War | Words & Tricks

Minneapolis Star Tribune wins multimedia journalism award

February 26th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Minnesota, News by Chris Pommier

The Newspaper Association of America gave the Minneapolis Star Tribune a Digital Edge award for Most Innovative Multimedia Storytelling in 2007 for the paper’s piece A People Torn. The story explores the experience of Liberian immigrants in their home country and in Minnesota.

This is particularly interesting to me, because I’m currently working in my free time as an Editorial Intern for the Minnesota Literacy Council. There are three of us who volunteer our time to put together this year’s book, which compiles entries from the various literacy programs in the state. Many of the adult learners are immigrants, and many of those are Liberian.

I’ve been incredibly moved by the stories that many of these adult learners share. They are often strikingly honest about their experience as refugees. Stay tuned to this blog and I’ll let you know when we publish the 2008 book. It’s worth a read. Perhaps I can get permission to post some of their stories here, as well.

An Ode to Sue Boyer

February 23rd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Opinion by Lauren Ciechanowski

Years ago, when my father was cleaning out his parents’ house, he came across his childhood Boy Scouts of America handbook. When I found the book myself, I relished it as an artifact of the days when Scouting meant adventure. My own Girl Scout experiences didn’t look at all like cooking over an open flame, tying slipknots and devising outdoor showers with pails and sticks. Mine looked like Sue and Jean, our homely Scout leaders, cutting ice cream into equal rectangles we could enjoy while the other girls made fun of me in the elementary school cafeteria.

And it is with the same childlike reverence that I recently finished reading Abbie Hoffman’s 1971 classic, Steal This Book. Though the good old days were not as they seemed, the book still possesses a kinetic energy and a presence of irony that seems missing from activism today. In an age when my peers rebel by riding bikes and caucusing, a how-to guide to hitchhiking, crafting Molotov cocktails, and rolling joints is certainly a throwback to something. The political climate Hoffman was confronting was not unlike the climate of today: a stupid incumbent president setting records for low approval ratings, fronting an administration rife with scandal, entrenching the country in a war in we had no business fighting. So why is it that Washington has not been overrun with protests? Where are the troublemakers? Where are the Merry Pranksters?

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Opinion: Application of Humanitarian Law Not Enough to Address Global Violence

December 3rd, 2006 | 3 Comments | Posted in Uncategorized by Chris Pommier

Over at Out of the Blue, a blog written by college instructor and my friend Bluegrrrrl, she posted an intriguing article titled “Militarism vs. humanitarian law” (on her blog, scroll down to Wednesday, November 29, 200 to read it). In it she discusses Mary Kaldor’s book “Beyond Militarism, Arms Races, and Arms Control.” Kaldor is professor and Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

It’s a great post and it really gave me something to think about. I’ve posted my response here. Just a few things to think about on this bitterly cold Minnesota Sunday.

The one thing I would add to this discussion is that there doesn’t seem to be much of a focus on education and poverty in this. Perhaps because it deals primarily with militarism.

In her premise bluegrrrrl writes that Kaldor says, “contemporary warfare is driven primarily by conflicting political ideologies “ and I would have to respond that this appears to be at once an overly narrow and overly broad premise. Narrow because it seems to discount issues of poverty, education (or lack thereof), tradition, language, history and religion. Broad because, if it is meant to include all those things, then it becomes unwieldy and leads to a (perhaps) simplistic conclusion that application of international law, by itself, would be a deterrent to war/ violence.

My problem stems from the question that, after all, if one is dealing with a group who is fundamentally opposed to the rule of (western) law, what could be gained from applying it?

To me it seems as though Kaldor is still advocating a top-down mode of “squeezing” or “attacking” her opponents. Replacing violence on the battlefield with violence in the courtroom. Or, at least, the possibility of it. After all, who controls “justice” ultimately?

So, for an addendum to her model, I would turn to what I conceive as a “grassroots” model that addresses the needs of the people, offering education and addressing poverty. Most of all, I would suggest doing away with the fiction that we live in a globally competitive environment that necessitates fighting over intellectual, cultural and natural resources. In many ways the U.S.’s message to the world is “Give us your best and brightest and we will give you McDonald’s, KFC and Wal-Mart.” This is the old smallpox blanket trick on a global scale.

I’m adding my vote to what spadoman, another commenter to this post and frequent Out of the Blue reader, wrote said in a comment, “look for the circumstances that caused the crime and try to stop it from happening again.”

Don’t get me wrong, I still think Kaldor’s suggestion is preferable to Bush’s non-answer answer to violence (More vioence! How stupid). She is supporting a narrative that makes room for answers to conflict that don’t necessitate the killing of civilians or soldiers and I absolutely appreciate that.