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Global Roundup

Uncle Sam Wants You (If You Think "Like a Man")!

The first credo that a rookie learns after s/he enters the armed forces is the law of the jungle - kill or be killed. Adopting this credo means leaving behind impulses that value nurturing and empathy towards other human beings and instead accepting regimentation, absolute discipline, and a strict command-structure hierarchy. In brief, the armed forces stress values which are patriarchal and non-humane.

Accepting such values can be especially difficult for women entering the armed forces, who must totally repress their "feminine" natures, accepting the values of being a "soldier." She must obey the soldier's code: "This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. I must master it as I must master my life." Having a rifle as a "best friend" effectively denies all human friendship, turning the recruit into a mere killing machine. So too the idea of "mastering" your best friend is obviously the antithesis of friendship and a formula for repression and persecution. "Don't make friends," is a stock army maxim. They are dispensable. And so are you.

As for the drill sergeants, they must turn recruits, men or women, into soldiers and do so by dehumanizing them. Commands proclaimed as gospel truth are usually shouted in anger. No matter how absurd or humiliating, such commands must be obeyed without question. For the officers, they inwardly know that this "training" is an insidious fraud, a bankruptcy of morality and reason.

From then on, both superior officers and recruits are in a "no-win" situation. To the male in authority, the woman recruit becomes both the subject of forgiveness and the desired object of sex. Thus the drill sergeant or superior officer faces a constant and perennial dilemma as does the female recruit. If he treats her only as a potential soldier, he is then denying his own sense of humanity. On the other hand, if he gives in to his guilt/desire, he is betraying the army's "no tolerance" code. The recruit, on the other hand, conditioned to obey the "master," has lost all personal value judgment and, fearing failure, falls victim to sexual abuse and harassment.

Whether it is the "comfort women" the Japanese government provided for its troops in China, the Bosnian refugee women raped in Serb camps during the recent Herzegovina war, or the Navy female officers harassed during the Tailhook binge, sexual abuse/harassment is as endemic to the male-dominated world as the system from which it derives, the nation-state. While the domination continues, the "old boy" network protects itself by threatening its victims .

"Women are not at war," states Betty Burkes, president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. But when they enter the man's army, they renounce peace and freedom. They must accept, from that day on, that they are soldiers, and their greatest passion must be for killing.

And rape is but a minor part of that total passion.

Cyberspace Stockmarkets

(Excerpted from a column by George Will, New York Times, October 9, 1996.)

On a June morning two years ago, after an overnight frost in Brazil, when a government official there announced a substantial reduction in projected coffee production, the news instantly flashed to the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. The price of coffee futures immediately began rising. Traders of soybeans and other products did not understand why this was happening but began bidding up their prices, causing the index of commodity prices to rise. This was registered on the computer screens of commodities traders in almost 200 Wall Street firms, who reported this shiver of inflation to their bond-trading colleagues, who started a sell-off of bonds, which caused bond prices to fall, which caused upward pressure on interest rates, which caused stock prices to fall.

Elapsed time between the announcement in Brazil and the tremor in Wall Street: less than 10 minutes.

A Call to Hebron-Declare Yourself a World City !

Hebron, a city of 94,000 Palestinians and 540 Jewish settlers, is sacred to both peoples because it is the alleged burial site of the patriarch Abraham. In addition, they share another common heritage-that of being people descended from Shem, the eldest son of Noah. In short, genealogically, all the inhabitants of Hebron are actually cousins!

The inhabitants of Hebron, like any city, share many municipal services: water, electricity, sewerage system, etc. In addition, Hebron's citizens are linked by the things that make us all human-sharing joy, depression, birth and death. In short, whatever the internal and national conflicts, Hebron is de facto a world city brimming with de facto World Citizens.

Both Bethlehem, on the West Bank, and Arad, in Israel proper, are sister cities joined with Burlington, Vermont, U.S.A. The mayors of all three cities have been issued honorary World Passports by the World Service Authority. WSA has also been issuing the same passport to citizens in Hebron as well as to others living in the West Bank. The total number of World Passports issued to Israeli residents is 2,600.

Citizens of Hebron: Claim your rightful heritage as World Citizens. Declare your city to be a World City, and join the over 900 cities worldwide that have already done so. Let peace reign through reason!

World Spies, Amalgamated

The truth is out! The spies of the world have a secret union! Single spies, double agents, triple agents, etc., all are linked by a single ethical code: When in from the "cold," the game is over. Hands off. We have to get on with our lives.

Vladimir Galkin blew the whistle. He's a former KGB spy who attempted to steal "Star Wars" secrets for the Soviet Union and who now works for a Russian-American company, Knowledge Express (how appropriate!). Galkin naively wrote his former profession on his application for a U.S. visa. To his surprise and chagrin, when he arrived at Kennedy Airport, he was arrested by Justice Department officials. But the CIA and the State Department decided that prosecuting Galkin "was not in the national interest." After all, former U.S. spies might be setting up business in Russia. A Justice Department official grumbled that, "They should have told us from the beginning."

Then, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service-the remake of the KGB-got into the act. It accused the U.S. of "breaking the unwritten rules of espionage" by giving a former spy a visa, then arresting him when he arrived. Such incidents did not happen "even in the worst Cold War times," it said. And the news of "World Spies, Amalgamated" was out in the open.

The tax-paying public should be righteously outraged. The salaries and payoffs for world spying are enormous and well-buried in national budgets. The tragic comedy or irony of the whole thing is that there are no secrets under the sun! At least that's what we are taught in kindergarten.


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