Last week, I posted a blog entry here entitled "Problems in American Democracy." Prompted by reports of government agents visiting a UMass Dartmouth student who had requested a copy of Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book" through interlibrary loan, I described my own experience in high school researching "The Communist Manifesto" and a book about the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Now we know that the UMass episode was a hoax, as some readers had suspected. I have deleted the blog entry to avoid furthering the hoax.

The threat confronting the United States in 2005 is very different from what we faced 30 years ago, when I graduated from Robinson High School in Tampa, Fla., and took the course -- required of all graduating seniors in that state -- known as "Problems in American Democracy." The text used was a Cold War relic, but the course was an example of how democracy is built. We learned to read widely and think for ourselves. Reading "The Communist Manifesto" and about the horrors of the Cultural Revolution has served me well, watching the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rapid post-Mao modernization of China.

Among the many things I learned that semester was that the founders of this nation were wise to build a system of checks and balances into the DNA of our society, no matter how uncomfortable it may occasionally be for our elected officials.

Wendell Philips said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Even though last week a college student fooled a newspaper reporter, and we (and others) should have been more careful in passing the report along, we are right to be vigilant when library records are subject to search. We are right to be vigilant when eavesdropping takes place on a massive scale without court oversight. And we are right to be vigilant when senior elected officials lobby for "exceptions" to federal law banning torture. UUSC's Civil Liberties Program is one important element in the defense of our values.

Congress has gone home and it will take a little time to figure out just how much damage has been done in these past few days. If you've been following the Congressional debate on torture, you'll want to read Jennifer Harbury's analysis of the meaning of all of the legislative actions of the past few days.

The bottom line is that U.S.-sponsored torture continues, even as you read these words. The garbled message coming from Congress has certainly not created a context in which torturers believe that inhumane treatment of detainees is likely to get them punished. Creating that context will take a lot more work by all of us who care.

UUSC has chosen its program area of civil liberties well. Unfortunately, there is much to do in the area of protecting civil liberties, here and abroad.

When does disrespect for civil liberties become an all out assault on the Constitution? The Bush administration is certainly walking that line. Despite its grudging acceptance of the McCain language to limit torture, the administration continues to insist on its right to torture. Now it turns out that the National Security Administration has been intercepting private communications without even a wave at the tattered protections that remained in place after the USA Patriot Act got through with them.

The president doesn't deny the reports and doesn't seek to cover up his lawlessness. He says the blatant violations of law were necessary and insists that they will continue. Liberal columnists are on fire, but no one else seems to care. Where is the outrage, my friends? Would you be more concerned if you knew they were listening to your phone calls? They may well be doing just that!

Writing in www.truthout.org , William Rivers Pitt provides more background on this disturbing series of events and speaks directly to the need for citizen action.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the entire affair is that The New York Times reported last Friday (when it broke this story) that its reporter had learned of this illegal surveillance a year ago, but that the paper had caved in to government insistence that it not print the article for reasons of national security. One wonders what else they know, but aren't yet ready to print.

On Monday, December 12, 2005, UUSC hosted a fabulous celebration at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Wellesley Hills. The night was held in honor of two of the original UUSC founders, Rev. Waitstill and Martha Sharp, who are being honored posthumously as Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem memorial museum for their work in helping Jews to escape Nazi persecution during World War II.

The day began fortuitously with a front page story in the Boston Globe about the Sharps. By 6:30 p.m., UUSWH began to fill with eager friends, family, and media covering the event. UUSC President Charlie Clements, the Sharps' grandson Artemis Joukowsky III, and Rosemarie Feigl, one of the survivors aided by the Sharps, were interviewed by NECN for a broadcast around the New England area that night. A buzz of anticipation was in the air.

The assembled crowd was welcomed, first by the amazing UUSWH choir, and then in quick succession by UUSWH minister Rev. Phyllis O'Connell, UUSC President Charlie Clements, and Unitarian Universalist Association President Rev. William Sinkford.

Artemis Joukowsky then spoke about the legacy of his grandparents, followed by Rosemarie Feigl who told the story of her escape. Next, UUSC Programs Director Atema Eclai placed the Holocaust in a modern context, as she described the current situation in Darfur, and asked the question: "Who is righteous among the nations today?"

After we again enjoyed the angelic sounds of the UUSWH choir, Dr. Martin E. Sleeper, associate executive director of Facing History and Ourselves spoke about the educational value of the Sharps' legacy. Then, the crowd was treated to spectacular addresses by the keynote speakers for the evening. First, Nancy Kaufman, executive director for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, gave an impassioned speech focusing on our failure as a people to permanently prevent genocide from occuring.

My personal highlight of the evening was the final keynote of the night, given by Dr. William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA and UUSC board member. Dr. Schulz put on a how-to-preach clinic, at times speaking softly, at time yelling. His message was made of equal parts anger at the world's apathy and hope that the story of two ordinary citizens like Martha and Waitstill could indeed make a real difference.

At the end of the evening, all that was left was to reflect on the powerful words of the night with friends, and to sit back and wait to read about it in the UU World magazine.

When I read the news today, full of references to secret prisons, covert eavesdropping, and torture, it makes me remember a terrifying night I spent in early 1980, in Santa Fe, Argentina, on the very edge of “disappearance.”

The Argentina of the 1980s, then living through years of unaccountable state-sponsored brutality, may seem far from the United States of 2005, in the distant past, in another world irrelevant to today’s “war on terror.”

But the abuses of the Argentine dictatorship were justified as needed to win a war on terrorism, just as the administration today justifies the erosion of basic civil liberties -- illegal domestic eavesdropping, unaccountable detentions, and mistreatment of detainees -- as necessary to win another war.

I invite you to read my story and reflect on the United States of today. There are differences, of course: our press and legislative bodies are beginning to do their jobs. We must encourage this, through our democratic political process.

And we must remember that it was the bravery of the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” that brought an end to the abuses of the Argentine junta. Like the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,” we must organize to oppose the undermining of our values. We must support organizations that are fighting to preserve our civil liberties -- for example, UUSC’s STOP Campaign, which seeks an end to U.S.-sponsored torture. And we must support the growing number of elected officials -- Republican or Democrat -- who in recent weeks have shown the courage to stand up for the “quaint” notions of liberty and accountability, a government accountable to the people.

UUSC's Martha Thompson has been traveling in Sri Lanka to visit regions affected by the December 2004 tsunami.

If we have heard it once, we have heard it 20 times since we got here, "It's very hard to work with Muslim women" or "the Muslim community is not open to community outreach workers working with the women, therefore it's hard for our projects to reach them."

As Anna Bartlett, our guide from Sewalanka, Nalaka, and I sit in a room in Kinniya conversing with 42 Muslim widows, these stereotypes ring in my ears. Our questions and comments are translated from English to Sinhala to Tamil and the answers come back in Tamil to Sinhala to English as the women talk about the livelihood project that we support through the Sewalanka office in Trincomalee.


The staff in the office there did not begin with the idea that it's extremely difficult to work with Muslim women. Instead, they took the time to observe what was going on in the Muslim community. Since many of the outreach staff hired on for the tsunami work are Muslim, they knew that that Muslim widows must observe four months and 10 days of seclusion after the death of their husbands. While they were secluded, the widows missed the initial rounds of applying for assistance and relief right after the tsunami and were in danger of being marginalized.

The Sewalanka staff also noticed that there were two young women who were constantly with the widows in seclusion, offering consolation and support. These two women, Rehanna and Fazima, are women ulema (priests) in Islam, and they were living out their faith by supporting the widows. Sewalanka staff hired the two women ulemas as community outreach workers to develop a livelihood support program with women that combines psychosocial support. Building on the supports within their community has proved to be a highly sucessful way to reach Muslim women.

Our meeting with the women is a difficult mixture of heartbreak and resilience. Hope is almost an impertinence here. Every woman has lost one or more children, as well as their husband and other family members. One woman is holding her two-year-old son and shows us his legs, covered with scars from the barbed wire fence he was tumbled against in the waves. They were caught in the branches of a mango tree, but she could not hold on to her one year old and three year old, who were swept away and drowned along with her husband.

Women begin to call out their stories, "I lost my husband and all my children, only my granddaughter is left" or "I lost my husband and two children." In the face of so much sadness, we can't take notes, our translator cannot speak.

Slowly, the two young women ulemas speak softly and encouragingly to the women and they begin to talk of what they are doing now. With support from the project, some have set up small shops, some make ice cream, some are doing tailoring and making food at home to sell. In their talk, they move almost imperceptibly from death to the every day cares of life.

After our meeting with the widows, Rehanna and Fazima speak very eloquently and articulately about their work with the women and how the women move from heartbreak into taking up the threads of life again with the livelihood project. The compassion and understanding of these two young women literally shine in the darkness, confounding the stereotypes we have been hearing about Muslim women.

If you've been breathing this weekend, you've heard something about the flap over President Bush's authorization of domestic surveillance carried out without constitutionally-required warrants. There is no place to hide here. President Bush has acknowledged that he not only authorized the snooping by the National Security Administration, but he re-authorized that activity thirty times!

In his speech tonight, Bush continued the line of defense adopted by the administration since the scandal broke . . . this surveillance saved lives. The devil made him do it.

Writing today on HuffingtonPost.com, David Sirota sorts out the real issue beneath the spin. The simple fact of the matter is that the law (even the USA Patriot Act) requires that law enforcement get a warrant for this sort of surveillance. The Bush administration has simply declined to seek the necessary warrants, even though the Patriot Act relaxes legal requirement to the point that the government only needs to go to a court that is entirely stacked in favor of the warrant request. Just what sort of justification did the government have if they didn't even want to seek a warrant from the friendliest of courts?

This is a very serious problem for the Bush administration, and the election news from Iraq won't make it go away.

Anna Bartlett, UUSC program assistant, is traveling in Sri Lanka.

Our visit to the UUSC-supported project in Panama was accomplished in the blistering heat of the midday Sri Lankan sun. The visit began with Martha, Nalaka (our guide and translator from Sewalanka), and me meeting with the directors of the newly created Farmers' Company in the town of Panama.

The purpose of this project is to provide livelihood restoration assistance to a group of rice paddy farmers who were overlooked by larger relief agencies that mainly focused on assisting fisherman in restoring their livelihood.

Much of these farmers’ fields were damaged due to the saltwater that came with the tsunami. At this point, the farmers have been able to salvage 50 percent of their paddies, but are stalled in recovering the other half by a damaged irrigation system that they do not have the funds to fix.

Despite this particular roadblock, this project has been a huge success and assists more then 80 farming families in restoring their economic viability.

In addition to recovering their paddies, the farmers, with the help of the Sewalanka field officer, have begun work on constructing a seed paddy processing center. Farmers can come here to collect new seed paddy, rather than reusing last year’s seed which results in an inferior crop.

We were taken on a walking tour of the paddy fields, which are a beautiful emerald green and appear to be thriving under the diligent efforts of the farmers. On the way, we were told how they must always be vigilant against elephants and wild boars that can damage the fields, and the occasional errant alligator that might find its way into the irrigation ditches.

We actually saw an alligator sunning itself on the opposite bank of the stream that runs along the edge of the paddy fields. While a few of the farmers convinced me that it was a good idea to take a picture of it, I was not crazy enough to get so close that you can actually tell that that is an alligator in the picture, rather than a particularly large clump of dark grass.

We left Panama later that afternoon with a clearer picture in our minds of how very small things can have a huge impact on people’s lives. In Panama, having the resources to resume their lives on their own terms has given the community greater confidence in itself. That is clearly evident as we drove through town and saw the new hospital, library, school, and various other private and municipal buildings that are being built or repaired as part of the tsunami restoration process. The process is a slow one, and the people of Panama still have a very long way to go, but there is a sense of purpose in the community that is hard won and well deserved.

As the U.S. Congress prepares to go home for the holidays, intense negotiations continue around Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) effort to attach anti-torture language to two bills related to the defense budget. The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly yesterday to instruct its negotiators to preserve every word of the McCain language.

The genius of McCain's effort is that he has made it very difficult for even rabid hawks to oppose it. The language only seeks to make into law the U.S. Army Field Manual on interrogations.

Now the Bush administration is seeking to turn that strength into a fatal weakness. If McCain wants to make the Army Field Manual into law, then why not change the manual to allow questionable interrogation practices? That'll teach 'em!

Yesterday's New York Times reports that the Pentagon is about to approve a 10-page addendum to the manual that moves official army interrogation practices that blur the boundary between acceptable practices and torture. Today's Washington Post follows with an op-ed by a retired Army lawyer calling for "No Secret Rules on Torture."

In making it easy for fellow Republicans to support his anti-torture language, Sen. McCain also made it simple for a Republican administration to attempt to make a mockery of it.

Despite the sleight-of-hand regarding the training manual, Vice President Cheney continues to negotiate with McCain and others to insert an exception into the McCain language that would make the CIA a sanctuary for torturers by exempting it from any restrictions on interrogation language.

There is still time to contact your congressional representatives and let them know what you think about torture as a tactic in the war on terror.

Anna Bartlett, UUSC programs assistant, is currently visiting regions in Sri Lanka affected by the December 2004 tsunami.

Why are international NGOs working on disasters not learning from their mistakes? As UUSC responds to several disasters simultaneously, we are increasingly struck by the recurrence of similar problems facing women displaced by disaster. A visit to our partners in Sri Lanka who are working with those displaced by the tsunami makes this glaringly apparent.

Despite numerous testimonies that have detailed very clearly over the years the problem in relief efforts in places such as East Timor, Rwanda, and the Congo, we are seeing many of the same problems in the relief effort happening today in Sri Lanka, particularly those related to violence against women.

Gender violence is a huge issue in the Sri Lanka camps, and is one that UUSC is trying to uncover and work against. Simple things such as the separation of sanitation and bathing facilities by sex are codified in the Sphere Standards and can go a long way toward protecting women from attack and assault. And yet, in many camps, this simple step has not yet been taken almost a year to the day of the tsunami.

In nearly every disaster situation, drug and alcohol abuse skyrockets, and with it comes the ensuing rise in domestic violence and child abuse. We have heard numerous stories from our program partner Sewalanka about the sexual and physical abuse women face, and the overall marginalization of women in the camps.

Fortunately, there are groups who are doing tremendous work against gender violence. We had the privilege of meeting with one such organization, the Affected Women’s Association, located in Akkaraipatu, Batticoloa district. Despite a vast language barrier -- Sinhala, Tamil, and English -- we are able to have a wonderful discussion about the work they are doing to assist tsunami-affected women, while sharing a cup of ginger tea.

AWA provides legal assistance to widows, educates people as gender trainers, and creates livelihood opportunities for women so they are not dependent on male relatives for support. It is groups such as AWA that are paving the way for gender justice in disaster relief.

I came away from the meeting excited and enthusiastic about their work and comforted from the very obvious female energy that pervaded the small office that we were in. These women are dynamic, driven, and outspoken in their belief that we must always be conscious of how gender plays a role in a disaster situation and how we can effectively combat these issues, and I am honored to have met them.

I am baffled as to why it is so difficult for the international community to learn from history, and yet we make the same mistakes over and over again. But the women of AWA have learned from their history and are doing their best to keep it from repeating, despite enormous odds. Unfortunately, I fear that they will have a long wait while the rest of us attempt to catch up.