The birth of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 1993 was like friendly fire on openly gay soldiers. The law states that any soldier who “demonstrate(s) a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts” cannot serve in the armed forces because “it would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.” Today, however, American military leaders opposed to DADT are shooting back.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke before Congress last month, rebuking the policy: “No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

On Meet the Press, General David Petraeus said that he doubts soldiers are much concerned whether or not the men and women fighting by their side are gay or lesbian. Even long-time supporter of DADT, retired Army General Colin Powell, believes the law should be repealed, as does Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former Vice President Dick Cheney, to name a few.

If DADT eventually gets KIA, then here’s a “eulogy” for the homophobic seventeen-year-old.

***

We are gathered here today to bury a bigot and a real bastard. DADT.

DADT is to blame for the removal of approximately 13,500 American soldiers since 1994, many of whom were ousted because third parties had publicized their sexual orientation. Additionally, countless soldiers were forced to conceal their identities from this oppressive policy, despite selflessly sacrificing for the citizens and ideals of the United States, a country that has long struggled with its most famous phrase: “All men are created equal.”

Strangely enough, DADT had its supporters. General George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of the staff, had tried to nurture DADT when it was on its deathbed, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee, “We just don’t know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness.” At a separate hearing with the House Armed Services Committee, General Norton A. Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, also stood by DADT: “This is not the time to perturb the force that is, at the moment, stretched by demands in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere without careful deliberation.”

But DADT’s death will not “perturb the force.” According to a Palm Center study, twenty-five countries, which include Canada and Great Britain, have done away with relatives of DADT and it didn’t damage “morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion.” When Canada and Great Britain euthanized their DADT doppelganger no more than three resignations in each country were received, even though two-thirds of military respondents in polls claimed that they would refuse to serve alongside open gays. There was also no increase in harassment of gay or lesbian soldiers in these militaries.

DADT was lucky to live so long. Consider desegregation and opening the armed forces to women. Did the American military crumble then? Plus, a big bonus for America’s bigots is that unlike race and gender, you can’t see sexuality. So if you don’t ask, you might not know.

DADT supporters, like Schwartz and Casey, were not protecting the military’s machismo or safeguarding tradition with their statements; instead, they were insulting those they tried to “protect.” The comments exhibited a lack of pride and a lack of trust in American troops. They falsely hinted at a deep-seated prejudice plaguing our military. If generals truly believed that our military was full of bigots, then wouldn’t our nation-building, democracy-spreading, terrorist-fighting missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have lost purpose?

Sorry, I’ve seemed to lose focus, let’s get back to the life of DADT.

This is a funeral after all, and we can’t bury you without saying something nice. Well… DADT… On last month’s Real Time with Bill Maher you proved once more to be great fodder for comedians, creators, and castoff politicians. The panel had this to say:

“If you’re sitting at home in your undershirt, watching TV, worried about terrorism, and at the same time objecting to the person who’s putting their life on the line so that your family will be protected, then you’re the worst kind of fucking asshole there is,” said Seth MacFarlane, the creator of The Family Guy.

Comedian Wanda Sykes alleviated fears when she claimed, “It’s not going to make the military soft or anything. I mean, they’re soldiers. We’re talking, yea, they’re gay, but we’re not talking Ru Paul, Elton John gay, we’re talking ‘Brokeback Mountain’ gay.”

Even Elliot Spitzer, who’s most famous for his own don’t-ask-don’t-tell bedfellow history, doubted your usefulness and wondered why you were yet to be repealed.

So as we lower you into the landfill of loathsome legislation, we say good riddance to a policy crafted to protect an invented problem.

***

As DADT is buried, much to the surprise of those gathered at the cemetery, Taps erupts from the mouth of the bugle.

“I thought they were going to play the Village People,” one lifelong supporter of DADT mutters.

“What’s this?” another supporter says as he receives the folded triangle of an American flag.

“It’s the American flag,” the soldier confirms, standing at attention. “What were you expecting?”

“One with a rainbow,” he admits.

“Sir, this is the United States military,” the soldier replies.

“Are you one of them?” the friend of DADT asks.

“It shouldn’t be your concern.”

Photo by DB King

As a New York City teacher, I’ve noticed these pots or bowls present in the building; but I’ve also watched these metaphors lose meaning as some students find comfort isolated with peers of their race, religion, or ethnicity.

Although the public schools must work to promote diversity, there is a greater concern when it comes to segregation in education. Since 1990, the growing charter school movement, which has tried to address the educational needs that public schools have failed to meet, is quickly contributing to segregation.

In a January 2010 report, the Civil Rights Project of UCLA contends that the charter school movement “has been a civil rights failure.” According to the report, “charter schools enroll a disproportionate share of black students and expose them to the highest level of segregation.  Almost a third end up in apartheid schools with zero to one percent white classmates, the very kind of schools that decades of civil rights struggles fought to abolish in the South.” The authors also indicate that Latino students face “triple segregation” by race, class, and fluency. Additionally, half of the Latino charter school students attend schools where 90% or more of the school’s students are minorities. Some states are also experiencing the “white flight” phenomenon, when white students head off to charter schools, leaving behind poorly funded public schools that begin to resemble American schools of the early ’50s.

“[T]he rapid growth of charter schools has been expanding a sector that is even more segregated than the public schools,” the authors conclude.

Segregation as a result of charter schools may have been overlooked in the belief that charter schools would offer a superior education, but in a 2009 report, the Center for Research Education Outcomes at Stanford University claims that students in charter schools are not performing as well as students in traditional public schools.

Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, acknowledges that education is the civil rights issue of our time, yet charter schools receive increased federal funding to operate.

As Black History Month draws to a close, there is a need to refocus our efforts on Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legalized segregation in schools nearly fifty-six years ago. Although today’s school segregation is mostly self-imposed, it is problematic when government funds allow these schools to operate and when Supreme Court decisions render Brown impotent, as in 2007, when the court ruled that school districts are not allowed to consider racial diversity as a factor for school assignments.

Allowing our schools to be segregated promotes a future of distrust and disunity. Separating youngsters along race, religious, or socioeconomic lines reduces the opportunity for social networking and limits the chance of exposure to diverse perspectives on society. Also, certain content will begin to lose relevance–How can you possibly teach King’s Dream in a classroom devoid of black or white faces?

Schools need to remain desegregated. To promote diversity, the pre and post-school day will require more funding, namely transportation and after-school programs. Federally funded transport allows students from mostly homogenous neighborhoods to spread out and attend schools that match their interests and needs. After-school programs provide an environment for collaboration and community. But with recent and future budget cuts, these programs die first. For instance, New York City is considering ending free MetroCards for the thousands of students that ride the trains and buses to school. This will increase school segregation, by keeping local schools filled with the color and class of their neighborhood. If times are so hard for the city, can’t partly subsidized MetroCards be offered?

Not all charter schools are failing, some are even quite successful, but those that are unintentionally fueling segregation are hindering a child’s learning potential. Take English Language Learners. Charter schools may offer ELLs the opportunity for intense language instruction in segregated classrooms; but in a diversified school, ELLs will receive separate language instruction, as well as exposure to native speakers in an organic environment. Though charter schools are not promoting racial segregation, just as Dr. Kenneth Clark illustrated in the Brown case when he highlighted a black child’s feeling of inferiority with the “Doll Test,” there is an implied inferiority that will continue to manifest in the minds of these young students learning in isolated environments.

This is not to say we should eliminate charter schools, but we should not allow federal funds to reinstitute segregation. Charter schools that can elevate diversity and meet the educational standards should be rewarded with government dollars; those that violate civil rights provisions should not; in fact, they should be closed.

In the past six decades, America has come a long way to eliminate school segregation and promote the beginnings of diversity. Though segregation as a result of charter schools is not of the same viciousness as Jim Crow, it still has the potential to lead us in the wrong direction. Ignoring integration is what established the climates of Jerusalem and Johannesburg, Belfast and Baghdad, and the United States of America in the century after slavery. If charter schools continue to unintentionally foster segregation and the federal government helps to fund this disservice, passing up the opportunity to provide guidance and offer reform, expect our metaphorical melting pot or mixed salad bowl to look more like the isolated layers of a seven layer dip or the sectioned off segments of a vegetable platter.

Photo by Image Editor

Nothing should detract from the suffering of the Haitian people, yet it’s puzzling how some of the world’s most horrific tragedies garner little attention. For the last seven years, the people of Darfur, in the western region of Sudan, have been victims of genocide, which should have attracted as much attention as earthquakes (if not more). It’s a devastation that cannot be pushed aside by bulldozers. And, unlike earthquakes, genocide can actually be prevented.

The systematic killings in Darfur began in 2003. Of the 6 million people that had lived in the region, experts estimate that more than 300,000 were murdered in two years by government-backed militias and the Sudanese military, and nearly 3 million are refugees. The United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force now lacks the funds and supplies to properly help the 2.7 million internally displaced Darfuris living in camps. (Another 300,000 are refugees across the border in Chad).

Darfur, despite the attention it has received from grassroots organizations, has apparently not been earth-shaking enough to attract the public’s eye. For instance, three weeks after an earthquake ravaged Haiti, the New York Times mentioned the words “Haiti” and “earthquake” in 210 articles, roughly 10 times per issue. Over the past seven years, however, the New York Times has only mentioned the words “Darfur” and “genocide” 716 times (Nexis.com). That means the genocide in Darfur received the New York Times’ attention about twice a week. (Nearly 100 of those references are thanks to columnist Nicholas Kristof). Typing just the word “Darfur” into Nexis yields less than 2,000 articles over that same time period, a measly mention once every 1.3 days.

Unlike Clooney’s “Hope for Haiti Now,” Darfur’s latest mainstream exposure was televised on the Jumbotron during a Duke-Georgetown college basketball game-a seventy-second spot for the “Darfur Dream Team,” which hopes to provide an education to the refugee children. But the video poorly portrays the problems in Darfur–kids are smiling for the camera and shooting baskets on a desert court. College basketball highlights and NBA stars provide most of the footage. Clooney’s benefit was able to capture hearts and wallets because it featured earnest entertainers, bloody limbs, and piles of rubble. Activists are not going to win over basketball fans for Darfur with smiles and jump shots. People need to see Darfur for what it is–a dangerously unstable region that has the potential of tumbling into a second genocide.

The night after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, the president answered questions proposed by YouTube users. The video that received the most votes came from the Enough Project, an organization pushing to end genocide. After recapping the crisis in Sudan, an Enough representative asked Obama via YouTube, “What will you do to galvanize the international community to insure that widespread violence does not occur in Sudan this year?”

Obama’s response mixed humanitarian rhetoric with political circling. He ended his reply by stating that his “hope is that we can broker agreements with all the parties involved to deal with what has been an enormous human tragedy in that region.”

The Enough Project, after hearing the president’s answer, wrote on their website that Obama’s first year in office, a time when 2,500 people have been killed in southern Sudan, has failed to make progress in that region.

Jerry Fowler, the president of Save Darfur, told me that he is “concerned with [the administration's] level of engagement.” When key activists met with Obama and his Special Envoy for Sudan, Major General Scott Gration, on March 30, 2009, it took the administration nearly seven months before they had readied plans.

The United Nations Security Council has also proven lackluster. They proposed an arms embargo, but have been delinquent in enforcing it. They’ve also suggested sanctioning key Sudanese officials, but according to Fowler, the council has only identified a few “marginal figures.”

This is no time for gradualism.

In April, Sudan is set to have their first significant election in twenty-four years. Free and fair elections, however, seem unlikely in the corrupt Sudanese political landscape. The residing president, Omar al-Bashir, is up for reelection, yet his credentials include an outstanding arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Last Wednesday, the ICC’s Appeals Chamber unanimously decided to have the Pre-Trial Chamber reconsider adding charges of genocide to al-Bashir’s indictment. Additionally, the government in Khartoum censors the press, detains innocent people, and represses political opposition. Not to mention, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement brokered between the government and a southern guerilla movement has been mostly ignored.

“The important thing is for the world community to scrutinize very closely the environment the election is happening in,” Fowler said during our recent phone conversation. Even though the violence in Darfur has shifted from systematic to sporadic, banditry, ethnic clashes, fighting within rebel groups, and military intimidation plague the region. According to the Carter Center’s December report, many Darfuris have not registered to vote, fearing the armed military presence at registration sites.

Fowler also believes that “Darfur cannot be addressed in isolation from the larger parts of Sudan.”

Last Tuesday, Admiral Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence addressed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “[A] new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in southern Sudan,” he said.

The south’s 2011 referendum to seek independence from the northern part of the country would create a border across Sudan’s oil reserves. “While a renewed conflict could be limited to proxy fighting or skirmishes focused around individual oilfields, both sides’ arms purchases indicate their anticipation of more widespread conflict,” Blair warned. And if the South’s secession happens to be successful, Blair doubts the region will function as they struggle now “to provide basic services, curb rampant corruption, or curtail escalating tribal clashes… Some international observers have suggested the south will become a failed state unless the international community assumes a significant role in development, security, and governance,” he told the committee.

Maggie Fick, Enough’s policy researcher, based in the southern city of Juba, Sudan, wrote in an AOL News piece: “The international community as a whole deserves a poor grade for neglecting to hold up its end of the bargain and help Sudan prepare for these landmark decisions. The United States has its special envoy, but engagement at a higher diplomatic level, backed by a coalition of countries willing to impose consequences on those who undermine peace, is sorely needed.”

When Haiti’s capitol was reduced to rubble, we listened to the pleas of a desperate people and funneled money into the country. Ten missionaries even went as far as kidnapping children, claiming to do God’s work. Their lawless act is condemnable; but their anarchy illustrates a passion, and the international community needs to find that fervor and use it to help Sudan as the country nears a most important election. As Save Darfur’s website declares, “Building peace costs less-in lives and in dollars-than picking up the pieces after a humanitarian crisis.”

The Obama administration and Congress-split by its own bipartisan fault-line-along with the United Nations, must lead the international community and become engaged at a high level.

If you’re interested in learning more about the effort and crisis, and to see how you can get involved, check out Save Darfur, the Enough Project, and Genocide Intervention Network.

Photo by FutureAtlas.com

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2010/02/09/hope-for-darfur-now/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2010/01/26/hate-for-haiti/ http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2010/01/26/hate-for-haiti/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:50:28 +0000 Noah Lederman http://thefastertimes.com/hate/?p=183

To speak ill of Haitians the day after a massive earthquake left nearly 150,000 people dead would be ungodly.

But televangelist Pat Robertson, the founder of Christian Broadcasting Network and the host of its premiere show, The 700 Club, didn’t think so. He told audiences that the quake was divine intervention. He claimed the people of Haiti to be “cursed” and said they “swore a pact to the devil” in 1791 when they revolted against their French captors. (This devil that Robertson conjures must have been a slow worker–Haiti did not win their independence until 1804; and what a time for God to fire off an earthquake… more than two hundred years later).

“The Haitians revolted and got themselves free,” Robertson said. “But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”  He’s right, they have been cursed, but not by any omniscient God, just by omnipotent dictators, intervening Americans, and bloody coups, all of which left the former slave nation deep in debt. Today, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where half of the population lives on less than one dollar a day. Furthermore, in post-quake Haiti, survivors are struggling to survive-disease and dismal sanitary conditions are taking their toll. Survival may even depend on a Haitian Diaspora.

Mr. Robertson, in an attempt to illustrate the curse, juxtaposed Haiti with the Dominican Republic, two countries that share the same island. The Dominican Republic, Robertson said, is “prosperous, healthy, full of resorts,” while “Haiti is in desperate poverty.”

But Haiti didn’t have a devil problem; they had a fault problem. The capital nearly straddles a major fault line and friction along that line caused the disaster. In fact, disastrous earthquakes have rattled Haiti many years before the 1791 Revolution, or what Robertson refers to as the devil pact. The only truth one can gather from Robertson’s lie is that he has a science problem and a moral problem.

Haiti is a nation that has struggled for centuries, and the day after schools, homes, and churches sit in rubble atop hundreds of thousands of victims, the Reverend Pat Robertson decides to preach xenophobic folk tales.

“Out of all the things that you can draw on from your religion to bring comfort to a devastated people and region…” Jon Stewart, the host of the Daily Show, said about Robertson’s sinful sermonizing. Stewart then pulled out the New Testament and read verses that Robertson had neglected, like “From the depths of the earth you will again bring me up… That almost sounds like it’s about fucking earthquakes,” Stewart shouted.

Natural disasters are the one time where the death toll is enormous and, for the most part, there is no one to blame. These events offer religion, in particular, myriad opportunities to heal. Instead Robertson preaches against his fellow Christians (Haiti is a country of mostly Roman Catholics) and calumniates the same people Christ was believed to help-the poorest of the poor.

Thus, it begs the question: what was Robertson’s motive?

Escalate fear? Spread hatred? Build ratings? Refute science?

Regardless, it doesn’t bode well for religion when a rich, white American preacher accuses his poor, black brethren, recent victims of a natural disaster, of being in cahoots with the devil.

But this is nothing new of Robertson.

Back in September of 2005, he daftly claimed that terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina were the consequences of legalized abortions. In 2006, Robertson alleged that Ariel Sharon, then the prime minister of Israel, had had a stroke because he was “dividing God’s land.” In 1998, to collaborate with Disney World’s Gay Days event, the city of Orlando voted to fly rainbow flags.

“I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you,” Robertson said, warning that it will “bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs. It’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”

Two days after September 11, 2001, the Reverend Jerry Falwell blamed the terrorist attack on “pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians,” among others who he had said “helped this happen.’”

Robertson agreed. “Well, I totally concur,” he told the New York Times.

If nature is God’s way of righting wrongs, then Pat’s got a campaign to run. This month both Brazil and California have been hit with deadly mudslides. Let me guess, Robertson will blame it on the attorneys seeking to overturn Proposition 8 and Brazilian waxings.

On second thought, the people of Virginia Beach best beware–this is where Robertson’s CBN is headquartered–because even if we forgive him of his hatemongering, Robertson is still one ignoble reverend.

In 2003, Pat Robertson publicly defended Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, who is currently facing charges of crimes against humanity. Robertson called Taylor a “Christian Baptist president.” Four years earlier, the Virginian-Pilot reported that Robertson’s Freedom Gold Ltd. had a mining agreement with Taylor’s government. Teaming up with African dictators is nothing new for the televangelist, so long as it helps his bottom line. In the early ’90s he received diamond-mining rights from Zaire’s late president, Mobutu Sese Seko, who came to power by publicly executing his rivals and has a history of human rights abuses. Mobutu, as he is known, also supported Hutu extremists during the Rwandan genocide.

Taylor and Mobutu were diabolical leaders and Robertson, to pad his pockets, seemed to be making deals with these devilish men.

The rains are coming Virginia Beach; that is, if you think like Robertson.

Photo by United Nations Development Programme

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2010/01/26/hate-for-haiti/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2010/01/12/holocaust-denial-mutates/ http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2010/01/12/holocaust-denial-mutates/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:05:48 +0000 Noah Lederman http://thefastertimes.com/hate/?p=170

Last month, a few goons crept into the former concentration camp Auschwitz, cut down the notorious steel banner at the entrance that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei,” and drove away with it. The sign, which means “work sets you free,” had, of  course, been a lie. For over one million people, most of whom were Jewish, work was something to endure before entering the gas chambers.

The stolen sign has since been discovered, and although the robbers only seemed interested in financial gain, the disappearance of the metal archway had me worried. Before the sign was found, I believed the criminals to be Holocaust deniers, another attempt to convert reality into fiction, a shift from theoretical acrimony to physical deconstruction.

In fact, we are seeing Holocaust denial in new forms. Not only can deniers infiltrate sacred ground, they are also able to secure key seats in the halls of history.

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, a history professor and native Pole, who authored “After the Holocaust” and “The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After,” both of which vindicate his Polish countrymen from the pogroms committed against Jews after the Holocaust, may sound like your typical revisionist. But Chodakiewicz is far from typical. He sits on the oversight board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005 — though his term ends this month.

In his books, Chodakiewicz incorrectly places equal onus on the Jews, claiming Polish Jews, after returning from the camps, were responsible for provoking violence against their neighbors and for murdering Christian Poles, though in reality it was the Poles who slaughtered many more Jews after liberation. He also reduces the number of Jews killed by Poles after the war by about two-thirds, and he wrongly contends that the Polish people only had issue with the Jews because of their affiliation with the Soviets, and that Polish antagonism toward the Jews had nothing to do with anti-Semitism.

During the Holocaust my grandparents were witnesses to Polish crimes. Some Poles operated as extortionists, others snitched on Jews in hiding, many waited outside Jewish homes with sacks to loot the place while the homeowners were led to the forest to be executed. This is not to say all of Poland’s citizens acted in this manner. There were some that helped my grandparents to survive; but these righteous gentiles were few. One Pole killed my grandmother’s brother a few weeks before the end of the war, and it wasn’t because my great uncle was a friend of the Soviets.

The historian and Princeton University professor Jan T. Gross proved in his book “Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland” that the crimes in Jedwabne were committed by the Poles, which is the view the Polish government endorses.

Regardless, Chodakiewicz has for years been able to inject his bias into history as a member on the museum’s oversight board; and now, with his departure, he carries the distinction of being a Holocaust scholar. Chodakiewicz will leave the museum and, I assume, continue to publish literature that promulgates propaganda. The most recent Intelligence Report, a quarterly published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the civil rights law firm that combats hate groups and intolerance, ran a full-length piece on Chodakiewicz. The Report details some of his other writings, some of which he contributes to far-right, fringe publications that voice anti-Semitic views. The Report also published some of his vitriol directed toward homosexuals, another group targeted and annihilated by the Nazis. For example, Chodakiewicz told the Intelligence Report: “If you are homosexual, that’s your business. However, I oppose any ideology - whether gay or straight - that denies the existence or necessity of sexual mores and that seeks to revolutionize our traditional society by imposing its paradigm on us. Hence, a cultural counterrevolution is needed to check this destructive project.”

“I don’t have any doubts that he’s anti-Semitic,” Gross said to the Intelligence Report about Chodakiewicz.

It’s tragic that a historian, who interprets the past through a bigoted and revisionist lens, was able to sit on the board of a museum that prides itself in ending intolerance and preventing genocide.

Some revisionists are even admitting Holocaust denial is a fight not worth having. Mark Weber, the head of the Institute of Historical Review, the oldest American Holocaust denial group, wrote an essay titled “How Relevant is Holocaust Revisionism?”

In his essay, Weber Mermelsteined his own propaganda camp. (The etymology of “Mermelsteined” stems from Mel Mermelstein, the Holocaust survivor, who, in 1985, responded to IHR’s cynical challenge to show proof that Jews had been gassed at Auschwitz. Mermelstein did so, and when IHR refused to pay the $50,000 “reward,” he took the “Institute” to court and won, making the gassings at Auschwitz a legally incontestable fact. Thus, to be Mermelsteined is to take down Holocaust deniers).

Weber concluded in his essay that “there has been little success in convincing people that the familiar Holocaust story is defective,” and even he acknowledges that European Jews were “wiped out” during World War II, and admits that after the war, most Jews “were gone.” Make no mistake, Weber has not become philosemitic; he’s just redirected IHR’s malice. Their modus operandi has shifted to fighting “Jewish-Zionist power.”

But the void IHR has left open in illegitimate literature will certainly be filled by the rising tide of Holocaust deniers.

The gravity of the Holocaust is also being slackened from memory in the country responsible for the genocide. Since World War II, Germany has implemented serious measures to prevent Holocaust denial. To display Nazi symbols or slogans was once a crime there; but this past August, the highest German court, The Federal Court of Justice, decided that Nazi slogans in languages other than German will be tolerated under German law.

It doesn’t mean, however, that Germans who reject hate have to tolerate this loophole. Hate groups and revisionist presses can still be taken to court in Germany for posting Nazi symbols. IHR was crippled in the late 1990s due to a number of lawsuits that drained them of funds. They were forced to halt conferences and suspend publishing of their revisionist journal, the Journal of Historical Review. These organizations need money to spread their hatred and disinformation.

Poland might not tighten security at Auschwitz, revisionists might find their way once more onto the boards of historical museums, and Germany might continue to ease up on their laws. Although many survivors are gone, unable to defend their stories in the hopes of preventing genocide, we still have a responsibility to end intolerance, to preserve history, and to Mermelstein ‘em.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2010/01/12/holocaust-denial-mutates/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2009/12/21/the-broken-toilet-theory/ http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2009/12/21/the-broken-toilet-theory/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:15:00 +0000 Noah Lederman http://thefastertimes.com/hate/?p=161 It’s better to be pissed off than pissed on. That’s one of my father’s favorite expressions.

But what do you do if you’re both?

When I walked into the men’s room at my local movie theater there were two walls of urinals. Near the corner where the two walls joined were two poorly placed urinals. One hung from the first wall, a second was mounted on the other wall — the jutting bottom lips of those two urinals almost kissed. All of the other toilets were occupied, so I was forced to use one of the oddly stationed receptacles. I squeezed in between two bathroom patrons, awkwardly angled from the guy standing to my right, who was using the other badly positioned toilet–together we formed this urinating “V.” I followed typical urinal protocol and peacefully went about my business.

But things went bad really fast. I felt a warm rush of liquid cascade down my right leg. I was your cliché deer in headlights: midstream, with nowhere to move. He’s peeing on my leg, was my only thought. I screamed “WHAT THE” and helplessly crept closer to the basin, attempting both to finish the task  at hand and to escape from this unpleasant waterfall, which felt more like hot coffee mixed with ice cubes than the normal tepid-tea feel of urine.

By the time I finished (which was seconds, though it felt like an epic tragedy), the culprit behind me was still going. Anger brewed and I awkwardly spun and leapt out of the way in order to avoid  my anonymous assailant. In that graceless hop my rage turned to hate. Which is where I would like to pause to ask a question. Would you:

A). Try to engage this offender in some sort of discourse?

B). Harm him physically?

C). Kick puddles of urine at him?

D). Reprimand him?

E). Run away?

If you chose any of the above options you would have, in this true scenario, been disappointed because the Urine Offensive wasn’t man’s evil deed. It was the result of a broken, overflowing toilet. So, as options A through E were no longer viable, I selected F, which was to yell at the popcorn girl and then complain to the theater manager who apologized to me and went off to inspect the malfunctioning urinal. (Realizing how stupid I was for taking my anger out on the poor kid behind the concession stand , I implemented choice E before the manager could return with his urinal diagnosis).

Now that I’ve thoroughly rinsed my leg and have had some time to reflect on this unpleasant episode, I’ve learned a few things about anger and hate, which is presented below in my Broken Toilet Theory.

It’s strange but typical how I assumed some stealthy peeing goon had defiled my leg. I couldn’t even imagine that my attacker was non-living. When I saw it was a thing, I knew how ludicrous it would be to fight with a toilet, so I transferred my rage to suitable scapegoats: the counter girl shoveling up popcorn for minimum wage and the movie theater manager who was obliged to help me. My actions toward the theater staff made me feel even more ridiculous. (In the interest of full disclosure, I even cursed the plumber and the urinal’s inventor.)

We blame people for things all of the time: did you ever cut yourself on a knife that was misplaced in the silverware drawer and then blame your loved one in the other room? (I’m guilty there too).

My unfortunate bathroom mishap is not comparable to any of history’s tragedies, when hard times caused embittered people to invent scapegoats to cope; nevertheless, this experience enlightened me. Broken toilets–be it a crumbling economy or a change to the social zeitgeist–fuel anger and detonate hate.

For instance, many experts have claimed our economy is “in the toilet,” but in fact it IS the toilet, a broken one. With nearly ten percent of the labor force discharged and others drowning in debt, many upset folks are looking for individuals to shoulder the blame. Hateful fingers often point to immigrants. That is why myriad, armed anti-immigrant militias are springing up along our borders and throughout the country.

Another presumed broken toilet is marriage. Same-sex marriage, which is legal in states like Iowa and Massachusetts, and was approved last week in our nation’s capitol, has social conservatives fuming–a big crack in their toilet. This change to our social fabric, I’ll assume, is one reason for the spike in hate crimes against gay and lesbian citizens. Last month’s annual hate crimes report, released by the FBI, indicated that hate crimes based on sexual orientation had the largest increase among all subgroups in 2008–11 percent.

When we have a real broken toilet in our homes, we’re not out to kill the plumber or the guy who flushed it; we just want it fixed. So if you’re faced with a figurative broken toilet that you feel undermines your personal values, then fix it with the tools of our democracy, like voting and discourse. Don’t hate or select scapegoats because that’s more unreasonable than shouting at porcelain bowls.

I don’t often rework witticism, but for the sake of a more rational world, here’s the modified version of my father’s favorite saying:

“It’s better to not be pissed off or pissed on, though if you do experience the latter, weigh the situation before converting to the former, and consider this: are you being pissed on or have you been drenched by an overflowing, broken toilet?”

(Photo by Joe M500)

The holidays are upon us and those neighbors who snub us of a salutation from January to November are greeting us again. Turkeys are in ovens and a crystal ball descends on the Big Apple, thus we get to feel that ephemeral benevolence once more. Since we’re already a few miles into our holiday marathon and since we’re all jolly and jovial, there’s one other holiday worth considering.

On December 10 the world will celebrate Human Rights Day. There’s no decorative lights or kitschy ornaments or grating songs. There’s just a belief that we are all created equal and that we are all entitled to “life, health, liberty, or possessions,” according to John Locke in his revolutionary Two Treatises of Government, or “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” as adapted by Thomas Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence (though his idea of rights extended only to rich white guys), or “life, liberty, and security of person,” as stated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was drafted by the United Nations sixty-one years ago this December 10.

To pursue this happiness and to have security of person there are many other human rights to consider like access to clean drinking water, affordable healthcare, a decent education, to name a few. But it’s hard to ensure these rights when we’re struggling to secure the most basic ones.

In the last century tens of millions of people have been exterminated in genocide and today 27 million people are in slavery, according to one of the world’s leading experts on modern day slavery, Kevin Bales, author of Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Experts say that every five seconds a child dies from starvation; that’s 16,000 dead children a day.

In my daily interactions I hear people sympathizing with those less fortunate, but these same individuals feel stymied by the red tape they imagine blocking the path toward change. So instead they curl up on plush sofas in warm homes to sip clean tap water while taking their affordable prescription drugs and accept their futility. Maybe they sit with their laptop and read what Navi Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations, has to say: She encourages people to join hands on Human Rights Day, to embrace diversity and end discrimination.

That’s a nice “We are the World” image to snuggle up with; but it’s just a talking point. She barely touches upon the real issue. Take action. Ignore Pillay and drop out from that Kumbaya circle because you’re going to need both hands for Human Rights Day; forget those seasonal smiles because you’re going to need to fire up a little anger too.

Here are some rather simple ways you can get involved this Human Rights Day.

Genocide Intervention Network, empowering individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum are canvassing for support from December 1 to 7 (though their campaign for signatures will continue on until January). They’re simply asking for your pledge to end genocide.

What’s a signature going to do? you ask.

“There’s a lack of political will,” said Janessa Goldbeck, Director of Membership for the Network. Goldbeck explained that legislators perceive the cost of action against genocide to be greater than the cost of inaction because of a misconception by politicians that constituents are indifferent. “We need to show [politicians] there is a large support for action.”

With enough signatures the Genocide Intervention Network hopes to put pressure on lawmakers to force implementation of the thirty-four recommendations of the Genocide Prevention Task Force report, which was co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. The report concludes that the existence of genocide and mass atrocities, aside from being tragic, also threaten the interests and values of the United States. The report states:

“There are ways to recognize [genocide's] signs and symptoms, and viable options to prevent it at every turn if we are committed and prepared. Preventing genocide is a goal that can be achieved with the right organizational structures, strategies, and partnerships.”

Your signature (as a constituent) is huge and it will cost you (as a taxpayer) little-less than one dollar a year per American, which is the increase necessary to carry out the thirty-four recommendations of the Task Force.

It doesn’t have to stop with your signature. Post on Facebook, tweet on Twitter, and with your laptop, solicit strangers in Starbucks to sign the petition.

Maybe genocide prevention is not where you want to invest your time, maybe it’s combating child labor or advocating for affordable healthcare and a quality education. Whichever it is social networking is upon us. Post or email or tweet the words “In honor of Human Rights Day…” and link it to an organization fighting for a cause you support.

If you want to help free detained human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience like Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, one of the many people worldwide that are unjustly imprisoned, then from December 5-13 join Amnesty International as they host hundreds of Write-a-thons nationwide. Participants write to the leaders of countries that are jailing these individuals on dubious charges and without due process of the law.

You can even fight to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” with the Human Rights Campaign. During their “No Excuses Campaign,” HRC will equip you with a toolkit and advise you on how to put pressure on your legislator.

For all the youngsters out there that want to capture injustice and broadcast it to the world (though it might be a little late to get this one finished for the December 10 deadline) Human Rights Watch and Adobe Youth Voices are seeking youth-produced films that expose human rights violations.

And to those of us jaded by the slow wheels of bureaucracy, then I suggest you go ahead and shop. Yeah, that’s right, shop. Buy your presents for the holidays, but do it responsibly. A few organizations have just the thing for you. The Human Rights Campaign consumer guide, “Buying for Equality,” rates businesses based on their treatment of LGBT employees. If you find yourself hungry while shopping, then skim the catalog for a non-discriminatory eatery. There’s also “Shop with a Conscience Consumer Guide” brought to you by Sweatfree Communities, an organization attempting to eradicate sweatshops. Since human rights should extend to future generations too, you can purchase with the planet’s preservation in mind by checking out GoodGuide.com. They also examine a company’s social responsibility and product safety. (Don’t forget your human rights).

“We can’t just make noise,” Goldbeck said. “We need to take action.” But the path to changing the world can often be a colossal and disheartening battle; therefore, Goldbeck recommends starting small. “Look at what you can change in your community and connect with the people who have the power.”

But if all you want to do is make some noise with your fleeting holiday cheer, then wish someone a happy Human Rights Day and let the word get around.

Photo by Art Makes Me Smile

War is discordance, severance, and destruction. Yet in this havoc, powerful bonds do form.

There are a number of documentary filmmakers exploring the unforeseen unions fostered as a result of war. Three such stories captured my attention: a group of mostly octogenarian Holocaust survivors reinvent family in their Catskill bungalow colony; homosexual Arabs and Jews find unity in a divided Israel; and a friendship between a grandchild of European Jews and a grandchild of a Nazi grows as they explore their families’ history.

The film Four Seasons Lodge, directed by New York Times journalist Andrew Jacobs, who discovered the lodge back in 2005, follows a group of Holocaust survivors through their Catskills bungalow colony during what was thought to be their final summer upstate.

Although some may call this a Holocaust film, it is not. Four Seasons Lodge is a poignant and even humorous documentary capturing survivors six decades removed from the genocide that robbed them of their families. When the survivors came to America, they discovered the Catskills and years later, when they purchased Four Seasons, the lodgers transformed forty acres of forest into more than just a bungalow colony; they renewed their Jewish family.

Jacobs told me he did not want to make another Holocaust film. “I wanted it to focus on their current lives as they lived them…because they don’t live their lives like victims.”

This documentary, full of flirty, whimsical, and somber moments, cannot, however, escape the concentration camps. To not capture the Holocaust would be like trying to record a basketball game without filming the baskets. The Holocaust is embedded in the Four Seasons. At the cards table, the camera reveals the survivors’ hands, but viewers are undoubtedly lost in the green numbers tattooed to those pale forearms. Concentration camp stories are told and then casually interrupted by questions about cards in play. One lodger is introduced as the man Mengele experimented on. Later, as the men stand around in fancy suits before the evening services and festivities, that same resident recounts being forced to pull gold teeth from corpses. But the lodgers cope with their pasts as they find comfort in their fellow survivors.

Some of the aging, infirm residents — like the lovable ninety-one year old Aron Adelman who seems cured of his ailments when he tells the camera “last night I danced” — deteriorated with the lodge. The fresh mountain air and the friendships, however, revitalized most. A pair of widows at the colony found something stronger than marriage in companionship. Two others lodgers, having lost their spouses, married one another. The survivors danced together, helped each other up steps, laughed with each other as they assembled in a huddle of lawn chairs, and worked together to stop the sale of their “paradise.”

“For them it was like being back home,” Gisele Weiss explained to me at a panel discussion for the film. Ms. Weiss’s mother, a survivor of the Holocaust, spent many summers at various colonies in the Catskills. Her final season was spent at the Four Seasons Lodge, the summer before Jacobs filmed. “These were people that [my mother] shared beds with in the concentration camps.”

“They were at their best there,” Jacobs said. “They didn’t have to explain the number on their arms or why they didn’t go to school. They had an unspoken understanding of the traumas.”

These relationships were the only silver linings to emerge from the greyest of times.

In a second film, war is not a thing of the past, but an ever-present tragedy. City of Borders, which was featured in the Other Israel Film Festival last week, is shot in Jerusalem, a city besieged with fighting and divided by religion, politics, and walls. Though there is friction between Jews and Arabs, one issue brings the religious fanatics of these groups together: their disgust of homosexuals.

In this daring documentary, director Yun Suh, takes the audience into Jerusalem’s only gay bar, Shushan. From the outside, Shushan is an unspectacular, yellowing façade, but inside it is a riveting cultural phenomenon harboring a community of Arabs and Jews who, in the outside world, are taught to hate each other. Inside the bar, they dance, form friendships, and discover peace in a city divided by war, in a city where religious extremists see homosexuality as a crime.

Throw them in jail, a man from Ramallah says. “We have to hate them,” a Palestinian girl claims. There’s even footage of the 2005 Jerusalem Pride Parade, when an ultra-orthodox man had tried to stab gay marchers.

“Jerusalem is really a city of borders,” says Sa’ar Netanel, Jerusalem’s first openly gay city council member and the owner of Shushan. “There is a border between east and west, between Jews and Palestinians, between secular and ultra-orthodox, between straight and gay.” But in Shushan borders dissolve. There are gun-toting Jewish soldiers dancing with Palestinians who have snuck across the border to connect as human beings.

“It’s very hard to be gay in Ramallah,” Boody, a devout, gay Muslim from Ramallah, states as the camera captures him in daily prayer. His alter ego — Ms. Haifa — is the “first drag queen of Palestine.” Boody explains that “Nobody is out and nobody wants to be out.” In order to have community, he is forced to illegally sneak out from the West Bank (where neighbors have threatened his life) and into Jerusalem (where neighbors have built separation walls and installed razor wire) to find acceptance at Shushan.

The film finds its voice in the unions the patrons of Shushan managed to form.

Samira, a Palestinian nurse, who dates Ravit, a Jewish doctor, describes how their relationship erodes Israeli-Palestinian taboos: Samira’s mother is horrified that her daughter is dating a woman, Ravit’s mother cannot fathom how her daughter can find love with a Palestinian. But Samira jokes: her mother had always wanted her to date a doctor.

Adam, a gay Israeli settler, is speaking to the camera when his dog slips under the fence. “[Dogs] don’t know borders,” he says as his own life is full of borders: religious, physical, and social ones.

“I gave people hope that Jerusalem can be different,” Sa’ar says at the end of the film. The bonds Shushan built are as strong as the fervor that keeps the city divided. Therefore, we’re left to wonder, which will crumble first, the unity or the borders?

In a third film, The Descendants Project, which has yet-to-be-released, offers a glimpse of what the bonds between history’s scripted enemies looks like. It is a documentary where two best friends from Seattle — one the granddaughter of European Jews, the other the granddaughter of a Nazi — go back to Poland and Germany to trace their heritage. Their friendship is not troubled by relationships to victims and perpetrators; instead it grows as the two women explore and remember the tragic fate of one’s people and the tragic choices of the other’s. It is the story of an unexpected friendship, ironically strengthened by the aftermath of genocide.

I have yet to view the Descendants Project, but I can relate to the search for answers and the discovery of unlikely bonds. When I traveled through Poland and Germany, the countries where nearly all of my family was murdered, I sought to understand the Holocaust and those responsible. As I investigated the places they suffered, I began to write my grandparents’ story; but I couldn’t have accomplished this without the people I met on this journey — Poles and Germans who extended compassionate hands, as if trying to rectify the sorrow brought about by their ancestors.

Though these films introduce audiences to profound stories, hopefully we’ll have a future where we won’t need to produce these types of documentaries. I’d like to imagine a future where relationships are not the consequences of war but a replacement for them.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2009/11/23/documentaries-where-unity-is-the-consequence-of-war/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2009/11/06/the-larry-david-affair/ http://thefastertimes.com/hate/2009/11/06/the-larry-david-affair/#comments Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:03:23 +0000 Noah Lederman http://thefastertimes.com/hate/?p=127

Two Sundays ago, Larry David, writer and star of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” caused quite a stir. During a scene at his assistant’s house, David had to use the bathroom, and because of some pill he was taking, his urine stream was overpowering. As expected, things went wrong: urine sprayed everywhere, even splashing the Jesus picture hanging next to the toilet. When the assistant and her mother entered the bathroom, a few minutes after David vacated it, the pair of devotees dropped to their knees. They thought they were witnessing a miracle, confusing the pee droplet with a tear from Jesus.

Certain folks were pissed off. Catholic League president Bill Donohue wrote that “David’s best years are behind him. He ought to quit while he’s ahead…would he think it comedic if someone urinated on a picture of his mother?” Donohue vented. “This might be fun to watch, but since HBO only likes to dump on Catholics…and David is Jewish, we’ll never know.”

Sadly, we won’t know if Bill Donohue actually sat through this episode of “Curb” because in 2000, the Catholic weekly magazine America criticized Donohue for lambasting films he hadn’t even watched. This is also not the first time Donohue has expressed his virulence toward Jews. On a now defunct MSNBC show, Scarborough Country, Donohue claimed that “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity.” In 2002, Donahue found another joke that upset him–an inappropriate Catholic joke made by then Columbia University sophomore Andy Hao. On another MSNBC talk show hosted by Phil Donahue (also off-air), Bill Donohue rattled off the word “gook” eight times during the interview and goaded Hao with a few cutting questions: “[Y]ou don’t like my gook joke? Now, what’s wrong with a gook joke?”

Donohue’s assertion is wrong. Larry David attacks everyone, so there was no personal vendetta against Jesus. The splattering of urine provided a lens for a deeper social narrative-some religious zealots look too deeply for miracles, (just as some people search too deeply for offense). The scene isn’t hate-filled and it doesn’t belittle religion. It satirizes society’s irrational faction: those ignorant enough to believe liquid in a bathroom could be linked to miracles.

Doug Giles of the conservative website Townhall.com seethed in his editorial as he addressed David’s stunt. “We don’t see you doing such things to a picture of Moses, or the 10 Commandments, or a Star of David, or … or … Islam. I’ll tell you why you don’t turn your urethra on them: It’s because you’d have hell to pay.”

Bravo to the Townhall columnist for his urethra witticism, but shame on him for his pointed statement about Muslims. Giles’s line insinuates that a David joke against Islam would lead to reprisal, but on a string of reader comments following Giles’s article, one of his supporters wrote: “If I were Mr. David, I’d be vigilant when enjoying the open air in Brentwood. Anger can turn to retribution quicker than a man can see his life flushed away.”

If folks like Giles want Jewish and Muslim traditions “pissed on” equally, then let them watch earlier seasons of “Curb.” In one episode Larry is forced to find an attractive woman for his picky blind friend. David decidedly sets him up with a Muslim woman in a burka. Larry, however, accidentally strips the religious woman of her head covering and reveals a secret ugliness that he cannot conceal from his blind friend.

Use the N-word, another post dared of David. He went there too. In season four, an African American doctor overheard Larry use the appalling term. This prompted the surgeon to enter into a blind rage, leading the doctor to shave a patient’s head (Larry’s manager Jeff) instead of following through with the appropriate procedure.

Why doesn’t he attack the Jews? someone else asked. That same season, the controversial comedy writer pitted two survivors against each other at the dinner table: one was a survivor of Auschwitz, the other a participant on the famed show Survivor.

No matter what, “Curb” will cause someone to complain. But laughing at our differences and at ourselves is what keeps us human. “When humor goes,” as Erma Bombeck once said, “there goes civilization.”

So Larry David, through his own brand of political incorrectness, keeps us civilized. Many other comedians have found brilliant ways to fuse offensive with comedic. As a Jew, I cringed when Sacha Baron Cohen, as Borat, announced the Running of the Jews, satirizing anti-Semitism through a Pamplona-like event. Stephen Colbert had me wincing when he commanded Jews to call his “Atone Phone” during the High Holidays, a comedic attempt to fill in for God. I was tense when Zach Galifianakis in “The Hangover” stared at the stripper returning his friend’s grandmother’s ring. “I didn’t know that they gave out rings in the Holocaust,” he moronically admitted. The unease comedy creates is what allows it to remain eternal. The other thing working for comedy, besides the First Amendment, is context and intention. Larry David has both.

Since David’s show is a comedy, it is allowed to cross certain boundaries. If Larry David urinated on Jesus off camera, then the context disappears and he becomes wrong; but on camera, as a character and comedian, the humor is ingrained in his offensive accident. The portrait had to contain something more than a mere mortal to be funny. Let’s say Barack Obama or Sarah Palin were framed, then the urine-tear-in-the-eye joke loses meaning because it would never be misconstrued as miracle. (Well, at least I hope not). We also don’t hold comedians to the same standards. It would be like comparing David Letterman’s sexual escapades to Bill Clinton’s. They operated in different contexts. If comedians had to constantly watch their mouths, we’d have Soviet-era humor. (To be fair, I’ve never watched state-controlled comedy, but I’m guessing they’re not laugh-out-loud productions).

Most humor involving religious subjects is not meant to propagate hate. Hopefully we can understand that Larry David’s intent was not couched in cruelty. He wasn’t trying to victimize or debunk Jesus. Anyway, what’s so bad about chuckling a little at the sacred; if anything, it allows us to realize the importance of all things hallowed. The right to laughter, by the way, is one of those things.

In last Sunday’s episode (the one after Larry’s pee splashed Jesus), David brought the comedy to his own mother’s grave. He noticed her tombstone, another thing our society holds sacred, was misspelled. So I appeal to Mr. David, for the sake of civilization, feed the embittered Bill Donohue’s dying sense of humor with the one joke he requested. In fact, better his recommendation of peeing on your mother’s picture and give that headstone a little tinkle.

Radiolab, WNYC’s Friday afternoon radio program, which blurs the boundaries between science, philosophy, and the human experience, asked a very important question earlier this month: Will humankind ever change?

In three segments, co-hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, along with some profound guests, searched for an answer. Two narratives grabbed my attention: How a troupe of innately violent baboons lost their aggressive nature and how a Darwinian geneticist selectively bred out the hostility from a contained group of silver foxes.

Before tracing the studies of primates and canines, the duo interviewed science writer John Horgan. Horgan conducted a street survey, asking Hoboken residents, “Will humans ever stop fighting wars?” The answer seemed universal: No. The reason: Human nature. Most felt that violence was ingrained in our DNA.

But then Radiolab introduced Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist and primatologist at Stanford University, who, as a young graduate student doing fieldwork in Kenya, studied his first of many baboon troupes. Sapolsky considers baboons to be “the textbook example of a highly aggressive male-dominated hierarchal society.”

The troupe he began observing exhibited typical baboonish aggression. But the troupe’s behavior changed once tourism came to their region. The tourist lodge started dumping its half-eaten food and assorted trash in the backyard of these primates. The animals no longer foraged, but feasted on the delicacies in the dump. Years later, however, the baboons had caught tuberculosis from some infected meat they ate from the trash heap. TB has disastrous effects in non-human primates. It wipes them out rapidly. First the baboons watched their hands rot away, and eventually the alpha males were dead.

With most of the alpha males gone, strange things happened to Sapolsky’s troupe. In contrast to baboon culture, the remaining males changed: they began reciprocating when females groomed them and even weirder, males groomed males. Sapolsky said, “if you were a baboonologist it would have been less shocking if these guys had wings or were photosynthetic.” Sapolsky, however, troubled by the TB horrors and the loss of half the study’s subjects, left the peaceful troupe. He would return six years later.

What Sapolsky noticed upon his return was that only one male from the original troupe remained, which meant that all the other males in the troupe had come from the outside world. When young baboon males near puberty they leave their troupe and search for a new one. Consequently, they bring with them their violent culture. Usually, the experience of joining a new troupe requires such brutality. It’s comparable to fraternity hazing. The rushee is attacked by the males and ignored by the females. The only way in is to fight. Sapolsky imagined that these new entrants seeking acceptance, would follow their innate proclivity toward violence, which in turn would destroy the tranquility of this troupe; but these new arrivals did not. They adopted the group’s nonviolence.

They unlearned their “innate” aggression. Without alpha males launching attacks on the incoming young males, the baboon sisterhood accepted these new arrivals and groomed them in six days as opposed to waiting three months, common to troupes beleaguered by alpha males. What was key to keeping the peace was early female intervention. They got to the pre-pubescent males before these young outsiders could reinstitute traditions of violence.

The other Radiolab segment flashed back to 1959, when Russian geneticist Demetri K. Belyaev took the Trans-Siberian Railroad from state-controlled Moscow to the opposite side of the continent. Belyaev started a fake fox farm in the guise of raising the creatures for fur. But Belyaev’s actual plan was to test ways to eliminate the silver fox’s evil gene.

For over forty years, Belyaev, his team, and successors selected 5 percent of the most “tamable” of some 45,000 foxes over thirty-five successive generations. Scientists would approach the fox cage and if the creature cowered in the corner, shrieking like a banshee, then the animal would be turned into a coat, while the more approachable foxes-the tame ones-would be bred.

The Darwinian geneticist, in his god-like role, by breeding nice foxes and killing off evil ones, was effectually speeding up the long and complex evolutionary process of domestication, which should have taken thousands of years. He transformed the once malignant hen-house hunter that had no qualms about attacking a human, into a tail-wagging, face-licking version of man’s best friend in only ten years. Not only did the animals become domesticated, but their physical traits morphed as well, from facial structure to tail rigidity. Cell migration during embryonic development slowed too, most notably it decelerated the development of the adrenal glands. These glands signal to the animal when to be afraid. In essence, Belyaev bred out fear, keeping these foxes forever in their juvenility.

According to a guest primatologist on the program, Richard Wrangham, humans have also undergone this domestication: Our teeth have been shrinking and are bones have narrowed over the last tens of thousands of years. But with our society inundated with war and violence, we have a ways to go before we’re puppy-like.

I’m sure these segment descriptions made some of you squirm as you considered the grimmest solutions. Even host Jad Abumrad jokingly asked, “We should just kill the football players?” But mass murdering our population and poisoning our alpha males is not where I’m going.

It’s not about killing our population; it’s about killing our culture. We are a culture that foments xenophobic “patriotism” (thanks in large part to mainstream media). Our borders are packed with self-proclaimed alpha males armed and ready for Mexicans. We are a culture that breeds violence. Look at cities like Chicago. The New York Times reported that since the 2007-2008 school year, 67 young Chicagoans have died in violent attacks, while hundreds of other school children in the city have survived gunshots and beatings.

Change is necessary. Chicago Public Schools are implementing a $60 million plan to help predict characteristics of future victims. They want to inundate these students with adult attention, paid jobs, and 24-hour phone support. Although this may protect the most vulnerable, it fails to address the bigger issue-the criminals are still out there, they will just change their targets.

First, we need to refocus the objectives of law enforcement and pull them away from policing lesser crimes and direct their efforts toward the dangerous offenders. We also need to relieve our prison systems of petty wrongdoers. Although this is a bit oversimplified, we can only begin the process if we clean up our neighborhoods first. (Incarceration is not the only means. Funding community programs and using police officers to discourage criminal behavior are some of the many possibilities). We need to emulate those female baboons and get to the pre-pubescent youngsters early on; otherwise we’ll be raising another generation living by the old world order.

According to the research of psychologist and co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Michael Tomasello, children are inherently altruistic, but as they grow up, they tend to shift away from these feelings of empathy. Therefore, a need for reinforcement exists. The best way to achieve this is through education. Schools should offer mandatory classes on empathy and altruism.

Over the past few years, Long Island, which consists of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, has seen an increase in hate-crimes. In Nassau County there were a number of hangman’s nooses found in government facilities in 2007, while Suffolk County has experienced a dangerous rise in hate-crimes, sadly underlined by the murder of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero back in November, 2008. The increase in violence against immigrants in this region even prompted a six-page Southern Poverty Law Center report.

As a result of these incidents, Long Island is taking measures to educate their youth. Newsday reported that schoolchildren across Nassau County will watch a video called “Hate-Crossing the Line.” The 12-minute video can be supplemented with a suggested curriculum to help educate students about hate. This curriculum, albeit voluntary, is a small step forward. Suffolk County is also distributing anti-hate videos and has sent hate-crimes units to middle and high schools for presentations.

However, anti-hate education needs to be consistent and permanent; it cannot be instituted solely as a public relations effort. Educators seeking material have access to a wide variety of resources on the Internet. Additionally, Southern Poverty Law Center distributes anti-bias media kits and a magazine titled Teaching Tolerance, which promotes diversity and equity in replicable ways.

During the trial to bring those accused of murdering Marcelo Lucero to justice, Rosario Lucero, the victim’s mother, was face to face with the teens charged in the death of her son. “They’re so young-they’re babies,” Newsday reported Ms. Lucero saying in Spanish. “The parents of these children must be feeling a sense of loss, too,” she added, empathizing with the mothers and fathers of those responsible for her son’s death, “seeing their children in these circumstances.”

Rosario Lucero’s words echo what we as a society have failed to see. Children need guidance. They need to be taught empathy and be exposed to the importance of humanity. Like Belyaev and his silver foxes, we need to breed the hate out of our children’s culture.

Photo by Chadica