Nonviolence training in Chicago

Hey there, apologies for not posting for ages. At the end of December I was finishing up my job at New Philanthropy Capital, then on the day after Christmas I hopped on the plane to Chicago, where I'm training with Christian Peacemaker Teams for a month, with a view to joining their team in Iraq if this is possible. The training is very intense but I'm doing it with an incredible bunch of people. I've even found a little time to experience local traditions such as deep pan pizza, gunpoint mugging and racism in the police department.

I've been stunned by the segregation here, which I didn't expect in the North. We are sleeping in the First Church of the Brethren, which was one of only two churches in Chicago to open their pulpits to Martin Luther King in 1968. In almost a month of walking 3 miles every day from the church to CPT's offices the only white faces I've seen have been cops (who tend to pull up and ask me, very politely, if I'm lost or need help). After my mugging I was far more shocked by the attitude of the policeman who pulled up when he saw us looking upset and said "these coloured kids are subhuman". Since the mugging I've made a point of greeting people I walk past in the street at night to prevent myself from dehumanising them and assuming they are threats.

Crazy few weeks

Some friends have been concerned that I haven't been blogging for a while, actually I've been doing 3-5 posts a day, but over on here. I haven't had time to do any personal musings because it's been such a crazy busy interesting couple of weeks. Somehow the world is still turning in spite of the second Bush term.

We've had an Iraqi economist working for Jubilee Iraq since mid-October, and he's done amazing work informing key people about the threat to Iraq's future posed by Saddam's debts and the machinations of the creditors. He's been braving the mean streets (I can often hear gunfire over the phone line when we talk) to build a coalition against the odious debt. And we're getting a strong response at last, we've even got a blessing from Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Just in time too with the Paris Club ruling last Sunday threatening to enslave Iraq to an IMF economic program.

I was over in Norway & Sweden on a mini speaking tour last week, which was a real pleasure, then in Paris on Wednesday for the first day of Paris Club talks. We held a demonstration outside the French Treasury and managed to get an audience with Paris Club officials inside the belly of the beast. The dorky photo below is taken in the Club's inner sanctum during their lunch break. We were actually left alone in there for a few minutes, and my Iraqi colleague, having been treated very rudely by the Paris Club President, mused that we could have easily brought spray cans with us and covered the room with justice slogans before anyone noticed! Next time ;-)

I somehow found time during my 24hrs in Paris to wander the streets and bars a fair bit, and was caught off guard as I found myself falling for the city. I think a genetically ingrained francophobia is one of the most conscious prejudices, and it was wonderful to start shedding the spirit of Agincourt and sampling a little of the charm of La Plus Belle Ville. One of my good friends has just moved over there, so I'm hoping to find more excuses to visit in the future.

A highlight of recent weeks has been spending time with Canadian activist Naomi Klein, who gave a tremendous lecture [there will be a link here when we get a video/transcript of the talk sorted out] with us to raise funds for the Fallujah Human Rights Centre and the Southern Oil Company Trade Union. I had the privilege of sitting in on some of her media interviews and hanging out with her for a couple of days. I've learnt a tremendous amount from her about the economic occupation of Iraq, the one subject I'd thought (due to obsession) that I was something of an expert on, as well hearing many new things about Argentina and other subjects. I learnt, for example, that the IMF's post-Soviet economic shock therapy program was created using a "find and replace" of the South Korean one, and in places they forgot to take out Korean references! I should have got in touch with her months ago about Jubilee Iraq, but I guess was shy of the whole celebrity status. Mistakenly of course, as she is not in the slightest bit affected by her global brand-name and willing to make time even for the little people like me. I've been greatly inspired and challenged to emulate a little of her passion, analysis and clarity of expression.

I'm beginning to get some concrete plans for the new year, though only the first steps. I've just been accepted to do the Christian Peacemaker Teams training in Chicago in January, with a view to joining the team out in Iraq (providing they judge it safe enough to remain there) soon afterwards. I still need to pray over this and talk it through with my parents a bit, but it's now looking like the most likely next season in my life.

Naomi Klein talk in London

If you want to hear what the second Bush term will mean for Iraq and the rest of the world, come along to hear Naomi Klein (author of no logo) in London on 24th November. This is an event I've been involved in organising in aid of Iraqi NGOs. Please come along and reserve your place here.

Time to learn Farsi?

It feels like the worst hangover in history, though i didn't drink anything. I went to bed at 2am GMT with the exit poll figures on the net showing a reasonably Kerry lead in most of the swing states and woke up to the horrific news that Bush is almost certainly the winner. There is the thinest sliver of hope (bouyed slightly by Kerry just winning Wisconsin) that Iowa and NM could go to Kerry in the next few hours and then if he gets about 65% of the absentee and provisional ballots he could still pull back the 120,000 or so votes needed for victory. But realistically speaking that's unlikely and could take weeks to emerge. (full data from CNN).

As I listened to the results last night I was filling in an application form for something which is now more relevant than ever, in the face of another four years of neo-con aggression. I was applying to join Christian Peacemaker Teams, an organisation which is genuinely pro-life in that it works to prevent violent conflict (I cannot get my head around the mentality of people who oppose abortion (like me) but at the same time enthusiastically support the death penalty and the massacres of thousands of foreign civilians).

I have spent time with their team in Baghdad and, if I am accepted, hope to join them in Feburary after doing a month of intensive training in Chicago. I'll be committing to at least three years service, and with Bush in power there will, unfortunately, be plenty of work to do both in Iraq and who knows where else (it is perhaps time to start learning Farsi and Korean). The latest email from my friend Matt, who is out there now, says there is substantial interest among Iraqis in forming a sister Muslim Peacemaker Team group, and that is a development I've been praying for for many years and I'd love to be involved with helping get that up and running.

Urgent: Pray for Fallujah

The situation in Iraq continues to get worse. I was talking with a friend in Baghdad this morning and I could hear the sound of battle in the street outside his home. I've just heard the dreadful news that the Deputy Governor of Baghdad has been assassinated, I'm particularly worried as one of my dearest friends had recently started working for him (after years of unemployment) and I don't yet know if he was caught in the attack or not.

The worst place of all is Fallujah, which Bush seems to be gearing up to attack in a cynical attempt to win votes tomorrow. I've just been chatting with a brave friend who has remained in the city, he writes: "NOW THE AIREPLANS IS OVER Fallujah and befor one hour attacks with tanks some houses in side fallujah but we thank for god that houses without any peoples. I am sure your prayers it will protect me and my peoples. yes, most of the peoples such womens and children are left fallujah but the large number of men and youth is stay to defince and protect my town. I hope to hear your voice again." So please pray for my friend's safety and for all the innocent people in Iraq.

Only Authorised Nonconformism Is Permitted

Today I went around the Turner Prize nominees' exhibition. This is probably Britain's most famous annual art award. At the end of the exhibition there was a place where visitors could write their feedback onto hundreds of cards maked "comment" arranged in a grid pattern around three walls of the room. I treat this kind of art fairly light heartedly, but found one piece thought provoking and so wanted to write down a quick reflection on it. The comments cards, however, were quite small and had only about 4 ruled lines on them. To get around this limitation I simply turned the card over and was able to write out my full reflection on the blank rear. I pinned it back up on the wall but when I glanced back, a minute later, one of the gallery staff was removing it. All the other cards had been filled in on the front side of the headed cards, and they clearly didn't like my one breaking their ordered array. But isn't this ironic that, in an exhibition of art which is in large part about challenging conventions and conformity, my tiny piece of self-expression against the mold was immediately squashed. I violated the ordained layout and my voice was unacceptable, unlike the exhibiting artists who were being paid and honoured for making far more blatant challenges to social norms. It seems that only authorised nonconformity is permitted.

The comment I was trying to make concerned Langland & Bell's installation "NGO" about post-war Afghanistan. Their imagery of NGO signs and names was very familiar from my time in central Africa (and Iraq to a lesser extend, although organisations no longer want to advertise their presence there). The implication of the work seemed to be that the proliferation of NGOs was a hindrance rather than a help, and focused attention on their little subculture rather than the real human needs of the country. Certainly there is a real danger that NGOs become restricted by a particular way of doing things, and there's a danger of waste and duplication, not to mention confusion, with so many mysteriously acronymed groups piling into fashionable disasters. However there is a counter argument, with which Langland & Bell don't seem to engage, that the variety of NGOs can result in creativity of response and a better chance that local concerns are met, instead of a situation where relief and development is delivered by some homogeneous entity.

Anyhow, I think art which stimulates a response is interesting and therefore Langlands & Bell get my vote for the Turner Prize this year. If you're in London go and have a look yourself and post up your views. And if you're worried I'm becoming pretentious and arty-farty, don't be, as the other thing I saw today was Alien vs. Predator. The catch phrase of the film "Whoever wins, we lose" sounds very much like what many of my Iraqi friends said during the war last year, and unfortunately they seem to have been correct.

My ears are burning...

I'm a huge fan. I've read the book, plastered the stickers on the tube, worn the t-shirt and bought all the other branded merchandise, and now she's quoted little me in a Guardian editorial: "If justice and not power prevailed in international affairs, then Saddam's creditors would be paying reparations to Kuwait as well as far greater reparations to the Iraqi people."

Ghareeb was NOT a spy

My dear friend Ghareeb was killed 6 weeks ago defending Italian Enzo Baldoni on the journey home from taking medicial aid to Najaf. The tragedy has been made worse for his family - living in Kuwait, Jordan and Palestine and unable to get into Iraq - because his body hasn't been found to bury and now because some Italians have been making blatantly false accusations.

Maurizio Scelli, the coordinator of the Italian Red Cross (who opposed taking the desperately needed medical aid to Najaf), has called Ghareeb "a double faced Palestinian who spied for the Israelis" ("doppiogiochista, palestinese spia degli israeliani"). He said on Italian TV that Enzo and Ghareeb were kidnapped because they were on a CIA spy list. Pino Scaccia, a Italian journalist in Iraq, wrote on 30th September "I myself have a lot of doubts about those days and, i'll be honest, on Ghareeb's role. But I swear that I, at least, am not a spy." [I've been in touch with Pino to assuage his doubts and ask him to defend Ghareeb's reputation in the future].

In a recent interview the two Simonas rebuffed these accusations: "For us, Ghareeb was a generous man who often came to us asking for drugs to take sick people"(Simona Pari replies). "He took serious risks in this work. I remember him organising a convoy to Falluja in the days of the worst bombardments on the city. He even managed to get a few wounded people out of that city" (Simona Torretta).

Ghareeb was a generous self-giving man who regularly risked his life for no personal gain to help people. He gave away everything he had and devoted his time and health (he never slept!) to help people ranging children crippled by the war through to naive do-gooder visitors (that's me!). He was committed to the Palestinian cause and longed more than anything to be able to return home one day. His character and his actions do not fit with the accusation that he was a spy, least of all an Israeli one.

Yet another raid

I just recieved a distressed message from an Iraqi doctor friend. I've heard so many stories of agressive American nighttime raids, which real reveal the cruel and contemptuous attitute that so many in the US army have for the people they claim to be liberating: "I do not know what to do. Yesterday at 1am at morning a group of the Americans crossed the fence of my house in Baghdad ...trying to smash in the main door of the house inorder to enter, while my family was sleeping. My father thought that they are thieves (actually they r), and they ordered him to open the door threatening to kill him. He asked them for any papers but they refused and pointed the gun toward him. He opened the door then they grabbed him and put the pistol to his head and dragged him to my sisters room. They also grabbed them and took them to the roof of the house where they started to humilate my father under the eyes of my sisters. When he asked them for the reason they did not answer him and started beating him, and he is an old man of 65 years... Then they gave my father a gun and told him if u have the courage kill yourself now (can you imagine how sick they are). Then the neighbours called the police. Five police cars came but said they could not do anything because they r the Americans. They kept him till 6am, finally leaving when the local people started making a demonstration. This is the new democrasy..." See the updated Christian Peacemaker Teams report on detainees (Word document) for more accounts of abuse similar to this.

In the belly of the Beast

So here I am at the centre of world government, not Geneva of course, this is Washington DC. I'm actually blogging from the belly of the beast, two floors underground in the IMF. I've been here for the last three days lobbying for a just resolution of Saddam's debt and generally making a nusiance of myself. There have been some formal "dialogue" meetings which i've attended (here's a webcast [at the 38th minute] of me stutteringly asking a question and Gordon Brown refusing to answer it). I've also gatecrashed a few events I don't think I was meant to attend and asked some controversial questions... it's amazing how far you can wander with a smart suit and a confident stride!

Today there hasn't been much for me to do at the Fund and Bank, so I've been wandering around the city. I went to church this morning just east of the Capitol and then had a picnic lunch with some people I met there. Then I went wandering along the Mall, snapping like a typical tourist at all the iconic buildings and monuments. It's strange how familiar it all seems. I think almost everyone who's grown up in the last quarter of the 20th Century with access to a television (and particularly in Britain) can't avoid but feel partly American. It's one of those classic love/loath relationships. I loath US foreign policy, decedant consumerism, introverted nationalism etc. etc. Yet at the same time there's lots I admire about the ideals the US theoretically aspires to and many exemplary individuals and organisations. You find the extremes in America - the very worst and the very best that humanity has to offer... not to forget the very wierdest as well!