Charles Keil emailed First of the Month a series of essays, notes and poems during, and immediately after, the war in Kosovo. Keil’s messages were marked by his determination to keep thinking–and feeling–in the face of fascism. Here are excerpts from his communications.
April 29
A month into this war against the fascist, racist, sexist (public rape as policy is to sexism and cleansing what concentration camps, gas chambers and ovens are to racism and genocide — the ultimate or most efficient criminal means to a grisly goal) regime in Serbia, I am still at odds with a lot of left intellectuals and clinging to Hannah Arendt’s arguments for bumping off Eichmann in Jerusalem. I am not at all happy to be in complete agreement with recent Wall Street Journal pro-war editorials, I can’t help noticing the stock markets are hitting new highs as the bombs and missiles are dropped on Serbia, but, following Arendt, I have to support what will pass for old testament justice in relation to these crimes against humanity UNTIL we can get a genuine world court, an effective world police force, and swift arrest warrants/ arrests/trials/death penalties for minority-slaughtering dictators like Saddam and Slobo. Don’t you, gentle reader, think the death penalty should be reserved only for dictators who murder innocent civilians in the hundreds as a matter of premeditated policy? Saddam gassed entire Kurdish villages back in the 80’s and we didn’t have a response. It only took the U.S. rice lobby to defeat the move toward Congressionally-proposed sanctions! Sick.
As horrible, racist (their lives so much less precious than ours), tech-fixated, ineffective, counterproductive (as the air strikes continue building the fasc around Slobo), Pentagon inflating, etc. etc. as it is, I still support the bombing with the further clarification by Blair, Clinton, that there can be no compromise, no negotiation, no appeasement of cleansers. NATO has not gone far enough in declaring the right of self determination, arming of KLA to defend their villages and people, insisting on war crimes trials for Slobo, the leaders, the thugs, and full reparations paid for by all Serbian citizens. Collective guilt exists when citizens elect and reelect a fascist government. I think we should be extremely grateful to the 18 nations that have been able to reach a consensus on doing something to oppose public rape, slaughtering unarmed civilians, this whole process we have come to call ‘cleansing.’
UN forces witnessing atrocities, consolidating turf cleansed by Serbs, not resisting the siege of Sarajevo, not arresting war criminals, not doing police work — drove me crazy back in the Bosnia era leading up to the appeasement and complicity in war crimes represented by Dayton. UN forces exiting Rwanda at the very moment when 800,000 lives could have very easily been saved with some tear gas, a few swift international police responses — that too disgusted me and disgraced us all. The Dayton accords made WITH the war criminals, in effect saying yes we can make a deal with people who murder unarmed civilians by the hundreds, create concentration camps, conduct public rapes as a matter of policy — all this reconvinced me that Hannah Arendt was right about the spreading ‘banality of evil’ in our century.
I don’t hear this line of reasoning in a recent public letter from French intellectuals. Statements by leading left intellectuals in the U.S. seem morally evasive, alienated, cynical. Former friends and comrades arguing with me by e-mail consistently fail to talk about how they would stop the ongoing Serbian crimes against humanity over the past 6, 7, 9 years. Given the UN record in Bosnia and Rwanda, they can’t realistically argue for a UN force being assembled and deployed and acting like police soon enough to make any difference. Won’t happen. Russia in Chechnya and China in Tibet showed why they don’t want anyone standing up to Slobo or seeking rough justice (or any kind of justice) for oppressed nations trapped inside fascist and genocidal states anywhere in the world. Should Russia and China have veto power over 18 democratic nations resisting crimes against humanity in the only way they think they can manage it politically?
Since Biafra I have been pleading for dramatic and decisive international efforts to define ‘administrative massacres,’ ‘famine as a weapon of war’ and ultra-racist incitement to genocidal events of all kinds as NOT the ‘internal affairs’ of any state. The basic principles are simple enough.
States forfeit sovereignty in the moment that a regime commits crimes against humanity.
Conversely, self determination of peoples applies first and foremost to those peoples whose lives and property have been sacrificed to a state that is killing and plundering them rather than protecting them…
When and as genocidal events are happening I don’t think you can ignore the screams of the victims, the mass graves, a million refugees and sit around talking about how evil the American empire has been, how big the Pentagon has gotten, how complex the situation is over there, that any use of American or NATO power must be part of an imperialist plot, that two wrongs don’t make a right, that armed force is never justified etc. etc.
Sorry, I part company. Armed force was justified when over a million Armenians were slaughtered by the Turks early in the century. And in every genocidal event since then, witnessing and deploring, blaming or ignoring, hand wringing and exploring options, clever demystifications of the real forces at work, etc. were not enough.
April 30
Racism/sexism/classism are all topped by and/or actually grounded in anthropocentrism/humanism, at least this is emerging for me as more and more ‘the problem’ as time goes on. Though I can see why you think raising the ‘population question’ will distract people. But what is cleansing about? Turf, lebensraum, not enough of us per acres, too many of you. That was a pressure in Rwanda too most populated part of Africa even after a decade of AIDS epidemic. The left has to look at these material conditions that pit people against each other and cancel out all pity, charity, solidarity.
- May 6
A Fascinating Fear of Fascism
We all fear it in others. I don’t know about you, but I fear it in myself. This deep, deep urge to be bonded, to be of one mind and body with kindred spirits, to feel righteous and strong in quantity of numbers and quality of truth, to have some shared beliefs you are willing to sacrifice for and even to die for if necessary, and…and…to kill for? Go to war for? No. Wait a minute…
What is a fasc? Just a fascis in Latin, a band or bundle of rods, twigs or straw…’also crowd of people.’ Togetherness. Us-ness. We are all straw or grass or twigs together. Consubstantiation. Participation. Communion. Communitas. Solidarity. Diffuse enduring solidarity or love — what we live for and constantly search for, never more so than in an era of ever more profound alienations from self, body, labor, nature, society. We were born to bond and bundle, to stroke and be stroked, to groom and be groomed, to respect and be respected, to love and be loved. And everywhere we are foreign, alien, alone and trying to decide which commodity best relieves our oppression/exploitation/alienation. Mike soars across the screen and he says try Nikes. We do. Fascinating.
Add big victimage to alienation. The Germans thought they were the big victims after World War I. Reparations were Hitler’s fuel for World War II. The Serbs think of themselves as big victims and justified in their new role as aggressors and executioners in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo — ask the survivors in Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Bihac and all of Kosovo what kind of victims the Serbs are…
How did a solid majority of those good, rational, intelligent, Mozart-loving, very civilized Germans become Nazis or Nazi sympathizers? Why do Serbs rally round Slobo instead of saying ‘guess we better stop butchering Albanians and burning villages, cause 18 nations are finally saying that’s a no-no in 99.’ Even more fascinating, why do 90% of Russians and 60% of Greeks side with the Serbian fascists and war criminals? How does that deep identification with the Serbs overlook the manifestly evil ways they have searched for lebensraum the past 8 years? How does demonstrating against NATO bombing assuage Russian and Greek senses of alienation, victimage, powerlessness, wanting to belong, wanting to love. I haven’t liked or trusted Mikis Theodoras ever since his music after ‘Song of the Dead Brother’ got more mushy, sentimental, pseudo-folky, pretentious, but he seems an intelligent, creative man of left who calls Milosevic a butcher and monster in one breath, only to say that fascist Serbia must be defended in the next breath or all of Greek history and honor will have been in vain! Fascinating…
Since Roman times there has been an ax in the middle of the fasc. ‘Fasces — a bundle of rods, bound together about an ax with the blade projecting, carried before magistrates of ancient Rome as an emblem of authority.’ The power tribe…How do we make the world safe for non-power tribes? How do we get the ax out of every bundle?
The most recent administrative massacres have been very low tech. The Hutu, using mostly machetes, were more efficient than the Germans! Slobo’s thugs in ski masks use mostly small arms and their Serbian penises. (Those masks are very important; some shame or fear of being identified and taken to the Hague seems to exist. Progress?) It might be too hard to stop the Hutu or the Serbs as they search and destroy in small groups. But superfast high tech planes flying 15,000 feet and higher don’t seem to be the appropriate technology to stop or deter cleansing and genocide…
We have never said ‘No’ to the administrators of massacres or the leaderships who generate other genocidal events in the first place. Read While Six Million Died and realize that no one ever tried to bomb the railroad tracks to Auschwitz. Fascinating. We don’t even know the names or recognize the faces of the men who masterminded, planned, propagandized, ordered, and executed the most efficient slaughter of innocents ever accomplished. Who wants to know? I don’t. I went and got the names of the Hutu evil geniuses and then promptly forgot them. Long names. Funny names. Too many syllables. Always faceless. Fascinating.
Since there are no conclusions to these paragraphs. Fascinations but no findings…I’d like to end by going over my only personal experience of fascism/racism/pogroms circa 1967 over thirty years ago in Nigeria.
My wife Angie and I could see, hear, sense the pogrom coming to Makurdi, the polyglot administrative center of Benue Province, feel the anti-Ibo racism rising, read about unpunished pogroms in other cities. The dozen or so white expatriates working for the provincial government didn’t think anything would happen, the Tiv people we were working with denied the possibility, but we felt it was just a matter of time and a trigger. Only the town madman, Gypsy Fullstop — a.k.a. Lord Rolling Stone, R.G.T. Above (RGT the initials for Royal Government Tyrannical) — was clearer than we were about the impending massacres, bringing word salads each day filled with truth-telling phrases (‘gangs of jealousy’ and ‘jeopardy, jeopardous’), signing himself ‘cruciferous’ or more than crucified.
When the day came and elements of a Nigerian army battalion showed up to lead the mob, I thought about going down the hill to the market area and trying to stop it. White people were still respected, distinguished visitors, closest to distant authorities — it was not a completely crazy thought. But I was afraid. And what happens to my wife and infant daughter if my bluff is called and I’m killed or incarcerated? I stayed home and watched the dust rise over the market from the hilltop. When we went across the Makurdi bridge by car the next day to see what the buzzards were circling over, to count the eviscerated bodies, to smell the most nauseating stench of rotting flesh in the tropics, to at least witness what had been done, we were greeted on the trip back by a Nigerian army officer at the bridge who cheerfully invited us to tea that afternoon and smilingly explained that we could discuss how important it was to rid the world of Ibos, what recent progress had been made in this area and what further progress could be expected. Chilling. The expatriates back at the social club, a few missionaries included, explained to us the next day that while indeed, it had happened, some had been killed, it was ‘just the riffraff,’ a few of the unemployed and hangers on, no one important. What I learned from this personal experience, and from the inability of Ibos and other ‘Eastern Nigerians’ to find freedom, dignity, justice, in an independent Biafra over the few years of struggle and starvation that followed, is that: 1)no-one wants to see it coming, to be alert to signs of oncoming fascism and genocidal events, to send out warning signals; 2) few recognize it when it does come — this is not an exceptional crime, it’s ‘just cleansing’ the riffraff, just how things are ‘in Africa’ or ‘in the Balkans;’ 3)the fascists think they are doing themselves and the world a favor ‘cleaning’ up a problem, and, 5) by and large, the world would rather agree than get over it’s fascinating fear of fascism.
To find out what the hell is going on with humans in this whole us/them, class/scapegoating, nationalism-gone-crazy department, and then figure out ways to stop the most appalling numbers of bodies from piling up in the charnel house does not seem to be a high priority for many philosophers, many social scientists, journalists, policy makers, thinking citizens anywhere. I know I’m hanging on to Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and an old article by Bernard Nietschman, ‘The Third World War’ from Cultural Survival Quarterly 11(3) for guidance and information…But where is the shelf full of analysis and imaginative suggestions on how to cope with crimes against humanity?
- May 8
I DO identify with the Serbs. the Serbian Gypsy brass band record ‘Ramo Ramo’ was one of my favorites for years and years… I have always marveled at and admired Serbian cultural tenacity in the new world, holding on to their songs, dances, string music better than other immigrants. I’ve got a German last name (would always rather think of it as Hessian I admit) and my grandma spoke German better than English. I want to understand why people I love and feel like I belong with seem to have this propensity for fascism. My friend Bob Dentan just sent me an e-mail about the children in Serbia who get hit by our stray bombs, the old ethnic Albanian couple hiding in the basement who get sealed off, entombed, by one of our bombs. I’ve been waking up with that old sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach the past few mornings. Because I like to feel righteous, correct, smart and ethical. And this war is making me feel more stupid and dirtied than usual.
- June 7
How to Stop Fascism and Genocidal Events
‘my object all sublime, I shall achieve in time
to let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime’
from The Mikado
There is nothing sublime about this essay, and we can’t wait for a long time to achieve successful anti-fascist strategies. The response to ‘genocidal events,’ to fascism and ‘cleansing’ must be swift, smart and efficient in the future. The first thing to understand is that fascism is a potent psychosocial brew or fusion of celebrated-victimage/deep-death-wish-disguised- as-lifeforce/constant-war/aggression-abroad-and-repression-at-home/scapegoating- and-cleansing-all-available-untermenschen/great-leader-who-will-stand-alone-in- a-field-of-corpses-or-hunker-in-the-bunker-as-the-last-survivor-of-his-noble-breed and some other factors of which rational people can claim only the dimmest understanding. Fascism is the horror cure for alienation. Fascism revitalizes a deformed and decaying civilization and becomes vigorous, rigorous, robust (I yam zo dizgusted hearing this ‘robust’ word applied to everything from batting averages to air strikes) in proportion to whatever opposes it. (‘Hey, you thought you’d seen atrocities? We’ll show you atrocities.’)
Whatever fascism is, seems like the international community of open societies should try very hard to identify and squish it in the larval stage, bop it on the head before it feeds and grows, treat it with big doses of biting satire and laughter before we have to take it seriously indeed. Fortunately, it is very easy to identify in the egg or the bud stage. Every fascist dictator has announced his willingness to stand alone in the field of corpses early in his career, has heaped scorn on the untermenschen of choice early on, and usually these crazy leaders, believe it or not, win an election or two on this platform before they drop poison gas on a minority village (Saddam) or invade a neighboring country (Slobo four or five times, I’ve lost count). Everyone with a responsibility to do something about it can see the fasc forming. In today’s world of high tech communications the very first repressions at home and aggressions abroad will register on political seismographs everywhere. So what do we do?
Set up criteria for fascistic societies and when those criteria are met, start applying very, very gradually the sanctions, ostracism from the market, embargoes by stages on the economic side and apply our imaginations very quickly on the cultural or aesthetic side, turn loose lots of truth-squad attacks, international conferences of humorists, air drops of cartoon and subversive propaganda showing how absurd fascism looks in both the egg and larval stages. Big ideas, esthetics, famous lost battles centuries ago, all manner of nonsensical ideologies are wrapt up in the growing fascism and need to be unwrapped in constant feedback from free world opinion before the creature evolves and becomes violent.
If and when the fasc does become violent, either internally or externally, the response must be swift rather than gradual. Complete economic sanctions announced by world leaders simultaneously: no trade, no aid, no normality whatever while aggression against neighbors or genocidal events internal to the country are on-going. (We have seen that long-term sanctions, embargoes, only punish the people not the leaders, but complete, short-term sanctions tell the administrators of massacres that they have become pariahs and pain is on the way.) World court indictments, quick arrest attempts by tough world police units, trials and punishments that fit the crime are what we should be working toward. But given the prevailing power structures and the time it will take to create enough world government, world court and world police to do the job, we need interim strategies, policies, understandings of what is possible and productive rather than counterproductive.
During the recent air war to stop Serb ‘cleansing’ in Kosovo, there were times when many of us were asking for ground troops, a full and comprehensive response to the humanitarian crisis, an invasion from the north that would force Serb armies to defend Belgrade and remove troops from Kosovo, etc. I still think selective, tactical, in and out use of helicopters and professional soldiers to attack Serb staging areas for an hour and leave, to defend specific village populations while they packed up or to protect fleeing refugees would have sent the Serbs a message that they didn’t have a completely free hand to commit atrocities. But I also think that fascism requires or feeds on blood sacrifices from powerful enemies. A Milosevic or a Mussolini would especially like to be standing in a field of enemy corpses. Why give the fascists the satisfaction of killing our young men? Why dignify a peculiar thirst for war by giving them the kind of war they want? Why satisfy their death-wish by giving them the kind of deaths they want?
These questions could be multiplied and come under the lead question: ‘Which kinds of force are most parsimonious and humane in undermining and stopping a fascist power’s aggressions and cleansings?’ The answer, I believe, is an air campaign directed 100% against energy, fuel, electricity, power lines. A dark Belgrade is a thinking Belgrade. A thirsty Belgrade going to the river for water is a thinking Belgrade. But cluster bombs? Hitting TV buildings filled with reporters rather than hitting the transmitting towers? Downtown buildings? Clearly this was never a 100% energy targets campaign, or a 100% materials and infrastructure targets campaign, and it could have been that and only that from day one. And been more effective.
A squeaky clean air campaign would still have too many civilian casualties and would still be obscene, alienated, refusing to engage in the mortal combat favored by Norman Mailer who [in a Washington Post op-ed piece] likens it to ‘first sex’ (glad I wasn’t his high school sweetheart!), but it matches better with the obscenity of ‘cleansing’ or what Mailer calls ‘psychic genocide.’ The Serbs amputate Albanian pasts with their atrocities, make ‘home’ into a place you will never want to return to. Shouldn’t we at least have used our high tech to turn out the lights in all Serbian homes while they thought about what their thugs were doing in Serbia’s name?
Here’s a much darker vision of response, but perhaps a punishment that fits the crimes. If we had announced in leaflets and in all available media exactly which bridges would certainly be hit on which nights next week, then the patriotic rock concert crowds with target t-shirts would know just where to assemble for annihilation by NATO bombs. Only the Serbs who would like to party and hug bridges rather than stop butchering Albanians would be killed and this would sort out over time, culturally or eugenically (I think it’s in their values to die for Slobo’s dreams, but who knows, maybe it’s in their genes), the good Serbs from the bad, the fascists from the non-fascists, and entirely on a voluntary basis. Perhaps this plays unfairly on the death-wish and racism parts of fascism, but simply contemplating this strategy of assigning bridge targets for martyr wannabes to cluster upon takes the Mailer insights about what it is in humans that lets fascism grow and thrive, and asks us to think further. Given what we know about how fascism works, is going back to macho, mortal, hand to hand combat really much of an answer? A ‘cowardly’ air war better fits the cowards who butcher and bully unarmed civilians.
- June 10
I heard Zbig Brzezinski talking about how a ground war would be more ‘humanist.’ That’s the word he used. Different from Mailer, but same general idea. I hear it as people across the political spectrum groping for how to decrease the alienation on our side. Or how to increase the morality or justness of ‘our cause.’ But bombing is never moral, war is always hell. Only fascists and machos find anything aesthetic in it whatever.
- June 16
The US is sooo bad that Serbian fascism must be good! Wish I had a slogan or epithet for this kind of worn out leftism that would stick in their craws but good. ‘My country always wrong leftism’ or…can’t put my finger on it. (If I did it would probably bite me.) ‘Peacecenter leftism’ I dunno, project for the day.
[A few minutes later on the 16th.]
How about the ‘clean left.’
- July 6
seven sonnets for the serb in us
cleansing
don’t put ‘ ‘ around the cleansing
there is no ambiguity or irony
about what this word means
throats slit eyeballs gouged
out of their sockets
homes looted and then burned
women raped before their families
dirtied by serb seed for all to see
a poem is no place for philosophy
much less comparative atrocities abstract
but cleansing is the larger category
and genocide’s a crime-in-progress deep inside of that
we all must learn to render caesars
in their own sour fat
crying over spilt yips
i will not stand vigil outside your church in lackawanna
now you’re tightly bundled in the fasc any bent twig could take me out
but i will write this poem of sweet memories serbs gave me
i will recall fast footwork in the blackrock balkan gardens
tripping lightly with jill in circle grand
as the balkan serenaders tambortiza’d us in and out of breath
circle dancing circle dancing into the wee small hours
affirming life no hint of death
one night at the orthodox folk fest
your girls danced and yipped
who could have ever picked a bone
over which culture best survived the trip
these girls of 5th or 6th generation
had never left their village home
slime
I’m sorry serbs that you’re the targets
but collective guilt is here today
three times you elected a fascist
and for your crimes as a fasc you pay
before the scales of justice can be balanced
we’ll need a million serbian refugees
but who can we find to do the raping
will even the best paid mercenaries do such deeds
eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth
until your cleansing crews are stopped
i believe that we’ll stop bombing
when you stop committing crimes
and i don’t believe the opposite
that appeasement clears up genocidal slime
reverse epic
your best friends think of you as needing thought reform
circles of self criticism until a nation is reborn
generations later the turks will not say ‘sorry for what we did to the Armenians,’ who can be sanguine that serbs deep in denial can reconnect to the divine
the world does not require every genocidal people to repent
still, we, your friends, stand outside your shrine of victimage, forlorn
hoping you’ll not add bricks and walls to to defend against world scorn
indians on reservations and big new prisons filled with blacks
remind never-bombed americans that our morality is slack
we cleansed and cleansed and middle passaged untold millions
to early graves, so we can’t preach apology, or what it will take
to be saved, but i ask you as humbly as i can, to ostracize your worst
may a guslar of peace and justice put your epic in reverse
genocide as too post facto
we’ve made some conceptual progress
from ‘genocide’ to ‘cleansing’
by using the term the perps use
we can feel the forces at play
we can see the victims as dirt, shit, detritus
filth to be washed away
fertile vermin that can only contaminate
they don’t know any other way
genocide may work on indigenees, delicate, small, not immune
but look at all the jews and armenians and the gypsies still playing their tunes
genocide’s hard to accomplish, a crime that’s rarely complete
a monstrous pile of black corpses does not holocaust standards meet
cleansing captures the incipient, cleansing grasps the intents
cleansing alerts us to rhetoric that always precedes the events
prevention
the alternatives to slobo are much worse
fathom the depths of the serbian curse
a.j. muste and ammon hennacy were rare birds here
dorothy day could not penetrate the u.s. cult of fear
so how will we pluck the ax from each fasc
and bundle up only for art
picking on you serbs first
appears an accidental start
numb chawmsky chews on the data
of all the bad deeds we have done
bill feels bad about the tutsi and the maya
but their bones still bleach in the sun
at some point in time we must turn a corner
and let Gaia’s will be done
c.o.u.r.a.g.e.* to face the ‘fer factor’
seriously screwed up ingroupiness
solidarity gone nuts
death wish masquerading as life force
compelled to kick enemy butts
brainstorming more definitions
set up c.o.u.r.a.g.e. councils everywhere
the ‘fer factor’ may still elude us
rwandans still counting the machete cuts
‘fascist ethnocentric racism’
many agree to kill as one
try to obliterate the other
god’s will must be done
righteous cleansing the heart of it
counteract with truth, beauty, fun
On July 7, 1999, Keil sent ‘An Open Letter to Foundations’ proposing that funds be gathered to set up *Councils On Understanding Racism And Genocidal Events. In a footnote to these sonnets he clarified why he was committed to the phrase ‘genocidal events.’
We probably need to stick with the G word in organizing and communicating with the world as it is. Only recently has American officialdom started to use the word ‘genocide’ in relation to Rwanda or events in the former Yugoslavia. Even though it feels a little like getting the New York Times to use a capital N on Negro — one belated, ‘dignifying’ fix for a double mistaken reification — it would feed into the ‘holocaust denial’ and ‘blaming the victim’ syndromes simply to abandon the term/concept of ‘genocide’….By using the phrase ‘genocidal events’ we can keep the term, focus on the processes, see racism and cleansing as the problem we need to understand and solve if ‘genocide,’ an end result, is to be stopped.
- November 7
In the aftermath of the war it is sad to note the lack of Serbian contrition and that the leading cleansers have not yet been brought to trial. Most of the opposition in Serbia scapegoats Milosevic for ‘losing Kosovo’ not for committing crimes against humanity there. Similarly, Hutu genocidaires are still active in Rwanda and few, if any, of the masterminds behind the most efficient administrative massacres ever accomplished have been apprehended or brought to trial.
We need more books like Philip Gourevitch’s We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda (this book may not quite be the equal of Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, but it is a fine book, a model, and a worthy sequel to While Six Million Died). We need a matching fund from a consortium of foundations for starting up COURAGE councils in the USA and abroad. We need regional and world prevention strategies by well-trained and ever-ready mediation teams backed up by well-trained and ever-ready regional and world police forces. While diplomats dicker over the use of force, composition of forces, people have been and will be killed in droves. Currently every cleansing crisis is met or not met at the whim of the USA and big regional powers. Preventing Violent Conflict — A Swedish Action Plan, available from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at www.ud.se on the net, deserves study, wider distribution and support. Finally, demilitarizing the US economy and arms control of every size, shape and description is our and the world’s number one need. With just a third of what the world spends on armaments each year (800 billion dollars) every major social problem could be solved, and that includes stopping the cleansings that destroy their bodies and our souls.
From January, 2000