C. Firpo, Ph.D., 1
Inclusive Dialogue–Action and Integrity among Nations
In the Neo Global Paradigm
by
Catherine Firpo, Ph.D.
We are one, after all, you and I.
Together we suffer, together exist,
and forever will re-create each other.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Dialogue offers a pivot point in consciousness towards depth awareness and transcendent exchange that creates momentum from concretized forms to fluid inclusive patterns of thought and ideology. Entering the threshold space of dialogue creates engagement with the Other. The Other, which carries the projection of people, race, community or nations, is often the beginning excuse for the use of violence rather than verbal or visual exchange. In order to dialogue and perceive from a deeper universal depth perspective–humanity must achieve the compassion necessary to move beyond the projections of judgments, limitations, and abandonment initiated by Otherization. A universal depth perspective offers an inclusive loupe into the mythologies, psychologies, and spirituality lodged in the cultural heart of each country contained within the global pantheon. This universal depth perspective makes visible the evolutionary movement of the archetypal forces that are symbiotically entwined with humanity’s rise in consciousness. This perspective leads humanity to the necessity of reconciling the darkness of the divinity, or divinities, in mythologies, psychologies, and spirituality, which often lie sheltered among the liberalization of apocalyptic discourse.
Once the projections of evil onto the Other are engaged and laid transparent,
disharmony among nations dissolves and movement into recollection and regeneration occurs. Evil is a compensatory function of sheer projection and collusion with unconscious shadow material. Who and what we are when all agendas fall away gives vision to our true collective face.
Global culture is addicted to a violence that bears the wounded shadow of creative life force. The wound must arrive at consciousness, be seen, before acknowledged in the flesh and the world. In the introduction to The Wounded Body, Remembering the Markings of Flesh, Dennis Slattery comments, “The world is let in through the opening, the place where the flesh has been wounded, where there exists a gap, a fissure. It is the place of dialogue and of narrative” (14). Not yet accessed or realized in our world is the dialogue through love which will embrace and utilize the power of humanity’s compassion. In humanity’s depth of vulnerability, and woundedness, lie the possibilities for the entrance of the divine or the mystery or divinities.
Under the global cultural gauze the Olympics represent a threshold to the divinities. At their ideological core they symbolize the rise above political discrimination, racism, and social economical issues. The Olympics represent human rights and dialogue in action through the gateways of athletics and perseverance, which is not unlike the International Society for Universal Dialogues theme for this 2009 congress: Dialogue among Cultures: Peace, Justice and Harmony, (ISUD.org). The “games” must go on amid wars, turmoil, and current worldwide violations of human rights. The International Olympic Committee, IOC, made a profound statement by choosing Beijing for the site of the 2008 Summer Games. China does violate human rights. Its nation state also holds much of the human rights violation projections of first world nations. The 2008 Olympic Games have fixed the projective eyes of the world onto the city of Beijing, China. Both China and the United States document two opposed forces of projections held within the rubric of the modern terminology: Human Rights. As the 2008 Summer Olympic Games have passed into the judgments of history, the projective panoptic media eye of the world has opened and entered the city and the inhabitants of Beijing; and in so doing, opened China’s psychological and philosophical borders.
Before the inception of the games in Beijing, the ICT worked with Tibetan’s and human rights groups to organize several protests world wide with the goal to stop the Olympic Torch from passing through on its long and arduous route to Beijing. Many such protests took place at the Civic Center and UN Plaza in San Francisco, CA. Since the Art Institute is at that location, my students, and I had a front row seat to the history of observing an over policed torch carrier’s route suddenly changed as to avoid conflict. The brigade of motorcycle officers riding two abreast and the following school bus filled with officers in riot gear and heavy metal jackets were a site from my liberal colleges widows in my liberal city.
The symbol of the torch is connected with freedom. Therefore San Francisco Police were bound to protect it. How did China deserve to receive the icon of freedom in the heart of oppression? Or, are we just as oppressed. Freedom, as I understand it belongs to all peoples. Under the lens of separation between Chinese politics and the Chinese people, one sees the hunger for freedom. Under the lens of separation between U.S. politics and U.S. citizens, I also see the longing for freedom and a democracy not yet realized.
The ICT, International Campaign for Tibet was founded in 1988. The ICT observes the borders between China and Tibet with a watchful lens as to human rights violations and strives to secure democratic freedoms for Tibetans. With offices in Washington, Amsterdam, Berlin and Brussels and field offices in Dharamsala and Kathmandu, the organization provides a network for monitoring imprisonment for political and or religious beliefs and works with the Tibetan peoples in negotiations between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese Government (
Many European, Asian, and communities worldwide pushed for boycotts of the 2008 Summer Games. The boycotts were to provide leverage to cease the Chinese government’s slaying of Tibetans in March of 2008. I will argue that the taking of any life is a horrific action of self-will, and or, will-given over to a person, place or divinity. The face of violence is the same no matter the cause or excuse.
The ICT, at a meeting it held at the University of California at Berkeley–requested that the now ex-United States President Bush not attend the opening ceremonies. As a member of this organization for since 2001, and present at the event, I was perplexed. I spoke to a board member, ex President Clinton advisor Keith Pitts that evening and stated the following: If the world wants China to cease human rights violation in Tibet, then demand President Bush confer with the Pentagon and immediately stop the use of DU, depleted–uranium in the weapons being used in the current war in the Middle East. Rather than place a pseudo Band-Aid on the situation initiate a change. The U.S by owning and ceasing an aspect of its’ participation in global human rights violations, would then enter into the territory of integris dialogue–and China, rather than being seen as the Other, would have the opportunity to also move from unnecessary violence and genocide to a neo global paradigm solution.
Mr. Pitts, who had served the American government from 1991 to 1997, as Democratic Subcommittee Staff Director for the House Committee on Agriculture, and is an active and founding board member for the ICT, did not favorably received my communication ( After his expression blanched, I was told I did not have a correct focus on the issue. Maintaining my position I further dialoged with Mr. Pitts. I challenged in today’s world a focus so narrow it devoids itself of inclusiveness, and thus creates a polemic of ideology where the shadow only exists among the Chinese government and not the United States. The over simplification of “China bad, U.S. good” must be terminated.
The perceived issues between China and the United States have been capitalized into forums for blame and fear. The creation of the cold war, communism verses capitalism, the race for weapons of mass destruction, WMDs, the desire of greed, and universal human rights violations issues have kept both nations in perpetual wariness of one another. Each country desires to be highly regarded as a global leader and recognized by the world nations as financially secure, good to their people, and transparent on their cusps of secrecy.
However, both countries participate in terrorism and in the systemic violations of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights. The UDHR was conceived in 1948, after the manufactured human horrors of WWII, the organization was the first internationally to demand dignity and justice for all the worlds’ citizens with the recognition “that all human beings have fundamental rights and freedoms.” On December tenth 2008, the UDHR observed it’s sixty-year anniversary, in which it set into motions the petition and theme of it’s following campaign: “Dignity and justice for all of us.” The 2008/09 campaigns reinforce the vision of the Declaration as a commitment to universal dignity and justice and not something that should be viewed only for the ownership by the first-world.
The Declaration contains thirty articles that define the perimeters of human rights. Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Article 30: Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein. The UDHR continues to be an active and relevant document today illustrating the desire and commitment towards rights without borders and ideologies.
()
The violations, which exist in both China and the U.S., do not honor the rights of peoples to live a life free from harm and the oppression of another’s ideologies. Violations exist in Chinas’ actions of the systematic killing, incarceration, and the denial of religious rights of Tibetan people. In the United States the creation, and formulation of the unconscionable use of DU among enemy states, human life–both friend and foe, and the environment. I will address these issues commencing with the U.S. and depleted–uranium.
The Human Rights Watch began in 1978 with the creation of Helsinki Watch, and is one of the worlds leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. Kenneth Roth, the director of HRW, is challenging now President Obama and his Administration “to put human rights at the heart of foreign, domestic, and security policy if it is to undo the enormous damage of the Bush years,” Human Rights Watch said today in issuing its World Report for 2009 ( Yet while the Human Rights Watch has much to say both in their yearly report and on an active website, there is no existing critic of the United States Governments Military use of deleted–uranium in weaponry. Although there is weighted criticism of China’s human rights abuses in Tibet–the United States Military Complex remains untouched in evaluation even as it continues to reign terror upon the Middle East through the use of DU in multiple fractions of weaponry. The Army, Navy and Air Force of the United States Military use DU in their arsenals. DU, or depleted–uranium is the by-product created by the production of enriched uranium, U235, which is actively used as weapons grade uranium for nuclear weaponry The U.S. Army added DU to its stockpiles in 1978 at the height of the cold war (Depleted Uranium, 31, 49). Fear of the Other, in this case Russia, having the strongest weapon spurned on the escalation of DU’s use in modern weaponry. U235 was used in the first Atomic Bomb dropped on the civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan at eight fifteen am on the morning August 6th, 1945. The uranium ore itself is found as uranium oxide that when purified becomes bright yellow in color and has the iconic name of yellow cake. DU in all of its incarnations is a highly poisonous heavy metal that has the half-life of 4.5 billion years. DU’s use harbors a systematic genocide of the peoples present and the environments in which it is used. Whether it resides in the bones or lungs of human beings or the water tables of the landscape-death is inevitable. There are two distinct perspectives to the use of DU. One is outrage, while the other claims there is nothing wrong, no side effects, no cancers, no death to humans or the landscape; and that DU’s use keeps U.S. military personal safe from harm.
One such article that provides a darker portal into DU is byLeuren Moret titled Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War. In it she states the following:
The use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States, defying all international treaties, will slowly annihilate all species on earth including the human species, and yet this country continues to do so with full knowledge of its destructive potential.
Since 1991, the United States has staged four wars using depleted uranium weaponry, illegal under all international treaties, conventions and agreements, as well as under the US military law. The continued use of this illegal radioactive weaponry, which has already contaminated vast regions with low level radiation and will contaminate other parts of the world over time, is indeed a world affair and an international issue. The deeper purpose is revealed by comparing regions now contaminated with depleted uranium — from Egypt, the Middle East, Central Asia and the northern half of India — to the US geostrategic imperatives described in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. (
Two other world organizations agree with the devastation and damaging properties of DU. The ICBUW, the International Coalition to Ban Depleted Uranium, and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights article: Human Rights and Toxics: Depleted Uranium and the Gulf War. From the International Coalition to Ban Depleted Uranium come the following remarks:
6. Since that time, more evidence of the use of depleted uranium and the Iraqi medical catastrophe has been presented while at the same time the controversy over "Gulf War Syndrome" escalates in the United States. It now appears that key information relating to this situation has been removed from top-secret files or destroyed.
7. Evidence compiled in the United States indicates as many as 50,000 veterans of the United States forces in the Gulf War and 4,000 or more from the allied countries have conditions that appear to be clear consequences of military service. There are no available statistics on the number of Iraqis showing similar symptoms, although Dr. Gunther's investigations indicate many thousands.
DU, there is no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up, yet it meets the US Government’s own definition of a Weapon of Mass Destruction. This illustrates the conflict within the Military Industrial Complex. Another confused and contrary voice in the field is that of the United States Department of Defense. At the official web URL for DefenseLink,
(
We have several branches of service that use depleted uranium. We have used it for about two decades. Next chart please. During the Gulf War, we fired ammunition weighing approximately 320 tons. That sounds like an awful lot of depleted uranium, but when you actually put it together and measure it, it's a cube about eight feet on the side. It isn't really a lot of material. Depleted uranium is very heavy. That's one of the things that makes it good for use in ammunition and armor, so it doesn't take up a lot of space.
The above presenter Army COL James Naughton, of Materiel Command. Following his statement a physician, Dr. Kilpatrick made these remarks:
We looked at some 90 Gulf War veterans who were in or on an armored vehicle when it was struck by depleted uranium in friendly fire. And those individuals have been followed on an annual basis now we are talking 12 years post-incident. And we do not see any kidney damage in those individuals -- and this is using very sophisticated medical evaluation of kidneys. Now, some of these individuals had amputations, were burned, had deep wounds, so that these individuals, some of them of course do have medical problems. But as far as a consequence of the depleted uranium exposure, we are not seeing anything related to that either from a chemical or radiological effect.
Next slide, please. We've looked at them for cancers. There has been no cancer of bone or lungs, where you would expect them -- to see that. We have seen no leukemias. As I said, there's been about 90 individuals we've followed up, and about 20 of these individuals still have small fragments of depleted uranium in their body. To try to remove that totally from their body would mean amputation or removal of muscles. And our belief is it's better to follow them than to go through any further traumatic type of surgery for the individuals. And, as I've said, we have not seen any untoward medical consequence in these individuals.
I do not believe the Army personals observations and or comments to be true. I find the denial of the U.S. Government to be horrific. In my fifteen years of research on radiation and the Atomic and Nuclear Bomb from a depth psychological and shadow perspective, I find I cannot collude with the information provided by the DOD. The conscious use of depleted–uranium is a terrorist act and a violation of international human rights and environmental law. If the U.S. would actively stop the use of DU world-wide, halting the weapons manufacturing use and sales to other countries, perhaps China would feel less threatened and secure ownership of it’s atrocities as well.