Tanzania: letter to the Editor

There are "too many of us.  The shortage of water is really the surplus of people." reads the letter in the newspaper delivered to my seat in a plane returning from Tanzania. 

Community members in Bahi, Tanzania, a small village close to the city of Dodoma (150 km NW of Dar Es Salaam) had called upon an international community of doctors, researchers and human rights workers for help.  The Tanzanian government was being lobbied by a uranium mining company from Australia.  The people believed that their lands and livelihoods were being bargained away.  

Bahi is semi-arid. The dry black earth is deeply cracked.  Our vehicles lurched over barely visible trails that would be gone when the rains came and the dike-bordered squares were transformed into rice paddies.

There is no uranium mine here yet. However, after the prospectors left, local farmers developed skin problems – especially on the skin of hands, lower legs and feet. Their plight simultaneously reached the ears of a German activist, a Swiss president of International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and a human rights organization.

The visiting team was organized in hopes of providing diagnoses, education about the health effects of uranium mining and provide support in their efforts to keep their small farm-holdings.

In Tanzania, the press of population is crushingly present – from cheek-sunken beggars by the roadside to car-choked traffic jams in Dar, from the scores of  unemployed to the grinding poverty of hundreds of thousands. Yes, this population demands a lot of water.

But the proposed uranium mine in Bahi would require 35 million litres of water per day! The used water would be poisoned with arsenic, acids, alkalis and heavy metals. It would be lost to human consumption. 

People are not consuming this water for their needs; it feeds an energy hungry industry based upon peoples' greeds.

So now I'm home and unpacking pent-up emotional baggage:  Sorrow for the 50,000 Africans who left Zanzibar per year as slaves, gutting the cultural heart of the continent.  Anger that they've, in turn, been left with a network of despotic corrupt leaders.  Anger at continued colonialism through bribery, extortion and collusion in the extractive industry.  Anger that the extractive industry's long arm can reach through the country's mosaic to harass opposition*.  Fury that Canada has the most lax international oversight in the world and shows callous disregard for the rights of Indigenous peoples in Africa, South and Central America and Australia.

Gratitude for the people I've met - many talented young and not so young African activists, for the group of medical students determined to make a difference in the arms trades working on One Bullet Stories, for the many who love their families, communities and countries - and are willing to risk imprisonment of worse to stand up for peace, justice and a sustainable world.

Preserving land and water to use for our needs and for those of future generations is a sacred trust.

*As we stood outside the police station in the tropical darkness, the police in Bahi questioned one of the organizers of the road trip.  The next morning the police stopped a bus coming to the conference in Dodoma and told them not to proceed.  That night an activist from the Congo was held at customs until someone came to sign a voucher for him.

No Military Intervention in Syria - or anywhere!

Interviewer:  What made you decide to join this action?

Bill and I have long been opposed to military action anywhere.  Call us "old peaceniks".  In April and October 1967, Bill marched in New York City and in Washington, DC  in opposition to the Vietnam war.  The enormous toll of war was apparent:  the environmental destruction, the waste of petroleum products, the re-building of lives, livelihoods and infrastructure.  When the peace movement influenced the US to pull out of Vietnam, many of us thought the world had reached an intolerance of war.  We raised families and developed professional careers.  

In the 1980's, the world accumulation of 67,000 nuclear weapons, enough to destroy ourselves many times over, spurred us to action again.  We were involved with International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War  (IPPNW) - it brought Reagan and Gorbachev to the negotiating table, the numbers were reduced to 23,000 and we thought the reductions would continue.  We were wrong. 

This year Obama devoted more than $80 million dollars to update nuclear weapons.  We don't know what he is truly thinking when he claims that he had have a "limited military action".  The Prime Minister of Russia has said, "Russia will regard such an action as an 'act of aggression'"?

Both sides have nuclear weapons and a measure of immaturity!  No military action in Syria.

Interviewer:  What do you think should be done?

Taking military action is will give in to the enormous military-industrial lobby, which will wring its hands all the way to the bank.   Whether it is power or oil or the banks, the beneficiaries will not be the people.  As the Mafia says, "Follow the money." 

"Occupy Wall Street" was right!  The economic system is intrinsically dependent upon both the petroleum industry (and other extractive industries) and upon the arms industry.  It is an entirely artificial, human-made system.  War and redirection of the world's resources into the military - the single greatest consumer of petroleum products and hence contributor to greenhouse gasses – is its product.

"Idle No More" sprang up to offer impetus to justice for Indigenous People and expanded to recognize the inclusion of opposition to extractive industries  and preservation of the environment.  It, too, will spur us towards the tipping point, the point where the human race changes direction. 

Do we "go where no man thought" (Carl Sagan), develop an economic system dependent upon sustainability (David Korton), accept the sacrifices (Naomi Klein) and create the world of the United Nations mission statement, a vision of peace and cooperation amongst people.  Or do we choose death - either by nuclear weapons  (nuclear winter – Carl Sagan, Ira Helfund) or by environmental destruction (global warming, increasing carbon)? 

Let us choose neither and start with Syria.  No military intervention. 

Let's:  choke the flow of arms into the country – identify the profiteers on both sides.  Pinpoint the manufacturers of weapons of mass destruction.  Remove international provocateurs.  Provide lots of work for undercover agents and journalists!

Start talking at every level of government, start teaching non-violent conflict resolution – not just in Syria but everywhere, start dealing with the already overwhelming numbers of refugees from Syria (but also all over the Middle East) and the personal traumas of survivors, including soldiers. 

Take it slow and take it patiently.  Real change does take some time.  Let Syria not slide into another violent Western-created quagmire like Iraq or Libya.

Interviewer:  Do you have hope for the future?

Yes.  The choices are clear and it is clear that many of us are making a choice to live and to create a world for future generations.  The human race has no alternative but to do it – and do it quickly!!!