rose by eighteen percent in London last year to over 1100 reported offences; the vast majority of such crimes still remain unreported. The Albert Kennedy Trust has also reported increases in the number of gay Muslims, fleeing from forced marriages and family violence, contacting them. As we enter the new decade we all need to be vigilant to ensure that gains made over the past three decades do not disappear and that people can still sing if they are glad to be gay.

Less religion, more peace and goodwill

By Lee Marsden

Anyone unfortunate enough to have watched Fern Britten's sycophantic portrayal of Tony Blair's religion and his self-aggrandizing Faith Foundation on television recently would have been left feeling amazed at the former PM's brass neck. Rather than facing trial at The Hague for war crimes he continues to strut the world stage as a 'peace envoy' in the Middle East and has embarked on a new mission to increase the importance of religion among world leaders. While some may feel, even at Christmas time, that the world might benefit from rather less religion and more peace and goodwill, late convert to Catholicism Tony Blair believes that religion is the answer to all the world's problems.

Certainly the world's major religions, depending on which sections of their sacred texts are emphasised, have the capacity to encourage their followers to live by the golden rule of doing to others as they would have others do to them. Religion makes big claims about life both in the here and now and in any afterlife. With such big claims also come big responsibilities – for its followers and leaders to live lives worthy of the calling. Sadly, while many religious actors are engaged in social action that has the potential to transform lives many others seem to work tirelessly to bring their religion into disrepute.

In the past few weeks US conservative evangelicals have inspired a campaign in Uganda to persecute homosexuals with proposed legislation to imprison gay people and anyone aiding and abetting them, such as landlords who might rent them a room. Sexually active gay people carrying the HIV virus could face the death penalty. The offensive notion that homosexuality is an aberration which can be ‘cured’ is not just confined to Africa but is mainstream among US and British conservative evangelicals.

In Ireland, the Murphy Report into child sex abuse cases in the Dublin diocese has revealed decades of abuse by Catholic priests, which have been systematically covered up by the church. In acknowledging the seriousness of this scandal, in terms of damaged lives and the reputation to the church, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has called for the resignation of four bishops as sign of collective responsibility for the abuse of trust and authority perpetrated in the name of the church. Only one of the bishops has so far resigned with other church leaders refusing to take any responsibility for their role in covering up these crimes.

Pope Benedict has recently signed a decree extolling the virtues of Pope Pius XII, a next step to possible sainthood, for the church leader who did so little to prevent millions of Jews being exterminated in the holocaust. Oblivious to the sense of outrage expressed by Jewish organisations the Pope is waiting for the opportunity to assert that a miracle has occurred which he can attribute to the intercession of Pius XII.

Finally, the recent sentencing of Mehmet Goren to 22 years in jail for the murder of his 15 year old daughter Tulay has highlighted the issue of so-called 'honour' killings among predominantly South Asian and Middle Eastern ethnic groups in Britain. According to the Association of Chief Police Officers a minimum of twelve such killings occurs each year. Forced marriages are also a huge issue as hundreds of mainly young women are spirited off to South Asia each year to be married off against their wishes. Religious leaders dismiss these as cultural, rather than religious, practices and yet little effort is made to wipe them out. According to Diana Nammi of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation in London "they may pay lip service to change but they have networks and contacts and they are not trying to change anything".

Maybe, rather than more religion, what is needed are more people who only do unto others as they would have done unto them.

Blair set to become EU President

By Lee Marsden

The ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by Irish voters has paved the way for the possible installation of former Prime Minister Tony Blair to the new post of EU president. The position is that of figurehead and answers Henry Kissinger's famous question of "who should I ring if I want to speak to Europe" the answer, as early as the end of this month, could be Tony Blair. Officially, the post involves representing the views of the 27 member states, chairing the European Council and, rather ambiguously, driving its work. The post could become as significant as the incumbent chooses to make it. A charismatic figure such as Tony Blair could have great sway in being able to influence the future direction of the EU, particularly in its relations with the outside world. The salary of £242,000 pa, personal staff of twenty, £37,000 pa housing allowance, chauffeur and other perks are unlikely to be the main motivation for a man who has, according to his biographer Adam Boulton, earned over £15 million since leaving office two years ago, but will undoubtedly help. European publics will have no say in the appointment, which is based on a vote of the 27 heads of state with support for Blair apparently coming from Sarkozy, Brown and probably Angela Merkel.

Blair's appointment would certainly increase the EU's international profile but at what cost? While Jonathon Powell, his former chief-of-staff, touts his friend's credentials around Europe as an international statesman, Middle East envoy, pioneer for climate change and Africa and founder of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, others may recall a rather different Tony Blair. A Tony Blair who misled the British public and parliament about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his non existent weapons of mass destruction. A man who is to be a key witness into the Iraq War enquiry, which will take place, if appointed, during his first term of office. A prime minister who led the country into wars at the behest of the United States and was once dubbed by Nelson Mandela as the "US Foreign Minister". A leader who promoted the neoliberal economic policies that resulted in the global economic crisis. A Middle East 'peace envoy' who in two years has visited Gaza just once and failed to speak out about the Israeli invasion less than twelve months ago. A man who avoided being implicated in the MPs expenses scandal because an official 'accidently', we're assured, shredded his expenses claims. Although we do know that he claimed £7000 in roof repairs on his constituency home just two days before leaving office, and earlier remortgaged the same house for £296,000 in order to pay the deposit on his £3.5 million Connaught Square town house with the added benefit of being able to claim one third of the interest payments on expenses.

Since leaving office, the man who did 'not do God' while in power has converted to Catholicism and started a faith foundation to increase religious influence on political processes. In a Europe which has grown increasingly secular over the past century Blair's religious fervour strikes a discordant note more in tune with the United States than the European Union. Which of course, apart from the undemocratic nature of the appointment, is the main problem of any Blair presidency, the willingness to subjugate British (soon to be European) interests to those of the United States. A close aide was quoted in The Times (3 October) as saying "if there was a genuine sense that people wanted him I think he would be up for it". Many thousands of people across Europe are busily signing a petition at http://stopblair.eu/ to send a message that he is not wanted.

Confusing religion and politics

By Liam Carroll

The world is full of injustice, tragedy and the horror of war, famine and disease. Much of this sad state of affairs can be placed squarely at the feet of social conflict, both within communities and between communities. Several recent books in Britain and America have held religion up as one of the primary causes of these human ills. Some evolutionists however have recently argued that religion has actually helped human societies bind together and that conflict is in fact a by-product of evolutionary development, of which religion is but a part.

Evolutionary scientists like David Wilson and Pascal Boyer have recently been speculating that religion is a natural phenomenon. Religion, they say, has been so widespread and fundamental to social development that it can only be a product of our natural evolution. We have needed religion, they theorize, to hold societies together; group cohesion and internal ethical structures, as provided by religion, have been necessary for societies to function.

There is good evidence to suggest that forms of belief in the supernatural have evolved over the last few millennia; starting with a mass of supernatural beings (animism), changing to a few supernatural beings (pantheism), before winding up as a single supernatural being (monotheism). The pattern coincides, roughly speaking, with the growth of the size of communities. Large communities require greater cohesion, and therefore they need a more simplified religion with a clearer ethical structure.

The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with religion, possibly way beyond any other. They indulged in a huge amount of ritual and diverted vast resources to the building of temples, pyramids and preserving dead bodies. Despite such seemingly irrational behavior, they had an empire that survived over two and half thousand years, dwarfing the longevity of every other empire since. Interestingly, toward the later years of the empire the Pharaoh Akhnaten tried to introduce a monotheistic religion around a new single all encompassing god, Aten.

The Romans had to adopt Christianity, it can be reasonably argued, to help keep the Empire together, as Christianity had become so popular. The need for religious coherence required the Emperor Constantine to enact a sweeping change from pantheism to monotheism almost overnight, in his pursuit of a more unified Empire.

The Arab world too, propelled itself into a new age of political and scientific success under Islam, a monotheistic religion. Under a diverse pantheon of gods, they had not been so successful.

Religion, in other words, has developed hand in hand with political authority over the years, and thus its many diverse and conflicting forms can be seen to parallel many of the varied political developments over the course of history.

In the The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, the author, bemoans the irrational faith placed in supernatural beings and argues that such faith has been deeply harmful to men's development. Well, maybe, but does he believe that history would have developed along purely rational lines in the absence of religious institutions? What about the non-religious governments of Mao, Stalin or Hitler, were they superior forms of authority?

In God is not Great, the author, Christopher Hitchens mimics the argument of Professor Dawkins, only he tries to lump the secular tyrants, just mentioned, in with religion, on the basis that they involved 'faith'.

To categorize political tyrannies as religions exposes the fact that the two systems share much of the same ground; they are about organizing society around certain principles, principles in which people must have some faith, at least initially. What can seem liberating, however, can of course soon turn to tyranny and in this respect religion and politics have much in common. To deny, though, that religion should play no part in our evolution, as Darwinists like Professor Dawkins do, could in fact, ironically, be to deny the working of evolution itself.

The optimism in Cain and Abel

By Liam Carroll

Humans like stories, and with good reason. Not only are many of them fun, but they are also informative. Psychologist Jordan Peterson has an interesting interpretation of the Genesis stories of Adam and Eve and their two sons, Cain and Abel; it is interesting, in my opinion, because it mixes religion and science, and is both plausible and positive.

When humans were animals, before the development of self-consciousness and rational planning, we lived in paradise. We lived in paradise because we had no thought for tomorrow, no anxiety about what we should or should not be doing; we were instinctive, we lived in the flow of life, moment to moment.

As we evolved, over several hundred thousands of years and underwent rapid brain development we became increasingly self-conscious. Who knows why, or God knows why, depending on your perspective. Either way, it was an evolution; an experiment of nature, or a process of design by the creator.

The emergence of light and the creation of Adam and Eve represents this emergence of consciousness in incredibly compressed form; it's only a page or two in Genesis, about a million years according to geneticists. The snake, curled upwards around the tree, is symbolic of the central nervous system running up the spine with our organs of sight, hearing and smell in the head. This is the information system that makes us alert to our environment. It warns us about physical threats and alerts us to things we need or desire.

The eating of the apple is the moment that Adam and Eve become aware of their nakedness, their vulnerability, their mortality; the fruit of knowledge is knowledge about ourselves and our environment, it is the birth of self-consciousness. We are no longer in paradise, we are no longer ignorant and blissful, we no longer live in the moment, in the rich flow of life. We now have to start preparing for tomorrow, to labour, to plan, to protect and to provide for ourselves, starting with the fig leaf.

Out of Eden we go with the Cherub, our youth, with the flaming sword, barring our return. We now have to plan and work, to store wealth, to prepare for lean times, for unexpected eventualities, and God knows what else.

Cain and Abel, the first sons, brothers, or two aspects of the human psyche, provide the first story of the choices that face us. Abel does everything right, he knows what sacrifices to make to please God and he is happy and God loves him. The love of God, literal or symbolic, depending on your perspective, represents happiness and well being. Although the world can be a cruel and tragic place, those people, according to this interpretation of the story, who behave appropriately, who make the correct self-sacrifices, and do not put aside everything for themselves, achieve happiness.

Cain on the other hand, doesn't make the right sacrifices. He sacrifices something, but in Genesis it doesn't go into detail. God is not happy with him though, and from this we might surmise that what he thinks is a sufficient sacrifice, in reality isn't. His sacrifices, his efforts, are mean and paltry, he wants to keep the best for himself, but he is unhappy, for God, or life even, does not treat him well. Cain's jealousy of Abel's happiness, of the love that he receives from others, as represented by God, is too much for Cain, and he ends up killing Abel. Life for Cain goes even further downhill from there.

The optimism of this interpretation of Cain and Abel, following on the heels of our expulsion from Eden, lies in the fact that there is redemption for humankind, if we make the right choices. Self-sacrifice doesn't mean going without, it means gaining something else.

Obama's war in Afghanistan

By Lee Marsden

This week has seen the removal of America's top military commander in Afghanistan General David McKiernan and his replacement by Lt General Stanley McChrystal, a veteran of Special Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Announcing the departure of General McKiernan, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that "fresh eyes [were] needed" in Afghanistan. The move reflects growing disquiet about the failings of US/Coalition forces in Afghanistan that has seen a resurgence of the Taliban, a growth in the drugs trade, and growing corruption of Afghan government and officials without a corresponding development in infrastructure or security for much of the country. The corresponding Taliban resurgence in Swat province in Pakistan, fuelled by US missile attacks often resulting in civilian deaths, has turned the Afghan war strategy into an AFPAK strategy that is likely to be just as unsuccessful.

As Obama turns US attention from Iraq, which is now regarded as a success because the civilian death toll has fallen to around 300 per month, towards Afghanistan he faces the danger of repeating his predecessor's mistakes. Unlike Iraq, the Afghanistan war is legal in the sense that it was perceived as a legitimate response to an attack on a sovereign country by forces harboured by the Taliban government. NATO troops are present in the conflict at the behest of the democratically elected Afghan government to prevent its overthrow by a resurgent Taliban. Yet the war in Afghanistan, just like Iraq, is being sold to British and American publics on a false prospectus. We are told that the conflict is essential to prevent Al Qaeda launching terrorist attacks against the West, that Taliban and Al Qaeda are one-in-the-same, in short that Britain and America's national security is tied to winning the battle in Afghanistan. In support of such claims Obama intends to increase US troop levels to 60,000 and is looking to NATO countries, including Britain, to increase its deployment also.

And yet such a strategy is disingenuous, built on a myth which has the potential to become self fulfilling prophecy. The relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda is tenuous at best, a marriage of convenience in adversity as US strategy unites them as 'the other'. In reality the Taliban were reluctant hosts to al Qaeda in the 1990s, regarded the attacks on America as a betrayal of Afghan hospitality, and after 9/11 offered to hand Osama bin Laden to a Muslim country for trial, an offer rejected by the Bush administration which preferred to destroy the Taliban regime in retaliation for the New York and Washington attacks. Today, the threat posed by Al Qaeda is considerably exaggerated. The US intelligence agencies which claimed in 2002 that there were hundreds of Al Qaeda sleepers cells in the United States have failed to find any and have acknowledged that any threat is potential rather than actual. The claim that terrorist groups need a geographical training base to launch operations from, such as could be provided in Afghanistan, is fanciful, terrorist operations can and are planed from anywhere. The capability of al Qaeda and its associates is also considerably overstated, their inability to strike again at America is not due to lack of opportunity but rather capability. Al Qaeda’s attacks on fellow Muslims in Iraq has led to widespread disaffection, demonstrated by the Awakening in Iraq. And yet a few hundred terrorists continue to dominate US/UK thinking. Britain's involvement in Afghanistan, resulting in the death of almost 160 troops, is not based on national security interests but rather a desire to be seen as America's closest ally. Does anyone seriously believe that British troops would remain in Afghanistan one day after US troops withdrew? The Taliban's return is undesirable on humanitarian grounds but let's not pretend that national security depends on winning in Afghanistan.

Obama’s plan for word domination

By Liam Carroll

"Our next challenge, as a species, is to learn how to negotiate between and transcend our cultures." – Dr M Tyrell, anthropologist.

"What we say goes" declared George Bush senior in the aftermath of the Gulf War with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the collapse of the Soviet Union, way back in 1991. Some of America's enemies, however, declared their opposition to the proposal through attacks against US embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, and ultimately against the US homeland itself in September 2001.

Those attacks were seen by some as a vindication of a theory put forward by political scientist Samuel Huntington, who had predicted 'a clash of civilisations' between what he saw as 'the West' and 'Islam'. His theory was based on the notion that both 'civilisations' believed themselves to be superior cultures that would never compromise their principles, and would thus be destined to 'clash' in what Huntington called 'the remaking of world order'.

George Bush junior, in the wake of the terrorist attacks, continued the theme of bold global leadership with the declaration that "you're either with us, or you're with the terrorists". The theme owed something to the fact that the US had a remarkably powerful military and presumed that if people were to forced to choose sides, they would choose the side of the US.

The reality of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the rising insurgency in Pakistan, and the testing of a nuclear warhead in North Korea, have left those notions of bold global leadership in tatters, and have instead left Huntington's grim prediction emerging as a frightening possibility.

In the light of this unhappy state of affairs it is indeed refreshing to see the new presidency of Barack Hussein Obama attempting to cast out Huntington's essential belief that 'the West' and 'Islam' are, to all intents and purposes, incompatible cultures. The US president is himself in some ways a direct contradiction to Huntington's notion, as his Kenyan father was born a Muslim and the American president bears the common Islamic name of Hussein.

Recently, on the occasion of the Iranian festival of Nowruz, which marks the beginning of spring and the first day of the Persian new year, President Obama took the opportunity to extend a message of goodwill to the Iranian people with an interesting emphasis on Nowruz as an 'ancient ritual' and a 'moment of renewal'.

These are key words to all cultures because 'renewal', as embodied in the spring, is a reminder of the cyclical nature of the seasons and the earth which has been appreciated by all known civilizations since ancient times. Indeed the Nowruz spring festival, the most significant holiday in the Iranian calendar predates Islam; a clear indicator (amongst many others) that 'civilisation', even as we know it today, is an ancient and complex product of thousands of years of human cultural maturation and not the product of a single short period in history.

Whilst the speech also runs through some standard diplomatic messages about 'rights' and 'responsibilities' he returns at the end to the trans-religious theme with a quote from the medieval Iranian poet Saadi: "The children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence". The reference to Adam is significant because the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Able and those of Abraham and other early Hebrew prophets, are all shared by the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which in their own right are based on even earlier religious forms.

By using a shared cultural language President Obama has made a welcome attempt to change the script of the Bush years, which sounded to many like a claim of world dominion. The world needs a shared narrative, not a divisive one, and we must hope that Obama's mastery of language can bring that a step closer.

Sex and society

By Nicola Pratt

Chatting with Jordanian friends the other week, we were all stunned to hear about a 22 year-old American woman who planned to publicly auction her virginity. We were surprised not so much because the woman was still a virgin at 22 (although, according to surveys, this puts her in the minority of women in her age group in the US). Rather, we were shocked because she was willing to sell her virginity to the highest bidder and told a TV interviewer that she found this 'empowering'. A few days later, after having just returned to Norwich, I turned on the TV to find an advertisement for a programme called The Virgin Daughters — a documentary about American parents who are actively encouraging their daughters, one as young as six years old, to practise celibacy until marriage. According to one father interviewed, sex before marriage exposes young women to all sorts of dangers that can ruin the rest of their lives, including 'getting cervical cancer, divorce, VD'.

Coming across controversies about women's sexual behaviour twice in as many weeks reminded me that it is not only in 'other cultures' (such as, amongst Muslims) that society is concerned about with whom, when and why women have sex. The rise in the numbers and importance of Evangelical Christians in the US has put questions of morality, and especially sexual conduct, at the centre of the political stage. Even in the UK, where there is no real equivalent to the 'Religious Right', public debates about women's sexual and reproductive activities are common—from changes to abortion legislation to panics about teenage mothers.

Despite the increasing ease with which many women can enjoy sex outside of marriage—due to increased access to contraception and abortion, living away from the parental home and less strict social attitudes—nevertheless, a sexual double standard continues to exist more than 30 years after the 'sexual revolution'. For example, one of the worst insults for a woman to receive is, 'slag' or 'slut'. No equivalent term exists for a man. Dominant notions about femininity and masculinity hinge on different social attitudes to women's and men’s sexual behaviour.

Increasing access to contraception since the 1960s, and, in particular, the invention of the pill, has enabled women to enjoy sex without the worries of pregnancy, leading to great strides in women's sexual autonomy in this country. However, it seems that whilst the 1960s helped women to expand their sexual horizons, it did little to challenge society's views about the sexual double standard. The sexual revolution appears to have led to an expansion in the commercial exploitation of sex and a situation where women are more sexually available to men than before—in lad mags, 'gentlemen's clubs' and through escort agencies and other services. No longer are women supposed to be the perfect housewives. Instead, they are bombarded with magazines and books instructing them on how to achieve multiple orgasms and have 'hot sex' with their partners. The rise in teenage pregnancies is one indication that young women may be more vulnerable than ever to intimidation in the name of 'sexual freedom'. Many people of 'other cultures' look at this and ask, 'Is this what women’s liberation means?'

The sexual revolution has not completely liberated women—although it has created more choices for more people. Instead, women face pressures to conform to a new mode of sexuality that exposes them to different dangers, such as the increased likelihood of sexually transmitted infections. The backlash against this transformation in sexual habits has taken the form of a socially conservative and religious neo-puritanism that harks back to a 'golden age' where women got married, had children, families stayed together and the world was supposedly a better place. This ignores the fact that a large number of people, particularly women, were obliged to stay in unhappy marriages with unfulfilling sexual lives and limited life choices because of social pressures.

I do not want to live in a society where the choice is between watching women auction their virginity versus young girls being socially coerced into abstinence before marriage. Sexuality is at the core of human identity and, therefore, it is essential that we are able to develop healthy sexual personae. The continuing sexual double standard prevents women (and men) of all ages from being empowered to make choices about their sexual lives, free from exploitation, intimidation and risk. Whilst legislation attempts to protect people from many forms of sex discrimination (for example, in the workplace), inequalities on the basis of our sexual behaviour continue to exist with negative consequences for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Let the refugees in

By Juliette Harkin

"I went to the House of God and returned yet I found nothing like my home" - An Iraqi Proverb

You can take a ride from central Damascus in a small 'micro' van packed with workers and travel to Sayyida Zeinab, a popular district of Damascus and home for mainly Shi'a Iraqi refugees. At the entrance to the gold domed mosque foreign women can don the black Abaya, the long black cover worn by some Iraqi and Iranian women, and visit the holy shrine of Zeinab, which houses her remains. Zeinab was the granddaughter of the Prophet Mohamed, daughter of Ali the fourth Caliphate. Shi'a Muslims make the pilgrimige to mourn the assassination of the fourth Caliph and the 'betrayal' against Ali's family at a time that saw the Shi'a and Sunni split of Islam.

Syria has received many waves of Iraqi refugees throughout recent history, from those fleeing the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam's regime, the first Gulf war, the crippling sanctions and now the current violence as a result of the second American-led war on Iraq.

A steady flow of Iraqi refugees arrive in Syria and Jordan, the earlier and relatively wealthy now joined by the impoverished, by those who fled with nothing, in fear of their lives – journalists, those who worked with the occupation forces, foreign embassies or NGO's, victims of torture, and anyone living in the wrong side of the new sectarian divides that carve up Iraq’s towns. They are all waiting to go home and hoping to make a life until their country is safe.

Umm Ashraf and Abu Ashraf (the mother and father of Ashraf), a retired Iraqi couple are still waiting, as Christians they were too scared to return. I first met them in 2003; they greeted me warmly, shaking my hand saying what sounded like a thousand ways in Arabic to say hello, ask after my health and thank God. They invited me for tea and sweet biscuits. They had just returned from church in the picturesque old Christian quarter known as Baab Tooma in the old city of Damascus.

Abu Ashraf said they hoped to join their daughter and her family in Australia. They showed me a brochure of Australia and seemed happy that they would leave the confines of living in one room. They missed home and worried constantly about their son and family still in Baghdad.

This summer Sharouk Dillaa, an Iraqi involved in women's human rights came to talk in Norwich. She reeled off some extremely grim figures. One hundred women every day lose their husbands to the sectarian violence on the streets or the brutality of the occupation. There are five million Iraqi war orphans and every day four hundred more children are orphaned.

Over four million Iraqi's have had to leave their homes. The UNHCR is describing this as "the world's fastest growing displacement crisis".

Amnesty International issued a report in September 2007 urging those responsible for going to war with Iraq to now help in the resettlement of Iraqi's who cannot return to their war torn countries. Amnesty says there is a "moral obligation" to intervene and provide the necessary funds and a safe haven for a nation of people totally traumatised by war, in fear of their lives and lacking the basic food and health needs.

The international community is largely ignoring this dire situation. Promising insufficient funds and setting tiny quotas, countries like the UK and the USA are put to shame by the relative generosity of Syria and Jordan. Amnesty International commended Syria for taking in 1.4 million Iraqis and Jordan over 500,000. By contrast, the UK will allow just 750 refugees to resettle in the UK under its Gateway Protection Programme. The USA is reneging on its commitment to take in 25,000 and now talks of maybe taking in… just 2,000.

Our politicians assume we don't want any more foreigners here in Britain, taking our jobs and welfare benefits. Jordan and Syria suffer high levels of absolute poverty yet Jordanian officials recently estimated that they spent $1 billion on coping with the Iraqi refugees. Syria has allowed all Iraqi children free education, emergency medical treatment and offered a safe haven for families from a war that they have always opposed.

Today Abu and Umm Ashraf are still in Damascus, living in one room, waiting. They are the lucky ones, they have food and shelter and their son in Baghdad is still alive. Their country is in ruins. Shame on us for closing our doors to refugees who watch in despair as their country is completely destroyed by the war that the British government initiated.

Iraqi names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Bombs and the deaths of civilians

By Rupert Read

Keiko Ogura was eight when the US Enola Gay flew over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and dropped the uranium bomb that vaporised and incinerated 70,000 residents of the city. "I was curious. I wanted to see what the city looked like. I climbed up the hill, near our house, and I saw. I was astonished - all the city was flattened", she told the BBC in a survivor testimony. The death toll of innocents continues, with hundreds of thousands dying in the months and years after of their injuries, radiation poisoning and cancers.

Historians continue to disagree about whether the use of the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was strategically and militarily a reasonable decision. There were strong critics even within the US military and government, challenging the use of the atom bomb on a civilian population. Meanwhile, Albert Einstein, the very scientist whose work made nuclear weapons first possible, made it clear that he felt the "…decision was political rather than military or scientific."

The United Nations, established in 1945, set out to provide an international framework for intervening in conflicts to prevent war and the subsequent massive (and often politically-motivated) human suffering of civilians. In its first meeting in January 1946 the UN General Assembly drew up a resolution to tackle the problems posed by the discovery of atomic energy. The resolution sought the elimination of all atomic weapons and indeed of all weapons able to cause mass destruction (of which nuclear weapons are by far the most potent). Subsequent conventions, such as the Convention on certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), have further protected civilians in international law.

When President Truman sent the atom-bombers to Hiroshima (rather than at the very least dropping the bomb on some uninhabited Japanese island instead) he discounted humanitarian concerns and, like many subsequent governments in the USA, acted out of pure narrow self-interest, showing off his military might to the Soviets, and in the process conducting a gruesome large-scale human experiment to see how nuclear weapons actually work. Resort to nuclear and other weapons that indiscriminately attack civilian populations (eg napalm, white phosphorus, landmines and cluster bombs) is a tragic indication of the failure of governments to seek out and strive for alternative ways to resolve disputes. In 1945 Japan was already licking its wounds and sending out diplomatic missives seeking surrender in return for the retention of its Emperor.

Lakenheath is a nuclear weapons base. It stores up to 110 nuclear B61 bombs at any one time. The base is being used as a storage centre and launching pad for the deployment of cluster bombs that have been used by 'us' in Iraq and by Israel in Lebanon. Cluster bombs are extremely dangerous for civilian populations (to see why, click here).

It is more than ever down to the public, you and me, to ensure that checks remain in place on governments of the day to not abuse their positions of power. As a result of an incident in October 2006, eight protesters (six of them East Anglians, including four from Norwich) have been charged with entering Lakenheath USAF base to secure evidence of war crimes.

In November 2006, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, said: "I have repeatedly called upon States to comply fully with international humanitarian law [notably, the CCW]. Recent events show that the atrocious, inhumane effects of these [cluster] weapons - both at the time of their use and after conflict ends - must be addressed immediately, so that civilian populations can start rebuilding their lives."

One year on from the Israeli attack on Lebanon last summer, in which Israel dropped about two million cluster weapons, the International Committee for the Red Cross are still monitoring efforts to remove the huge numbers of these lethal bomblets so that Lebanese farmers can return to their land and tend their much-needed crops.

Nuclear bombs and cluster bombs. The two are linked by the civilian deaths they inevitably cause - it is the inability of these bombs to discriminate between combatants and civilians which makes them war-criminal.

They are also linked by their presence close to us, at Lakenheath. As Hiroshima Day approaches, here's a date for your diaries: August 4, 7pm, for an interfaith commemoration of Hiroshima Day at the Quaker meeting house in Norwich. Which, as it happens, is my place of worship, along with one of the Lakenheath 8, who is a dear friend of mine. All are welcome.

Thanks to Juliette Harkin for invaluable help preparing this column.

Another no-win situation for the Palestinians

By Liam Carroll

For those people who follow events in the Middle East, particularly the plight of the Palestinians, the last week or so, coinciding with the anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War, has surely served up as grim a picture of despair as has been seen in the occupied territories since the second intafada (uprising) began in September 2000. The cause for despair is not the Israeli air strikes against buildings in Gaza killing scores of people, grim as though scenes are, but the reports of Hamas continuing to fire Qassam rockets at the nearest available Israeli town, Sderot. In of themselves the rockets are fairly innocuous compared to Israeli reprisals; with only two Israeli fatalities compared to fifty-odd deaths in Gaza. However it is what the rockets represent, a new low in the fortunes of Palestinian politics, that is the cause for despair.

The overwhelming victory for Hamas in last years Palestinian Authority elections was a clear signal to the international community that the Palestinian people had had enough of Western promises that their rights would finally be respected and the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank would cease. In the first elections of their kind, the Palestinians voted for the militant party, Hamas, which had combined grassroots social activism with suicide bombings since their emergence in 1987, in preference to the US favoured Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas appears to be modeled on the successful Hezbollah, which emerged out of the 1982 war in Lebanon as the new resistance, and is credited with driving the US out of Beirut in 1983 and Israel out of Lebanon in 2000. What are terrorists in the eyes of the West, represent the resistance in the eyes of the people in Lebanon and the Palestinian occupied territories. Unlike the old left-wing secular resistance groups in Lebanon and Palestine, these organizations have combined Islamic asceticism, military training and social welfare activism to produce an army that has a strict moral code of conduct and a programme for establishing a wider social order. This social discipline has made them popular in areas where criminality is a serious problem, and stands them apart from their more established Fatah rivals that are perceived by many as being corrupt.

Although nominally opposed to the existence of the state of Israel as defined by their charter, which will not recognize the right of non-Muslims to own land in Palestine, Hamas has none-the-less stated that their national goal is to establish a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, which is an implied recognition of Israel if not in fact an explicit one. Their refusal to renounce violence, they contend, is based on their inalienable right to resist an occupying force and point to the fact that Fatah had made such denunciations and yet had failed to achieve progress toward an Israeli withdrawal. Hamas has demonstrated a willingness to negotiate, and indeed had actually maintained a cease-fire with Israel from March 2005 until June 2006 before an Israeli shell killed several civilians on a Gaza beach.

As soon as Hamas had won the elections, though, in January 2006, Israel, the US and the EU were soon trying to undermine them, firstly by withdrawing funding for the Palestinian Authority, thus leaving the entire civilian administration without pay, and more recently by training and funding security forces from the opposing Fatah organization, which the US claims are the legitimate security forces of the President. Although the two rival groups did succeed in forming a unity government in March this year, the bitter in fighting over who controls the security forces and police within the West Bank and Gaza has remained fragile. The latest outbreak of fighting between the groups points to the deep divisions between the two organizations and the fragile nature of the Palestinian Authority which many believe is close to collapse.

The great tragedy for the Palestinians in all of this is that their internal politics are in disarray, compounding ever declining fortunes in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. The fact that Hamas have grown in popularity in proportion to Fatah's decline, indicates that Palestinian patience with negotiated settlements has virtually evaporated. This isn't to say though that Hamas would reject a political settlement, but judging by the reaction of Israel and the West so far, it does seem unlikely that they will be given much opportunity to reach one. For the time being then, open confrontation is likely to be the order of the day, delaying yet further the likely hood of any kind of political arrangement that might bring some measure of relief to the long suffering Palestinians.

Can we really blame Iran?

By Liam Carroll

Recent reports about Shiite militia from Iraq receiving military training in Iran is more fuel for the fire of those people warning us about the increasingly dangerous influence of Tehran in the Middle East. The case for retributive military action against the Islamic Republic for the sake of disarmament or for the purposes of regime change is slowly being built. The argument rests on the perception that Iran is fuelling the insurgency in Iraq, arming and funding Hezbollah to fight Israel and continues a nuclear programme in defiance of the Security Council.

The perception that we face a massive existential threat if we do not take action is of course fundamental to creating public acceptance for the huge risks and potentially catastrophic consequences of taking military action against Iran. An obvious question therefore emerges; is the perceived threat real or do the proponents of war have an ulterior motive for magnifying the threat?

Is the threat real? The obvious point about the Iraq insurgency is that it was always primarily a Sunni driven conflict, where as it is Shiite militias that have been associating with Iran. No doubt the relationship involves funding, training and weapons supply – however the association predates the invasion of Iraq and it would be a bit rich, to say the least, to charge Iran with the crime of interfering in Iraqi politics; something the US and British have been doing somewhat more comprehensively over the last few years, equally without legal endorsement.

Aside from the insurgency in Iraq, Hezbollah remains another perceived obstacle to US policy goals in the Middle East. The US backed Siniora government in Lebanon wants a peace process with Israel, as indeed does the whole of Lebanon. The dividing line between the government and the hugely popular Hezbollah is drawn over the terms of that peace process though. Hezbollah represents Arab opinion more generally in demanding that Israel release thousands of political prisoners, withdraw from the occupied territories and provide an honourable settlement for the two million odd Palestinian refugees still in Lebanon. The Siniora government would settle for much less and is thus popular in Washington, but less so amongst Lebanese.

Hezbollah was a product of the Iranian Revolutionary guard in the eighties, but as an organisation they have come a long way since; former CIA Lebanese specialist, Robert Baer, recently told the New Yorker that "The most important story in the Middle East is the growth of Nasrallah (Hezbollah leader) from a street guy to a leader – from a terrorist to a statesman". This is not to underplay the fact that Hezbollah represents a minor military threat to Israel, but to point out that it is also an established political organisation with legitimate goals. To frame Hezbollah as apocalyptic suicidal bombers bent on the annihilation of Israel and controlled by Iran is hyperbole. Sure, tensions in the region run high, and the politics of the Middle East are complex but these issues have their own dynamic and are local in origin; to blame the Iranians for Arab-Israeli problems would be hugely dishonest.

As far as the nuclear issue is concerned, leaving aside the fact that the Iranians do actually have a right to enrich uranium, lets assume that in two years time they produce a nuclear weapon; what then? Well the US administration talks as if this would mean instant nuclear war with Israel, a war that would almost certainly entail the more certain annihilation of Iran. Now the Iranian leaders may not be the most rational people in the world, but it seems unlikely that they have got where they are by being completely suicidal. Alternatively, Iran might use the protection afforded by a nuclear weapon to further destabilise the Middle East through mobilising militant groups throughout the Shiite crescent that the world has only just suddenly noticed. Are the Arab states and Israel really so vulnerable to influence from impoverished minority Shiite groups? If that is the case, once again, the blame can hardly be laid at the feet of Iran.

Is Iran really poised to overrun the Middle East and seize control of the world's major oil producing region, levelling Israel in the process? It is interesting that the people most intent on convincing us of these facts are the ones who have done most to open the door to Iran by levelling Iraq. If the Iranian threat really is as great as they claim, why couldn't they see it before Operation Iraqi Freedom? Maybe it is just simply easier to find a scapegoat for a Middle East policy that lurches from bad to worse, than to simply admit their own failings.

We should be dealing with Saudi Arabians, but not by selling them arms

By Liam Carroll

Since the Arabian tribes helped the British and the French throw the Turks out of the Arabian Peninsula over ninety years ago, the UK has enjoyed strong relations with Saudi Arabia. The relationship has largely revolved around the Kingdom’s huge oil reserves which have allowed the House of Saud, it's ruling family, to indulge in excessive military spending.

The proportion of the country's wealth spent on weapons from the West though is a source of tension inside Saudi Arabia, and has long been used by radical Islamic militants in anti government preaching. Further dissatisfaction with the regime stems from the House of Saud’s resistance to constitutional reform and their failure to guarantee increased civil liberties.

While the UK Government may claim to be a partner in pushing for political reforms in Saudi Arabia, the recent intervention by the Government into the Serious Fraud Office investigation into a BAE/Saudi arms deal has raised serious questions about the UK's priorities.

The official line from the Foreign Office was "UK-Saudi relations are very strong. The UK and Saudi Arabia have intertwined and inseparable interests in our attempts to combat global terrorism and improving regional stability."

A serious scandal is now brewing around the Government's intervention; however the real scandal surrounds the fact that we sell weapons to Saudi Arabia at all. Saudi Arabia is an odious regime where political oppression, torture, executions and blatant denial of the rights of women are deeply entrenched. Further to this, most people live in poverty while the Royal Family squanders the countries vast oil wealth. Superficially, the UK economy benefits from such extravagance as British registered companies like BAE Systems fill their order books with billion dollar contracts. Yet on a deeper level our cosy relationship has been a disaster.

The failure of the West to encourage political reforms inside Saudi Arabia, combined with seemingly unrestricted arms sales has been one of the rallying cries of the radical Islamic militants who have massively increased the number of attacks against mostly UK and US targets inside the Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia is home to the most extreme form of Islam, the Wahhabi religion. The Taliban are Wahhabi's, Osama Bin Laden is a Wahhabi, and so are the Saudi Arabian Royal Family.

How does 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan and the wider War on Terror help balance the benefits derived from all those arms deals? Saudi Arabians formed the largest national contingent of those seized in Afghanistan and taken to Guantanamo. Fatwas have been issued by prominent Saudi clerics calling on muslims to support the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

Is that what the Foreign Office means by "inseperable interests in our attempts to combat global terrorism and improving regional stability"? I think I know what they do mean. Militants that wish to bring down the Saudi Royal family are at work in what is the homeland to the two most sacred shrines of Islam, Mecca and Medina. These militants have a ready source of recruits amongst the discontented subjects of the regime, and the radical ideology to go with it. No one in Europe or across the Atlantic could tolerate such a situation and the message from the Foreign Office is clear; "we must stand shoulder to shoulder with the Saudi's as they attempt to keep a lid on the widespread discontent in their regime".

But where has this discontent come from? It stems from the utterly foolish way in which the Saudis have squandered the countries vast oil wealth on arms when they should have been investing in education, training facilities and hospitals and other institutions of social welfare.

We do the Saudi Arabian Royal Family no favours by indulging their taste for ever more expensive and advanced jet fighters. Instead of wilting in the face of billion dollar contracts the Government needs to use its good relations to insist on progressive democratic developments. If our interests really are inseparable then its about time we fought for genuine stability based on sound governance and respect for human rights, not the maintenance of the status quo.

No doubt British officials in the last century found it easier to appease the feelings of the Saudi Arabian rulers rather than push for meaningful political reforms. It may be tempting to continue to do the same today as large orders come rolling in for prominent British companies like BAE Systems. The real costs may be further down the line, and it maybe only then that we realise we have been conducting the wrong kind of deals.

The War on Error

By Liam Carroll

The last week or so has been notable for the number of reflections on the terrible attacks on the twin towers in New York on September 11th. It has also been notable for the number of attempts to assess the 'War on Terror'. It now appears that many of the views and statements that have issued forth from our leaders and commentators over the last few years have turned out to be grossly inaccurate, or just plain wrong. Here are a few examples of inaccuracies that should be remembered in what could be described, perhaps badly, as the War on Error.

One of the most enduring inaccuracies persists in the minds of those you would have hoped would be better informed: the soldiers on the front line in Iraq. Get this: when asked, in a recent survey, to explain their presence in Iraq, 85 per cent of American soldiers said that the "main mission" was "to retaliate for Saddam's role" in the September 11 attacks. Where did they get that idea from? Interestingly, a US Senate committee report has just been released, confirming the long understood belief that there was no evidence of formal links between Al Qaeda and the government of Iraq. Before the beginning of the war that is.

Another interesting error, now rapidly being repackaged, is that 'Operation Iraqi Freedom', was part of the War on Terror. Not many people now hold the view that the invasion actually struck much of a blow against terrorism. Indeed the US National Intelligence Council early last year said that Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills". One month before the invasion George Bush had said; "Instead of threatening its neighbours and harbouring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both."

Tony Blair, having finally shrugged off the debate about the never found weapons of mass destruction, is now also trying to move on from the War on Terror. In a speech in Los Angeles recently he said, "We are fighting a war, but not just against terrorism, but about how the world should govern itself, in the 21st century, about global values". Instead of mentioning the War on Terror, he used a new phrase to describe the threat to "our values" and it came in the form of "the arc of extremism". This recalls George Bush’s 'axis of evil' which was made up of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Iran is of course still part of the arc/axis, but North Korea, once a worthy member of the 'axis of evil' doesn't make the 'arc of extremism'. To make the arc of extremism, you have to be Islamic.

The "arc of extremism", Tony Blair explains "is what I call reactionary Islam", and the way to fight it, apparently, is "to empower moderate, mainstream Islam to defeat reactionary Islam". One wonders though if it really is up to 'moderate Islam' to win this struggle, and whether or not it isn't actually 'moderate Anglo-Saxons' that have a larger role to play. Assessing the nature of reality is not, after all, so easy and can of course be disastrously wrong, as Christopher Hitchen's early appraisal, in 2001 demonstrates: when talking of the capture of Kabul in Afghanistan, the first stage in the War on Terror he wrote, "It was also obvious that defeat was impossible. The Taliban will soon be history". That was five years ago.

The real world is surely more complex than the sound bites about global struggles and recipes to defeat them suggest. One of the main architects of the War on Terror, Donald Rumsfeld, was once widely ridiculed for one of his statements about the nature of the struggle. Personally I think it was one of the more sensible and truly honest moments in a long list of appalling predictions and gross inaccuracies: "We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know". If the statements of our leaders and commentators are anything to go by, there are indeed many more unknowns than they appear to have known about. A little less 'knowing' and a little more understanding, might represent a step forward in what could be called, probably inaccurately, The War on Error.

The stone throwers

By Jacqui McCarney

It is impossible for us to imagine what God, if there is a God, thinks. In the face of such unknowable mystery, humility would seem to be the wisest course to take. Humility is in short supply among those claiming to know God’s mind – the fundamentalists whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim would have us believe that they have a direct line with the Almighty.

The rest of us may feel we know very little about God but I had understood that we had agreed on one thing and that is that 'God is Love'. And it is at this point that I and many others, who have missed the 'born again' express, become enormously confused. Our confusion may simply reveal our ignorance, or our simplicity, but it is always useful to go back to basics - to what we all think before we make the gargantuan leap of trying to understand what God thinks.

There will be many who share my view that a God of Love would not think that killing another human is a good idea, no matter what the excuse is, and, there have of course always been excuses ranging from 'weapons of mass distraction', 'bringing democracy to foreign countries', and the excuse of all excuses, yes, you have heard it many times before the 'War on Terror'.

Knowing the one thing that we are certain about God, that God is love, what can we imagine she thinks of this 'War on Terror'? What does he think when she sees his/her creation – beautiful children, their mothers, fathers being blown apart. Can any rational person to believe that God supports such actions?

If, for the sake of argument, we were to truly believe as many fundamentalists believe that killing innocent civilians is noble, then we have to conclude that our God is not a God of Love but a God of injustice and discrimination. This is where, I believe, so called religious people can appear almost childish. Are we really to believe that God has chosen to favour one group of human beings over another – that like a dysfunctional parent, he has favourites amongst his children?

If he has chosen a group of people to be his chosen people, what does she feel about the rest of us – are we merely excess baggage, inherently inferior, and therefore disposable.

It does seem that many human lives have become disposable – people in the way of a greater plan – a plan that seems to be at present time about a 'new Middle East' in the recent words of Condoleezza Rice. How do these disposable people feel every day when calls for a ceasefire are delayed by these God knowing people – Mr Bush, Mr Blair, Mr Bolton, Mr Olmert?

To kill innocent people in the name of God seems to me to be the worst act of blasphemy. We can not surely commit an act that is inherently evil, to take the sacred life of another human in the name of God? This to me is a contradiction – surely we can only commit acts of love in the name of God and our acts of blind evil can only serve what is opposite to God and that is the Devil, if you believe in the Devil.

I don't believe in the devil. I do believe that the heart of every human being carries the seeds of wickedness and goodness, devil and god, and evolution is about waking up to our personal responsibility for which of these we express in the world.

We have some way to go. Current behavior on the global stage would put our collective evolutionary age at say early childhood. "It's all his fault" maybe a tiresome whine to mothers, but it is deeply depressing to hear world leaders repeat this phase – the only progress being able to express this in more sophisticated language: e.g. "the axis of evil that stretches from Tehran to Damascus", Ehud Olmert speaking of Iran and Syria last week.

Whatever the underlying Geopolitics, this sort of simplistic labeling has an underlying emotional immaturity that is the same as – "I am good, and everybody else is bad".

By the time most children get to ten, especially with sensitive parenting, they begin to acknowledge their responsibility in relationships. Until our world leaders begin to see War as an abysmal failure which starts with the human failing of projecting badness onto 'the other', we will continue throwing stones at one another. Our stones are getting bigger, and are now capable of destroying this earth, that so many of the stone throwers believe was created by God for them.

Happiness is not an individual matter

By Jacqui McCarney

Happiness courses are now on offer at Harvard, the top university in the States and Wellington College, the expensive public school in Berkshire. Much media interest in these courses has opened up debate about whether we can cultivate happiness, and whether this has any place in education, or should be better left to the individual and their family. Judging from the interest shown at Harvard, where Happiness classes are heavily oversubscribed, students are willing to take time from more expedient career subjects to wrestle with the slippery problem of how to be happy.

In Buddhist culture, happiness is a central purpose in life and this is illustrated most readily by the tiny Buddhist country Bhutan where the success of the country is measured, not on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as is the case in western countries, but in Gross National Happiness. The aim of this tiny state is to prioritise happiness as a valuable asset for the individual and for society.

It is ironic that the scientific West has no real handle on happiness and is inclined to regard any attempt to teach it as an airy fairy, woolly headed waste of time. But this is only because the West is indeed woolly headed about happiness, and, while psychotherapists like Carl Rogers have produced insightful work on personal happiness, there is no essential philosophy of happiness. On the other hand, the supposedly less rational East came up with teachings and practices for happiness - known as Buddhism - two and a half thousand years ago. It is a philosophy, matured throughout Asia for the intervening millennia, that has found great favour among westerners who are increasingly turning to Buddhism - there are now a large number of Buddhist groups in Norwich.

Buddhism accepts that for all humans there is suffering and this profound simple acceptance allows us to move on. We all suffer to some extent whether it is physical or psychological and we all need to touch this pain rather than try to escape it. In the west we are encouraged to cloak our suffering in consuming - shopping sprees, drugs, entertainment. The overwhelming evidence that shows affluent western countries are growing unhappy is proof that all these tactics fail in the end.

Buddhist teachings, through the four noble truths, tell us firstly that "suffering is". Secondly we are asked to look at how our suffering came about and to look at the ways in which we continue to feed this suffering. To do this we may need the help of friends, a group of like minded people (Sangha, or spiritual community) or the help of a teacher or therapist. This is no quick fix, and the path calls for courage and commitment.

The third Noble truth is that we can stop suffering, and the fourth Noble truth is to follow the Noble Eightfold path which is a path that leads us to refrain from doing the things that cause suffering.

This eightfold path takes us from the personal to how this philosophy operates in society. The renowned Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn, wrote "Happiness is not an individual matter". It is difficult for us to be happy if our children are in difficulty or our partner is unhappy. Fear is prevalent and growing today. How can we be happy if we fear for our safety and the safety of our loved ones - whether the danger is from attack, nuclear accidents, and terrorism. It is difficult to be truly happy if our life style causes terrible suffering for others in Iraq, or by exploitation of third world countries. To deal with the overwhelming suffering of the world, we numb ourselves, deadening our feeling to these things. We live a deadened existence that denies us authentic feelings. Buddhism by it very nature is to be alive, and to be alive we have to be engaged with the world around us - according to Thich Nhat Hahn, an engaged Buddhist himself, "it is not Buddhism if it is not engaged".

The privileged students taught happiness classes must try to practice the lessons they have learned in a world that is increasingly violent competitive and unequal. Without the support of a deep philosophy of life, suffering and happiness, this will be very difficult. Those who are happy, despite the suffering in their families and worlds, are deeply narcissistic and this is both superficial and dangerous.

Real strides in happiness in the West will only come about when people learn that we cannot consume our way to happiness, and Governments start putting true wellbeing before endless economic growth.

All aboard the Afghan bus

By Marguerite Finn

Up to very recently, Afghan women were among the most disadvantaged on the planet. As one cruel joke put it: In Afghanistan, women never grow old. Why? Because Afghan women's life expectancy is only 42.5 years, one of the lowest in the world.

Deep-rooted cultural traditions have helped fashion a society where only 14% of women are literate, compared with 50% of men. Statistics show that those women who do work, are paid only half as much as their male counterparts. Up to 80% of marriages are arranged without the consent of the bride, and maternal mortality rates in some parts of Afghanistan are the highest ever recorded. According to UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), 600 children under the age of five die every day from preventable diseases. Fifty women die every day from obstetric complications, out of a total population of 28 million people. Only 40 per cent of girls attend primary school.

And that is not all. Picture, if you will, a queue of Afghan women waiting for a bus. Here comes the bus – but it doesn’t stop. Buses speed straight past, if there are only women waiting at the bus stop; at other times, men barge past the women to board the bus. This is a regular occurrence in the life of an Afghan woman.

There are some encouraging signs that the outlook for women is improving. A 'Ministry of Women's Affairs' was established in 2001, creating a national programme for women and tying it into the government's national strategy. Sima Samar, the first woman to head up the Ministry, now chairs the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. Her successor, Habiba Sorabi, was appointed by President Hamid Karzai as Governor of the Bamian province – the first woman in Afghanistan to be elevated to such a post. The Ministry of Women's Affairs is now run by Massouda Jalal (pictured left), a former UN worker and qualified paediatrician. She takes a long-term approach to improving women's lives. Over the next 10 years, if her policies are implemented, all girls under the age of five will be vaccinated against a range of diseases; sixty to seventy per cent of girls will attend school; Maternal mortality will fall by fifteen per cent and the number of female teachers will increase by fifty per cent.

The Ministry for Women also encourages women to run for parliament and provincial councils and to form women’s councils and associations throughout the country. Nevertheless, critics say that the pace of change is too slow and that the Afghan government does not take the Ministry seriously. The All-Afghan Women's Union pointed out that last year the Ministry's budget was approximately $4 million – out of the government's overall spending plan of $632 million. With this level of governmental support, they fear the Ministry will not achieve any real progress within the next 40 years! Massouda Jalal is not so easily discouraged. "If we work together to make the situation better, it will take two or three decades," she said. "If we don't, it will take two or three centuries."

Set against a background of continuing political chaos, the modest achievements of the women's ministry are quite remarkable. One way it has managed to speed things up is by working with outside agencies such as UNIFEM. This month, the benefits of such co-operation resulted in a better deal for women travelling on Afghanistan's public buses. By the end of this year, at least 30% of seats on all public buses in Afghanistan will be reserved for women, under the UN-backed programme. It all happened when the Minister for Women, the Deputy Minister of Transport and the Programme Director of UNIFEM, all got together and signed a Memorandum of Understanding, promoting a positive attitude among public transport staff and male passengers towards women passengers. Implementation of the Memorandum will be monitored by the independent Afghan Women's Network. A hot-line will be set up to take complaints and disciplinary action will be taken against staff who fail to observe the new directive.

The UN says that this iniative is in line with the benchmarks spelt out in the Afghanistan Compact – a UN-backed blueprint for international engagement in the development of Afghanistan over the next five years - and with the Afghan Government’s commitments to promote gender equality.

In February 2006, UNIFEM launched a pilot project in Afghanistan which aims to record cases of violence against women in a comprehensive database, which will be used to analyse trends, identify gaps in nation-wide response mechanisms and to determine strategies to tackle the issue.

For further information, see http://www.unifem.org/ or phone UNIFEM-UK: 0207-201-9987.

Your waste is my waste

By Jacqui McCarney

Some thirty years ago independent scientist James Lovelock scrambled over the mountain of western knowledge to proclaim that the earth was a self-regulating, interdependent system which continually adjusted to maintain conditions fit for life. He named his theory of a living planet after the Greek Goddess of the earth; Gaia.

What Mr Lovelock, the scientific community and the media failed to notice was that sitting on the other side of the mountain having waited for the last two and a half thousand years was the Buddha along with most indigenous peoples.

Despite the revolutionary feel to Lovelock's theory, it was not new, for at the heart of the wisdom traditions is a profound belief in the interconnectness and interdependence of all life, expressed in Buddhism (Dharma) as the "dependent co-arising of all phenomenon". The Buddhist precept to "do no harm" is a call for compassion but also a call for enlightened self-interest because in an interconnected world harming others is harming ourselves, poisoning the environment is poisoning ourselves and our children.

Acknowledging this interconnection with the earth is primary to the cultures of indigenous people of the past and those few surviving today. Through art, ritual, festival and ceremony kinship and reverence is expressed for mother earth. Remembering their interconnection with life around them their choices tend to be in harmony with their environment and the good of the whole.

Modern industrial society has made a virtue out of forgetting this relationship. Lovelock's work, now largely accepted by the scientific community, remains in practice a mere theory. Yet environmentalists who took Lovelock’s work seriously and have spent the last thirty years campaigning for the planet have largely been ignored.

A large part of the scientific world with the help of large corporations have spent the last thirty years on what can only be described as throw away trivia - DVDs, iPods, personal computers, ever newer mobile phones - or technological indulgences - GMs, cloning, plastic surgery. Why are scientists not focusing on saving the planet?

In James Lovelock's new book Revenge of Gaia, he paints a damming picture of runaway global warming and argues that climate change may have gone beyond the point of no return. His solution is little more than extraordinary - as an exponent of a living systems theory, he is advocating that we build more nuclear power stations.

If ever there was a technology that ignored the interconnectedness of life on this planet, it must be the nuclear industry. Chernobyl exploded a cloud of radiation over most of Europe and killed many Ukrainians. Britain already has 2.3 million cubic metres of stored nuclear waste which can kill an adult within two minutes in its most potent form. It remains lethal for one million years and will cost £85 billion to deal with. Rising sea levels makes all our nuclear sites, largely built on the coast, vulnerable with the catastrophic risk of polluting all the worlds' seas.

Unfortunately, our government wants to expand nuclear power and to triple mass burn incineration, despite strong environmental arguments against both.

This mocked-up photograph shows just how big the planned Costessey incinerator is when placed alongside Norwich Cathedral.


Locally, we have seen an excellent example of 'enlightened self interest' working and people empowerment in the debate over the incinerator at Costessey. Residents have turned up in their hundreds to debate this issue, well informed and determined to prevent harm to their children, and grandchildren. They are now painfully aware of the need for less packaging, more recycling and the treatment of waste in the most environmentally sensitive way.

Any new nuclear programme, like incineration, will bring people out to protect their environment and community. In doing so, their action benefits all of us and Gaia, aiming to protect us from nuclear and incineration toxins entering our atmosphere, waterways and food supply.

These technologies flourish in a growth based industrial society which assumes the earth is not alive, nature is reducible to its individual parts, we are all separate and independent of each other, and that we can pollute here and not affect there.

There is another approach and that is to work with Gaia using models for society that are sympathetic to a living Systems. A vital part of this approach is de-centralising power so that decisions are not based on riches for the few but for the good of all.

Ancient wisdom tells us it is time to listen and act now with principle and truth. Lovelock may be right and it may be too late, but either way we must leave a planet as clean as possible for the handful of descendents who do manage to survive. To bestow on them even more waste, nuclear or toxic incineration residue, as well as global warming would be sheer irresponsibility.