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Two days after
the attacks of September 11, 2001, I surrendered. Melbourne, Australia
is a long way from Boise, Idaho, and I could no longer cry in a sympathetic
yet foreign land alone. Seeking comfort, I sadly called home. The
voices of my father and grandmother provided some solace, but what I heard in
them only deepened my sorrow. My family’s pain, confusion, and fear
were palpable. In their anger, uncomprehended suffering surfaced and thrashed,
gasping for a breath of understanding. Stunned with paralysis in mid-ricochet,
they clung to platitudes as explanations for why America had been so violated.
Many Americans, if not most, shared these emotions and reactions.
That mournful
conversation inspired Invisible Hands, an attempt
to cast light on the shadows of suffering. The work includes a Flash presentation,
forty-five exhibition quality photographic prints, and an artist’s book.
Commencing with the ancient formation of fossil fuels, it follows oil’s
flow through terrain afflicted by an overwhelming production and consumption
of superfluous goods. At the end of this viscous river, one finds a planet
littered with various petroleum by-products in the form of plastic. To
be sure, many plastics serve noble functions. Plastic heart valves and
hip joints lengthen lives. Polar tech fleece material is long lasting
and provides warmth and comfort to millions of people. I use photographic
film made of cellulose acetate, a tough and transparent plastic. However,
most plastics in our lives merely serve convenience, and when no longer convenient,
are tossed aside and ignored like so many episodes of an unpleasant past, and
as the industrial detritus obstructing a sea turtle’s digestive track refuses
to dissolve, so the legacy of injustice fails to fade from American history.
After presenting poignant snapshots of illicit liaisons between oil, war, and
US foreign policy, this work then inspects the confluence of public fears, personal
consumption habits, and the motivations behind military operations. In
conclusion, it highlights actions available to almost anyone seeking a more
just and sustainable future.
As a democratic ideal, America has set a high standard for itself. Unprecedented economic and military strength make this as yet unattained ideal worth striving for more so today than at any other time in my nation’s history. However, without reflection upon our motives and behaviors throughout the world, the ideal will tragically remain a mirage, an American dream glimpsed waiting to be won.
At ten, I happily
tapped the inauspicious “dot…dot…dot, dash…dash…dash,
dot…dot…dot.” SOS was the only Morse code I knew.
Built with my father, the simple telegraph of scrap lumber, hinges, wire, and
battery consumed my interest, not the transmission of messages.
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Samuel Morse’s
telegraph was the first practical instrument to utilize electric current to
communicate. The American painter and inventor patented his device in
1840, ushering in a new era in human communications. Eight years later,
six New York newspapers formed the Associated Press to share wire expenses,
quickly followed by Reuters in London. Eighteen sixty-seven witnessed
the introduction of Thomas Edison’s stock ticker, a specialized telegraph,
to the New York Stock Exchange. By the time the telephone signaled its
demise, people sent information via telegraph so frequently that it had become
integral to commerce, government, and military alike.
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Now computers send our songs of ones and zeros around the world, and the telegraph is hardly used though its direct, understated distress call remains a cultural fixture. Thus this body of work begins with the Ticker Series, an invitation to Americans of all political persuasions to hear and heed the messages within our Invisible hands.
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From era to
era, epoch to epoch, each and everyday, beautiful sunlight streams past this
rocky planet. In the past, earth wandered alone, circumambulating about
its star of light, warmth, and energy. Then bacteria and plant-life arose,
transforming sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into energy-rich sugars and
oxygen. Animals grew to breathe the oxygen and eat the sugars, expending
energy and returning to plants the water and carbon dioxide.
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Tall trees
rose from swampy ground, swathed in the sun-dappled fronds of giant ferns.
In the seas, countless generations of microscopic organisms thrived in a sun
drenched soup with many drifting in death to deep and sleepy seabeds.
On land, dense carpets of leafy plants and trees captured and stored the sun’s
light energy, thus sustaining all.1
Death delivered their decaying bodies to the bottoms of ancient peaty bogs.
In time, even dinosaurs—the mightiest of all terrestrial fauna—dissipated,
contributing to the energy-rich stratum.
Not long ago, humans recognized lightning, and understanding fire, began warming their bodies and cooking their food by harvesting the energy of combustion. Today those who can afford to drive chariots drawn by internal fires that consume petroleum, the ancient detritus of nature, expending energy and releasing into the atmosphere the carbon dioxide of millions of years.
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Born where
the scorched winds of the Great Basin collide with early rumblings of the Rocky
Mountains, I have known in desert twilights the crisp scent of sage. During
a seven-year drought, I learned that hot air, heavy with dust, can sear the
throat with each breath. I recall manicured lawns, blistering backseat
drives, parched freeways flanked by sun-burnt grasses, and towns like my grandma’s
made of swirling sprinklers, mailbox petunias, and dry dusty birdbaths.
I next encountered
drought on the monsoon-soaked, equatorial slopes of Indonesia. There,
in the verdant rainforests that skirt a feisty chain of volcanoes, I marveled
at life’s diversity.2
At dawn, delicate birdsong rippled through tree leaves. In muted morning
light, large sapphire and small iridescent brown butterflies fluttered about
lush nectar-laden boughs. Palm-sized, emerald dragonflies cruised through
the balmy afternoon breeze. At dusk, the last fiery rays of day lit monstrous
thunderclouds. Bats flitted to and fro, ravaging hungry mosquitoes.
Then came hard rain. The sky opened and a wall of water slammed into the
earth. Deafening claps of thunder clashed above, while in the wet inky
darkness below, serenading frogs hollered, “Hello, hello!” Though
torrents fell that first monsoon, the following year, scant moisture tumbled
from largely cloudless skies. As an unfailing sun blazed, fires caught
and raged, their smoke smothering a distant metropolis. I remember leaving,
with my head resting on a window streaking past rice paddies, which were dead
and dying.
Drought and
I met again in the smog scoured streets of Santiago, the Chilean capital resting
at the foot of the Andes. In late afternoons, I’d race the fading
sun to the top of a ragged outcrop. Out of breath and delectably dizzy,
I’d gaze at the icy peaks shimmering in brilliant, pollution-pink sunshine.
Santiago, home to millions, was but a thin brush stroke at the base of such
great mountains. Snowmelt hurtling down their steep slopes generates much
of the country’s electricity. A lengthy dry-spell precipitated crop
failures and nationwide power shortages, prompting the government to forbid
shopkeepers from illuminating the wares in their windows. Each evening
an eerie unlit calm descended over the tense and thirsty city, which held its
breath until winter snows finally arrived in the cloud-shrouded mountainsides.
As a child,
I too waited impatiently for seasons to change. In waning winters, I eagerly
sought the robin’s return, for this scarlet-breasted bird announced the
coming of the warm spring sun. Now in autumn, robins remain, surviving
winters once too frigid.
Last winter, I traveled to the drought-plagued, flood plain of the Murray, one of two large rivers coursing through the Australian bush. Onto the scrubby plain spilled towering red river gums. These colossal trees require only occasional flooding to reach astonishing heights. In their nutrient-rich limbs, chattering birds congregate, while bounding kangaroos and elegant emus traverse the rusty sands below. Seven floodless seasons had taxed the strength of smaller plants and animals. Only after days of quiet hiking, did I spot a dainty lizard basking on the trail. Within steps, however, I grew suspicious; the tiny reptile hadn’t scattered. Not so amazingly, the little critter had made its way to the sun-baked scrub from far off China. While pocketing the plastic tid-bit, I imagined a freckled boy, haphazardly dropping his silent toy. I wonder: will his children ever know of little lizards darting to and fro?
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Subterranean
cracks in the earth’s crust allow crude oil to seep to the surface throughout
the world. In various parts of the Middle East, bitumen rises in rock
fissures—most famously in the ancient town of Hit, near present day Baghdad.
For five millennia, torches tipped with the semisolid oozy substance have lit
the night, protecting some and violently destroying others.
3 Though betrothed in these early
hostilities, oil and war weren’t wed until after the invention of the oil-powered
engine and the advent of World War I. Historian Daniel Yergin points out
that, “while simplifying the problems of mobility and supply,” the
introduction of the internal combustion engine “also multiplied the devastation.”
4 Previously, wars were waged with inflexible railway systems and ultimately
at a horse’s pace. But as Yergin explains in The
Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, the First Battle of
the Marne would unequivocally reveal petroleum’s emerging strategic value.
5
War planner,
Alfred von Schlieffen, prepared Germany to fight on two fronts with Russia and
France. He believed each needed to be dealt with separately. The
Schlieffen Plan called for a swift defeat of France, as a hopefully flat-footed
Russia slowly mobilized. Two wings of the German army were to crush the
French army in a pincer movement. A small left wing would defend Germany
along the French border. A much larger right wing would invade France
through the Netherlands and Belgium, thereby trapping French forces. The
entire German assault relied upon the advance of a strong right wing.
The easy capture
of Belgium, late in the summer of 1914, gave credence to German predictions
of a quick victory on its western front. By September, the German right
wing sat a short 40 miles (64km) from Paris. One hundred thousand civilians
and the French government had already evacuated the city, entrusting its defense
to military governor General Joseph Gallieni. Few took the aging general
with his shaggy moustache and untidy, ill-fitting uniform seriously. Though
aerial surveillance indicated a German weakness near the Marne River, he could
convince no one of the need for a French counter attack. Only after an
angry and emotional phone call from Gallieni, did the French Commander in Chief
order an offensive.
Gallieni’s
assessment proved correct, and French troops made solid gains until German reinforcements
arrived. Guarding the city of light, French soldiers were stranded in
the surrounds of Paris. Disruption of rail service compelled most to walk,
with little hope of reaching the front in time.
Days prior,
Gallieni had organized a unique transport squad composed of taxicabs “on
reserve” to evacuate the city’s last defenders. A master of
improvisation, Gallieni realized more cabs were needed at once to form a troop
transport system. Gallieni immediately ordered police and soldiers to
commandeer all 3,000 Parisian taxis. The drivers had to abandon their
passengers, but were to be paid by the meter. During the next forty-eight
hours, non-stop columns of taxis transported thousands and thousands of troops
“driving as only Parisian taxicabs can, speeding and passing and repassing
each other, their headlamps darting points of light along the dark roads.”
6 A reinvigorated French campaign forced
the Germans to fall back, and the armada of taxis helped end Germany’s
planned offensive, while shredding its hopes for an early defeat of France.
Nearly three
and a half bloody years of trench warfare ensued. During assaults, men
charged out of wet, putrid, rat-infested trenches with fixed bayonets onto an
artillery-scarred no man’s land laced with barbed wire. More rapid
and accurate fire from machine guns slaughtered wave after wave of infantry,
which contributed to enormously high casualties.
In 1916, Germany
secured Romania’s sabotaged, yet invaluable oil fields, enabling continued
fighting. In Russia, the political chaos resulting from the collapse of
the Czarist regime and the subsequent rise of the Bolshevik party, tempted German
generals to seek petroleum from the great oil fields of Baku on the shores of
the Caspian Sea. 7
A small British expedition entered Russia denying Germany access to Baku at
a critical moment. Facing acute fuel shortages, Germany surrendered in
November 1918. 8
By war’s
end, petroleum did much more than provide reconnaissance or transport troops
and supplies. Agile oil-powered ships patrolled the seas. Flame throwers
shot streams of burning fuel. Dogfight aces battled in the skies, and
tanks finally punctured trench defenses, which ultimately led the Germans to
accept defeat.
In post-war
years, geo-political alliances shifted, reflecting oil’s now devastatingly
demonstrated strategic importance. Leaders the world over recognized the
impregnable position stable access to petroleum afforded. In 1924, the
Bolshevik Commissar of War, Leon Trotsky spoke of:
Oil, which now plays such an exceptional military and industrial role, totals in the United States two-thirds of the world output, and in 1923 it had even reached approximately 72 per cent. To be sure, they complain a lot about the threats of the exhaustion of their oil resources. In the initial post-war years, I confess I thought that these plaints were merely a pious cover for coming encroachments on foreign oil. But geologists actually do confirm that American oil at the current rate of consumption will, according to some, last twenty-five years, according to others, forty years. But in twenty-five or forty years, America with her industry and fleet will be able to take away oil from all the others ten times over again. 9
In fact, decades after Trotsky’s prediction, America continued to dominate crude oil production. 10 Before this supremacy slid, the US would draw heavily on its reserves during the most lethal conflict in history: World War II. Not surprisingly, oil shaped the belligerent’s campaigns and often determined the victors in battle.
In 1931, Japan
seized Manchuria, China’s coal and iron-rich northeast. The fertile
province became an important industrial base for the Japanese during the Second
World War. Two years later, the newly appointed Chancellor of Germany,
Adolf Hitler, began strengthening his armed forces in violation of the treaty
ending World War I. Longing for empire, Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935.
Within a year, the Italians conquered one of Africa’s oldest nations, which
had kept its independence during nineteenth-century colonialism. Hitler
next sent troops to the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone under the Treaty of
Versailles. Soon, Italy and Germany formed the Rome-Berlin Axis.
Late in 1937, the Japanese launched a major assault against China. In
six weeks, Japan’s Imperial Army massacred hundreds of thousands of civilians
and unarmed soldiers. By the end of 1938, Japan controlled most of eastern
China and began espousing its vision of empire: the “Greater East Asia
Co-prosperity Sphere.” German troops overran Czechoslovakia and marched
into Poland, triggering declarations of war from France, Great Britain, and
several British Dominions. When Japan cast its lot with Italy and Germany
in 1940, the original axis was born.
Struggling early in the war, the Allies conceded most of Western Europe to blitzkrieg—lightning war waged with rows of fast tanks, infantry, and dive bombers that knocked out Allied communications and ferociously pounded battle lines. In an attempt to sever British access to Middle Eastern oil, Italians in Ethiopia attacked British Somaliland and Egypt. 11 For two years, rival forces sea-sawed across the deserts of Egypt and Libya, forever racing further than their fuel supplies. At the finish line, British General Bernard Montgomery had petrol, while the Desert Fox, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, did not.
After Japan’s
capture of northern Indochina, the United States limited steel, scrap iron,
and aviation fuel exports to the resource-poor aggressor.
12 Conversely, American president
Franklin Roosevelt sought to defeat the Axis by supplying nations at war with
it. In North America, new plants manufactured enormous amounts of war
goods, and converted automobile factories produced tanks and aircraft.
In March 1941, the US Congress approved the Lend-Lease Act granting the president
powers to lend or lease food, weapons, and equipment to any country fighting
the Axis. Ultimately, the Soviet Union, China, and Great Britain received
billions of dollars worth of ships, tanks, aircraft, and other war materials,
as well as significant supplies of petroleum. Roosevelt urged the United
States to become an “Arsenal of Democracy.”
Having failed
to bomb Britain into submission, Hitler once again set Germany’s sights
on Baku. He despised communism and harbored a deep distrust of the Soviet
Union. Hitler now made Baku oil central to Germany’s conquest in
Europe. He cautioned the Italian leader, Benito Mussolini that “the
life of the Axis depends on those oil fields.” 13
Fortunately, the Soviets halted his ill-conceived invasion just short of the
vast resources of the Caucasus region, though not without great sacrifice.
At war’s end, the Soviet Union had suffered roughly 19 million civilian
and 7.5 million military deaths, far more than any other nation.
Soon after its pre-emptive attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan also targeted territory rich with oil. During the Battle of the Java Sea, Japan’s navy mauled Allied ships protecting the Netherlands Indies. 14 Japanese petroleum stocks soared when the Dutch colony fell in March 1942. Japan’s fortunes faltered months later at the Battle of Midway as American code breakers cracked Japan’s naval code and discovered plans to raid the westernmost Hawaiian Island. The commander of the US Fleet, Admiral Chester Nimitz, prepared an ambush. Throughout the three-day struggle, American dive-bombers pounded enemy aircraft carriers while their planes re-fueled on deck. In total, Japan lost four of its nine carriers and 200 skilled pilots and planes, crippling its naval power for the remainder of the war.
Germany, a
petroleum-poor country, invested heavily in technologies to synthesize fuel
from coal, a resource it had in abundance. IG Farben, the largest chemical
manufacturing enterprise in the world, provided half of Germany’s fuels.
In fact, IG Farben synthesized many raw materials consumed by Hitler’s
war machine: oil, rubber, gasoline, fibers, nitrates, rocket fuels, aspirin,
sulfa drugs, and even poisonous gases such as Sarin and Zyklon B, the gas used
to execute the Nazis’ “Final Solution.” Asserting German
cultural superiority, Nazi party doctrine claimed the right to rule the world.
Those deemed inferior—the disabled, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, and Slavs,
particularly Poles and Soviets—faced murder and persecution. Soldiers
collected millions of people from across occupied Europe, and packed them like
cattle into box cars bound for concentration camps. There the weak were
exterminated, and the fit enslaved, subsisting at most on 1,000 calories a day.
By 1944, slave
labor formed one third of the workforce in the German synthetic fuels industry.
15 Near Auschwitz, the central site
of Nazi genocide, IG Farben built a massive industrial complex to produce synthetic
oil and rubber. The company paid the SS, Hitler’s elite military
force, three to four marks per day for each adult laborer and half that for
children. A young Italian named Primo Levi survived because his training
in organic chemistry made him useful in the labs at the mammoth factory.
“This huge entanglement of iron, concrete, mud and smoke is the negation
of beauty,” he said of the industrial complex. “Within its
bounds not a blade of grass grows, and the soil is impregnated with the poisonous
saps of coal and petroleum, and the only things alive are machines and slaves—and
the former are more alive than the latter.” 16
In the spring
of 1944, the Allies finally targeted Germany’s Achilles heel. A combat
force of nearly one thousand bombers and their escorts struck several synthetic
fuels factories, including the giant IG Farben plant at Leuna. Though
the Germans had feared such attacks for years, the raids were more debilitating
than any had imagined.
A massive invasion
force commanded by General Dwight Eisenhower gained a foothold on the beaches
of Normandy on June 6, 1944. By month’s end, a million Allied soldiers
had entered France. Gradually, they advanced, until the end of July when
bombers blasted a break in enemy lines, and the US Third Army poured through
the gap. Lieutenant General George Patton’s men rolled through Paris,
then raced toward the River Rhine. But late in August, his tanks sputtered
to a halt, out of gas. In a conflict characterized by the need for oil,
often while in pursuit of oil, a fitting overture to its finale occurred when
the last major German offensive ended with empty fuel tanks.
During the
decades following the epic struggle, the union of oil and war consolidated,
multiplying in its complexity. Eventually, in the US, the Carter Doctrine
codified their shotgun wedding:
Let our position be absolutely clear. An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. 17
Of course possession of, or access to, petroleum fuels economies and enables nations to accumulate wealth, but not without also encouraging them to acquire or manufacture armaments to wage and win wars. In an age in which the American military maintains a “presence at the gateway to every major source of fossil fuel,” and suicide bombers use planes and oil tankers as weapons, while toy makers scramble to replicate the newest battle tools showcased live on CNN, I question if we’ll ever learn to live without oil and war again. 18
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Albert Einstein
wrote Roosevelt in 1939 explaining that it was possible to create potent, powerful
explosions by splitting atoms. The German-born scientist also expressed
the fear that his colleagues in Germany could be working on such a weapon.
The US government responded by establishing the Manhattan Project, a clandestine
attempt to invent an atomic bomb. It succeeded. On August 6, 1945,
America detonated the first nuclear weapon used in warfare and annihilated tens
of thousands of the inhabitants of Hiroshima, Japan. Nagasaki was targeted
three days later. Reverberations of these calamitous events continue to
resound and haunt human imagination.
As a child
in the early eighties, my nightmares often involved either apocalyptic visions
of nuclear holocaust or the morbid landscapes of a nuclear winter.
19 At the tender age of eleven,
I stumbled upon a dog-eared copy of On the Beach
by Nevil Shute. 20
Written at the height of the Cold War, the novel examines the aftermath of a
nuclear engagement on three continents in the Northern Hemisphere. Skillfully,
Shute tells the stories of doomed Southern Hemisphere survivors awaiting radioactive
winds in Melbourne, Australia. During the brief weeks and days left of
the characters’ lives, I became less of a child. In their stirring
tales of acceptance or lack thereof, I discovered terror and tragedy.
My alarm intensified when I learned that nearby Mountain Home Air Force Base
was on a list of probable Soviet strikes.
Is it odd for a twelve-year-old to desperately wish for a fallout shelter? My closet floor had a trap door. It led to the crawl space under the house, where ducts and pipes and wires snaked through cobwebs in three feet (1m) of filthy darkness. I kept cans of soup and an opener under the hefty door. Perhaps my emergency stash still sits to save the day. Regrettably, the threat of nuclear annihilation also endures, yet another lurking anxiety desolately suggesting that our plastic sacks shall outlast us all.
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When I reflect
on the final years of the Cold War, I am struck by the extreme fear the Soviet
Union and its peoples, about whom I knew almost nothing, inspired in me.
In my experience, many Americans’ understanding of either communist ideology
or reality is spotty, sometimes shockingly so. As I watched the televised
spectacle of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, my friend in patriotic fervor resolved
to enlist in the Marine Corps so that he could “kill those commies.”
He fulfilled his pledge, though not in time to serve in Iraq, a nation more
commonly associated with dictatorship and petroleum than communism. The
literary Noble Laureate, John Steinbeck and Robert Capa, a distinguished combat
photographer, encountered similar incognizance in 1948, when they teamed up
to document the life of ordinary people in the Soviet Union. In A
Russian Journal, Steinbeck describes peoples’ reactions the moment
they learned of the duo’s intentions:
We were smothered in advice. We were told the food to take, otherwise we would starve; what lines of communications to leave open; secret methods of getting our stuff out. And the hardest thing in the world to explain was that all we wanted to do was to report what the Russian people were like and what they wore, and how the acted, what the farmers talked about, and what they were doing about rebuilding the destroyed parts of their country. This was the hardest thing in the world to explain. We found that thousands of people were suffering from acute Moscowitis—a state which permits the belief of any absurdity and the shoving away of any facts. Eventually, of course, we found that the Russians are suffering from Washingtonitis, the same disease. We discovered that just as we are growing horns and tails on the Russians, so the Russians are growing horns and tails on us. 21
The year before
Steinbeck and Capa’s journey, President Harry Truman committed US support
to nations resisting communist aggression. Aimed at halting Soviet expansion
in Europe and the Middle East, the Truman Doctrine gave rise to the “containment”
policies of the Cold War. Both the Soviet and American publics were repeatedly
told of the need for perpetual preparedness for war with one another.
Human rights advocate and scholar of international law, Richard Falk argues
that:
From 1947 onward, the country [US] was mobilized for war despite the absence of combat. It became a permanent condition in which an enormous military establishment became a normal ingredient of government, and tied in a pervasive way to a network of powerful corporations and to the grass roots via the labor market. 22
With 5.1 million
employees in 2001, the Pentagon is today the leading employer in the US.
23 In turn, the American government purchases the most weaponry on the planet.
24 American defense industries
also top export lists, at times arming both sides in regional conflicts.
25 In the world’s largest
arms market, the Middle East, American firms have in the past aggressively pursued
weapons sales to Israel and its neighbors to “maintain or gain influence.”
26 The sums involved in these
transactions within and between countries make a mockery of government claims
of “no more money” for sustainable development and poverty reduction
programs. 27
Roosevelt’s Arsenal of Democracy has evolved into Eisenhower’s “military-industrial
complex” a phrase coined by the president when he saliently warned:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic process. 28
With Eisenhower’s caveat in mind, I suggest that when a nation spends approximately half of every discretionary dollar on its military, and yet only six cents to teach its children and a meager four cents on health care, evaluations of both the nation’s democratic process and the people’s priorities are in order. 29
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A geography
junky from an early age, I have frequently observed an American blind spot:
our unfamiliarity with the “others” of the world. In 1988, a
year before I graduated from high school, the National Geographic Society conducted
a groundbreaking study. 30
Investigators compared the geographic skills of 18 to 24-year-olds in ten countries,
including the United States. The report overwhelmingly documented the
long-lampooned, ugly Americans’ ignorance of the globe and ignorance indeed
of their own country. 31
In a 2002 follow up study, commissioned by the National Geographic Education
Foundation, RoperASW interviewed 3,250 young adults in nine countries and found
little had changed during the intervening 14 years. 32
Today however,
our lack of earthly knowledge appears more ominous. Though completed after
September 11, 2001 and the onset of the war on terror, the survey found that,
“While the majority of young Americans (58%) knew that the Taliban and
al Qaeda are based in Afghanistan, they were the least likely of all young adults
surveyed to get this question correct. Moreover, just 17% could find Afghanistan
on a world map.” 33
It follows that most of my fellow countrymen are also oblivious of the nature
and scope of much of their government’s foreign policy throughout the world.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many of the rest of the world’s
citizens.
As a youth,
I was not alone in believing that most people of the world envisioned my country
as heroic liberators of WWII Europe and as nothing else. Little in the
public arena contradicted this impression. Mainstream media rarely discussed
other nations, and when it did, it did so in terms of their relationship with
the US rather than in their own right. Decades of neglect have created
millions of Americans who experience difficulty when identifying countries on
a map, and who possess only a vague sense of world history. Ariel Dorfman,
who at age 12 moved from Manhattan to Chile, describes this obliviousness while
writing about an afternoon spent over two decades later with an inconsiderate
American family:
Absurd, perhaps, to think this now, but they symbolized to me the many ways in which the US had dominated Latin America: its ownership of mines and fields and banks and ships, its proconsuls in Mexico and Buenos Aires and Bogotá, its invasions of Nicaragua and Cuba and Guatemala, its training of torturers, its coups in Brazil and Bolivia and Honduras, its barely concealed idea that the only thing Latin Americans understood was a kick in the pants; and also, of course, as for all my generation, the horror of Vietnam. But what was most irritating about Americans—to me, who had been one, who had been just as unconscious and insensitive in my own day—was their blind innocence, their inability to grasp how their intrusive bodies and loud mouths and naive incomprehension grated on the world. Their professed unconcern—‘What? Me Worry?’—about what was done in their name seemed to me more outrageous than the deeds themselves. 34
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Like many young Americans, I was aware of only three outrageous deeds: the slaughter of Native Peoples, Slavery, and the Vietnam War. This conflict swept away fathers and uncles of my generation, returning them—if at all—shell-shocked and damaged, sometimes irreparably so.
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On the evening
of September 30, 1965, a group of leftist army officers kidnapped and murdered
six generals. They dumped the bodies in an unused well on the outskirts
of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. The army, led by General Suharto,
claimed unconvincingly that the attempted coup had been carried out solely by
the Communist Party. 35
Army papers published statements by members of women’s organizations—young
girls—who “confessed” to castrating the generals. The women
were never brought to trial and most, after spending years in prison, retracted
their coerced testimony. 36
The army also supplied, trained, and encouraged vigilante gangs to slaughter
hundreds of thousands of party members in retaliation. Headless and disemboweled
corpses clogged rivers for miles. In many cases the army itself herded
entire families into trucks; vehicles departed fully loaded and returned empty.
37 The US Central Intelligence
Agency described the carnage thus:
In terms of numbers killed, the anti-PKI [Indonesian Communist Party] massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s. In this regard, the Indonesian coup is certainly one of the significant events of the 20th century, far more significant than many other events that have received much greater publicity. 38
Among the unpublicized dead lay village chiefs, labor leaders, teachers, and children.
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By delaying
the release of documents from the months surrounding the Indonesian coup, the
United States government has fed decades of speculation about American involvement.
39 In 1990, after interviewing
retired officials, investigative journalist Kathy Kadane reported that lists
of names compiled by US intelligence officers facilitated the military’s
decapitation of the Communist Party as a political force.
40 Having already equipped much of
Suharto’s army, Washington secretly provided his generals with a field
communications network, thereby assisting in the co-ordination of the killings.
41
Indonesian
histories often fail to mention the massacres and instead focus on Suharto’s
“rescue” of the archipelago from bloodthirsty communists.
42 Each year on the anniversary
of the coup, state-run television aired a graphic staging of the generals’
murders at the hands of crazed communist women. 43
Inculcated with propaganda, Indonesian students are thoroughly versed in Suharto’s
account of events—in fact too versed. I discovered this in the late
nineties while teaching English on Java, Indonesia’s most densely populated
island. During an advanced class, I led students through an activity that
called for everyone to listen to two classmates discuss a secret topic.
The brave souls who began the conversation were not allowed to mention the topic
by name. When other students correctly guessed the secret subject they
joined in. Two dates, August 17, 1945 (the end of Dutch colonial rule)
and September 30, 1965 (Suharto’s ascendancy) bounced around the room,
and were amply peppered with the adjectives dull, boring, and awful. Finding
common ground, my diverse, and often contrarily opinionated, students unanimously
loathed their Indonesian “history” lessons. Though careful not
to publicly equate their textbooks with propaganda, an unwise action anytime
during the decades-long dictatorship, they clearly saw through their government’s
over-the-top sell job.
For the most
part, the West greeted the butchery with enthusiastic aplomb. Excited
about new economic opportunities spawned by the violent transfer of power, Time
proclaimed the killing spree to be, “the West’s best news for years
in Asia.” 44
Contemplating the country’s tropical hardwood forests, mountains of minerals,
and petroleum, Vice President Richard Nixon remarked that with its “3,000-mile
arc of islands containing the region’s richest hoard of natural resources,
Indonesia constitutes by far the greatest prize in the Southeast Asia area.”
45 In late 1967, the Time-Life
Corporation sponsored a conference to aid in the rebuilding of the convulsed
nation. 46
After analyzing the conference papers, Jeffery Winters concluded participants
parceled out the Indonesian economy by sector:
They divided up into five different sections: mining in one room, services in another, light industry in another, banking and finance in another; and what Chase Manhattan did was sit with a delegation and hammer out policies that were going to be acceptable to them and other investors. You had these big corporate people going around the table, saying this is what we need: this, this and this, and they basically designed the legal infrastructure for investment in Indonesia. I’ve never heard of a situation like this where global capital sits down with the representatives of a supposedly sovereign state and hammers out the condition of their own entry into that country. 47
Thus commenced
the much touted Asian economic miracle. Infant mortality rates, life expectancies,
literacy levels, and living standards improved over the ensuing decades.
However, these gains pale when compared to the opulence generated for a select
few in the country. Suharto extended a “rich tradition of corruption,
nepotism, smuggling and patronage” to the benefit of his family and friends.
48 So pervasive is crony capitalism,
that the American Embassy in Jakarta has warned investors of the “irregular
fees” associated with all enterprise. 49
Recently, my
passport expired. Before applying for its replacement, I thumbed through
its crumpled pages, reminiscing about the places the battered document had taken
me. During my 15 months in Bandung, the capital of West Java, my passport
accrued 14 full-page stamps, each indicating the payment of a hefty bribe.
Fortunately, the University employed a retired army officer to maintain the
patronage needed to furnish international faculty with requisite visas and work
permits. Always a harried man, he ran off with our passports for months
at a time. Each form he lodged and every low-level immigration authority
he spoke with required a payoff.
In Indonesia,
as in many developing nations, insidious corruption is linked to labor suppression.
A leading human rights advocate, Indera Nabasan, described a typical operation
in the shoe and garment industry: “You hire three Koreans to run the factory
and then you hire generals for the board of directors and they provide protection
for the business. If a labor inspector ever files a complaint, the company just
tells the guardian and he calls the government and says: ‘This is mine.’”
50 William Greider, a Washington-based
journalist who has reported for newspapers, magazines, and television for over
40 years, argues:
The suppression of labor was vital to the functioning of Indonesia’s economic system, not mainly to counter global wage competition since Indonesian labor was already cheaper than most, but because the depressed wages provided a way to compensate firms for the heavy costs of corruption—the bribes they paid to the bureaucracy, the profits they had to share with local military and business elites. 51
During my short
stay, the government shut down Tempo, the nation’s
most respected current affairs magazine, and the military broke up wildcat strikes
organized by workers outrageously demanding employers pay the legal minimum
wage. Suharto’s long reign was not exactly the “best news”
for the majority of Indonesia’s 200 million citizens.
Issued on the bicentennial anniversary of the US Consular Service, the last page of my passport explains that the special edition (its cover is green, instead of blue) honors Benjamin Franklin, “perhaps our most distinguished early diplomat.” In his long and productive life, he once counseled, “Commerce among nations should be fair and equitable.” 52 Though this most American of dictates would suggest hope for trade policies aimed at improving the lives of those subsisting on “starvation wages,” sadly, this is not so. 53 Until consumers insist upon equity and social justice, corrupt governments and unscrupulous corporations will continue to exploit the planet’s poorest people. In his long poem, “An Explanation of America,” US Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky attempts to reconcile the country’s inconsistencies and contradictions. Writing to his daughter, he asks:
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“…a
long petal of sea, wine and snow.” —Pablo Neruda
55
Not long ago,
I stood transfixed, admiring the library of Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Laureate
who so tenderly described his nation. His fanciful Santiago home had miraculously
survived the 17-year dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. During
the first days of Pinochet’s ruthless regime, troops harassed the elderly
and ill Neruda in what were to be the poet’s final days.
Later that
week, I stood horrified at the cobblestone entrance of a tired, boarded up,
castle of a building. Each day, unaware of its history, I’d ventured
past its awkwardly tragic edifice. At an exhibition of photographs the
previous evening, I’d examined the heartless building in detail.
While peering at the pictures’ windows, I failed to recognize the lonely
peeling planks. But now, next to its chillingly abandoned old-world masonry,
I realized that hundreds of Pinochet’s victims had breathed their last
behind its rotting boards. Taken by surviving family, the photos of the
places their loved ones had last been seen alive, indicted the dark structure.
On the morning
of September 11, 1973, fighter jets under the command of general Augusto Pinochet
bombed another building, La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace.
56 Chile’s democratically
elected president, Salvadore Allende, did not survive the assault.
57 Allende, a Marxist, would
not be tolerated. Previously, President Richard Nixon had directed the
CIA to “make the economy scream” in Chile “to prevent Allende
from coming to power or to unseat him.” 58
The US government provided military advice and persuaded American businesses
to withdraw from the country. 59
Estimates of civilian deaths during the September military onslaught and ensuing
years range between 3,000 and 20,000. Thousands more were imprisoned and
tortured, or fled into exile. 60
Over the next four months, I met many Chileans with family members who had “moved” overseas in 1973 or shortly after. Twenty-eight years later to the day, Americans glimpsed the terror that they and much of the world have known for decades.
Made in a Hong
Kong factory famous for its lack of stringent quality control, every Holga 120
has personality. The cameras’ flawed plastic lenses uniquely distort
light passing through them. Some have slower shutter speeds, others peculiar
light leaks. Snippets of tape cover the leaks in my Holga’s faux-leather,
plastic body. Blue rubber bands prevent the back from sporadically popping
off and thin cardboard wedged under the film spool keeps the film taut enough
to wind properly.
I can hear
my father asking, “Honey, what would anyone want a camera like that for?”
I’d describe the Holga’s signature, with its vignetting and edge distortion
that surrounds the image with a dark dreamy frame. Then I’d mention
its low price and, he’d accept that.
I wish I’d
had a Holga the night I tired to capture the tormented soul of that cold Santiago
building. It would have better suited the surreal twilight, as horse carts
clattered and office workers fumbling with car keys scurried past, their expressions
of discomfort inadvertently registered on my film.
A few years later, I used the Holga to inject these feelings of loss and disorientation into several images in Invisible Hands. The first such image, La Moneda, depicts footage of the presidential palace. Missile strikes have set it ablaze, and acrid smoke obscures the sky. The Holga’s distortions begin to suggest the spine chilling terror conceived in the rubble and ash of that September morning, while traces of the blurred screen remind the viewer that these events were once witnessed and then ignored. The image obliquely enquires, “Will you too quietly forget?”
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On December
7, 1975, Indonesian troops invaded East Timor. 61
The day before the attack, US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger met with Suharto in Jakarta. The pending invasion was discussed
and quietly approved. 62
At least 200,000 East Timorese—one in three—died.
63 At one point the children
of 20 randomly selected women were torn out of their mother’s arms.
Soldiers then led the women to the edge of a jetty and shot them one at a time.
A crowd of terrified onlookers was forced at gunpoint to count out loud as each
woman fell. 64
Suharto’s soldiers often displayed their trophies: the severed heads of
their victims. 65
Indonesian portrayals of the Timorese resistance as “communist” succeeded in alarming the US, then wrapping up its withdrawal from Vietnam. 66 Washington also harbored a greater strategic reason for siding with Jakarta: American submarines used the region’s deepwater straights to travel undetected between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. US officials were reluctant to renegotiate this privilege with an independent East Timor. 67 In economic terms, the territory was of little significance next to the “prize” of Indonesia. A State Department official explained, “We regard Indonesia as a friendly, non-aligned nation—a nation we do a lot of business with.” 68
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Twenty-five cruise missiles struck a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on August 20, 1998. President Bill Clinton ordered the assault remarking, “There will be no sanctuary for terrorists.” 69 The American government contends that the factory produced a chemical agent used to manufacture nerve gas. While this assertion has yet to be proven, it is known that the Al-Shifa factory supplied 50% of Sudan's medicines, including all of its chloroquine, the standard treatment for malaria. In a nation with endemic malaria, this led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Malaria most threatens pregnant women and children. 70 When will humanity realize that pathogens, and not people, are our deadliest of foes?
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The deadliest
industrial fire in history occurred in Bangkok, Thailand on May 10, 1993.
74 Managers of the Kader Industrial
Toy Company had locked their factory’s main exit doors, trapping hundreds
of workers on the upper floors. Its narrow stairways quickly filled with
trampled bodies, or collapsed entirely. At least 188 people died, though
an exact toll is unknown as many others were incinerated in the inferno.
Of the identifiable remains, all but 14 were women, some as young as 13-years-old.
Almost all of the plastic playthings these adolescent children produced were
bound for the American market and into the hands of American children.
Until the Kader
tragedy, a conflagration at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in Lower Manhattan
had stood for over 90 years as the world’s worst industrial fire.
75 The deaths, under similar
circumstances, of 146 young immigrant women provoked public condemnation and
galvanized support for citizen reform movements. Many states passed laws
prohibiting sweatshops. Minimum wage laws discouraged the use of subcontractors
to circumvent the new standards. Unfortunately, the current trend of shifting
production to developing countries has fostered an “out of sight, out of
mind” attitude on the part of consuming nations. William Greider
describes this particular parochialism by pointing out that at the time of the
Kader fire:
Americans worried obsessively over the everyday safety of their children, and the U.S. government’s regulators diligently policed the design of toys to avoid injury to young innocents. Yet neither citizens nor government took any interest in the brutal and dangerous conditions imposed on the people who manufactured those same toys, many of whom were mere adolescent children themselves. 76
I look forward to a day when invisible hands in developed nations demand fair treatment for all workers, whether they live across town or across the globe.
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The seventies
were a decade dominated by a “bitter battle” between oil producers
and consumers over the commodity’s price. 78
A mere two-years-old in 1973, I have no memory of the first oil crisis, but
I do remember Iranian students storming the US embassy in 1979. Terry
Anderson, a math teacher from my hometown, was one of the hostages held by Iran’s
revolutionary government. The tragedy in Teheran spurred thousands of
panicked motorists into lengthy gas lines with their engines idling hours to
be refilled. Both oil shocks heightened the industrial world’s apprehensions
about energy independence. A skeptical public grudgingly resigned itself
to conservation measures. In hindsight we know that those modest efforts
significantly reduced consumption rates. Daniel Yergin remarks that, “Though
often dismissed or even ridiculed, conservation had turned out to have massive
impact. Energy conservation in modern industrial society meant, for the
most part, not deprivation, not ‘small is beautiful,’ but greater
efficiency and technological innovation.” 79
In fact, we
are surrounded by examples of reducing materials consumption by substituting
quality and innovation for energy and mass. In Natural
Capital: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, Paul Hawkin, Amory
Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins consider strategies currently employed to advance
resource productivity. They call attention to several tangible results:
aluminum cans are 40% lighter, yet deliver the same contents; the mass of European
yogurt containers has dropped a staggering 67%; and today’s Kodak film
canisters weigh 22% less than their predecessors. 80
Globally, we use ten times more wind energy than we did a decade ago, and solar
power production has risen sevenfold. 81
Besides saving homeowner dollars, resource efficient technologies contribute
to quieter, more comfortable living spaces. For evidence, one need look
no further than the Bush family’s “green” house in Crawford,
Texas:
George W. and Laura Bush's dream home is built of a BTU-efficient, honey-toned native limestone quarried from the nearby Edwards Limestone Formation. The passive-solar house is positioned to absorb winter sunlight, warming the interior walkways and walls. Underground water, which remains a constant 55 degrees [13°C] year-round, is piped through a heat exchange system that keeps the interior warm in winter and cool in summer. A graywater reclamation system treats and reuses waste water. Rain gutters feed a cistern hooked to a sprinkler system for watering the fruit orchard and grass. 82
Today entrepreneurial
energy service companies make money by increasing efficiencies in existing commercial
buildings. Charging nothing up front, they devise and implement infrastructure
improvements, accepting as payment a percentage of the savings garnered by smarter
designs and cleaner technologies. 83
Hybrid electric vehicles have finally entered the market, and some industries
have taken tentative steps toward closing manufacturing loops, with about half
of the world’s lead and a third of its gold, steel, and aluminum coming
from recycled sources. 84
These developments encourage me, and as I believe humanity has reached a watershed in history, I am optimistic. Seedlings of hope now germinate in the ashes of imperialism, because for the first time, a majority of the peoples of the world are aware of one another’s presence. While many of us have yet to exhibit concern for every person on the planet, our universal reliance on the Earth’s environment for the provision of air, water, sustenance, and shelter will continually remind us of our commonalities. At the same time, we are learning to use, in a myriad of ways, our invisible hands to seek a more just and sustainable future.
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“Plastic Shrapnel: Vietnam 1972” is a distorted re-shoot of an x-ray of a human face. Imagery for “Communist Liquidation: Indonesia 1965 – 66” of mother and child under guard and awaiting departure, from the documentary The New Rulers of the World: A Special Report, narr. John Pilger, episode of Cutting Edge, SBS Television [Australia], 22 Aug. 2001. Imagery for “La Moneda: Chile 1973” from The Battle of Chile: the Struggle of an Unarmed People, dir. Patricio Guzmán, First Run/Icarus Films, part 1 1975. Imagery of decapitated East Timorese from Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy, dirs. John Pilger and David Munro, Central Independent Television, 1994. Imagery of blood cells infected with malaria from “The Trouble with Malaria,” episode of The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, Canadian Broadcasting Company, 1998.
1.
For a description of the energy cycle and an examination of its importance to
all life forms, see Janine Benyus, Biomimicry: Innovation
Inspired by Nature (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1997)
59-62. back
2.
For a compelling investigation of biological diversity, consult Edward O. Wilson,
The Diversity of Life, 2nd ed. (New York: W.
W. Norton & Co., 1999). back
3.
For a description of petroleum in the ancient world see Daniel Yergin, The
Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (Carmichael US: Touchstone
Books, 1993) 23-4. back
4.
Yergin, The Prize 168. back
5.
Much of my summary of the First Battle of the Marne relies on Yergin’s
vivid account in The Prize 167-170. back
6.
Yergin, The Prize 169. back
7.
Rivaling Saudi Arabia, the oil and gas of the Caspian region remain the world’s
largest untapped reserves, and continue to influence strategic thinking.
A recent report by Lutz Kleveman examines the impact recent oil booms have had
on the former Soviet republics that ring the Caspian Sea, and assesses the implications
for US foreign policy. See Lutz Kleveman, Interview with Barbara Bogaev,
“Journalist Lutz Kleveman” Fresh Air,
Natl. Public Radio, 12 Nov. 2003. back
8.
Yergin, The Prize 182. back
9.
Quoted in Tariq Ali, The Clash of Fundamentalisms:
Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (London: Verso, 2002) 262. back
10.
Yergin, The Prize 793. back
11.
Somaliland refers to modern day northern Somalia. back
12.
Northern Indochina refers to parts of present day Laos and Vietnam. back
13.
Quoted in Yergin The Prize 335. back
14.
The Netherlands Indies or the Dutch East Indies encompassed present day Indonesia.
back
15.
My discussion of the German synthetic fuels industry and its destruction is
based on Yergin, The Prize 344-7. back
16.
Quoted in Yergin The Prize 345-6. back
17.
Quoted in Yergin The Prize 702. back
18.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigations warned of oil tanker attacks in June
2002, citing an assault in Tunisia. See Steve Inskeep, “FBI Tanker
Truck Warning,” All Things Considered,
Natl. Public Radio, 21 June 2002. Source of information regarding America’s
military presence, John Pilger, “What Good Friends Left Behind,” Age-Good
Weekend [Melbourne] 18 Oct. 2003: 38. For an interesting look at
the interrelatedness of the toy and defense industries see William Hamilton,
“Toying with War,” Age [Melbourne]
4 May 2003: 8. back
19.
For a lucid description of nuclear winter see Richard P. Turco, Owen B. Toon,
Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack and Carl Sagan, “The Climactic Effects
of Nuclear War,” Scientific American Aug
1984: 23-33. back
20.
Nevil Shute, On the Beach (London: Heineman,
1957). back
21.
John Steinbeck, “A Russian Journal,” ed. Jane M. Rabb, Literature
and Photography Interactions, 1840-1990: A Critical Anthology (Albuquerque:
U of New Mexico P, 1995) 348-9. back
22.
Richard Falk, “The Terrorist foundations of Recent US Foreign Policy,”
Western State Terrorism, ed. Alexander George
(Cornwall: Polity P, 1991) 114. back
23.
Helen Caldicott, The New Nuclear Danger: George W.
Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex (Melbourne: Scribe Publications,
2002) 185. back
24.
Present at the Creation: A Survey of America’s
World Role, Spec. issue of Economist,
363.8279 (29 June 2002): 8. back
25.
For export rankings see United States, Dept. of State, Bureau of Verification
and Compliance, World Military Expenditures and Arms
Transfers 1999–2000 (Washington: GPO, 2002). Caldicott discuses
arming all sides in New Nuclear Danger 41.
back
26.
Yergin, The Prize 634. back
27.
The Real World Coalition, From Here to Sustainability:
Politics in the Real World, Ian Christie and Diane Warburton writs. and
eds. (London: Earthscan Publications ltd., 2001) 159. back
28.
Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address quoted in Ali, 226. back
29.
For a discretionary budget break down consult Randy Shaw, Reclaiming
America: Nike, Clean Air, and the New National Activism (Berkeley: U
of California P, 1999) 184. See also Caldicott, 185. back
30.
RoperASW, “National Geographic - Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy
Survey,” c510007671, Nov. 2002: 1, accessed 12 Dec. 2002, <www.nationalgeographic.com/
geosurvey/download/RoperSurvey.pdf>. back
31.
For a comprehensive essay examining the history of the ugly American stereotype
in Europe see Simon Schama, “The Unloved American,” Age
Review [Melbourne] 21 June 2003: 1+ [originally published in New
Yorker]. back
32.
Countries surveyed include: Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico,
Sweden, and the US. RoperASW, 2. back
33.
RoperASW, 4. back
