From Norman Morrison to Malachi Ritscher
Self-Immolation as Anti-War Protest
By JOE DeRAYMOND
"When you own a big chunk of the bloody third world, dead babies just come with the scenery"
Chrissie Hynde, from "Middle of the Road", by The Pretenders
In November of 2005, the United States used white phosphorus munitions against the people of Fallujah, Iraq. Jeff Englehart, a former marine who spent two days in Fallujah during the battle, said he heard the order go out over military communication that WP was to be dropped. Mr Englehart, now an outspoken critic of the war, says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete ... Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children." (as reported by Andrew Buncombe and Solomon Hughes: 15 November 2005, The Independent)
On November 3, 2006, on an off-ramp during rush hour in Chicago, Malachi Ritscher immolated himself. News reports have made much of the fact that his death had no immediate impact, since he was not identified for many days, and because the national news did not pick it up for several weeks. He is characterized as a troubled man. These are the words he left behind in his suicide note: "Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country... If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country."
In March of 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized the use of napalm against the people of Vietnam. Napalm is a burning gel that sticks to the skin, and made flame throwers and incendiary explosives a staple of the US arsenal against Vietnam. A Business Week article (February 10, 1969) termed the chemical "the fiery essence of all that is horrible about the war in Vietnam."
On November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison immolated himself within sight of Robert McNamara's window at the Pentagon, to protest the war in Vietnam. Norman did not leave a suicide note. His friend John Roemer described his action as follows, "I don't know. I don't know. He fought the war more and more deeply. I mean, when are you one of the Germans?...You have to be mentally different to fly in the face of received wisdom in this country. He played it out in his mind, I think, in terms of being a moral witness", and, "In a society where it is normal for human beings to drop bombs on human targets, where it is normal to spend 50 percent of the individual's tax dollar on war, where it is normal...to have twelve times overkill capacity, Norman Morrison was not normal. He said, 'Let it stop' ".
The Vietnamese canonized Norman Morrison. Streets were named after him, a postage stamp was printed with his image, poems were written in his memory. The most quoted, by To Huu, includes this stanza:
McNamara!Where are you hiding? In the graveyardOf your five-cornered houseEach corner a continent.You hide yourselfFrom the flaming worldAs an ostrich hides its head in theburning sand.
Norman was one of several people who chose to become a victim of the fire of the Vietnam War. Others include Vietnamese Buddhist monks, Quang Duc, June 1963, in Saigon; an unnamed monk in Phanthiet, August, 1963; Thich Nu Thanh Quang, in Hue, 1966. Each death galvanized opinion and resistance to the war within Vietnam. On March 16, 1965, Alice Herz, an 82 year old pacifist, immolated herself on a Detroit street corner. She stated in her suicide note, that she was protesting "the use of high office by our President, L.B.J., in trying to wipe out small nations." And "I wanted to call attention to this problem by choosing the illuminating death of a Buddhist." A week after Norman Morrison's death, Roger LaPorte burned himself in protest in front of the United Nations in New York. In May of 1970, George Winne, Jr., burned himself in protest of the Vietnam War on the University of California campus in San Diego. (See Frances Farmer's Revenge.)
Coverage of the sacrifice of Malachi Ritscher has been obsessively concerned with his sanity. The AP article on his death includes this conclusion, "Mental health experts say virtually no suicides occur without some kind of a diagnosable mental illness." Our government and its experts expect that rational citizens living rational United States lives understand that the burning of civilians is just part of the scenery, a necessary element of foreign policy. A person who actually takes responsibility for the purposes to which his/her tax monies are being devoted is by definition insane. It is a world turned upside down, in which torture, napalm and white phosphorus are "legal", and peaceful protest criminal. It is no mystery to me that there are human souls who cannot bear the light of truth, and choose to join the victims of our culture's madness.

Utopia
She is in the horizon
I encroach two steps forward,
She recedes two more steps back,
I walk ten steps and
The horizon runs
Ten steps further.
For all that I walk
I never can reach her.
For what purpose then does Utopia exist?
This is it's purpose:
To walk

Eduardo Galeano

Thanksgiving day was spent amongst a group of about 30 Guatemalan youth in the highlands of AltaVerapaz, Guatemala. In that group of 30 youth, 4 languages and 3 countries were represented. I wonder if anyone reading this has caught on to the irony of that. Thanksgiving Day is historically the day when we white people try to calm our historical consciences by lying to ourselves. We try to forget the worst genocide in history by creating a day of giving thanks for our blessings, instead of understanding the history and how it´s effects ripple into contemporary life amongst indigenous peoples in this hemisphere. Thus this is the irony that I see and that I feel privileged to have experienced: Whereas Thanksgiving historically has meant to me to be a marker of the beginning of indigenous genocide and our justification of such through distortions of historically reality, this Thanksgiving Day I was able to spend amongst a group of indigenous youth where the prescence of their faces and their existence could not be overlooked. Their simple prescence made the Thanksgiving story that we teach our children in kindergarten come true. But this time, that story was told to me in its harsh truth.
I woke up every morning these last couple of days to an ensemble of three indigenous languages laughing and blending with the tones of Spanish as well. I saw a group of Ke´chi girls who were to timid to even look in the face of a stranger because life and the history of life had taught them and their ancestors to be submissive. But I also groups of Su´tuil and Ixiil youth be bold enough to be challenged and to learn about how to be agents of service amongst their communities. And for that, I give so much thanks......

Today was the first day I spent amongst the people to whom i will be dedicating the next three years of my life. today i went to visit 6 families living with AIDS. And amongst those three families, one can find everything from hope to hopelessness, from strength to weakness, from determination to resignation. the first family we visited was a single mother with 6 children, five of which are hiv positive living in a small, dirty one room house in the middle of two gang territories. the children are in the process of leaving school simply because they dont want to go and their mother is too tired and overwhelmed to demand otherwise. after leaving that family we went to eat and the only way i could force my eat was to forget the truth of what i had just seen. to forget...to abandon compassion......that´s what i did, so that i could be comfortable. there is a hindu-buddhist concept of not being attached to the fruit of your actions which i believe has a lot to say to people involved in working for change in the world. if you work for change hoping to see that change, despair abounds. if you become able to work without a concern of what the end result will be but focused instead on developing the relationships with those you work with and thus participating in their lives, then the end result which will never be seen is no longer an acceptable. but does that then mean that one has given up on wanting to see a world encompassed by the reign of god.....
that´s all for now....

It should be very interesting to see how the U.S. responds to this case of them harboring an international terrorist in light of their "war on terror."

Decision Time on Cuban's Detention
Friday, Nov 10, 2006

By: Carol J. Williams - Los Angeles Times
MIAMI — He has admitted to bombing Havana hotels, served time for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro and for more than 20 years was a fugitive from charges of blowing up a Cuban airliner.But 17 months after Luis Posada Carriles was arrested and sent to a Texas immigration lockup, U.S. officials have declined to label him a terrorist or charge him with a crime. On Friday, a federal judge in El Paso gave the U.S. government until Feb. 1 to bring a case against Posada or the reputed bomber will be freed.He has become a political liability for the Bush administration in its declared global war on terrorism. As a veteran of nearly five decades of covert operations in Latin America, including the Bay of Pigs invasion, clandestine Cold War actions and the Iran-Contra affair, Posada knows where Washington's bodies are buried.If Posada, 79, were to be prosecuted, he probably would seek to defend himself against any criminal charges by arguing that his violent actions were on behalf of his CIA masters.His Miami lawyer, Eduardo Soto, alluded to his client's past collaboration with U.S. intelligence services as he pressed the Cuban militant's unsuccessful quest for political asylum. "A public trial of Luis Posada would certainly reveal embarrassing details on the degree to which U.S. covert operatives used terrorism as a tool in the 1960s," said Peter Kornbluh of the independent National Security Archive at George Washington University.Kornbluh has compiled declassified CIA and FBI evidence of Posada's role in the 1976 plane bombing, near Barbados, of a Cuban airliner in which all 73 on board died. Among the documents in the archive's online dossier is one recently obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation that shows Posada informed his CIA minders of the plot to blow up the airliner three months ahead of the attack.The administration has avoided bringing a criminal case against Posada, who enjoys strong support among Miami's politically powerful Cuban exiles, by handling him like any other immigration offender and simply seeking his deportation.Posada returned to Florida in March 2005, reportedly on a fellow exile's shrimp boat sent to fetch him from an island off the Yucatan Peninsula. He'd made his way there six months after being pardoned by outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso in August 2004 after serving four years for attempting to kill Castro at a Panama summit in 2000. Moscoso's clemency decree for Posada and three U.S. militants was seen as a favor to the Bush administration in a presidential election year when the Cuban exile vote in Florida was vital.Posada moved about Miami with impunity, despite indignant demands for his extradition by Cuba and Venezuela, where he is a naturalized citizen. Authorities arrested him two months after his arrival when he invited journalists to his Miami residence for a news conference.A federal immigration judge in El Paso, where Posada has been held since May 2005, ruled last year that he should be deported to a country other than Venezuela or Cuba, which want to try him for the jetliner bombing. The federal government has spurned those countries' extradition requests, contending Posada would be at risk of torture or execution.The State Department approached at least six friendly foreign governments to take Posada, but Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador all refused. The Mexican government later said it would hand Posada over to Cuba if he reentered Mexico.Soto argued in August that U.S. authorities couldn't hold Posada indefinitely after abandoning efforts to send him abroad. U.S. Magistrate Norbert Garney agreed, and recommended in September that Posada be released.In October, the Justice Department urged the court to keep Posada in jail."Luis Posada Carriles is an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks. The Department of Justice believes that Posada is a flight risk and that his release would be a danger to the community," said spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement then notified Posada that the government had decided to prolong his detention because of concerns that his release "would have serious foreign policy consequences," according to an agency statement.Under anti-terrorism powers claimed by the administration, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has only to ask Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzalez to brand Posada a terrorist to keep him locked up while the government pursues criminal action, said David Sebastian, Soto's paralegal on the case. Much as the administration can indefinitely detain terrorism suspects at Guantanamo without legal recourse or formal charges, it can hold Posada on grounds that he poses a national security threat. The Justice Department missive makes clear that the administration considers him a terrorist but has yet to pursue that formal designation. Soto has filed a writ of habeas corpus challenging the government's continued jailing of Posada on the immigration violation. That move presents a dilemma for the administration: It could be forced to let a man they call a terrorist walk free or prosecute him and risk public airing of some of Washington's darkest secrets.U.S. District Judge Philip Martinez on Friday gave the administration the Feb. 1 deadline to prosecute or release Posada.Neither the State Department nor the Justice Department would say what, if any, actions were being taken to ensure Posada remains in detention.Posada's fellow militants launched a petition drive demanding that the administration release him before today's election or risk losing support for GOP candidates from among the anti-Castro constituency."Some of us vote for President Bush. Others, like me, vote against him because he doesn't do anything for Cuba," said Juan Torres Mena, a vice director of the Brigade 2506 Bay of Pigs veterans association. "Those fighting against communism are in jail now," he said. "Before we were freedom fighters. Now we're terrorists."

Something scary is happening to me. This the true problem I am confronting in my life: a loss of compassion for the poor--a pragmatism that steals away the heart from encarnating myself with the poor. Where has that person I once was gone to? That person who wouldn't eat his lunch because he saw poor, hungry, people on the streets and knew they were hungrier than he. That person who found the greatest joy living in and amongst the people of the garbage dump talking and laughing with them and drinking their tea and getting to know them and their realities. What happened to that person who is now better dressed, working for a service organization that keeps him decently housed and decently fed? My heart for the poor has been hardened by a desire to help them through structure and pragmatism. Perhaps I am still illusioned by failures with CCMV. I know not what made me this way. But the other day I saw a man with one shoe, homeless, and begging on the street. And in my bag I had an extra pair of shoes too small for me--but I didn't approach him because I thought I needed the shoes for the gym I was going to to lift weights. What bullshit! Adn then two days later I saw a man with no legs sitting on the corner of a street begging for money and his eyes were filled with a warmth and a humanness. And all I could feel was guilt and a need to avert my eyes. I didn't want to sit down and talk with him and get to know his name and his situation. This is my spiritual crisis. It's not that I find it difficult to maintain an inner spiritual life, but it's that my heart has been hardened and my eyes blinded to the poor amongst me. I still want to help them, but in a structured way. And though this has its value in some ways, it can NEVER take the place of sitting on a street corner with a legless begger and getting to look into his eyes without shame or pity, but with respect, compassion, and love. Or nothing can take the place of sitting with a one shoed homeless man and putting new shoes onto his dirty, blistered feet. And I know that untill I learn to be able to do that again, I will never truly be able to say with conviction the words of Saint Francis "My God and My All" or even to pronounce that revolutionary prayer of Jesus that began with the words "Our Father." For it is pure hypocrisy to say and affirm belief in "Our Father" if one can still avert his eyes from the suffering of those he passes on the streets everyday. Without the touch of the poor, pragmatism steals the touch of God administered through contact with the reality and the lives of His most poor.

Well, I have been here in Guatemala for about three days or so and without seeking to be too cliche or anything like that, I honestly feel that this is a place and time in life where as Dom Helder Camara says "Providence has grabbed me by the hand and led me here." The people I have been working with are people I already admire deeply and I have seen so many possibilities in the first few days for different projects and ideas to take shape. I am actually not even going to be working in Guatemala that much, but my mind is spinning with different projects. The other day I sat down with Antony and Irma, the two country representatives, and we discussed all sorts of different development projects. I have met many amazing people working for justice and peace in a society of injustice and violence. Guatemala is a beautiful country filled with systemic ugliness. From the roof of my apartment I can see two or three huge mega malls, a plethora of multinational corporations, and the hidden slums of which the majority of Guatemalans live. So in this context, where politicians see development as bringing in these corporations and mega malls to serve the interests of a few elites, it is a great joy to be working with an organization dedicated to creating development solutions to help the majority of those people living in those hidden slums who never will dream of buying a McDonalds hamburger or wearing Gap bluejeans. That's all for now.
Peace...

So I suppose that this is the first time I have ever experienced ever putting my thoughts out there for others to read. I guess I am kind of old fashioned in that I like the idea of journals and pens as a means to jot down those things in life I want to remember. And I must admit that I have often thought of people reading all the things I have written in those journals posthumously. But alas, I thought I would give this a try, not so much for me (I have a feeling it will be kind of a pain in the ass feeling as if I have to write in this all the time), but for those who for some odd reason or another want to know what road life is taking me down. And also, though I don't feel in any way that I am doing anything "special" in my life that would warrant people wanting to read what I am doing, I do feel that life's path will take me to many interesting situations and into the paths of many amazing people. Thus, I do hope that by recounting some of the experiences that are awaiting for me, others can perhaps take interest in what is out there in the world.
So, that having been said, I titled this piece "The Beginning" because tommorow I am leaving for El Salvador for three years to work with a small Catholic, grassroots organization through the Mennonite Central Committee. I have traveled much throughout the last four years in Latin America and the Middle East, but never before has it quite felt like such a profound beginning as now. It's not just the amount of time (3 years really isn't that long), it's that I finally am beginning to feel like now life is at a jumping off point. Now, more than ever, I suppose I have finally grown up. Shit.... Well, this is where I begin, in a small basement at the MCC headquarters in Akron, PA. The challenge is always what lies ahead.

The beginning

So I suppose that this is the first time I have ever experienced ever putting my thoughts out there for others to read. I guess I am kind of old fashioned in that I like the idea of journals and pens as a means to jot down those things in life I want to remember. And I must admit that I have often thought of people reading all the things I have written in those journals posthumously. But alas, I thought I would give this a try, not so much for me (I have a feeling it will be kind of a pain in the ass feeling as if I have to write in this all the time), but for those who for some odd reason or another want to know what road life is taking me down. And also, though I don't feel in any way that I am doing anything "special" in my life that would warrant people wanting to read what I am doing, I do feel that life's path will take me to many interesting situations and into the paths of many amazing people. Thus, I do hope that by recounting some of the experiences that are awaiting for me, others can perhaps take interest in what is out there in the world.
So, that having been said, I titled this piece "The Beginning" because tommorow I am leaving for El Salvador for three years to work with a small Catholic, grassroots organization through the Mennonite Central Committee. I have traveled much throughout the last four years in Latin America and the Middle East, but never before has it quite felt like such a profound beginning as now. It's not just the amount of time (3 years really isn't that long), it's that I finally am beginning to feel like now life is at a jumping off point. Now, more than ever, I suppose I have finally grown up. Shit.... Well, this is where I begin, in a small basement at the MCC headquarters in Akron, PA. The challenge is always what lies ahead.