In the last hundred years, just 11 women worldwide have been honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. Five of those have occurred since 1991, when the pace of women honorees quickened: Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, Rigoberta Menchu in 1992, Jody Williams in 1997, Shirin Ebadi in 2003, and Wangari Maathai in 2004. That’s a pretty impressive record of women working for peace.

It’s interesting to note that of the five recent honorees, only Jody Williams of the U.S. has been able to work for human rights without falling prey to brutal retaliation from oppressive regimes. Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma has been under house arrest for years and years; Rigoberta Menchu was forced into exile and hiding for a long time in her home country of Guatemala; Wangari Maathai was long jailed and harassed for her environmental work with women in Kenya; and Shirin Ebadi was also arrested and imprisoned for her outspoken defense of women’s human rights in Iran.

As she recalls in her autobiography, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, “from the day I was stripped of my judgeship to the years doing battle in the revolutionary courts of Tehran, I had repeated one refrain: an interpretation of Islam that is in harmony with equality and democracy is an authentic expression of faith. It is not religion that binds women, but the selective dictates of those who wish them cloistered….I have been under attach for most of my adult life for this approach,” Ebadi concedes, but she remains defiant, insistent on using her training and talents as an attorney to defend human rights, especially for women.

Most Nobel prizewinners enjoy a degree of personal security, thanks to the prestige and worldwide recognition the award brings. But the government of Iran, perhaps unsurprisingly, is thumbing its nose at world opinion, banning Shirin Ebadi’s Center for the Defense of Human Rights. The Center provides free legal representation to prisoners of conscience, supports their families, and reports on human rights violations occurring in Iranian detention facilities.

Ebadi, who has spent months in Iranian prisons herself for her activist work, remains defiant. In a recent statement to the international community, Ebadi wrote that she and her staff “do not intend to shut down the center and we shall continue our activities. However, there is a high possibility that they will arrest us. The government's action in this regard is illegal.”

In response to Ebadi’s statement, there is a call circulating on the web demanding that the Iranian government allow Ebadi and her Center to continue working without hindrance or harassment; I’ll append the sample letter below.

Just imagine the face of His Excellency Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Head of the Judiciary, as thousands of letters begin to pour into his office from around the world! Let’s do it!!

You can send a letter online, or work from the sample letter below:

His Excellency
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
Head of the Judiciary
Ministry of Justice
Park-Shahr, Tehran
Islamic Republic of Iran

Your Excellency,

I am deeply concerned about your Interior Ministry's recent decision to ban the work of the Kanoon Modaefan Hogooge Bashar, led by Nobel Peace Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi. I understand that the members of this organization have been threatened with arrest, should they continue their invaluable human rights work.

I am alarmed by this decision of the Ministry, four years after failing to respond to the Center for the Defense of Human Right's request for registration. Under Article 12 of the Political Parties Law of 1981, the Political Parties Commission is required to respond to such requests within three months of receiving them. In the absence of any response, the Ministry of the Interior is legally obliged to issue a license to the Center.

The refusal of the Ministry to issue this license suggests that this illegal ban, like the arbitrary detention of Nasser Zarafshan and Abdolfattah Soltani, is an attempt to prevent human rights defenders from reporting and protesting violations of human rights violations in Iran.

Kanoone Modaefan Hogooge Bashar is one of the most important human rights organizations in Iran, and its work is critical to ensure the protection of the basic rights of the Iranian people.

Any arrests of individuals who are trying to inform the public about human rights or human rights abuses are direct violations of the 1998 UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, under which all persons have the right ''freely to publish, impart or disseminate to others views, information and knowledge on all human rights and fundamental freedoms.''

Other international and regional instruments that are binding on the government of Iran, like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, similarly prohibit the persecution of peaceful critics of the Iranian government.

I demand, therefore, an immediate withdrawal of the ban on the Center for the Defense of Human Rights, and the release of Abdolfattah Soltani and all other human rights defenders. I will continue to monitor this and other similar cases closely. I appreciate your attention to this most serious matter.

cc.

Ambassador Mohammad Javad Zarif
Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the U.N.
622 Third Ave. New York, NY 10017

I have been reading Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia, a 1960’s-era utopian novel envisioning what would happen if the West Coast of the U.S. seceded from the union, and became entirely self-sustaining by reducing its demand for fossil fuels and inventing new sustainable technologies. The book also describes a social revolution as radical as anything Marx ever came up with—communal living, free love (of course, it was written in the 60’s), and cradle-to-grave security. Ecotopia also happens to be governed by women!

I’m reading the book for potential inclusion in my syllabus at the University at Albany—it was suggested by one of the faculty on my team at Project Renaissance. I actually prefer Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing as utopian novels go, because it’s a more lively read, and less pat—there’s still a chance that Starhawk’s Californian utopia could fail, whereas Callenbach’s Ecotopia is a done deal, and so a little static.

But why am I telling you this? I’d been privately scoffing to myself as I read along in Ecotopia—this could never happen! What pie in the sky! And then this morning I received an email from Susan Witt at the E.F. Schumacher Society in South Egremont, Mass., announcing the launch of a new local currency program in the Berkshires, BerkShares.

Lo and behold, right here in our little corner of the world, a social experiment is underway—modest, to be sure, but real nevertheless. The idea is to replace federal currency with local money called BerkShares, which would be accepted by local businesses only. You would exchange dollars for BerkShares at local banks ($90 for 100 BerkShares) and participating businesses would accept each BerkShare as one dollar, thereby offering a 10% discount to BerkShare consumers.

Susan Witt has been talking about the potential of local currencies for quite a while, but it didn’t really sink in for me until this morning just how positive they could be. Just as in Ecotopia, there’s value in investing in the local, thinking small, green, and self-sustaining.

When I look out into the national scene and see the uses that my tax dollars are going towards (and not going towards), it definitely puts me in a secessionary kind of mood. I hardly recognize the leaders of our country as “my fellow Americans”—I don’t share their vision of how the world should be, I don’t share their values, I want to distance myself from them and hunker down among likeminded people in my local community waiting out this siege.

And while we wait it out, we can and should be working for change! Buying BerkShares is one way; electoral activism is a must; trying to be as green as possible in one’s individual lifestyle is another.

For me, as a teacher, having students read a utopian novel and discuss the ideas it generates seriously is yet another realm of activism. My SUNY students usually come in pretty mainstream and unquestioning. As a new school year approaches, I look forward to challenging them to think outside the box a little bit. There’s just not enough fresh air inside that mainstream box, is there?

I am very proud that it is a woman judge--and a Black woman judge at that!--who has had the gumption to stand up to the Republican machine and strike down their wiretapping program as illegal. Federal court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled last week, the New York Times reported, "that the National Security Agency's program to wiretap the international communications of some Americans without a court warrant violated the Constitution, and she ordered it shut down."

Anna Diggs Taylor is no stranger to civil rights work--she earned her stripes in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and was appointed to the bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, the first African American woman to be named Chief Judge of the Eastern Region of the U.S. District Court (there still aren't many women in these positions, let alone African American women). She has the reputation of being fair, tough, and impartial, outlawing discrimination where she sees it, whether the bias favors whites or minorities.

Of course, Judge Taylor is being demonized by the Republicans, and the ruling was being appealed almost before the ink dried. So be it. In a time of Gilded-Age-style pandering and cravenness, it's wonderful to see a judge with the backbone to make an independent, hard-nosed decision. If only we had someone like Judge Taylor as our Attorney General, instead of the brown-nosing Alberto Gonzalez!

Postscript: Has anyone noticed how the New York Times has been publishing a daily feature called "Names of the Dead" for the past few weeks? I think it's laudable that the newspaper is giving us access to the daily rollcall of American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it irritates me no end that the online version of this feature juxtaposes the names of the dead with the most frivolous stories and images from the day's paper as well, such as "The St-Tropez of Turkey," or "The Trouble When Jane Becomes Jack," complete with inane, happy-go-lucky photos:

Names of the Dead

The Department of Defense has identified 2,597 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:

McKENNA, John J. IV, 30, Capt., Marines; Brooklyn; Fourth Marine Division.

PHILLIPS, John P., 29, Sgt., Marines; St. Stephen, S.C.; Ninth Engineer Support Battalion, Third Marine Logistics Group, Third Marine Expeditionary Force.

Please! Have some respect for those who are dying over there in a quagmire they didn't deserve!

And now for this week's chilling installment of the on-going action-thriller of world events: LONDON-BASED TERROR PLOT FOILED! What really gets me about this is the smaller headline underneath: ARRESTS BOLSTER G.O.P. AS ELECTION NEARS.

How can The Times report with a straight face Bush's pronouncement yesterday that the world is safer than it was after 9/11? Do the Republicans really think people will take seriously their self-righteous spewing into any available microphone, "We told you so! We can't pull out of Iraq when there are terrorists afoot!"

Let's be real here! It's been well-proven that Iraq and Al Qaeda had nothing in common in 2001, and if they have more in common now it's thanks to the disastrous US occupation of that country, promulgated by the Republicans. Once again Cheney is going around trying to make connections between waging war in Iraq and Al Qaeda-driven terrorism that simply don't hold water.

Meanwhile, notice how quiet Republicans are being about what's really driving these terrorists: Israel and the devastation of Lebanon. Granted, Lebanon has become a haven for Hezbollah (in a way that Iraq was never a haven for Al Qaeda). But does that justify the destruction of homes and infrastructure, the wanton bombing of civilians?

There's been a little hemming and hawing this week from the US about shipping Israel a big load of cluster bombs--a little hand-wringing over the fact that cluster bombs will inevitably end up killing civilians. But you know that shipment will go out, and those bombs will be dropped on Lebanese families, killing children or maiming them for life. You don't hear much talk from Cheney or Rumsfeld about that, do you?

It's become increasingly obvious to me that Israel is fighting a proxy war for the US. Our hands are tied in Baghdad and things are going from bad to worse. It's necessary to shift world attention somewhere else, to take the heat off American (non)leadership, and distract Americans from the fact that their young people are dying every day in Iraq. Israel is a convenient scapegoat for Arab fury, a lightening rod for all the angry militants in the region. Israeli soldiers are well-trained, well-equipped, and at least they have the satisfaction of feeling like they're truly fighting for their country, their own families and territory. Let them do the job.

But the London terrorist plot of Summer 2006 shows that the hardcore terrorists aren't fooled. They know the US is still to blame. Who is supplying Israel with weaponry and intelligence? Who has abdicated the effort to secure a reasonable two-state solution for the Palestinians? The latest terrorist attempt was actually a brilliant plan to punish both the US and its henchman, Britain, in one fell stroke. The only problem is that as with all terrorism, it's innocent civilians who become the pawns, and pay the price with their lives.

Not that I can really in good conscience say that any American or British citizen is "innocent." We're all going along with what's been happening here in our lifetimes. The injustice, the greed, the short-sighted policies, the thuggery of the weak--we view it as a fact of life, background noise that we learn to screen out. If we cared, we'd have impeached this president by now.

We have a chance, this November, to send a strong statement, not just to our politicians but to the whole world, that Americans have had enough of the kind of leadership that has given us one crisis after another ever since 2001. Things have not gotten better under Bush leadership, they've gotten much, much worse. Maybe we've finally hit bottom, and can begin, battered but determined, to make our way back up.

Okay, I admit it. I’ve been avoiding posting because every time I think about what I might say, my mind dissolves into something like the famous painting “The Scream”—I just want to hold my head and wail. Every day I think morosely, “Well, things can’t get any worse, we must be hitting bottom,” and then the next day comes and—it's worse.

And the fact that the violence isn’t touching me directly, the fact that I am going about my ordinary comfortable American existence day by day, makes it even harder to bear somehow. The juxtaposition of my sweet, easy life and the maelstrom taking place in much of the world is so jarring that most of the time I just can’t stand to maintain the polarity. I give myself small doses of world news, and pull the covers of my narrow, pleasant existence back over my head with ostrich-like obstinacy.

There are small signs that the American public is awakening. A coalition of social justice activists, educators and a few courageous politicians have just published a full-page ad in The New York Times listing all the crimes of the Bush Administration against the world and calling for a “mass day of resistance” on October 5. The graphic is powerful—the globe going up in flames.

Yesterday Hillary Clinton finally called for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation, after a Senate hearing at which two of the generals in charge of the American forces in Iraq admitted that the country might be “sliding into civil war” and that the violence was as bad as it’s ever been. “Yes, we hear a lot of happy talk and rosy scenarios, but because of the administration’s strategic blunders and, frankly, the record of incompetence in executing, you are presiding over a failed policy,” Clinton told Rumsfeld at the hearing. “Given your track record, Secretary Rumsfeld, why should we believe your assurances now?”

Why indeed? But the real question is, why has it taken Clinton and so many other politicians and pundits so long to read the writing on the wall?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world where there’s no place to hide, an anguish to match my own: Riverbend gives vent to a rage I haven’t yet heard from her, in the three years since she started blogging from Baghdad. She has always seemed like a moderate voice, a voice of reason in the midst of the hysteria of Iraq. But now even she is calling for vigilante justice to be visited on the American occupiers of her land, in response to the rape of a young girl and murder of her and her family—an incident that received some attention in the US press, but only in Riverbend’s blog was the rape victim named and mourned:

“Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it's not really the latest- it's just the one that's being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them. We've been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?

"In the news they're estimating her age to be around 24, but Iraqis from the area say she was only 14. Fourteen. Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally, her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American heroes... Raise your heads high supporters of the 'liberation' - your troops have made you proud today.

“I don't believe the troops should be tried in American courts. I believe they should be handed over to the people in the area and only then will justice be properly served. And our ass of a PM, Nouri Al-Maliki, is requesting an 'independent investigation', ensconced safely in his American guarded compound because it wasn't his daughter or sister who was raped, probably tortured and killed. His family is abroad safe from the hands of furious Iraqis and psychotic American troops.

”It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?

”Why don't the Americans just go home? They've done enough damage and we hear talk of how things will fall apart in Iraq if they 'cut and run', but the fact is that they aren't doing anything right now. How much worse can it get?”

HOW MUCH WORSE CAN IT GET????? The fact that someone like Riverbend is ready to deliver US soldiers to mob justice in retribution for their crimes of war is truly terrifying, because as I said before, she is a moderate voice in Iraq. If this is the way she is thinking, one can only imagine with horror what's in the minds of the Hezbollah and Hamas militants.

Israel is taking the fall right now, but it's really the US that's to blame for this crisis, and the only person who may not understand this is the average American, the millions of CNN/Fox News devotees who are still suckers for the stars and stripes.

I have never been more ashamed to be an American. And I've had just about enough of hiding under the covers, too. Election season is coming up, and there is a chance to make a difference, if a strong enough message can be sent to the august halls of Congress through the ballot box. If Senator Clinton is finally summoning the backbone to speak out openly against Rumsfeld and his disastrous fumbling of Iraq, maybe the tide is turning and others will follow her lead. Maybe there is still time to put out the flames and reconstruct a global civilization worthy of that designation.