External Review Discussion Board
Additions to External Review Services
Two of the services PJSA would like to offer are, first, a stock "state of the discipline" summary that programs can download into their own external review documents. This will save individual programs a great deal of research, effort and time. This will be updated annual by the PJSA board member charged with overseeing the external review facility. The second service PJSA will provide is a list of people who can serve as external reviews. Please provide your ideas or reflections on what services should be added to the PJSA external review service.View Comments (1) Post Comment
Reflections on Developing Standards
Evaluation raises the issue of a discipline's standards which is a delicate subject because it inevitably moves a discipline in the direction of establishing a canon. This is not something all justice and peace scholars want to see happen. In an effort to make sure that movement in this direction does not stifle new thinking or create an "in" and an "out" crowd, participants in the workshop discussed this issue at length and concluded that each academic discipline thinks about standards in its own way. At one end of the spectrum is the very structured approach taken by law and medical schools. At the other end is a much looser approached used in the field of medical ethics and philosophy. There was consensus that peace and justice studies should adopt the second approach (with perhaps an additional set of criteria for programs which also specialize in conflict resolution for the purposes of certification). It was further suggested that this looser approach might be furthered by developing a "self study template" that justice and peace studies programs could use to generate thoughtful discussion in advance of inviting an external reviewer to visit. Such a template could be framed in very different ways. [list]Some possibilities include: [*]1) a set of core competencies that all programs should have [*]2) a set of core competencies all graduates of such programs should have [*]3) a definition of key questions programs should address [*]4) a definition of core problems (of violence and injustice, etc.) that all programs see as their object of study [*]5) a list of "best practices" [*]6) a list of key actors and theorists [/list] Please respond to this thread with your ideas about which approach (or combination of approaches) to developing standards is most attractive and why? Are there other possible approaches to developing standards?View Comments (0) Post Comment
Scholarship on Program Review
Please provide titles of studies and readings that help to address these issues.View Comments (0) Post Comment
Connections with Other Organizations
Please provide your ideas about the links between PJSA, USIP and ACR.View Comments (0) Post Comment
Other Ideas
Any other other good ideas or references!!??View Comments (0) Post Comment
Announcing a new blog for PJSA!
Dear members, We are excited to launch a new service for our members. This blog will be viewable to anyone visiting the PJSA website, but only members will be permitted to post threads, replies and comments. We hope this resource is useful. Please feel free to contact us if there are any problems or if you have any ideas about how we might improve upon this platform in the future. Best Wishes, Amy Shuster PJSA Webmanager Assistant Professor of Political Science University of Minnesota DuluthView Comments (2) Post Comment
Student occupations at UC
BERKELEY, CA (11/20/09) -- Students occupied Wheeler Hall on the University of California campus in Berkeley, protesting a decision by university regents to raise fees (the equivalent of tuition) by 32%, bringing them to $10,302 per year for undergraduates. At the beginning of the occupation the students made several demands, including the rehire of 38 laid off custodial workers, and amnesty for protesting students. The hall was surrounded by hundreds of supporting students, faculty, campus workers, and community members. The day before the occupation, two university unions -- the University Professional and Technical Employees and the Coalition of University Employees -- together with students and members of campus faculty mounted a campus-wide strike. After a day of occupation, students voluntarily left the building, and were cited for misdemeanor trespass. On other campuses, including at Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and Davis, students also occupied buildings and in some cases were arrested. Puck Lo, a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and one of those occupying Wheeler Hall, told the LA Times that the protests were taking place during a period in which students also had to study for coming final exams. "This strike is really inconvenient," she said. "But this seems the honorable thing to do for future students." http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Occupation-Movement-Sweeps/8942/ http://www.fightbacknews.org/2009/11/21/student-struggles-continue-across-californiaView Comments (0) Post Comment
public option writ larger
As we spiral downward in our 'jobless recovery' featuring more millions without health care (thanks to losing their jobs, which is where most Americans get health care coverage) and more home foreclosures (again, thanks to lost jobs) and more than one in ten Americans out of work, we seem bereft of creative thinking. In the spirit of heading out of the box, I'd propose that we need to expand (rather than retreat from) the notion of public option. Smarter people than I always improve on any ideas I have, so I only offer this as a notion, not a Big Plan. It seems to me it's time to finally think as big as FDR did when confronted with a deep depression. I think it's time to develop a full public option for employment, one that is linked in all cases to full health care coverage and is linked in many cases to housing as a benefit. If, for example, anyone out of work could sign up for a low-paying job doing the many public works that we need, and if that person knew that in all cases full health care coverage would be a part of this low-paying job, that would take most of the sting out of the health care coverage debate. If many of those low-paying jobs included housing, even rudimentary shelter, and if many of those jobs were part of building those simple and functional shelters, we might approach the minimal level of functionality any ethical society would seem to desire. This would not obviate the other services available to low-income people, such as food stamps, but putting people to work is better than forcing them out of homes into the street as we see in every town in the US right now. When the numbers of homeless nearly double in a year, when we waste $millions daily on occupations of others' lands, when scores of millions are without health care coverage, when we maintain thousands of nuclear weapons ready to wreck the world--it is time for radical action and past the point of lingering and waiting for our 'leaders' to emerge as a functional and responsive democracy. I teach several undergraduate courses each term and assign group presentations that are hypothetical campaigns. I have never had so many groups show such militance about radical change, starting with free higher education. These students are starting from where it hurts the most, just as more and more Americans are, and we will see the results. The civic engagement work I do is with homeless groups and I can tell you they are growing in sheer numbers, in sophisticated analysis, and determination to see change.View Comments (1) Post Comment
Afghanistan
Afghanistan: What Would a Real Policy Look Like? Michael N. Nagler At a Washington meeting some years back Rep. Jim Moran of VA said to a group of us who had come to discuss Mideast policy, “All foreign policy is domestic politics.” The recently announced ‘surge’ of 30,000 additional troops for Afghanistan was designed to placate political pressures on the President, which, even if it were possible, is not the right way to formulate a policy. What would be? Shortly after 9/11 we got a letter from a friend of ours who was in western Pakistan helping Greg Mortenson, of Three Cups of Tea fame, build schools. People from the village streamed in to express their condolences, and the local mullah came hastily back from a long trip to assure my friend that ‘this is not Islam.’ I remember commenting during a lecture shortly thereafter that the people in that part of the world seem to resemble human beings: if you build schools for them, they like and respect you; if you bomb their schools and homes with drone rockets…well, you take it from there. I have friends who advocate pulling our combat forces out of the region, period; but while I completely understand their feelings there seem to me to be two things against that policy. It would send a message that the United States is capable of doing great harm but not capable of doing good, which is not true as I will be outlining in a moment. Second, if we go about it in the right way we can help repair the damage we’ve been partly responsible for causing and help that country find its way to a stable solution, and if we can, we should. I am not arguing from guilt here: I follow the moral reasoning laid out by Roger Fisher of the Harvard Negotiation project some years ago (and many others down the years, of course), that the obligation to help others arises not from any prior harm we may have done them but simply because we have the capacity to do so. We are human beings, after all — do we need special reasons to help others when we have the capacity to do so? What can we as a nation do, then, to help Afghanistan instead of following this mad policy of throwing gasoline on the fire? Fortunately, there are many ways — as long as we know where to look. There are methods that have worked around the world, though the mainstream media are remarkably slow to notice them and hence they remain off the margins of public awareness, including the awareness, to all appearances, of policymakers. The mechanisms I’m about to list (and I’m sure there are others) assume that we completely halt aggressive military action in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and start a steady build-down of military forces there. Ideally, we would phase military forces out as we phase the following non-military alternatives in that render them unneccesary. And there are two ground rules, both gained by much practical experience in non-military intervention over the last thirty or so years: 1) Don’t go it alone. This is not America’s problem, it’s the world’s problem, and the world’s people must be involved in solving it. Virtually all the successful intervention teams of the type I’m about to mention have been multinational. 2) Don’t do it uninvited. The term “peace imperialism” has been coined in the field of peace studies for the idea that we can parachute in and bring peace somewhere without local invitation and cooperation. Afghanistan today is not a unified country. If the Karzai government is unwilling to issue an invitation to civil-society groups to come and help them elements within Afghan society would most certainly do so. Here, then, is the scheme: • Rebuild Afghanistan through micro-lending. It’s much harder for corrupt warlords, or politicians, to make off with small, dispersed loans than highly concentrated, government-to-government ones. As Rebecca Griffin, of Peace Action West has recently put it, “Right now in Afghanistan, military officers walk around with pocket money to throw at poorly developed aid projects because we don't have enough trained civilians to do the work. Contractors are pocketing millions of dollars through fraud and waste. It's time to stop paying lip service to development while bombing communities.” Micro-lending is working very well all over the world. • Offer two kinds of peace-building services: 1) the intervention of trained nonviolent civilian teams such as are in the field today in Sri Lanka, Mindinao, Colombia, Southern Sudan, and a dozen or so other places thanks to organizations like the Nonviolent Peaceforce, Peace Brigades International, the German Civilian Peace Service (Zivile Friedensdienst). 2) Mediation groups, again civil society, like Johan Galtung’s TRANSCEND or the Washington-based Search for Common Ground. Like everything else I will be listing here, these organizations have inspiring track records of success. • Offer to send teachers, agricultural experts, carpenters, medical personnel and whatever Afghanis say they need. There are thousands of volunteers ready to go in all of these fields: only make sure they get some training in cultural sensitivity, and make sure they understand that they are going where no one can guarantee their safety. By and large, aid workers are much safer than soldiers, but in these violent times they are not safe completely and it will be crucial that the volunteers understand this. Who will pay for all this? We will. A soldier costs a million dollars a year; a highly trained field team member from Nonviolent Peaceforce costs $50,000. (Not to mention that the unarmed civilian type of intervention actually works). Advocates of force often throw up their hands and say, ‘we have no choice.’ But we always have a choice. If we paid poor farmers in Colombia so that they did not have to grow Coca to survive, they doubtless would — but instead we pay twenty times more to eradicate their crops (and cause much additional damage). The cost for each year that we maintain one soldier in Afghanistan is twenty times greater than the cost of building a school. And, as mentioned, twenty times greater than the cost of an unarmed civilian peacekeeper. Why are we still paying for death?View Comments (1) Post Comment
Nobel Speech? C-
If, a week ago, one of my Intro to Peace Studies students had handed in the very speech given by President Obama in Norway, I would have given that student a C-. What? He is charismatic, eloquent, measured, brilliant-how can a peace studies professor be so cynical, so arrogant, so hyperbolic? Because. Because he cited Gandhi as an influence then attempted to repudiate Gandhi. He cited Dr. King as not merely an influence but as sine qua non to his, Obama's, very presidency-and then called King's methods unworkable for a head of state. Because he said, "A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies." Any good student in my field would be on Full Factoid Alert upon hearing that. In fact, where nonviolence was attempted against the Nazis it succeeded. Ask the Norwegian teachers, the brave exemplars of nonviolent resistance to Quisling's Hitlerism. Some of those teachers perished in Arctic prison camps rather than teach Nazism and Vidkun Quisling eventually blamed those teachers for his failure to change Norwegian culture. Ask the non-Jewish wives of Jewish men whose husbands were rounded up into a prison on the Rosenstrausse, just four blocks from SS headquarters, and whose brave nonviolent siege upon that building led to negotiations with the Nazis and the release of their husbands. Ask the Jewish descendants of the 7,000+ Danish Jews who were saved from the round-up order by non-Jewish Danes, or ask the great-granddaughters of the Jews saved in Le Chambon, France, at great risk to the local descendants of the Huguenots who sheltered them. Yes, these were sporadic and admittedly counterintuitive methods-organized nonviolence versus Nazis-but Peace Studies scholarship has given us a glimmer of the possibilities of such an apparently quixotic strategy and no one who is getting solid advice from anyone in that field would make such a categorical misstatement as Obama did. Certainly I would expect my Intro to Nonviolence students to make a different argument by midterms at the latest. Because President Obama said, "I believe that all nations, strong and weak alike, must adhere to standards that govern the use of force." My students know that civilians are legally protected and yet President Obama has presided over unmanned drone missile attacks that have killed an estimated 800 civilians, including children. These attacks not only elicit scorn and derision from indigenous Taliban forces as evidence that Obama's military is too cowardly to come meet them, they are illegal and are used as recruiting points for both the Taliban insurgency and al-Qa'ida terrorists. Peace Studies students know all this, and much more, about the fallacies, hypocritical stances and reversals of fact proffered in Oslo by our president. I wish he would find himself at least one advisor from the world of peace--not the imposed peace of empire but the peace of dialog and negotiation, nonviolent force and mass action. Then, if he took some peace studies courses, he would probably be an A student. His pre-test comes back with a C-, however. Too bad the entire world had to hear it and really too bad that his ignorance is going to cost so much blood and treasure of the US, Afghanistan, NATO countries and Pakistan. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tom H. Hastings teaches various peace and nonviolence courses at Portland State University and directs PeaceVoice, a program of the Oregon Peace Institute. He lives in Whitefeather Peace House in north Portland.View Comments (2) Post Comment
A Lesson on Nonviolence for the President
(Fairly basic but a good overview for a mainstream publication....) A Lesson on Nonviolence for the President by Eric Stoner In Oslo last week, President Barack Obama ironically used his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize to deliver a lengthy defense of the "just war" theory and dismiss the idea that nonviolence is capable of addressing the world's most pressing problems. After quoting Martin Luther King Jr. and giving his respects to Gandhi — two figures that Obama has repeatedly called personal heroes — the new peace laureate argued that he "cannot be guided by their examples alone" in his role as a head of state. "I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people," he continued. "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason." Unfortunately, this key part of Obama's speech, which the media widely quoted in its coverage of the award ceremony, contains several logical inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies that tragically reveal Obama's profound ignorance of nonviolent alternatives to the use of military force. The Power of Nonviolence Almost immediately after acknowledging that there is "nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King," Obama equated nonviolence with doing nothing. To live and act nonviolently, however, never involves standing "idle in the face of threats." Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, Dave Dellinger, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and countless other genuine peacemakers have put their lives on the line in the struggle for a more just world. Advocates of nonviolence, like Gandhi, simply believe that means and ends are inseparable – that responding in kind to an aggressor will only continue the cycle of violence. "Destructive means cannot bring constructive ends, because the means represent the ideal-in-the-making and the end-in-progress," Martin Luther King explains in his book Strength to Love. "Immoral means cannot bring moral ends, for the ends are pre-existent in the means." Therefore, to put it bluntly, it's impossible to create a world that truly respects life with fists, guns, and bombs. As A.J. Muste, a longtime leader of the labor, civil rights, and antiwar movements, famously said: "There is no way to peace — peace is the way." Using a broad array of tactics — including strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, and protests — nonviolent movements have not only gained important rights for millions of oppressed people around the world, they have confronted, and successfully brought down, some of the most ruthless regimes of the last 100 years. The courageous, everyday citizens who spoke out and took to the streets to stop the murderous reigns of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, to name only a few examples from recent decades, were anything but passive in the face of evil. Moreover, these incredible victories for nonviolence were not flukes. After analyzing 323 resistance campaigns over the last century, one important study published last year in the journal International Security, found that "major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns." Victories Against Hitler Contrary to Obama's speech and the dominant narrative about World War II, nonviolent movements in several different European countries were also remarkably successful in thwarting the Nazis. In 1943, for instance, when the order finally came to round up the nearly 8,000 Jews in Denmark, Danes spontaneously hid them in their homes, hospitals, and other public institutions over the span of one night. Then, at great personal risk to those involved, a secret network of fishing vessels successfully ferried almost their entire Jewish population to neutral Sweden. The Nazis captures only 481 Jews, and thanks to continued Danish pressure, nearly 90% of those deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp survived the war. In Bulgaria, important leaders of the Orthodox Church, along with farmers in the northern stretches of the country, threatened to lie across railroad tracks to prevent Jews from being deported. This popular pressure emboldened the Bulgarian parliament to resist the Nazis, who eventually rescinded the deportation order, saving almost all of the country's 48,000 Jews. Even in Norway, where Obama accepted the peace prize, there was significant nonviolent resistance during the Second World War. When the Nazi-appointed Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling ordered teachers to teach fascism, an estimated 10,000 of the country's 12,000 teachers refused. A campaign of intimidation — which included sending over 1,000 male teachers to jails, concentration camps, and forced labor camps north of the Arctic Circle — failed to break the will of the teachers and sparked growing resentment throughout the country. After eight months, Quisling backed down and the teachers came home victorious. Alternatives to the War on Terror Obama's rejection of negotiations as a possible solution to terrorism also doesn't square with the evidence. After analyzing hundreds of terrorist groups that have operated over the last 40 years, a RAND corporation study published last year concluded that military force is almost never successful at stopping terrorism. The vast majority of terrorist groups that ended during that period "were penetrated and eliminated by local police and intelligence agencies (40%), or they reached a peaceful political accommodation with their government (43%)." In other words, negotiation is clearly possible. For his book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, University of Chicago professor Robert Pape created a database on every suicide bombing from 1980 to 2004. Pape found that, rather than being driven by religion, the vast majority of suicide bombers — responsible for over 95% of all incidents on record — were primarily motivated by a desire to compel a democratic government to withdraw its military forces from land they saw as their homeland. "Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism," Pape said in an interview with The American Conservative, "the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us." Apart from pulling U.S. troops out of the Middle East, calling off the deadly campaign of drone attacks, and ending military, economic, and diplomatic support for repressive regimes in the region, how can the threat of terrorism be best minimized? A recent article in the Independent by Johann Hari may provide an answer. Through interviews with 17 radical Islamic ex-jihadis over the course of a year, Hari discovered that they all told strikingly similar stories about what drew them to extremism, and what eventually got them out. They all felt alienated growing up in Britain, and connected their personal experiences to the persecution of Muslims around the world. In most cases, however, coming into contact with Westerners who took the values of democracy and human rights seriously, opposed the wars against Muslim countries, and engaged in ordinary acts of kindness first made them question whether they were on the right path. As I silently carried a cardboard coffin from the UN headquarters in New York to the military recruiting center in Times Square during a protest on the day of Obama's speech, I couldn't help but cringe to think of the president justifying the deployment of 30,000 more troops to the "graveyard of empires." Every nonviolent alternative has not been exhausted. In reality, they have yet to be tried. ----------- Published on Friday, December 18, 2009 by Foreign Policy in Focus Eric Stoner is a freelance writer based in New York and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. His articles have appeared in The Nation, NACLA Report on the Americas, and the Indypendent.View Comments (0) Post Comment
This is the best reply I have seen to the Oslo speech. I'll be spreading it around. Thank you Eric. Dustin ------------------------------------------------------------- Dustin Howes Assistant Professor Department of Political Science Louisiana State University www.lsu.edu/faculty/dhowes1View Comments (0) Post Comment
Michel Serres on the failure of Copenhagen
Sent to me from a friend from the University of Lyon 2, in France, an article from Le Monde: The basic ideas: In this interview, Michel Serres proposes that the summit was a failure because "we forget to invite the earth to the conference on climate change," and that when we invite 192 politicians to a table, their goal is to defend their interests, and only to cooperate for their interests. The journalist repeats Hugo Chavez' remark, "if the climate were a bank, we would have already saved it," and Serres response is that it is indeepd the economy that has been accorded supremacy in running today's world, yet he reinforces that the economy is only one parameter, not singular. His final word is that of the 192 politicians, they are there with the figures from scientists, yet none of the scientists were chosen to represent their countries; in other words, those who know what is happening were not there while those who have no idea were asked to negotiate. He calls for a reconfiguration of these two separate identities. Enjoy, Stephanie Michel Serres, philosophe "On a oublié d'inviter la Terre à la conférence sur le climat" LE MONDE | 21.12.09 | 14h37 • Mis à jour le 21.12.09 | 18h22 Professeur à l'université de Standford, Académicien, Michel Serres est l'un des rares philosophes contemporains à proposer une vision du monde qui associe les sciences et la culture. Dans son dernier essai en date, Temps des crises (éd. Le Pommier, 84 p., 10 euros), il retrace les bouleversements qui ont récemment transformé notre condition humaine, et soutient que la planète doit devenir un acteur essentiel de la scène politique. Nous lui avons demandé sa version du sommet de Copenhague. *** Douze jours de négociations pour aboutir à un accord a minima : la montagne a accouché d'une souris. Pourquoi un bilan si décevant ? Copenhague est à la géopolitique ce que les accords de Munich, en septembre 1938, ont été à la politique : un compromis lâche et dilatoire. Mais la comparaison s'arrête là. Si le sommet sur le climat a été un échec, c'est d'abord parce que mettre 192 personnes autour d'une table relève de la grand-messe plus que de négociations véritables. Le problème vient surtout de ce que ces 192 personnes sont des hommes d'Etat, dont la mission première est de défendre les intérêts de leur gouvernement et de leur pays. La politique, c'est son rôle, examine les relations humaines, fussent-elles conflictuelles. Or, l'enjeu de Copenhague n'était pas les relations humaines, mais le réchauffement de la planète, la fonte des pôles, la montée des eaux, la disparition des espèces. Il s'agit d'un objet qui dépasse l'horizon classique du politique. Ce que montre avant tout le sommet de Copenhague, c'est que les limites du politique, au sens traditionnel du mot, sont aujourd'hui atteintes à un point sans précédent dans l'histoire. L'échec était donc écrit d'avance ? Il était en tout cas probable, et pour une raison simple : on a oublié d'inviter à Copenhague un partenaire essentiel, composé d'air, de feu, d'eau et d'êtres vivants. Cette absente, qui n'a encore jamais siégé dans aucun Parlement, je l'appelle la "Biogée", pour dire en un seul mot la vie et la Terre. C'est un pays dont nous sommes tous issus. Qui va représenter ce pays-là ? Quel sera son ambassadeur, quelle langue parlera-t-il ? Cela reste à inventer. Mais nos institutions ne peuvent plus désormais se contenter de jeux à deux. Le jeu de demain doit se jouer à trois : nous ne pourrons plus rien faire sans tenir compte de la Biogée. Jouer à trois, que voulez-vous dire ? Il y a un tableau de Goya, Duel à coups de gourdin, qui l'explique très bien. On y voit deux hommes se battre avec des bâtons. De ce jeu à deux, qui va sortir gagnant ? Quand Hegel met aux prises le maître et l'esclave, il donne le résultat de leur lutte (l'esclave devenant le maître du maître), mais il oublie de dire où se déroule la scène. Goya, qui est peintre, ne peut pas se permettre cet oubli, et il situe cette bagarre... dans les sables mouvants. A mesure que les deux hommes se tapent dessus, ils s'enfoncent ! Et voilà pourquoi le jeu à trois, aujourd'hui, devient indispensable. Les hommes politiques peuvent continuer de gérer leurs conflits de façon stratégique, guerrière ou diplomatique : tant qu'ils oublieront de représenter la Biogée, ils s'enfonceront dans les sables mouvants. A Copenhague, j'aurais voulu que ce tableau soit au milieu de l'amphithéâtre ! "Si le climat était une banque, on l'aurait déjà sauvé", a ironisé le président du Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, durant le sommet. Que vous inspire cette remarque ? Ce que souligne Chavez, c'est la suprématie qu'a prise l'économie dans la gestion de notre monde. Depuis cent cinquante ans, il est entendu, aussi bien par la gauche extrême marxiste que par la droite la plus pure, que l'économie est l'infrastructure essentielle des sociétés. Dès lors, il suffit qu'arrive un gros nuage dans ce domaine pour que tous les politiques se mobilisent. Mais je soutiens depuis longtemps que l'économie n'est qu'un paramètre parmi d'autres. Et que la crise financière qui bouleverse aujourd'hui le casino de la banque n'est que le révélateur de ruptures autrement plus profondes, pour lesquelles les termes de "relance" ou de "réforme" sont hors de propos. Ces ruptures que vous décrivez dans "Temps des crises", quelles sont-elles ? La première, la plus profonde sans doute, c'est la disparition de la majorité paysanne. Au début du XXe siècle, il y a en Occident 60 à 65 % de paysans ; en l'an 2000, il en reste 1,8 %. Cette chute brusque des populations rurales, qui va gagner rapidement les autres parties du monde, marque la fin d'une période qui a commencé... avec le néolithique. Or, la nouveauté d'un événement est toujours proportionnelle à la longueur de l'ère précédente. C'est donc un bouleversement considérable qui vient de se produire, dont les conséquences commencent seulement à se faire sentir. La bête rurale n'est pas la même que la bête urbaine, ce n'est pas le même "être au monde"... Et notre époque connaît bien d'autres ruptures. Dans des domaines aussi variés et importants que l'habitat, l'espérance de vie, la démographie, les communications, tout est véritablement en train de se transformer. Mais il y a une chose qui n'a pas changé, ce sont nos institutions. Et vous voudriez que cela n'explose pas ? Avec des instances gouvernementales prévues pour un milliard d'habitants quand nous sommes six milliards et demi ; pour des paysans quand nous sommes tous dans la ville ; pour des gens qui mouraient à 30 ans quand nous devenons centenaires ? Comment faudrait-il modifier ces institutions pour tenir compte de "l'invitée manquante" de Copenhague ? Je disais tout à l'heure que le sommet sur le climat a montré les limites du politique, mais il faudrait aussi parler du scientifique. Jamais ces 192 personnes ne se seraient réunies s'il n'y avait eu derrière elles les travaux du Groupe d'experts intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat (GIEC), c'est-à-dire les savants. Deux groupes de personnes sont donc en jeu : un groupe d'experts qui savent mais qui ne sont pas élus, et un groupe d'élus qui ne savent pas. Pour avancer, il faudra inventer une reconfiguration de ces deux profils. Celui du politique comme celui du scientifique, dont l'implication dans la vie de la cité est aujourd'hui absolument nécessaire. Propos recueillis par Catherine Vincent Article paru dans l'édition du 22.12.09View Comments (0) Post Comment
Interesting story about WWII COs
Intriguing -- and even shows pacifists in a positive light! ============================================================ WWII Pacifists Exposed Mental Ward Horrors by Joseph Shapiro 12/30/09 In September of 1942, Warren Sawyer, a 23-year-old conscientious objector, reported for his volunteer assignment as an attendant at a state mental hospital. The young Quaker was one of thousands of pacifists who had refused to fight and instead were assigned to work in places few outsiders got to see — places like Philadelphia State Hospital, best known as Byberry. "Byberry's the last stop on the bus here in Philadelphia," Sawyer recalls. "Any young man on the bus, other people knew that we were COs working at the hospital. And they'd make different kinds of remarks, supposedly talking to each other, but hoping that we hear. And you know: 'Yellowbellies, slackers.' " Those slurs were harsh. But not nearly as harsh as what awaited the young men inside the gates of the chaotic and overcrowded hospital for people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities. The young pacifists would be changed by what they saw in places like Byberry, and then become a force for change themselves. Serving The Country At Home Ten million men were drafted into the military during World War II. But more than 40,000 refused to go to war. These conscientious objectors came from more than 100 religions. But most were from the traditional peace churches: people from the Church of the Brethren, Mennonites and Quakers. Still, they wanted to serve their country. Many did serve in the military in noncombatant roles. Others did alternative service, like the 3,000 who were assigned to 62 state mental hospitals around the country. "Well, I called them hellholes," says Sawyer. "Terribly overcrowded. All we did and all we could do was just custodial care. Because when you have three men taking care of 350 incontinent patients with everything all over the floor, feces and urine and all that kind of thing." The smell got into his clothes and was so strong that even after he washed them, the smell lingered. "In the incontinent ward," he says, "it took a few weeks before you got used to eating supper with the smell all through your clothes and everything." The "incontinent ward" was what the men called A Building. It was a large open room with a concrete slab for a floor. There were no chairs. There were no activities, no therapy, not even a radio to listen to. So hundreds of men — most of them naked — walked about aimlessly or hunched on the floor and huddled against the filthy bare walls. Nearby was B Building; it was called the "violent ward" or the "death house," because angry men sometimes violently attacked one another. In one room, rows and rows of men were strapped and shackled to their bed frames. Sawyer wrote frequent letters home, and those letters provide some of the best surviving historical record of the conditions in those grim wards and of the work of the conscientious objectors at Byberry. "It was in B Building, the death house," he started in a letter written in September 1944 that explained one day of violence. "Due to the shortage of cuffs and straps and restraint locks that has prevailed in B Building for some time, one of the patients was able to get himself loose. He was a very dangerous fellow. He only had one cuff and strap on and he got out. He had a spoon that had been broken off at the end and was sharpened almost to a knife edge." "After he was loose, he went to another patient and jabbed him in the side of the neck on top of his shoulder and drove the spoon down about one inch deep, just missing the jugular vein." Testing Their Ideals Sawyer is 89 now. He lives with his wife (who also worked as a volunteer at Byberry) in a Quaker retirement community, in Medford, N.J., outside Philadelphia. Among Sawyer's neighbors are other former conscientious objectors, including Evert Bartholomew and his brother John, and Neil Hartman. In Sawyer's living room, they tell stories of the horrific conditions there. They talk about the young sailor who climbed to the top of a building and jumped off to commit suicide and of the time Sawyer made checkerboards for the patients but administrators took them away because they feared the thin boards could be used as weapons. "Our work was to try to get attendants to realize these were ordinary people with a little problem and they needed help," says John Bartholomew. Working in such a brutal and chaotic place tested the men's own ideals of nonviolence. "But I found out there, the difference between violence and force," says Hartman, who at the time was a young Methodist. "We used force. We'd grab a man and we'd pin him. And then maybe get a nurse if we could to give him a shot. But we didn't use violence. And the difference was: It wasn't unusual next day for the patient to come around and thank us for not using violence when we could have." There was lots of violence at Byberry. Many of the regular attendants were drunks who'd get fired at one state hospital and just move on to a job at the next. Some kept control by hitting patients with things like sawed-off broom handles or a rubber hose filled with buckshot. Hartman says the patients came to appreciate the gentler manner of the conscientious objectors. "Cause they knew, the regular attendants, one of their tricks was to use a wet towel and put it around their neck and squeeze it. It, of course, choked them awful, but it didn't make any mark on them so no state inspector could catch up with them," he says. Making A Lasting Impact Still, the young pacifists worried that it wasn't enough simply to show kindness. With the end of the war nearing, the conscientious objectors soon would be gone, but they didn't want to leave behind a place where untrained and underpaid attendants ruled patients by brutality and violence. So the conscientious objectors came up with a daring plan. Sawyer wrote about it in one of his letters home: "We are working on a carefully laid out plan to blow this place open in two months," he wrote. In secret, they went to newspapers, with details of the scandal inside the institution. "If we COs do nothing about this place to improve it," Sawyer continued, "our stay here has been to no avail and we have accomplished nothing. Two other fellows and I are heading up this thing to launch a campaign and gather material." One of those other fellows was a conscientious objector named Charlie Lord. Today, Lord, 89, lives in another Quaker retirement community, this one in Tennessee. In the living room of his brick bungalow, he flips through old yellowed photographs. "Here's the original one. Here, 1946. This is the day room with dozens of naked men along the left wall." At Byberry, Lord sneaked a small Agfa camera in his jacket pocket. It was the camera he'd borrowed to take on his honeymoon. But he'd dropped it in a lake and then felt he had to buy the damaged camera from his friend. Now he could use it to take pictures to show conditions in the A and B buildings. When no one was watching, he'd quickly shoot a picture without even looking through the viewfinder. "I'd try to fill the frame," he says. "You know, not just have little people far away. I'd get up as close as I could. I was aware of composition. But the main thing was to show the truth." Over a few months, Lord filled three rolls of film, with 36 exposures each. His pictures showed the truth, in black and white. In the past, reformers and journalists like Dorothea Dix and Nellie Bly sneaked into institutions and wrote exposes about the horrific conditions there. But Lord was one of the first to ever expose institutions by using the power of photography. "I just thought this would show people what it was like. It's not, not somebody writing to describe something," he says. "They can use flowery words or you know, do whatever they want. But if the photograph is there, you can't deny it." One of the first people to see the photographs was Eleanor Roosevelt, in September 1945. A meeting was arranged between Roosevelt — whose husband, President Franklin Roosevelt, had died just a few months before — and a couple of the conscientious objectors from Byberry. They brought along Lord's disturbing photos. But Roosevelt at first doubted them. According to Steven Taylor, a professor of disability studies at Syracuse University, Roosevelt assumed these were photos from some institution in the South. She said she knew about those kinds of conditions in Mississippi or Alabama. When told that they had actually been taken at an institution in Philadelphia, Roosevelt then promised to support the reform campaign and wrote about what she'd seen to government health officials and journalists. Going Public Lord's photographs would have their biggest impact several months later, when they were published in Life magazine in May 1946. Taylor says the images of thin, naked men lined against walls echoed some other disturbing images Americans had just seen. "The immediate reaction by many people to these photographs were that these look[ed] like the Nazi concentration camps. People could not believe that this was the way we treated people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities in our society," he says. "So it created a kind of mass uproar, nationally." Of course, one can't equate the conditions in American mental hospitals back then — no matter how inhumane — with the extermination of more than 6 million Jews and others. In fact, among those killed by the Nazis were up to 250,000 people with disabilities. They were mainly people with mental illness and intellectual disability, the same disabilities as the people who lived at American institutions like Byberry. Still, Taylor, who has written a new book about the World War II conscientious objectors called Acts of Conscience: World War II, Mental Institutions and Religious Objectors, says the photos punctured a national sense of American superiority. "We saved the world. We stood for human rights; we condemned the Holocaust," he says. "America's confidence was soaring in the immediate post-World War II era. We were morally superior; we were militarily superior. And I think this was a stark reminder that America wasn't perfect. America had its shortcomings." In postwar America, the country turned to righting those shortcomings. Conscientious objectors from Byberry started a national association that helped train and professionalize workers at state hospitals. And, most of all, they helped improve the lives of the vulnerable people who lived in those state institutions. The COs from Byberry continued to work for social change, in political activism and in the jobs they chose. Charlie Lord became a professional photographer and a social worker. The Bartholomew brothers both went into social work. John Bartholomew worked for a mental health group that moved people out of institutions and into small group homes. Neal Hartman was a teacher. Warren Sawyer sold real estate and is proudest of the way he helped integrate neighborhoods. Sawyer says what he saw at Byberry — and what he saw could be changed — fortified his dedication to work for human rights. His work at Byberry, he says "changed my life in terms of appreciation of people who are forgotten. It makes me want to make people aware of the many things that need to be done, that people need to be involved in doing things." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122017757&f=1002&sc=igg2View Comments (0) Post Comment
Eyeless in Gaza
I just finished reading Aldous Huxley's "Eyeless in Gaza" (1936) and found it to be a powerful and historically significant statement about nonviolence. I posted about it in my Class of Nonviolence blog -- if you haven't read this book -- highly recommended. Next on the list is Ape and Essence. http://classofnonviolence.blogspot.com/2010/01/eyeless-in-gaza.html Susan Ives, San Antonio peaceCENTERView Comments (0) Post Comment
Pact with the devil
Like many, I've been following the controversy surrounding Pat Robertson's comments about Haiti. As CNN reported: Robertson, the host of the "700 Club," blamed the tragedy on something that "happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it." The Haitians "were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever," Robertson said on his broadcast Wednesday. "And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.' True story. And so, the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' " Coincidentally, I've been re-reading Robertson Davies' 1991 novel, “Murther and Walking Spirits.” The central character is a ghost, and in this scene he is at a film festival in Toronto watching an old silent film, The Spirit of '76. In Trinity Church, “the oldest English church in New York,” the Rev. Cephas Willoughby preaches his sermon against the impending rebellion. The narrator summarizes the sermon: “What lies behind these murmurings, which are now growing to the pitch of clamourings? Rebellion? Certainly. But rebellion must have a cause, and it's cause is not against taxes, and the cost of England's standing army of seventeen regiments in the American Colonies. It is not the popular cry of No taxation without Representation. . . .It lies in the hearts of man, where many evil things have their abode and where for a time they may prevail, when the Prince of Darkness gains a supremacy. It was in the heart of Cain that the Evil Prince found a foothold; when Cain rebelled and struck down his worthy brother Abel. . . . Dearly beloved, it is is not the murmurers and complainers who speak from their own hearts in their tempestuous words. It is the voice of Cain, the Dark Angel himself. It is the Dark Angel who in our America would set brother against brother, and subject against King.” (pp 45-46) This is fiction: I suspect that the Rev. and his sermon were invented from whole cloth, but it struck me that there is undoubtedly an historical precedent for the church to blame uprisings on the work of the devil – as Willoughby did in the novel, as Robertson did earlier this week. Does anyone know of any real-world examples from history? I can't recall any other Revolutionary War examples in my reading, although I do know that many churches used scripture to support slavery in the Civil War era (and many used it to oppose it, as well . . .) Susan Ives, San Antonio peaceCENTERView Comments (1) Post Comment
Does It Take a Disaster for Us to Care?
The images coming out of Haiti are unimaginably grim, and as the clock continues to tick while rescue efforts become mired in bureaucracy, the death toll is sure to rise. Still, as is often the case in times of epic tragedy, Americans express their grief and demonstrate their largesse in myriad meaningful ways. The sincerity of these gestures is obvious, but the question persists: Why does it take a high-magnitude disaster for us to really care? Consider that in the case of Haiti, people essentially were living in a state of “permanent disaster” for decades with almost no expression of concern from our shores. Hemispheric policies of creating corrupt puppet regimes, ousting popularly elected officials, arming paramilitaries, and imposing “law and order” on disenfranchised people have existed in Haiti and throughout the region without cessation or even much official denial. Economically speaking, so-called “free trade” has served to flood markets with subsidized U.S. goods, drive people from their land tenure to poorly-built urban shantytowns, cause crushing poverty and despair, and undercut whatever minimal public infrastructure had existed. This was the state of affairs for most Haitians before the earthquake hit. With 80% living in poverty and with no real prospects for improvement, the people survived as best they could, demonstrating remarkable dignity and resiliency in the process. But the recent “natural disaster” -- much as happened here when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans -- exposed the thin veneer of baseline vulnerability in which the people had tenuously been existing. Inadequate structures, both social and architectural, crumble in the face of nature’s force. In this sense, the disaster was surely man-made as much as it was natural, and to some extent we must acknowledge that it was partly “made in the USA” as well. Haitian lore may indeed suggest that a “deal with the devil” was struck to gain their freedom from under the heel of enslavement, but it couldn’t save them from the brute force of our foreign policies. Haitians largely have been persona non grata on these shores, effectively remaining landlocked to cope with conditions sufficient for strong claims of refugee status. Given their proximity to the U.S., it is clear that a “stable” kleptocracy with millions living in squalor has been politically preferable to an unpredictable populism in which post-colonial peoples feel empowered to define the conditions of their own lives. Despite Haiti being the first slave state to win its independence, their subjugation didn’t end -- it just changed form. This is a cultural “teachable moment,” as they say in higher education. If we open our hearts and wallets in this critical time, but then fail to alter “business as usual” once the crisis passes and the news cycle moves on, we’ll simply be deferring disaster again until the next “big one” hits. Having done relief work in migrant communities following Hurricane Andrew, and then again in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast following Katrina, I have no doubt whatsoever that Americans are generous and caring people filled with sincere compassion. Yet I also wonder whether such episodes touch a place of unspoken and perhaps even unrecognized guilt as well. On some level, we must know that our collective comfort is partially paid for with the impoverishment of others. Much has been said and written in recent days about the desperation and plight of the Haitian people. In this time, we should do everything in our power to contribute resources to genuine relief organizations that actually serve people and communities. We should support Haitians living here in the U.S. in their quest to locate family and friends, and to deal with the emotional consequences of the catastrophe. We should offer prayers, empathy, and comfort on every level that we are able. We should, in essence, apply the basic premise of the golden rule and consider what we would most need and desire if our lives were suddenly buried in the rubble. Most importantly, we cannot lose sight of the plight and become blithely reabsorbed into our everyday lives in short order. New Orleans is still an open wound in America’s psyche, and the displaced people there -- both internally and externally -- have not been able to truly find solace and peace in their lives. The best form of disaster relief we can provide is preventive, namely demanding a course correction in our national policies that allow people to exist in states of maximum vulnerability and perpetual neglect. Rather than simply reacting as disasters befall, we can alleviate them through proactive policies that uplift people everywhere by exporting a genuine ethos of health, opportunity, and democracy rather than exploitation and immiseration. We can help the people of Haiti by likewise demanding these virtues and values for ourselves. Notwithstanding certain disequilibria of geography and economy, we all share a common humanity that is increasingly becoming interlinked both technologically and environmentally. Let us express this during times of acute crisis, and also during times in which crises exist below the radar of our cultural consciousness. This type of ongoing relief in which we strive for justice and equity on a daily basis will show the true spirit that lies at the core of who we are, as we work simultaneously to remediate this disaster and mitigate the next ones before they emerge. Perhaps, in the end, it is this sort of pact with each other that will lead to our mutual salvation. --------------------- FYI, here are a few grassroots organizations that people can contribute to where the aid will actually get to the right places: Partners in Health: http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti Artists for Peace & Justice: http://www.artistsforpeaceandjustice.com/ Haiti Emergency Relief Fund: http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/HERF.html Medecins Sans Frontieres: http://www.msf.org/View Comments (0) Post Comment
Emergency Nonviolence
Just to add a few complementary ideas to your thoughtful analysis Randall ... http://wagingnonviolence.org/2010/01/emergency-nonviolence/View Comments (0) Post Comment
Solidarity, Not Charity: Helping Haitians Help Themselves
In the wake of a disaster such as Haiti is experiencing right now, there's a strong impetus to help coming from people across a wide range of persuasions and perspectives. This is a good thing, of course, and yet even empathetic intentions can go awry when they foster conditions that can leave vulnerable people in a permanent state of dependency. As is often the case in the crucial matters of justice that we face, we can look to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. for guidance.... (read the rest of the article at this link, and scroll down to the bottom of it for more links to grassroots, peace & justice organizations working in Haiti for the short- and long-term alike): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randall-amster/solidarity-not-charity-he_b_429615.htmlView Comments (0) Post Comment
Haitian Nonviolence
Building on the thesis from Dustin's last post on "Emergency Nonviolence," in this essay (posted by our friends at Waging Nonviolence -- please check them out) I explore nonviolence in Haiti's past, present, and (hopefully) future. Here's the gist: "If Haitians are to surmount this time of profound crisis and rebuild their society, these values of social justice and conflict transformation must be given space to reemerge. The untold stories of people practicing true humanitarianism in Haiti can serve to remind us that, even in a disaster zone, those in great need can offer hope and guidance in our shared struggle to create a peaceful world." Read the whole article here, and visit WNV in the process: http://wagingnonviolence.org/2010/01/haiti-untold-nonviolence-and-humanization-at-the-grassroots/ In peace, RandallView Comments (1) Post Comment
Remembering Howard Zinn
Like many in the fields of peace, justice, nonviolence, and social change, we are saddened by the passing of Howard Zinn. We are also thankful for the legacy of inspiration that he leaves behind and for his re-reading of a shared people's history that will inform our collective future. Many PJSA members knew Howard personally, counting him as a colleague, mentor, and friend. Others were, like many the world over, inspired by his words and deeds. The Nation has a tribute page set up with some excellent resources and videos: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow/522580/goodbye_howard_zinn PJSA members can post their recollections and remembrances here. There is also a proposal at hand to rename one of our annual awards "The Howard Zinn Social Courage Award," which is meeting with great favor thus far. Our thoughts are with Howard's family, and our thanks go to a man who made the pursuit of peace and justice his life's work....View Comments (0) Post Comment
Remembering Our Humanity
"Remember our humanity, and forget all the rest." Albert Einstein The decade has not begun with a paean to human wisdom. Two recent acts of folly in particular share a deep and pernicious connection that bears some pondering, and I am not even referring to the capture of Ted Kennedy's seat in a Massachusetts. I am referring to the 5-4 Supreme Court decision on Thursday last week ratifying an absurd and dangerous notion that had been let loose in the public discourse almost by accident nearly a century ago, namely the legal 'personhood' of corporations, and secondly to the introduction of full-body scanning for 'security' that is coming soon to airports near you. The first decision will unfetter corporate influence over policymakers (all in the name of populism, ironically), an influence that was already operating almost without let or hindrance under the present rules. The second decision reflects is a serious misunderstanding of security (we can know real security only when we pursue peace and justice, not by walling ourselves in with ever-more-invasive technology), and was apparently arrived at, in unseemly haste, through the kind of corruption that has all too commonly accompanied post-9/11 'security' measures: as Randall Amster reports in his Op-Ed News article, “Invasion of the Body Scanners,” former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff is a vocal and influential proponent of Rapiscan, the firm that stands to make huge profits from the scanners, and has promoting their cause since long before the Christmas bomber set off the recent panic. The Chertoff Group, his consulting firm, has Rapiscan as one of its clients! The damage these decisions will do to us, however, goes even deeper; and it may be only when we peel back the covering on that deeper significance that we may really be able to understand — and overcome — the challenge they represent. When dissenting Justice John Stevens said that the majority had committed a grave error in treating corporate speech on the same level as that of human beings, he was hinting that they have dealt a blow not just to democracy, but to humanity. I am an embodied, conscious person endowed with judgment and responsibility. A corporation is none of these things. It is an abstraction, a collection of individuals who have surrendered precisely those qualities. It is more than a political mistake to grant corporations the status of persons: it is a spiritual delusion. And as such, it has dealt a blow to the very basis of freedom and democracy, the inviolable dignity of the human person. These dehumanizing features do not come out of the blue. They have been a part of our culture for a long time. The very term 'human resources' that is a standard technical term in corporate vocabulary implies that humans are resources for corporations, and not the other way around; while anyone who flies knows that body scanning is only the ultimate militarization and humiliation of airport ‘check points,’ like the yellow stars that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany after they had been suitably prepared by a series of escalating insults. As the revered religion scholar Huston Smith pointed out at an education conference some years ago, no further progress will be made in our culture until we can formulate a higher, mutually accepted image of the human being. Seen in this light, we have just been handed two steps backward in that essential progress. To quote Amster again, body-scanning “is essentially a form of high-tech voyeurism masking as security, and it portends more such incursions into liberty and privacy.” Without liberty and privacy, what are we? So these decisions, and the wrong momentum behind them, have to be resisted. But how? Actually, this is a no-brainer. We must resist by means that bring back to light the meaning of the person even as they work toward ends with the same purpose. Those are the means of nonviolence. They alone allow us to resist the actions of our opponents, even to point out their follies, without diminishing them as persons. British historian Arnold Toynbee said astutely of Gandhi’s methods: “He made it impossible for us to go on ruling India; but he made it possible for us to leave without rancour and without humiliation.” More: nonviolence is the method that humanizes as it creates change. It humanizes those offering it, those to whom it is offered, and -- to the extent they are alert -- the 'reference publics' looking on. I therefore heartily endorse the current proposal to amend the Constitution to do away with this confusion once and for all; but should it fail, or not be sufficient, we must be prepared to carry out more creative, and sterner methods in this humane spirit. In an important article in the Huffington Post my colleague George Lakoff states that the first principle of democracy is empathy. Yes, but a more etymological way to define its core principle is, the locus of value and responsibility of the human being, considered in his or her self without reference to social category or status. A democracy is made up of empowered, responsible individuals, or else it is no more than an empty structure composed of ciphers who have lost their true significance politically and are in danger of losing their very humanity spiritually – a 'democracy' in name only (and quite possibly the more dangerous for clothing itself in that sacred name). And now for the crowning irony. If I were gay, the people who would deny me the right to marry a same-sex partner because it isn’t 'natural' are now telling me that corporations are equal to persons — the grossest denial of nature one can imagine. They are telling us, for that matter, that life is sacred until you are born — that we must be allowed to live until birth but once we’re out of the womb the death penalty, war, and a flood of cheap handguns can have at us. I guess if you deny evolution and global warming it’s only a short step to denying your own humanity. And we know from history where that will take us. The brilliant political scientist and holocaust escapee Hannah Arendt said very clearly that totalitarianism... “strives not toward despotic rule over men but toward a system in which men are superfluous.” Satyagraha, anyone?View Comments (1) Post Comment
Personal Corporatehood?
Coping with the Reason Divided of [i]Citizens United[/i] [b]by Randall Amster[/b] [url=http://www.truthout.org/personal-corporatehood-coping-with-reason-divided-citizens-united56509]published by Truthout[/url], Jan. 29, 2010 [img]http://www.truthout.org/files/images/012910-4.jpg[/img] There's great consternation brewing over the recent Supreme Court decision that cements and extends the misbegotten logic of "corporate personhood," and rightly so. Surely, one of the most farcical and tortuous doctrines ever established in our system of jurisprudence, this conflated concept has drawn the ire of (small-d) democrats at least as far back as Thomas Jefferson, who [url=http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff5.htm]wrote in 1816[/url]: [quote]"I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."[/quote] Ethics and politics aside, as a matter of law this extension of power and rights to corporations is woven into the very definitional fabric of our [url=http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/1/1.html]federal legal code[/url]: "In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise ... the words 'person' and 'whoever' include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals...." Still, the notion of "corporate personhood" remains something of a misnomer. In our system, as now expanded by the Supreme Court, corporations actually enjoy more rights than individuals do in many ways. To wit: liability shields, rights of transfer, political access and influence, subsidies, [i]laissez-faire[/i] regulation, freedom of movement, self-determination, self-governance, tax breaks etc. In particular, when it comes to political speech, corporations are now essentially unfettered in their freedom, something that we mere mortals have yet to fully secure. Consider the language of the court's recent ruling: [quote]"If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."[/quote] Does anyone else see the ray of hope in this line of reasoning? Apparently, the government can no longer arrest protesters during political demonstrations, if we are to take this literally as a matter of "strict construction." First Amendment advocates have long sought such a validation, yet somehow it took a corporation claiming their speech was impinged to finally motivate the justices to so rule. Disconcertingly, the court didn't actually have to address these larger questions, since the facts presented in [i]Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission[/i] left open myriad avenues of decision that would have been consistent with the longstanding doctrine of "[url=http://everything2.com/title/Constitutional+avoidance+doctrine]constitutional avoidance[/url]." In light of this case, where the court actively reached for the constitutional questions by calling upon the parties to reargue and rebrief the issues along broader lines than originally brought forward on appeal, it appears that we in fact do have a Supreme Court headed by those dreaded "activist judges" after all. President Obama called the decision "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans." What wasn't immediately clear is whether he intended this as a lamentation or a mere observation of political reality. Either way, he was in essence stating a working fact, namely that whatever shards of democracy and the "will of the people" had existed up to now, the pretense is all but gone and corporations will openly run the show. I suppose this has the virtue, in any event, of being a more honest representation of how things actually transpire. The question is where things will go now that this critical threshold has been crossed. Most likely, this ruling is a harbinger of further extensions of corporate rights and powers. A broad mandate and a willing court will impel corporations to take on even more of the qualities ordinarily associated with individuals, as noted in the [url=http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/01/analysis-the-personhood-of-corporations/]SCOTUS blog's analysis[/url] of the decision: "It is not too much to expect that lawyers for corporate America may well be looking to explore the outer possibilities of their clients' 'personhood' and new-found constitutional equality." There previously had existed a founding principle that "natural persons" and "artificial persons" were separate and distinct entities under the law, with the former holding historical priority in our constitutional framework. By now, that distinction has been blurred to such an extent as to be effectively meaningless, as evidenced by a [url=http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/5/111058/7725/810/529057]2008 Federal District Court ruling[/url] in which it was proclaimed by the judge that "Blackwater is a person...." If Blackwater is a person, I want out. Indeed, this suggests a strategy that "natural persons" might take in embracing the implications of this unrestricted corporate world. If a corporation can become a person, then by implication a person can become a corporation. I am thus advocating a new doctrine of "personal corporatehood," in which we should all avail ourselves of the enhanced rights granted to "artificial persons" in our system. People should begin taking steps to incorporate themselves immediately. (I personally am pursuing a nonprofit option, which matches my earning capacity quite well anyway.) Lest you think this is arising as a response to an outlandish Supreme Court ruling, in fact the [url=http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:R7HKsC6OEd0J:https://dev.docs.indymedia.org/pub/Global/MiamiModel/FTAALogSheetSonyaDiehn11.21.03.rtf]sign I held[/url] during the FTAA protests in Miami in 2003 read: [u]PERSONAL CORPORATEHOOD[/u]. Just imagine the benefits. When someone asks you for a favor, you can off-puttingly reply, "I have to check with my board of directors at next month's meeting; someone will get back to you then." When you want to meet with your Congressperson on matters you feel strongly about, the receptionist will announce, "Senator, a corporation is here to see you," which will likely get you instant access. If you go public, you can sell shares in yourself and make a tidy sum (just be sure to retain a controlling interest). If someone irritates you or has something you want, you can likely get the Marines sent in to deal with them. You can avoid having to appear personally at court hearings, sending your hired-gun attorney instead. And you can't be thrown in jail, since a corporation itself cannot be imprisoned. See? At the end of the day, we "natural persons" can try and fight city hall on this one, or we can get in the game and embrace the benefits of artificiality. In a world of surfaces, where profiteering masks as politics and gerrymandering as justice, this may well be the best of all strategies for survival. In fact, let's abolish altogether any outmoded notions of corporealism vis-a-vis "the body" in favor of cutting-edge views of corporatism as an expression of "the company." Whereas our individual bodies have served us well up to now, things will run much more smoothly overall if we are all bade to serve the companies instead. This is at least as rational as the logic of the Supreme Court in opening the floodgates for complete commercial control of governance under the guise of freedom.View Comments (0) Post Comment
Teaching Nonviolence
Teaching Nonviolence Helen Fox, University of Michigan [i]From 'War: Interdisciplinary Investigations' from the 4th Global Conference on War, Virtual War and Human Security held in Budapest, May, 2007[/i] I am a pacifist. My pacifism is rooted in my Quaker faith. In a declaration to King Charles the Second in 1661, Quakers said, [i]“We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons for any end or under any pretense whatsoever. This is our testimony to the whole world.” [/i] It’s true that not all Quakers are pacifists. Many fought in World War II, after becoming convinced that this was a good war, necessary to preserve peace and freedom, and to free others from oppression. But many other Quakers have been conscientious objectors, opposed to all war as a matter of principle. I joined their ranks after the New York World Trade Center was attacked on September 11th 2001. This is how I came to that realization in my life. On September 10, 2001, I had just returned from Cambodia where I had talked to survivors of the Khmer Rouge, who, as you surely remember, had sent most of the population into slave labor in the countryside, declared money invalid, blew up the central bank, burned books, executed the intelligentsia, and turned the local high school into a torture chamber where they starved, mutilated, and executed seventeen thousand of their own people including many young children. Who were these monsters that inflicted such suffering? They were not an external enemy, nor were they some different ethnic or religious group. They were Cambodians who had turned against their neighbors, their teachers, their colleagues, even their own families. This is what still haunts Cambodians today, that they did all this to themselves, that they became so brutalized by an idea, and committed such atrocities out of fear, or revenge, or cold-blooded self righteousness. Looking around as I walked through the streets of Phnom Penh and the villages and towns I visited, I realized that many of the people I saw had been young adults during those terrible years, and had either been very, very lucky, or had participated in some way in this system. But strangely enough, I did not see a nation of people degraded by evil. In fact, I found Cambodians to be some of the most gentle, hospitable, and delightfully sunny people I have ever met. As a nation of Buddhists, they are taught to revere all forms of life and deplore inflicting pain on others. To get angry in public - over a cab fare or some other petty complaint - is considered childish and embarrassing. Even raising one’s voice is culturally inappropriate. This is not something that arose recently, after the experience of such opposite sentiments. These values have been present throughout Cambodian history. My conclusion was that it’s simplistic to say, as my government does, and as all governments do when they want to prepare the people to commit unspeakable crimes of violence, that there are the bad people and the good people, the evil countries and the responsible countries, and that if we annihilate the evil ones we - the good and responsible people - will be safe, and evil will be defeated forever, or at least kept under control. Shortly after September 11th, when the United States decided to protect itself from terrorism by attacking two defenseless countries, one, desperately poor, the other trying valiantly to maintain itself under United Nations sanctions, I made several personal decisions, just to remain sane. One was to start speaking openly about pacifism. The other was to develop a new undergraduate seminar at the University of Michigan called Nonviolence in Action. After teaching that course for several years I began a study that I hoped would help me envision how to reach a wider audience of college students, and what that audience might need to know. I also wanted to understand more clearly what students at a high-ranking, politically liberal university think about the current war in Iraq, what they think of war in general, and how they might view the possibility of a nonviolent future. We have now completed in-depth interviews of eighty University of Michigan students, about a quarter of whom have taken my class. Most students we talked to believe that the Iraq war is senseless. Many think the United States brought the September 11th attacks on itself by acting arrogantly in the world, bullying other countries or treating them as inconsequential. Most express cynicism toward the current administration as well as the media reporting of the war, which they find manipulative, biased, and superficial. If a military draft were reinstated (which is unlikely, but has been discussed) the vast majority of respondents said - rather rashly, I thought - they would flee the country or somehow make themselves unqualified for military service. Almost all said they do not feel safer as a result of the US response to the terrorist attacks, and that war is clearly not the best or only way to deal with terrorism. Some expressed the view that any war is pointless or self-defeating. Yet, the overwhelming majority said that wars will continue eternally, and that the dream of a nonviolent future is unrealistic. The reasons for this pessimistic view are many. Some respondents were quite sure that humans are violent by nature. Many pointed out that violence is the easiest and most definitive way for people or nations to settle their differences, much easier than trying to talk things over. Some said that humans are greedy, or enjoy controlling others, or that humans don’t act rationally, or that terrorists don’t act rationally, or that humans are accustomed to the tradition of war, so they have a hard time envisioning alternatives. A few said that the existence of the arms industry creates a need and desire for war, or that leaders are inherently violent because they are concerned primarily with their own power. Interestingly, most students tend to think of interpersonal violence in the same terms as large-scale national or international violence. Many said that war persists because of the inevitability of anger and disagreement among individuals, or the “us and them” mentality that has always plagued families and communities. They said that people will always get angry at each other, or use violent language to put each other down, or even just assert their will, and that means that in order to avoid violence, humans would have to agree about everything, and that would mean we would need some kind of thought police to avoid divisions between people. Humans would have to be perfect to outgrow the need for war, they said, and that will never come to pass. Here’s a sample from one of the interviews: [i]No matter what, there’s always going to be violence, there’s always going to be that one guy on the block who abuses his wife, there’s always going to be that one woman on the block who abuses her children, there’s always going to be that one country around the corner that disagrees with our policy, there’s always going to be that one president who’s out of his mind that would bring us back to war.[/i] These reasons for the inevitability of war were almost always given in a tone of cynicism and even despair. Yet when asked how humans could learn to avoid war, almost all students gave answers that reflected their optimism about human nature, saying that tolerance, respect, and communication are key, or that we just need to sit down with the other side and work on problem solving together, or that more cultural understanding will help, as will alleviating world poverty. Trite as these responses may sound, they were offered to the interviewers seriously, even passionately, as if these alternatives to violence had never seriously been considered before. Many respondents also claimed that wars of liberation or armed humanitarian intervention in cases of extreme oppression or genocide are quite different from the greed or fear-inspired wars like Iraq or Vietnam that they so deplore. Like many Quakers, these students saw World War II as a “good war,” saying (erroneously) that the U.S. entered into it to liberate the Jews from Nazi oppression. They also cited the U. S. Civil War as morally necessary, saying (again erroneously) that it was fought primarily to free the slaves. This strong impulse to justify armed intervention to protect the weak and vulnerable was echoed by the majority of students who enrolled in my nonviolence class. I have no doubt that humans are intelligent and courageous enough to address their differences without war. But to get there, we must convince the young that peace is possible. High schools and even elementary schools need required courses in peace education that would teach nonviolent solutions to conflicts, both interpersonal and international. College students in political science courses should learn effective ways to address some of the major causes of war: global inequalities, religious extremism, and arguments over dwindling energy resources, with special attention given to points of view of countries and individuals most affected by these problems. History courses should give central consideration to the extensive history and theory of nonviolent activism, and challenge students to come up with their own ideas about how international conflicts could have been addressed without resorting to war. All these courses must be grounded in the personal: the stories, testimony, and deeply introspective accounts of the people we call friends and enemies. This is what touches students and gives them pause. At the end of my course, many of my students report that their new understanding of nonviolence has come as a meaningful, personal revelation. As one wrote, [i]“Here is what I have come to believe: you cannot be a peace maker until you actually care about the welfare of other people. And that is easier said than done.” [/i]View Comments (0) Post Comment
We won't sentence a corporation to the Death Penalty
But we do collectively sentence other ‘legal persons’ to death. According to Amnesty International, there are as many as 3,300 inmates on death row in the United States alone, as of today; mostly male; many with mental illnesses; many abused as children; many guilty of the accused crimes; many innocent among them. In Maryland itself, each death penalty case costs the state taxpayers three million dollars. Even with these numbers and considerations, only 15 states have abolished capital punishment, showing that contrary to rhetoric against conservatives, Americans do care about something other than money and profits: we care about protecting our moral standards first. Still, why is this topic so controversial to so many? Conservative Americans stand firm in a belief in the sanctity of life and in protecting the individual. They seek to make clear that these [legal] people have transgressed our moral standards and the families of the victims need closure for the harm done. It is about individualism and security: a nation that does not prioritize the security of the individual is not doing its job. Just as a father would feel it to be his responsibility to severely punish his child as a consequence of hurting another, with “this hurts me more than it hurts you,” a nation without severe consequences will never teach true morals to its citizens either. In fact, without such severe consequences, we demonstrate no empathy at all for those who have suffered. Progressive Americans also stand anchored: there is no such thing as individual culture; we are a collective culture. To the progressive, we are literally made up of one another, like a family. We should feel responsible when a crime is committed in our larger human family, in the same way that a mother feels shame, and partially responsible, when she finds out that the child has been arrested for stealing. Likewise, the progressive side believes that for each crime committed by any member of our society, we are partially responsible as a nation to rehabilitate that person, as we would our own child. We may have been deeply offended by the act, but we should hold fast to the ideal that human life is always sacred, even in the most trying of circumstances on our hearts and minds. We place our eggs in the basket of human imperfection and firmly state that a society based in retribution, not rehabilitation, is one that lacks empathy. As it turns out, conservatives and progressives actually agree with one another: Americans are morally rooted in the sanctity of life and in a culture of empathy. We care about our security: that of our families, of our communities, and of our nation; and we care about each other. We even care so much about individual people that when we come together in these collective identities, we don’t see abstract entities; we see collectives of individual people who deserve our empathy. This is why I am willing to defend my sister’s intentions sometimes, even if the act she committed might be wrong, since she is a part of my family; or why we are at times willing to defend our President if he makes a mistake: because he seems to be acting in good faith and we elected him to make hard choices in the name of our nation. Regardless of what it may look like on the outside, we are a culture in respect and defense of the person. This idea is reinforced by the recent Supreme Court ruling to affirm ‘legal personhood’ to the corporation. Why? Because a corporation is not an abstract entity–it, like a family, is composed of individuals. And, paradoxically,our government, like a parent who deeply loves her child, is willing time and again to grant pardon to our corporations for their mistakes (our mistakes), and their transgressions (our transgressions);or as she would act toward an unfaithful spouse, to give them another chance. What about when corporations commit alleged acts that would warrant capital punishment? Even if we could, we would never sentence a corporation to the death penalty because we do not hold them fully responsible for their actions. When it comes to this specific collective of individuals, we are astoundingly progressive as a nation. Yet, we wouldn’t have the chance to see this truth about ourselves without the work of conservatives, either. So, why are we not yet this empathetic with each other, as exemplified by the 3,300 legal persons on death row? As it stands, the United States of America is becoming incorporated, whether we like it or not. Perhaps our real challenge (as the original “legal persons” ) is not to deepen our mistrust for corporations with this ruling; rather, we must work unceasingly to undo our deeply rooted mistrust of one another. As this decision gives us pause to redefine what makes a person sacred, reconsidering the death penalty may be the right issue to start with.View Comments (0) Post Comment
The Art of War
The [i]New York Times[/i] had an intriguing "idea of the day," [url=http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/the-morality-of-web-war-footage/][b]The Morality of Web War Footage[/b][/url]. It leads us to an online magazine that is new to me: [b]Guernica[/b] - a Magazine of Art & Politics and specifically to an article by Nicholas Sautin, [url=http://www.guernicamag.com/features/1563/the_pleasure_of_flinching/][b][i]The Pleasure of Flinching[/i][/b][/url]. I wrote about this in my [url=http://classofnonviolence.blogspot.com/2010/02/images-of-war.html]Class of Nonviolence Blog[/url] with some follow-up on the Susan Sontag and Virginia Woolf references. Susan Ives, San Antonio peaceCENETRView Comments (0) Post Comment
Obama's proposals for nuclear power ill-advised and sad
All, Below find just a few links that describe the extensive and growing problems and risks at the 104 nuclear reactors currently operating in the United States. Included are comprehensive websites by groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists [1] and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service [2], as well as an extensive report on major problems and "near-misses" by Greenpeace [3]. Also included are specific articles that describe problems related to fire safety [4,5], spent fuel pool safety [6], and plant aging [7,8]. Not even addressed is the fact that we have no technology or site to permanently deal with the radioactive waste created by nuclear plants. Despite all of the above, President Obama has just put U.S. taxpayers on the hook for 8.3 billion in construction loan guarantees for two new reactors in Georgia -- loans the Congressional Budget Office estimates have a "very high -- well above 50 percent" likelihood of default [9]. The loans are the first part of $54.5 billion in guarantees for new nuclear construction for which Obama is requesting Congressional authorization. Obama's pursuit of nuclear power flies in the face of the position of Jon Wellinghoff, whom Obama appointed head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last March. According to Bloomberg, Wellinghoff's position last April was that "the U.S. may never need to build new nuclear or coal-fired power plants because renewable energy and improved efficiency can meet future power demand" [10]. Amy Goodman has an excellent short piece [11] about the ill-wisdom and sadness of Obama's proposals (including some very wise comments by Amory Lovins). Harvey Wasserman has an excellent piece highlighting the major design shortcomings of the plants proposed for Georgia and other states; the tritium leaks at 27 of our 104 currently operating plants; and the situation in France [12]. The situation in Britain is similar [13,14] There are many safer, cleaner, cheaper, more quickly deployable, more job producing, more community enhancing strategies that do not create the intractable problem of nuclear waste, and do not increase the likelihood of catastrophic accidents, terrorism, and nuclear weapons proliferation. We need to vigorously embrace such strategies, and renounce new and phase-out old nuclear power plants Best, Joe [1] Nuclear Power Safety - Union of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/safety/ [2] Nuclear Information and Resource Service http://www.nirs.org/ [3] An American Chernobyl: Nuclear “Near Misses” at U.S. Reactors Since 1986 - Greenpeace 2006 http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/usa/press-center/reports4/an-american-chernobyl-nuclear.pdf [4] Fix Fire Safety Problems at U.S. Power Reactors - Union of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/safety/fix-fire-safety-problems-at.html [5] Dozens of U.S. nuclear power plants (NPP) are emerging as flagrant violators to current fire protection law at sites including Oyster Creek, Shearon Harris, Diablo Canyon, Arkansas Nuclear One, Davis-Besse, McGuire, Crystal River, Sequoyah, St. Lucie and Comanche Peak [addresses "inoperable" Thermo-Lag 330 fire barriers and other issues] - NIRS/WISE 1/9/04 http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/601/5566.php [6] Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina - Story #4 in Project Censored's Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010 http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/4-nuclear-waste-pools-in-north-carolina/ [7] Signs of Nuclear Regulatory Shortcomings Proliferate [aging nuclear reactors; Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio] - J.R. Pegg - Environment News Service 5/20/04 http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-20-10.asp [8] How We Almost Blew Up Ohio - Judith Lewis - Mother Jones 4/27/08 http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/05/how-we-almost-blew-up-ohio.html [9] Energy Sec Unaware That Nuclear Loans Have 50 Percent Risk of Default - Kate Sheppard - Mother Jones 2/16/10 http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/02/chu-not-aware-nuclear-default-rates [10] U.S. May Never Need More Nuclear, Coal Plants, FERC Head Says - Tina Seeley - Bloomberg 4/22/09 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ajl3fRv9AdDI [11] Obama’s Nuclear Option - Amy Goodman - TruthDig 2/18/10 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/18 [12] Obama's Atomic Blunder - Harvey Wasserman - CommonDreams 2/17/10 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/17-5 [13] Sellafield: the most hazardous place in Europe - Robin McKie - The Observer 4/19/09 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/19/sellafield-nuclear-plant-cumbria-hazards [14] A £1bn nuclear white elephant - Michael Savage - The Independent 4/6/09 http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/a-1631bn-nuclear-white-elephant-1664427.htmlView Comments (1) Post Comment
Best Book in Peace Education
Robin Crews posted this list to the Peace Studies Association website shortly before its merger with COPRED, which led to the founding of PJSA. I've been meaning to find a home for it on the PJSA website. This blog seems like the right place since it can be a "living" list. Feel free to comment on particular listings or add your own favorite book. What follows below is Robin's original message. enjoy, Amy Shuster * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [b]"THE ONE BEST BOOK IN PEACE EDUCATION" [/b] In the spring of [2001] a number of peace electronic discussion groups were canvassed to determine the title and author of the single book which above all others inspired and informed responding peace educators. The same request was also placed in the last issue of PSA NEWS. Listed below in alphabetical order by author, are the titles of those "best books" and the name and home territory of each of the persons suggesting the book. The purpose is to help recognize some of the most influential books and to appreciate how people, many of whom we know, began or developed their journey in peace education. Cheshmak Farhoumand later forwarded the request on the PEACE and ICAR listservs and enlarged the quest from peace education to "peace studies". Although this opens up a somewhat expanded body of considerations for choosing one best book those selections are also integrated in what follows. They are denoted by *PS* which follows the title. The Peace STUDIES list is not as extensive and deserves a full treatment at some future date. The Single Book Which Most Inspired and Informed Me in Peace Education (and in some cases: Peace Studies generally): [b]Barash, David. [u]Introduction to Peace Studies[/u][/b] *PS* -- Kathleen Maas Weigert, Univ. of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA [b]Chomsky, Noam. [u]What Uncle Sam Really Wants[/u][/b] --Jennifer Atieno Fisher, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA [b]Clarke, Bill. [u]Enough Room for Joy: Jean Vanier's L'Arche: A Message for Our Time[/u] [/b] -- Pat Goulet, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada [b]Dalai Lama, H.H. The 14th. [u]Ocean of Wisdom [/u][/b] -- Ellen W. Gorsevski, Penn State Univ., Univ. Park, PA, USA [b]Deming, Barbara. [u]We Cannot Live Without Our Lives [/u][/b] --Kathy Bickmore, OISE, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [b]Eisler, Riane. [u]The Chalice and the Blade [/u][/b] -- Lisa Schirch, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA [b]Fisher, Roger & Ury, William. [u]Getting to Yes[/u] [/b] -- Steve Iliff, Avila College, Kansas City, Missouri, USA [b]Freire, Paulo. [u]Pedagogy of the Oppressed [/u][/b] -- Amy L.Scanlon Christian Children s Fund, Richmond, VA, USA -- Larry J. Fisk, MSVU, Halifax, NS, Canada [b]Galtung, Johan. [u]Peace by Peaceful Means [/u][/b] -- Joanna Santa Barbara, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON, Canada [b]Galtung, Johan. "Violence, Peace, and Peace Research" in [u]Journal of Peace Research[/u] [/b] -- Mitsuo Okamoto (Hiroshima Shudo University) Japan & Harvard Law School, MA, USA [b]Gandhi, Mohandas K. [u]My Experiments with Truth[/u] [/b] -- M.V. Naidu, Brandon Univ., Brandon, Manitoba, Canada -- Janet M. Powers, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA, USA -- Kumar S. P. Udayakumar, U of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA [b]Golas, Thaddeus. [u]The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment[/u] [/b] -- Gay Rosenblum-Kumar, United Nations, New York, USA [b]Gray, J. Glenn. [u]The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle [/u]*PS* [/b] -- Tamra Pearson d'Estree, George Mason U. Fairfax, VA, USA [b]Hanigan, James P. [u]Martin Luther King Jr. and the Foundations of Nonviolence[/u] *PS*[/b] -- Mara Lyn Schoeny, ICAR, George Mason U, Fairfax, VA, USA [b]Harris, Ian. [u]Peace Education [/u][/b] -- Sharon Wisniewski, Cooperative Educ. Service Agency, West Allis, WI, USA [b]Havel, Vaclav. [u]The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice [/u][/b] -- Thomas P. Dwyer, Osceola, Wisconsin, USA [b]Heger, Heinz. [u]The Men with the Pink Triangle [/u][/b] -- Christopher E. Renner, University of Naples, Italy [b]Horton, Myles. [u]The Long Haul [/u][/b] -- Bernie Wiebe, Menno Simons College, Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada [b]Huxley, Aldous. [u]The Perennial Philosophy [/u][/b] -- Malvern Lumsden, Newmedia, Norway [b]Isaacs, Harold R. [u]Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change [/u]*PS* [/b] -- Ivan King, National Science Foundation, USA [b]Kelman, Herbert C. & Hamilton, V. Lee. [u]Crimes of Disobedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority & Responsibility [/u][/b] -- Ruth Krall, Goshen College, Goshen, IN, USA [b]King, Martin Luther Jr. [u]A Testament of Hope [/u][/b] -- Ian Harris, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,. WI, USA [b]King, Martin Luther Jr. [u]Strength to Love [/u]*PS* [/b] -- Antonia (Tonie) Malone, Seton Hall University, & Middletown, New Jersey, USA [b]Kleidman, Robert. [u]Mobilizing for Peace [/u][/b] -- Eric Swank, Morehead State University, Morehead, Kentucky, USA [b]Kreidler, Bill. [u]Creative Conflict Resolution[/u][/b] -- Randy Salm, Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia [b]Lakey, George. [u]Strategy for a Living Revolution [/u][/b] -- James D. Pickens, Elon College, North Carolina, USA [b]Lederach, John Paul. [u]Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies[/u] [/b] -- Cynthia Sampson, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA [b]Lifton, Robert Jay & Falk, Richard. [u]Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case Against Nuclearism[/u] [/b] -- H. J. Hank Stam, Univ. of Calgary, Calgary Alberta, Canada [b]Max-Neef, Manfred. [u]Human Scale Development: Conception, Application and Further Reflections[/u] *PS* [/b] -- Davin Bremner, ICAR George Mason U. Fairfax, VA, USA [b]Mische, Gerald and Patricia. [u]Toward a Human World Order[/u][/b] -- Jacqueline Haessly, Cardinal Stritch U. Milwaukee, WI, USA [b]Owen, Wilfred. [u]Collected Poems [/u][/b] -- Ada Aharoni, Israel [b]Parry, Danaan. [u]Warriors of the Heart [/u][/b] -- Happi McQuirk, Four Winds, Greenore, Co. Louth, Ireland [b]Peace Pilgrim. [u]Peace Pilgrim Writings [/u][/b] -- Joanne Curran, SUNY College at Oneonta, New York, USA [b]Prutzman, Priscilla et al. [u]The Friendly Classroom for a Small Planet [/u][/b] -- Marsha S. Blakeway, George Mason U. Fairfax, VA, USA -- Celina Garcia, CEPPA Foundation, San Jose, Costa Rica [b]Quinn, Daniel. [u]Ishmael[/u][/b] -- Gordie Fellman, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA [b]Rapoport, Anatol. [u]The Origins of Violence: Approaches to the Study of Conflict[/u] [/b] -- Metta Spencer, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [b]Said, Edward. [u]Culture and Imperialism [/u]*PS* [/b] -- Linda Forcey, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA [b]Saint. Exupery, Antoine de. [u]The Little Prince[/u] [/b] -- Lea Scott-Donelan, Independent Projects Trust, Durban, South Africa [b]Satir, Virginia. [u]The New Peoplemaking [/u][/b] -- Harriet Field, Child & Youth Studies, MSVU Halifax, NS, Canada [b]Sharp, Gene. [u]The Politics of Nonviolent Action[/u][/b] (3 vols) -- Ron McCarthy, Merrimack College North Andover, MA, USA [b]Sibley, Mulford Q. [u]The Quiet Battle: Writings on the Theory & Practice of Non-Violent Resistance [/u][/b] -- Ted Herman, Colgate, Hamilton, NY, USA & the Balkans. [b]Thich Nhat Hanh. [u]Being Peace[/u] [/b] -- Geraldine (Gerry) Ulstrup, Whyalla, Australia -- Patrick McNamara ICAR, George Mason U. Fairfax, VA, USA [b]Thoreau, Henry David. [u]Walden & The Duties of Civil Disobedience [/u][/b] -- Floyd W. Rudmin, University of Tromso, Norway [b]Trumbo, Dalton. [u]Johnny Got His Gun [/u][/b] -- Joyce Kennedy, Continuing Education, MSVU, Halifax, NS, Canada [b]Universal House of Justice. [u]The Promise of World Peace: A Baha'i Statement on Peace[/u] [/b] -- Cheshmak A. Farhoumand, York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada [b]Vogt, Wolfgang R. & Jung, Eckhard. [u]Kultur des Friedens: Wege zu einer Welt ohne Krieg[/u] ([u]Culture of Peace: Roads to a World without War[/u]) [/b] -- Karlheinz Koppe, IPRA & Universitaet Muenster, Bonn, Germany [b]Waltz, Kenneth. [u]Man the State and War [/u]*PS* [/b] -- Kevin Clements, ICAR George Mason U., Fairfax, VA, USA [b]Walzer, Michael. [u]Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations [/u][/b] -- Crandall R. Kline, Jr., Akron. OH, USA [b]Webster-Doyle, Terrence. [u]Why Is Everybody Always Picking On Me? A Guide to Handling Bullies [/u][/b] -- Susan Fitzell, AIMHI Educational Programs, Manchester, New Hampshire, USA [b]Wink, Walter. [u]Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination[/u] [/b] -- Maria Cockroft, Fairfax Virginia, USA -- Julie Hart, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, USA [b]Winn, Albert Curry. [u]Ain't Gonna Study War No More [/u][/b] -- Warren Eastman, Florida Southwest Peace Education Coalition, Florida, USA [b]Woolf, Virginia. [u]The Three Guineas [/u][/b] -- Frances Early, Peace History Society & MSVU, Halifax, NS Canada [b]Yoder, John Howard. [u]The Politics of Jesus [/u]*PS* [/b] -- David Cockburn, Bradford University, United Kingdom page author: Robin Crews (crews@csf.colorado.edu) recoded by Sara Van Degrift (Earlham College - TWG) 2/1/01View Comments (0) Post Comment
SELECTIVE SERVICE TO EXPAND ALTERNATIVES FOR CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS
The San Antonio peaceCENTER is co-located with the Mennonite Church where this agreement will be signed -- Susan Ives SELECTIVE SERVICE TO EXPAND ALTERNATIVES FOR CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS Director Lawrence Romo returns to hometown to sign agreement with Mennonite Church Arlington, Virginia— Selective Service Director Lawrence G. Romo will sign the Agency’s first Alternative Service Employer Network (ASEN) agreement in 25 years on Tuesday, April 20 in San Antonio, Texas, expanding options for conscientious objectors (COs) should a military draft ever be reinstated. The agreement will be between the Selective Service System and the Mennonite Voluntary Service, part of the Mennonite Mission Network, an agency of the Mennonite Church USA. The event will take place at the Mennonite Voluntary Service office at South St. Mary’s Street in San Antonio. “The second mission of Selective Service, right after conducting a military draft if ever Congress and the President consider it necessary, is to arrange civilian alternative service for conscientious objectors,” Mr. Romo said. “Few people are aware of that second mission, but we take it seriously and devote time and resources to ensuring a just and productive alternative for men sincerely opposed to war.” . Alternative service was included in the 1940 Selective Training and Service Act. During World War I, COs served in noncombatant roles or went to jail if they couldn’t avoid the draft. Before that, COs paid fines, provided substitutes, or found other ways to support the war effort. Alternative service generally means a 24-month term of service, the same duration as the military service of draftees. If a military draft were ever reinstated, Alternative Service Workers (ASWs) would work for the Federal Government, or for organizations engaged in charitable activities conducted for the public welfare. Those activities would include health care, education, community or social services, agriculture, or environmental programs. Selective Service’s last ASEN agreement was with the U.S. Department of Interior in January of 1985. The draft ended in June of 1973. Since 1980, however, federal law has required virtually all men to register with Selective Service between their 18th and 26th birthdays. “Although there is no draft, and no likelihood of a draft, Selective Service has a responsibility to be prepared for every contingency,” Mr. Romo said. “Since that contingency planning must include alternative service for COs, we appreciate the long-standing support and cooperation of the Mennonite Church, culminating in this agreement.” Expected to join Mr. Romo at the event are Stanley Green, executive director of the Mennonite Mission Network; Hugo Saucedo, Mennonite Voluntary Service director; and other Selective Service and Mennonite officials. Mr. Romo has headed Selective Service since December 4, 2009, following his nomination by President Barack Obama. He is a native of San Antonio. Previously, Mr. Romo was Soldier and Family Assistance Program Manager for the U.S. Army 5th Recruiting Brigade. He was also chairman of Bexar County Veterans Committee and Chairman of the San Antonio Commission for Children. The Mennonite Church USA is an Anabaptist Christian denomination with more than 109,000 members in 44 states. Twenty-one area conferences serve as regional offices or districts for 939 congregations. ### CONTACT: Selective Service Public and Intergovernmental Affairs, (703) 605-4100.View Comments (0) Post Comment
Government economic policy may drive world affairs.
PJSA members: I sent Floyd's recent reference to my broker this morning. My broker is a very bright fellow, with his own firm and thus free to think very independently of big business/ big investment firm policies or philosophies. He talks below of very serious government policy shortsightedness, apparently across many major world govenrments (printing money to solve problems). Thus, economics and government policy may drive much of our foreseeable future. How can social activists have a significant impact on redesigning governments or at least retooling government visions and worldviews sufficiently to manage our collective affairs realistically? That seems to the be the implied bottom line question. Bill McConochie, Political Psychology Research. My brokers comments on the world economy: "I share many of the concerns of this author. It is amazing to me > how people have chosen to just ignore numerous problematic areas. > I think the Greece crisis does have the potential to spread > because it is precisely THE problem that faces so much of the > developed world. That problem is too much debt and too many > underfunded entitlement programs. We need to face reality and I > do think there is the potential for a severe market shake up as > we are forced to come to grips with this. With that being said, > it is clear that our leaders are convinced that our challenges > should be met with massive money printing. In a world dominated > by money printing it is a lot harder to be conservative than it > would be in a deflationary environment. In a deflation we can > just hold cash and look for things to buy. If very high inflation > is on the table, this strategy could be disastrous as asset > prices inflate continually and the purchasing power of money > erodes. As things stand at the moment, I am not sure if the > deflationary or inflationary forces will win out in the short > term. I lean towards inflation, but I fear the deflation > scenario. My approach to managing your money in this environment > is to employ put option hedges where it seems reasonable, hold > some cash, emphasize gold, silver and precious metals miners, > avoid most government debt (more than a couple years in > maturity.), and above all try to remain flexible in the face of > record uncertainty."View Comments (0) Post Comment
Walls and Bridges
Tearing Down Walls and Building Bridges Jean-Marie Muller * Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a war pilot in May of 1940 when he wrote these lines: "The drama retreating is that it removes all meaning from one's acts. Whoever tears down a bridge can only tear it down with disgust. This soldier is not slowing the enemy down: he is leaving a bridge in ruin. He destroys his country in order to fulfill the caricature of war!" It is always so. Always, war, whatever cause it claims to serve--and this can be just--, leaves bridges in ruin. War will forever leave houses, villages, and cities in ruin. And these ruins are the ruin of man's humanity. Violent means do not only pervert the most noble of causes, but it erases and substitutes that cause for itself. "It is this reversal of roles between means and ends, writes Simone Weil, it is this fundamental folly that accounts for everything foolish and bloody throughout history." Violence is thus sought after for itself. It becomes a blind mechanism of destruction, demolition, devastation and death. Each evening, we are tele-voyeurs who watch men play the mechanized game of war from the four corners of the earth. And one cannot but help to note that we are fascinated by these images of iron, fire, blood and death. However, in each one of these conflicts, violence is not the solution, it is the problem. The error lies in deeming that violence is human. Facing the tragedy of violence, facing its inhumanity, its absurdity, its ineffectiveness, has not the moment arrived, out of realism if not wisdom, to become aware of the need for non-violence? Violence can only destroy bridges and build walls. Non-violence invites us to tear down walls and to build bridges. Unfortunately, it is more difficult to build bridges than walls. The architecture of walls demands nothing of the imagination: it has only to mind gravity. The architecture of bridges demands an infinite greater amount of intelligence: one must defeat gravity's pull. The most visible of walls separating men are the concrete walls that martyrize geography and divide the earth we should be sharing. As was the Berlin wall, so is the Wall of Jerusalem. For posterity's sake, the Berlin wall was not destroyed by the massive arms of destruction from the West. Neither did it crumble by itself under its own weight. The Berlin Wall fell under the pressure of the non-violent resistance of women and men from civil societies from countries in the East who took the greatest risks in order to regain their dignity and freedom. Yet there also exists walls in the hearts and minds of men. These are walls of ideologies, prejudices, insults, stigmatization, bitterness, resentment, fear. The most dramatic consequence of violence is that it constructs walls of hate. Only those who, on whichever side they find themselves, have the lucidity, intelligence and courage to tear down these walls and build bridges that allow individuals, communities, and people to meet one another, to know one another, to talk with and begin to understand one another, they alone keep the hope alive that gives meaning to the future of humanity. The fatality of violence is built entirely by the hands of men. This means that men, with their own hands, can tear it down. Translated from the French by Stephanie N. Van Hook *Writer and Philosopher, Jean-Marie Muller is the national spokesman of "Mouvement pour une Alternative Non-violente" (MAN: www.nonviolence.fr). [img]http://blog.syracuse.com/indepth/2009/05/large_berlinx.jpg[/img]View Comments (0) Post Comment
A Ripple of Hope: RFK and MLK
I rented [url=http://www.rippleofhopemovie.com/][b]A Ripple of Hope[/b][/url] from Blockbuster online -- and you should do the same. This just-released 54-minute documentary is about Robert Kennedy's April 4, 1968 campaign speech in Indianapolis, the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. It is one of the most profound and important speeches in American history: [i]What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. [/i] [read the rest of the post of the [url=http://classofnonviolence.blogspot.com][i]Class of Nonviolence[/i] blog[/url]]View Comments (0) Post Comment
PJSA Issues Statement Condemning Arizona Immigration Law
As one of the leading professional organizations in the fields of Peacebuilding, Conflict Studies, and Social Justice, the Peace & Justice Studies Association (PJSA) has issued a strong condemnation of Arizona’s new immigration law, SB 1070. Joining with other academic and educational associations in related fields, we believe that the law is draconian and ill-advised, and that its application threatens to inflame anti-immigrant sentiments and undermine constructive solutions to the challenges faced by communities in Arizona and across the nation. Below is a statement unanimously endorsed by the Board of Directors of the PJSA, which has been delivered to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer calling upon her to rescind this unjust law. In so doing, we recall the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his landmark essay [i]Letter from a Birmingham Jail[/i], following the teachings of St. Augustine: “‘An unjust law is no law at all.’... Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” SB 1070 is such a law, and accordingly we join with myriad others in calling for its immediate rescission. ============================== May 9, 2010 The Honorable Jan Brewer Governor of Arizona 1700 West Washington Phoenix, Arizona 85007 Dear Governor Brewer: We, the members of the Board of Directors of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA), wish to express our deep concern with and unequivocal condemnation of Senate Bill 1070, which you signed into law on April 23, 2010. By making it a state crime to be in Arizona without federal authorization, and also making it a punishable offense to support someone without the appropriate documents, SB 1070 criminalizes countless decent human beings who live, work, pay taxes, and raise their families in Arizona. In addition, the enforcement of such a constitutionally problematic law threatens everyone’s civil rights in the process, and undermines the potential for fostering an environment based on peace and social justice. We unanimously denounce this law and strenuously urge that you rescind it in the name of compassion and human dignity. The PJSA is a non-partisan professional organization of scholars, educators and practitioners that was formed in 2001 as a result of a merger of the Consortium on Peace research, Education and Development (COPRED) and the Peace Studies Association (PSA). We are dedicated to bringing together academics, teachers, and activists to explore alternatives to violence and share visions and strategies for peacebuilding, social justice, and social change. As such, our international membership is both knowledgeable about and concerned with the problems associated with social issues such as immigration. While immigration reform in the United States may be overdue, we also know that using this to justify state laws that usurp federal authority over immigration will create many more legal and social problems than it resolves. Police officers are not immigration officers. Putting them in the position of enforcing federal immigration law will destroy the trust between police officers and communities that is necessary for effective law enforcement. It will also lead to unwarranted and prolonged detention of citizens and legal residents, increasing the likelihood of civil rights litigation against police departments, cities, and towns, and potentially damaging family units across the state. Despite language ostensibly prohibiting racial profiling, this will be the de facto reality of the law’s implementation. Physical appearance, particularly being of Hispanic background, will unavoidably remain the primary factor determining whether someone is or is not asked to prove their citizenship or residency status. For all these reasons, many law enforcement leaders across the country, as well as in Arizona, oppose this law. It would be wise to heed the objections of the law enforcement officers who are now faced with enforcing this unjust law. For some, the stated intent of SB 1070 unequivocally is to cleanse Arizona of its undocumented immigrants and their families, among them children and other relatives born in the United States, as evidenced by the fact that legislative supporters of this law have repeatedly and proudly described this as part of a strategy to make life so unbearable for undocumented residents and their families that they will leave the state. Any law whose goal and effect is to drive an ethnic population to leave its place of residence is a crime against humanity under current international law. SB 1070 risks making Arizona a pariah state on the international as well as national stage. Furthermore, whatever the intent, at minimum this law will create a climate of fear so intense as to make low-wage workers even more vulnerable and therefore much easier to exploit by unscrupulous employers. Denying immigrant workers protections or otherwise making them more vulnerable does not stop them from coming. Rather, it simply drives them further underground and makes them more exploitable. We further observe that the climate of fear and hostility created by this law is antithetical to the aims of promoting a more just and peaceful world. By institutionalizing chauvinism and magnifying differences of race of ethnicity, SB 1070 promises to enlarge the gulf between diverse communities and pit groups against one another rather than encouraging people to work together to find mutually-beneficial solutions to challenging issues. Moreover, this bill will make it less likely that people of color in need of assistance will reach out to either law enforcement or other community members, thus enhancing their vulnerability and disabling the potential resolution of conflicts in a constructive manner on a community-wide level. For all of these reasons, we find that SB 1070 contravenes the mission and values of our organization. We recognize the political pressures placed upon you to sign the law, but we appeal to you to provide the leadership that is expected and required of our public servants. We ask whether you truly want this to be your legacy. Please choose to be on the right side of history and work to rescind this patently unjust law. We thank you for your time and attention in this important matter. Sincerely, Board of Directors of the Peace and Justice Studies Association Prescott College 220 Grove Ave. Prescott, AZ 86301 (928) 350-2008 info@peacejusticestudies.org www.peacejusticestudies.orgView Comments (0) Post Comment
Consortium of Professional and Academic Associations Condemns Arizona Immigration Law
An ad-hoc working group comprised of representatives from over twenty leading professional and academic associations has issued a joint statement condemning Arizona’s immigration law (SB 1070) and related state policies such as the prohibition against Ethnic Studies programs (HB 2281), calling for these laws to be rescinded. The "Consortium of Professional and Academic Associations" believes that these laws are inherently unjust, and that their application threatens to inflame anti-immigrant sentiments and undermine constructive solutions to the challenges faced by communities in Arizona and across the nation. We call upon the governor, legislators, and people of Arizona to work diligently and swiftly to repeal these laws. Our organizations include members from fields including sociology, criminology, political science, peace studies, psychology, anthropology, environmental studies, Chicano/a studies, and a multitude of related areas of study. Our collective membership numbers more than 15,000 scholars, educators, and activists, with many residing in Arizona. The decision to join together in issuing the open letter below represents an unprecedented and historical moment of collaboration. As academics and professionals concerned about social and environmental justice, human rights, and due process, we add our collective voices to those of many others from across the country calling for the immediate rescission of SB 1070 (and, as amended, HB 2162) and HB 2281 in the name of equity, compassion, integrity, constitutionality, and sound public policy. Signatories to the joint statement include representatives from the following professional organizations and academic associations, all of which have either issued individual statements or otherwise indicated their opposition to and condemnation of SB 1070 and related policies (additional signatories may be added to this growing list as organizations finalize their support): [list=1] American Studies Association (ASA) Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA) Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) Chicano/Latino Faculty and Staff Association, ASU (CLFSA) City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center's Immigration Working Group Joint Coordinating Committee of Mexican, US, and Canadian Historians Justice Studies Association (JSA) Law and Society Association (LSA) MAVIN Foundation Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies (NACCS) National Association for Ethnic Studies (NAES) Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) San Francisco State University (SFSU), College of Ethnic Studies (multiple programs):[quote]Department of Africana Studies; Department of American Indian Studies; Department of Asian American Studies; Department of Raza Studies; Race and Resistance Program; Arab and Muslim Ethnicities in Diaspora Program; César E. Chavez Institute[/quote]Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) Society for Adv. of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA) Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) Sociologists Without Borders (Sociologos Sin Fronteras) (SSF) Therapists for Social Responsibility [/list] A press conference featuring delegates from a number of these organizations was held on Wednesday, May 19, 2010, at 1PM on the Senate Lawn at the Arizona State Capitol. Representatives from many of the signatory organizations issued short statements, and then engaged in follow-up discussion. Participants and representatives at the press conference included: Randall Amster, J.D., Ph.D., Executive Director, PJSA Merrill Eisenberg, Ph.D., President-elect, SfAA Paul Espinosa, Ph.D., President, CLFSA Luis Fernandez, Ph.D., Board Member, SSSP Zoe Hammer, Ph.D., Program Committee Member, ASA Manuel de Jesus Hernandez G., Ph.D., Former National Chair, NACCS Marie Keta Miranda, Ph.D., Chair, MALCS Devon Pena, Ph.D., President, NACCS Michelle Tellez, Ph.D., Board Member, NACCS Finally, by way of background and context, the following member organizations have issued specific statements condemning SB 1070, which can be found at these locations: [url=http://www.sssp1.org/file/Brewer%20Final%20Ltr%20-%20Arizona%20SB%201070.pdf]SSSP[/url] [url=http://www.peacejusticestudies.org/resources/blogcomments.php?qwerty=79]PJSA[/url] [url=http://www.naccs.org/images/naccs/ltrs/SB_1070.pdf]NACCS[/url] [url=http://malcs.net/blog]MALCS[/url] [url=http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfbyctt/petition.html]SSF[/url] [url=http://www.psysr.org/about/programs/wellbeing/immigrationreform.php]PsySR[/url] [url=http://naisa.org/node/189]NAISA[/url] [url=http://aaastudies.org/blog/2010/05/17/statement-in-protest-of-arizona-legislation/]AAAS[/url] [url=http://www.sacnas.org/pressRelease.cfm?contentitem_id=45]SACNAS[/url] [url=http://justicestudies.org/Print/JSAletter-arizona.pdf]JSA[/url] [url=http://www.sfra.org/node/80]SFRA[/url] ================================= May 17, 2010 To Governor Brewer, the State Legislature, and the People of Arizona: We wish to express our deep concern with and unequivocal condemnation of Senate Bill 1070, which you signed into law on April 23, 2010. By making it a state crime to be in Arizona without federal authorization, and also making it a punishable offense to support someone without the appropriate documents, SB 1070 criminalizes countless decent human beings who live, work, pay taxes, and raise their families in Arizona. In addition, the enforcement of such a constitutionally problematic law threatens everyone’s civil rights in the process, and undermines the potential for fostering an environment based on peace and social justice. We unanimously denounce this law and strenuously urge that you rescind it in the name of compassion and human dignity. We are all non-partisan professional organizations of scholars, educators, and practitioners, with thousands of members from across the country and abroad, committed to and knowledgeable about a wide range of social justice and environmental issues. We count among our members numerous scholars and other professionals who are among the most knowledgeable in the country on the subjects of immigration, including undocumented immigration, and our legal and political systems. While immigration reform in the United States may be overdue, we also know that using this to justify state laws that usurp federal authority over immigration will create many more legal and social problems than it resolves. Moreover, we note that the combined effect of SB 1070 with the prohibition on Ethnic Studies contained in HB 2281 creates an atmosphere of legislated intolerance and racialized politicking that is simply untenable, unwise, and unjust. Indeed, the simple fact that SB 1070 had to be amended, under pressure following its passage, by HB 2162 (which sought to qualify the conditions for officer contact) demonstrates quite clearly the inherently flawed and potentially racist implications of this piece of legislation. We note here as well that the purported “remedy” of requiring a “stop” before officers can inquire further about legal status based a “reasonable suspicion” is equally expansive in its application, and thus equally problematic. These alterations, again adopted in haste following public pressure, will not provide sufficient protection against racial profiling. Police officers are not immigration officers. Putting them in the position of enforcing federal immigration law will destroy the trust between police officers and communities so essential for effective law enforcement. It will also lead to unwarranted and prolonged detention of citizens and legal residents, increasing the likelihood of civil rights litigation against police departments, cities, and towns, and potentially damaging family units across the state. Despite language ostensibly prohibiting racial profiling, this will be the de facto reality of the law’s implementation. Physical appearance, particularly being of Hispanic background, will unavoidably remain the primary factor determining whether someone is or is not asked to prove her or his citizenship or residency status. For all these reasons, many law enforcement leaders across the country, as well as in Arizona, oppose this law. It would be wise to heed the objections of the law enforcement officers who are now faced with enforcing this unjust law. For some, the stated intent of SB 1070 unequivocally is to cleanse Arizona of its undocumented immigrants and their families, among them children and other relatives born in the United States, as evidenced by the fact that legislative supporters of this law have repeatedly and proudly described this as part of a strategy to make life so unbearable for undocumented residents and their families that they will leave the state. Any law whose goal and effect is to drive an ethnic population to leave its place of residence is a crime against humanity under current international law. The law will also have the effect of separating cohesive family units, leading to increased marginalization and immiseration among communities already facing grave challenges. In this manner, SB 1070 risks making Arizona a pariah state on the national and international stages. Furthermore, whatever the intent, at minimum this law will create a climate of fear so intense as to make low-wage workers even more vulnerable and therefore much easier to exploit by unscrupulous employers. Denying immigrant workers protections or otherwise making them more vulnerable does not stop them from coming. Rather, it simply drives them further underground and makes them more exploitable. Finally, the climate of fear and hostility that this law will create is antithetical to the aims of promoting a more just and peaceful world. By institutionalizing chauvinism and magnifying differences of race and ethnicity, SB 1070 promises to enlarge the gulf between diverse communities and pit groups against one another, rather than encouraging people to work together to find mutually-beneficial solutions to challenging issues. Ironically, and sadly, the net effect of SB 1070 will be precisely what is sought to be prohibited under HB 2281, namely that it will in practice and principle serve to “promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group.” Opposition to this law has been rapid and strong, and is likely to become even stronger, as more and more groups and individuals boycott the state of Arizona and businesses based in Arizona. We are aware as well of the ostensible support in the state for the law, and therefore recognize the political pressures that have led you to pass this law. But widespread support for a law does not make it just; not long ago the majority of southerners supported segregation laws. As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his landmark essay Letter from a Birmingham Jail, following the teachings of St. Augustine: “‘An unjust law is no law at all.’… Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” It is especially in instances such as these that strong moral leadership is needed, and we are appealing to the governor, state legislators, and all concerned Arizonans to provide it. Please choose to be on the right side of history and work to overturn this patently unjust law. We thank you for your time and attention in this important matter. Sincerely, The ad hoc Consortium of Professional and Academic Associations ============= Direct Link to Statement and Letter on [url=http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/05/18-1]Common Dreams Newswire[/url] Announcement in the [url=http://chronicle.com/blogPost/10-Academic-Associations-Issue/24090/]Chronicle of Higher Education[/url]View Comments (0) Post Comment
Quelling Evil
Subject: Quelling Evil is not Evil. President Obama, in his speech in Oslo, presented the right philosophy about war and peace. There are such things as just wars. Fighting to relieve people from aggression, genocide and terrorism are just wars. This is the mission of the United Nations and we need to support them in it. This is the philosophy proposed by my book, "Peace Within Our Grasp". When every nation embraces freedom, equality, and freedom of religion, there will be no more wars. My book provides the specifics needed to implement the Obama philosophy. Every one needs to have clear in their minds what evil is and what it isn't. The U.S. in the 20th and 21st centuries has been fighting wars, not to seek control but to relieve them of control by evil governments. Now that Germany and Japan have governments endorsing freedom, they are our friends. Fighting to protect people from aggression, repression, genocide and terrorism is not evil. President Obama was right to receive the Nobel Peace Prize at the same time he was fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to suppress the factions who seek to control in an evil manner. Those who advocate nonviolence as the path to world peace need to know that evil factions cannot be suppressed by nonviolent means. If they think they can, they have had plenty if opportunities to prove it. Maybe, Obama should ask a group of pacifists to go there and convince the Taliban to accept freedom of religion and laws eliminating killing for any reason. Then we would have no reason to fight them. Defense is a basic right but we need carefully worded international laws to determine who is the aggressor and who is the defender. That is why my plan is called peacedefense. Crandall R. Kline peacedefense@sbcglobal.netView Comments (0) Post Comment
The Ironies of Peace
In 1982 Mother Teresa of Calcutta stunned the world by announcing that she was going into a raging conflict in Beirut to rescue disabled children from an abandoned orphanage. It was during the bombardment that Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel called “Operation Peace [that word again] for Galilee.” It was a stunning gesture, perfectly worthy of her, and the judgment of the Nobel Peace Prize committee which had awarded her the coveted honor some years before. What the world didn’t notice is that PM Begin, author of the carnage, had also been given the Nobel Prize for Peace! From that day to this — or even further back if you consider that Alfred Nobel made his fortune by inventing dynamite — the prize has been accompanied by ironies. Last week in Oslo those ironies took on a particular form that is of great significance to all of us. There were many noble thoughts resounding throughout President Obama’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. The knowledge he revealed of some of his great predecessors, particularly Martin Luther King and Aung San Suu Kyi, was astounding for someone in his position; but at this point he makes a fatal mistake, and it is essential to recognize that mistake and to correct it. to make sure that it does not happen again. He said, “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.” In this I make bold to say that he was wrong. In March,1943, Gestapo headquarters in Berlin ordered the arrest and departation of the remaining Jewish men who had been left out of the roundups so far because they were married to ‘Aryan’ wives. But then a totally unexpected thing happened. First one, then another of those wives began to converge on the detention center at 1-2 Rosenstrasse demanding their men be released. By the end of the weekend they were nearly 6,000 strong, and refusing orders to disperse though Gestapo headquarters was only a few blocks away. And the Gestapo caved in. They returned the men. Moreover, as we have learned only recently, in Nazi-occupied capitals all over Europe officials carefully watched the failed experiment and decided to leave their own Jews who similarly had aryan spouses alone. In other words; a primitive, weak, unorganized form of nonviolence carried out spontaneously by untrained people with no organization and no followup “stopped Hitler’s armies” in their most virulent form, saving tens of thousands. On one level, it should come as a surprise that such a sophisticated President, who speaks knowledgeably about King and Gandhi, should come out with the oldest objection in the book, ‘it wouldn’t have worked against the Nazis’ — the most frequently heard cavil, the most knee-jerk reaction that people like me who advocate the ‘sweet reasonableness’ of nonviolence can hear in our sleep. There are several problems with the logic of this apparently imperishable argument, but it will do for now to simply say that it is patently false: nonviolence did work against the Nazis — when it was tried. The issue is not just philosophical. In the next breath The President adds, “Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.” This is how those who can see no recourse but violence always justify their actions. Was it not Hitlerwho said, in [i]Mein Kampf[/i], ‘We Germans have learned to our cost that the British will not listen to anything but force’? We may as well give this mistake it’s proper name: dehumanization. You cannot be violent toward another unless you adopt the fatal mistake of denying his or her humanity; and no peace will be possible as long as we persist in doing that. “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes,” President Obama said to frame his position; but that is pure speculation. Parallel to that was his projection of the same pessimism backward, to the imagined past: “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history…” No it didn’t. Modern research has shown that there are forms of conflict resolution among our primate ancestors that are more sophisticated than any some groups of Homo sapiens care to use — or acknowledge that they have. And the archeological record says that whole civilizations lived on what is now European soil for thousands of years with hardly a sign of large-scale conflict. As mentioned, this President displays more awareness of the nonviolent alternative than anyone who has held or could conceivably hold that high office in our lifetime. From what other President could we expect to hear these words in a highly public speech: “As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak — nothing passive, nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.” And yet, as he follows out of this logic he runs into a tragic block. He simply declares, again without evidence, that nonviolence would not have stopped Hitler’s armies and cannot stop a ruthless and determined opponent, although it stopped Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, Slobodan Miloevi in 2000 and about a dozen other dictators who were, like these, ruthless enough. He likewise bemoans the fact — and I am not accusing him of insincerity — that when a Darfur or a Rwanda happens we have only two choices, to stand by and do nothing or to use deadly force, because “inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.” Yet for the last twenty years the practice of unarmed civilian peacekeeping has been steadily growing, saving lives and moderating conflicts all over the world though only individual donors and a few enlightened governments (not including our own) keep them going. One global effort, called the Nonviolent Peaceforce, says plainly that they represent “what you can say yes to when you say no to war;” but the deafening drumbeat of violence and materialism, blaring at us in every medium, dutifuylly repeated in most every history book, is overwhelming, and we do not heed them. Again and again, the contrast between the President’s sophistication and his failure to apply it startles: “security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive.” Yes, this is called “human security” and is a far deeper and more practical promise than the folly of bombing enemies into undying, if helpless enmity. Recently Jeffrey Sachs, along with many other respected writers, has pointed out that development has a far, far better track record at stabilizing societies than any amount of military intervention — again at a fraction of the cost. As Sachs says, even if we spent $200 on every villager (which is more than enough to give them the economic security the President cited) we could help 5,000 of them for the cost of a single U.S. soldier stationed in Afghanistan: “That's right,” he concludes, “the approximate trade-off is meaningful help for an entire village versus stationing one more US soldier.” But where is the conclusion, that we should withdraw our troops and begin development in Afghanistan? But my point is a little different. I am talking about our addiction to violence, an addiction that is fed to satiation and beyond every day by our own mass media (the extremely violent new video game, “Modern Warfare,” which features ‘players’ massacring civilians, sold seven million copies in the first few hours), and has blinded us to the point that we cannot see the way out of our quandary even though it is happening, with a rising tempo, here and there across the planet. Having watched with admiration how calmly the President-to-be delivered his brilliant (albeit often evasive) speeches during his many campaigning months, it was painful for me to see for the first time a numbing strain invade his features. It was painful not just because of the admiration and, yes, affection in which I, for one, still hold President Obama: it was painful because in that agonizing tension between his personal vision and the tired, clichéd party line on which he is forced to walk we see reflected the tragedy of our civilization, where more and more of us can see a better world almost taking shape before our eyes but others of us, not always very many, maintain their death grip on the public discourse. So my point is not to criticize President Obama. Far from it. My point is to condemn the culture that has entrapped him, forcing him to betray his high intelligence. And that I do, not to stand in judgment on that culture or anyone who has fallen into its clutches, but to alert every one of us to the danger it poses — to encourage each of us to learn all we can about nonviolence and personally begin the shift, as Martin Luther King urged, from a ‘thing oriented’ civilization to one based on the infinite potential of the human being. The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States opened a door to a much brighter, nonviolent future. We have to pluck up the courage to walk through that door before it closes once again, perhaps for the last time.View Comments (0) Post Comment
Every Teacher a Peace Teacher
[b]Every Teacher a Peace Teacher by David Cook YES! Magazine June 29, 2010 [/b] Earlier this year, I walked into the university classroom where I teach a course in Peace Studies. Seated in a circle around the room were seniors just shy of graduating. They would soon become doctors, social workers, teachers, community organizers, executives, and leaders. To open our semester together, I wrote a simple, three-word question on the board. [i]What is peace?[/i] Silence. Stumped by this tiny question, no one spoke. They did not have an answer, and I would later discover why: It was the first time in their life a teacher had asked them to define peace.... [url=http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/every-teacher-a-peace-teacher]READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE[/url]View Comments (0) Post Comment
PJSA statement regarding Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project
In response to the recent US Supreme Court ruling in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project that supports a broad-ranging law that allows Americans who offer advice to banned organizations, including legal assistance and information on conflict resolution, to be prosecuted as terrorists, the Peace and Justice Studies Association makes the following statement: We scholars, educators, students and professionals who have devoted our careers to understanding how violence in the world can be reduced and how security can be attained believe, as a matter of conscience, in the right of all individuals to support both humanitarian aid to all people in need, and the teaching of nonviolent means for resolving conflicts without regard to lists of terrorist organizations provided by any agencies or governments. We are convinced that waging war cannot meet the security needs of people in a globally interconnected world, and that waging peace is a more effective strategy for addressing the roots of terrorism and promoting the inherent dignity of all members of the human family. We view efforts to restrict peacemaking activities as contradictory to the goals of combating terrorism and as an infringement of our right to express views consistent with both our knowledge and our moral and spiritual commitments to a world of peace. The PJSA is a non-partisan professional organization of scholars, educators and practitioners, dedicated to bringing together academics, teachers, and activists to explore alternatives to violence and share visions and strategies for peacebuilding, social justice, and social change. Learn more about us at www.peacejusticestudies.org.View Comments (0) Post Comment
Divisions Over Peace Studies
August 10, 2010 Inside Higher Ed At a time when student interest is growing in nongovernmental organizations and conflict resolution, faculty members in peace studies master's programs and those who employ their graduates appear to have split on the direction these programs should take. “In a nutshell, academics have a certain perception of what their graduates need, and employers have a specific need that is not being matched,” said David Smith, national education outreach officer for the United States Institute of Peace and co-author of a new institute report. ... Randall Amster, executive director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, agreed with the findings and lauded the report’s recommendations for bringing more field-based education to the classroom and for employers adjusting the way in which they engage the programs' graduates. “The [PJSA] would encourage a synergistic approach in which the perspectives of graduates in the field are invited straightforwardly into the policy-making and organizational frameworks developed by peace-related employers,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I would further urge that the field develop with due regard not only to needs of organizations and employers, but also to those of the graduates themselves and the academic institutions.” [url=http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/peace#]READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE[/url]View Comments (1) Post Comment
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