From Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence:

“In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military ‘advisors’ in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.’

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ‘This is not just.’ The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.”

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967.

Search and replace “napalm” with “depleted uranium”, “Communism” with “terrorism”, “the seating of Red China in the United Nations” with “withdrawing from Iraq.”

A doctor in St. Louis is improving public health with customized graphic design.

From the BBC:

“A scheme which hands out a personalised calendar complete with pictures of your child is boosting vaccination rates in the US.

In St. Louis, where as few as a quarter of eligible children get all their [shots], uptake rose by 50% on average.

The calendars have key dates ringed so that parents find it easy to work out when to visit the doctor....

There are a plethora of different vaccinations offered to babies in their first two years of life, and the confusing sequence sometimes means that [shots] are missed.

St. Louis physician Dr. Matthew Kreuter came up with the idea of generating immunisation reminders tailored for each baby by computer.

To ensure that parents hung on to these calendars, they included a high quality image of their baby - as many patients in deprived inner-city St. Louis cannot afford to have professional photographs taken.

After one year, 82% of the ‘calendar babies’ were up to date with their immunisations — compared with 65% of children that did not receive calendars.

After two years, two-thirds of those with calendars were up to date, compared with 47% of those without....

Dr Kreuter said: ‘Getting babies immunised is very important for families and the community.

‘But it’s also difficult for many parents because of challenges with transportation, busy work schedules and finding childcare for other children.

‘We want to reward their efforts with this unique reminder to keep them coming back over time.’

Every time a child attends an immunisation session, the photograph is updated with a new one - so at the end of the process, the parents will have a varied selection of good quality photographs.

The whole process costs the public health system approximately $1,200 per child, but Dr Kreuter says this is worthwhile.”

Dr. Kreuter is the Director of the Health Communication Research Laboratory at St. Louis University. The program strives to “enhance the health of individuals and populations through the research, development, and dissemination of innovative and effective health communication programs.”

Dr. Kreuter has conducted extensive research in tailored communication, using new technologies to produce customized information for patients, both online and offline.

Ten years ago, on January 1, 1994, a primarily indigenous rebel group, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), declared war on the Mexican government. It was the same day NAFTA went into effect.

From a brief history of the Zapatistas:

“The systematic brutalization of indigenous communities and the tight control of the political machinery that allowed for no democratic openings constitute the conditions against which the Zapatistas organized. NAFTA is a key factor, since it sells off Mexican sovereignty and further erodes the autonomy of indigenous communities. The institution of NAFTA was preceded by the repeal of Article 27 of the Mexican constitution, which protected communal land holdings from privatization, part of the victory of land reforms of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The Zapatistas have insisted that the further privatization of land means the death of indigenous cultures that are centrally determined by a collective relation to the land....

A key component of the Zapatistas’ uniqueness is that from the very beginning they have refused a vanguard role, calling out to different sectors of Mexican civil society to take up the struggle in their own ways.”

In February 2001, members of the EZLN began a march to Mexico City. The caravan included some of the oldest Zapatistas in the country who fought alongside of Emiliano Zapata at the beginning of the 20th century. Along the way they participated in the Third National Indigenous Congress with representatives of 40 of the 56 ethnic groups that live in Mexico. By the time the caravan reached Mexico City, it had grown to include several thousands of participants. [more]

While representatives of the EZLN addressed the Mexican Congress, in the streets, two groups of Mexican designers, Fuera de Registro and La Corriente Electrica postered the city in solidarity.

The posters were also distributed by email with the following statement:

“The EZLN has arrived to Mexico City.

To welcome them, to support the indigenous people claims, to demand peace with justice and dignity, we have produced these images. Help us to distribute them. Use, share, print the images. We need every one’s help to demand the Mexican Government the following conditions to re-initiate the peace negotiatons with the EZLN.

1. Constitutional recognition of the San Andres Agreements about Indigenous Rights and Culture.
2. Freedom to all the zapatista prisoners.
3. Withdrawal of the Mexican Army of the Chiapas Heights.

Mexico DF, March 2001.
Fuera de Registro, La Corriente Electrica.”

Rene Wanner has posted some images of the posters on his page, Zapata vive ! Mexican posters for peace in Chiapas.

“Fuera de Registro” is a pun which means “off register” in printing, as well as a person who can not vote because they are not registered.

Chiapas Indymedia has produced an audio documentary on ten years of Zapatismo.