cost of war

Iraq, Afghanistan War Costs Now Top Vietnam - excerpts:

As a result of Wednesday’s vote [congress approved $70 billion more], Sharp [of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation] said, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will become the second costliest conflict in American history, trailing only World War II.

"But that was a time when 12 million Americans served, as compared with 1.42 million active duty soldiers and just over one million National Guard and reservists today," Sharp added.

Much of the money approved by Congress will go to buy expensive new military equipment

"I think what you’re seeing from Democrats is a resignation to the fact that they’re going to have to wait for the Bush Administration to leave office before they see any serious change in the country’s war policy," Sharp said. "The Democrats just want to play out the clock on this one."
But "playing out the clock" comes with a severe cost for essential services at home.

"We want to help people comprehend the magnitude of these numbers," said the group’s Pamela Schwartz. "Surely, ultimately, we'd hope that our priorities would shift so that significantly less money is going to war with more money going to programs like heath care, Headstart, and education."
"We want to help people understand that choices are being made here," she added.

To that end, the National Priorities Project has set up a web-site, www.costofwar.com, where taxpayers can learn what the cost of the Iraq war has meant to their community. Visitors to the website can search by state, city, or congressional district and find out how much money the Iraq war has taken out of their community and where the money could have gone instead.

"The Democrats were elected last year with a certain set of priorities, but President Bush drew a line in the sand," Schwartz told OneWorld. "Rather than drawing their own line, Democrats respected Bush’s line. They met President Bush’s spending limits on domestic programs and gave him a blank check for the Iraq war. That’s the choice they made."

13 grandmothers

Celebrations galore! In the next 6 weeks, we will celebrate Christmas, New Year, my birthday, and the birth of our new daughter; but are 4 celebrations sufficient, or should I be asking for an additional "push present" for gestating her?

I see this "thanks for the baby, have some diamonds" trend around me - it makes perfect sense on some level: we, as mothers, do an incredible job of nurturing a little one into this world; and we are expected to do so much more from then on. The sacrifices, the societal inequality, the martyrdom, it's all there. But what if the level it makes sense on is connected to acquisition purely as a by-product of ingenious marketing (we could, instead, be offered daily naps or a reprieve from cooking post-partum).

So I've been thinking about stuff lately. Stuff. Consumerism and the planned obsolescence of stuff from The Story of Stuff.

Incidentally, I was reading around to see what reactions were in different circles and liked the following:

Is The Story of Stuff just preaching to the converted? No. (Though note, as a friend says, that there's a reason and rationale for the clergy to preach to the congregation every week -- it reinforces, deepens and sustains commitment and understanding.)
The Story of Stuff is something you can show to anyone (or ask anyone to view online). It's persuasive but not a sermon. It's sophisticated but not esoteric. Its tone is light but its content is serious. It's narrated by the irrepressible Annie Leonard with passion but no pretense.
Annie, who is a former colleague and good friend, casually mentions at the start of The Story of Stuff that she spent 10 years traveling the world to explore how stuff is made and discarded. This doesn't begin to explain her first-hand experience. There aren't many people who race from international airports to visit trash dumps. Annie does. In travels to three dozen countries, she has visited garbage dumps, infiltrated toxic factories, worked with ragpickers and received death threats for her investigative work. Her understanding of the externalized violence of the corporate consumer economy comes from direct observation and experience.

Go ahead and watch it. I'll wait right here.

The Stuff is clearly an environmental and sustainability problem (If I had more time and energy to have more guts, I'd be well on my way to becoming The Christmas Greench); it's a why don't individuals have more rights than corporations problem; it's a global social justice problem (the externalization of cost; the massive inequalities based on which country The Corporations work in cohute with and against) which clearly leads to a "deficit of trust" and geopolitical instability ; it's completely anti-yogic in its pursuit of hoarding (Is hoarding in reaction to fear and insecurity?).

The United States of The Stuff is not working for the majority of people; certainly not for those who contribute to the 2.5 trillion dollar US consumer debt nor the poor kids who thanks to Bush's watchful eye won't have to leave the private health insurance sector for a federally funded program nor Texas' teen moms and repeat teen moms nor the mothers of micro-preemies and others in fragile healthcare insurance situations (It's an issue dear to my socialist-raised, occasionally US-bashing heart. And an issue that's been getting closer as this time around I face unpaid maternity leave, no maternity nor child allowance. Finding private health-insurance was no piece of cake, and others around are unable to acquire an ultrasound or health insurance because of their (legal) immigration status, or 'prior condition' known as pregnancy). Though it is getting somewhat better as North Carolina improves heart attack care by putting profits first.

Is it possible that the world of Stuff is still standing because everything is so compartmentalized? With the wheel of politics and politicians on one hand; the world of corporations and dividends and profits on another; the world of home and family and friends and humanity on another (stay with the yoga analogy; we are now on #3 of Shiva's many hands); nature on another; and so on.

I know it might seem like I'm bundling together a host of very varied problems; but that's my point: from the perspective of each person who can't make ends meet financially, who gets through the work week only with the prospect of weekend shopping or drinking, who can't get through the month without antidepressants and/or a visit to the shrink, and that's the majority of the US population right there, this isn't working.

It took a woman to launch ecology,

Ellen Swallow Richards, MIT's first alumna, was troubled by the toll industrialization was taking on the environment, evidence of which she discovered by analyzing the local water whenever she traveled (in 1903 she would conclude, "It is hard to find anyplace in the world where the water does not show the effect of human agencies"). To Richards, the home, the natural world, and human health were all interconnected, so she believed that science should be interdisciplinary. In 1892 she gave a talk proposing a new field called "oekology" (ecology), to be grounded in that holistic principle. The speech made quite a splash in the Boston Daily Globe, but it soon became clear that the science establishment dismissed her concept. Her idea ran counter to that era's trend toward specialization: with many new branches of science--such as limnology and bacteriology--coming into existence, scientists were more interested in focusing on their fields than in forging connections.

Does it take 1 woman, 13 grandmothers, an Obama, or something else to look at the problems more holistically and take a fresh-eyes human-centered view of society?

PS: Btw, darling if you're reading, my preference for a push present for our bundle of joy would be some BPA-free glass baby bottles. Or a day at the spa prior to the birth. Whichever, really.

I was mad once. I used to force myself into things more - force to keep up appearances, force to do what had made it on my to-do list, until it hit me over the head that plenty of times there were excellent reasons why I was postponing such or such item. I hadn't grown into it. There was an unanswered question I needed to work through. Simply, there was a reason, sometimes unconscious, to wait.

I believe I've written here before about things coming together - reading just the book you needed at the right time, or meeting just the right stranger one day for an unexpected and enlightening conversation.
And often it isn't that the world has changed (has it ever), rather than our perspective has shifted. We notice all the strollers and pregnant bellies once we start expecting ourselves, for instance.

Thursday nights are my night off where I go to prenatal yoga, ritually. I hang out with other pregnant ladies, and greatly enjoy the circle of life - the new little tummies and those who never return only to send a birth announcement a few weeks later. There is something immuable (that's probably not a word in the English dictionary) about the length of time of a pregnancy, which despite today's rushed-rushed, pay-to-get-things-your-way culture, is level for all. Many months of pregnancy, and despite incredible impatience, especially during the first pregnancy, nothing sensible about wishing for a rush.

When asked, I always talk about 'my first pregnancy', not 'last time', when referring to my pregnancy with A. Because this is my third, not my second pregnancy. The second one ended rather dreadfully in a hospital, after I had been bleeding consistently for 10 days. I thought I was managing the miscarriage, doing it my way, simply (read unmedicalized; I was far from home and had not gotten the chance to see my OB when the bleeding started), in the comfort, and secrecy too, of my home and a few friends and family via the computer mostly. But I went into painful labor and heavy bleeding one morning, and had to have surgery. We don't have much practice talking about feelings and loss in my family, and no one had experienced the same type of loss, so expectedly (that has to be a word), I turned to online communities of those who had lost a pregnancy. And I cried. And I buried my grief to continue caring for my sunny child.

And I continued to cry occasionally. Yoga released quite a bit of emotions.
P and I found our way to reconnect past it. The expected due date passed, and a weight was lifted. The crying has subsided, though I did find myself with silent tears last week during our hypno birthing fear-release session (don't ask).

But a certain rawness hasn't disappeared.
I had resolved not to talk about this loss here, because I did not know how to find a way to mention it without asking for pity. Without feeling self-conscious as I am more comfortable being a part of an audience than having the spotlight shining on me. I did not believe either that hiding it was helping anyone, and I am apalled at how little our cultures give space to the very large number of women who have suffered the loss of a pregnancy, or a stillbirth. But I simply was not ready.

And I am more ready now.

With the birth of my second daughter less than 8 weeks away, I do find myself going back over that last stay in the hospital. That sense of immense loss which had me sobbing before I was even really awake from the anesthesia. That day in the hospital whose anniversary is coming up; and which ironically could be this daughter's birth day as well.

I am more ready now, more prepared for healing. I wish that if you have a grief or loss you are working through, that you will get there too.