Taxonomic challenges of struggle

The debate about whether a particular civil society struggle is nonviolent or not is interesting, I suppose--"I'll take Intifadas for $300"--but I think more to the point is attempting to estimate the effects of tactics. Did Egyptians win their struggle (at least this first major phase of it) as a result of, or despite, their relatively minor amount of stone throwing? Did that violence accelerate or retard their advance toward the goal of getting Hosni Mubarak to step down?

First of all, this great struggle will be known historically as a nonviolent uprising. The decision on the typology is fairly settled. So, given that, how will the tactics be understood?

I believe they will be regarded as a very minor departure from a similar display of nonviolence used in Serbia in 2000 and in the Philippines in 1986 and in South Africa in the late 1980s, and throughout the Eastern and Central European Velvet Revolution. I do not believe it will be thought of like either Intifada in Palestine Israel. In those struggles the rocks were pelted at Israeli Defense Force, an occupying armed force. In Egypt, the stones were thrown at attacking thugs paid by or otherwise beholden to Mubarak's machine. The rocks were not hurled at the military. Indeed, the military was treated well and in turn generally treated the civil society uprising with relative courtesy. The difference is significant.

Israelis and Americans reacted negatively to Palestinians winding up and hurling rocks at the heads of IDF troops, especially since Palestinian fighters were also sometimes sniping at the same IDF troops and, it was felt, the suicide bombers who blew up kids at the university or in pizza joints were from the ranks of the stone throwers. True or false, it was a logical assumption.

Everyone understood almost immediately that the aggressive violent attackers in Tahrir Square were the same men seen at past demonstrations and election polling places, intimidating and committing violent acts. They came in swords swinging, pistols drawn and pointed, on horseback or camelback, for heavensake. It was thuggery, organized violent crime, and that was far too obvious. The image of the protesters was not nonviolent when they responded with stones, but everyone sympathized--everyone Egyptian and from the outside. The protesters never claimed to be Gandhian or Quaker nonviolent sufferers. They are Egyptians using strategic liberatory nonviolent civil society struggle and they essentially pushed the pause button on nonviolence to defend themselves with crude projectile objects when they were brutally attacked without provocation by criminals well known to them. This did very little to erode their image as sympathetic to most people domestic and foreign.

The other kerfuffle about how much Gene Sharp affected their struggle is a bit like asking how much the Wright Brothers influenced the Russians as they work on a new jet design. Sharp never claimed his teachings were necessary to do this--otherwise, how did Gandhi manage to achieve what he did, how did MLK do the Civil Rights movement, how did Kwame Nkrumah ever manage his nonviolent liberation of Ghana? All those preceded Sharp's scholarship on the power, methods and dynamics of nonviolence. Sharp is proud of his life's work, as he should be, but he is the last one to claim that anything other than culturally specific and locally led nonviolence will accomplish anything. His teachings have helped and any Egyptian who denies this may live by the Nile but also lives in denial.

We are simply humankind trying to help each other understand this force, this power that is always there, usually latent, normally cloaked, and far more complex than Gandhi or Sharp or Ackerman or Stephan or Schock or Kurtz or Popovic or Presbey or Helvey or True or Chenoweth or Zunes or Nagler or Burrowes or or Boaz or Clark or Cortright or Weber or any of our outstanding analysts can describe. Describing nonviolence is like describing an ecosystem; it is always far more complex than our most intricate explanation and all our complicated exegesis is absolutely helpful and necessary.

War on war

I've lived through the War on Poverty (poverty won), the Vietnam War (the Vietnamese kicked us out of their country), the War on Drugs (drugs prevailed), the Gulf War (Iraqis will eventually get us all out of their country), the War on Terror (up for grabs but the first side to choose nonviolence will win and right now it looks good for the Arab street as they figure out how to outfox all sides in this inane war). While my father's generation virtually worshiped war as the way to manage all conflict, it has been decidedly unimpressive to my generation. Perhaps there are legions of glorious victors of the Great War to Liberate Grenada drinking together across the land, but I haven't heard reports. So I hesitate to call for a declaration of war, but I am just an old fogy who can't help but want to defeat my enemy. We need a War on War.

War already declared that it targets everything we love. War targets our children and our ability to make a living. War targets our families and our very homes. War targets nature and nature will strike back with a fury that will turn humankind into collateral damage. The question is not whether this war should be declared, but whether we should notice that war is waging it and that we are losing.

Listening to the most liberal of national news sources, National Public Radio, is like listening to reports from the campaigns. The European Union, for all its glitches and personality disorders (France on the couch, Italy in the bordello, Greece in anger management therapy), is edging ahead of war in this battle. Africa is gaining. The Arab countries have found a path to defeat the worst of war as they learn to separate the armed forces from the dictators and join them with the people. The US lags.

Republicans and Democrats discuss the budget and the 1,800-pound gorilla squats in the living room, eating off of everyone else's plate, and no one from either party or the mainstream media seems to notice. NPR goes over the painful details of cutting non-defense discretionary spending, which is already losing bone--fat was gone back in the time of the Clintstones, and all muscle was excised in the Bush Junior years. Nothing is left of that budget but pain management and we are watching war strip away that.

From the discussion about non-defense discretionary, the discussion quickly leaps to "entitlements." These are trust funds that are being raided by the most untrustworthy of all humans, the war promoters. Social Security fixed an age old problem of old age and we are now fixing to sacrifice more and more elders to the needs of war. Health care is also being fed to the maw of war and neither party can do much besides cluck their tongues. The Republicans from Richistan are grinning and the Ds are wringing their hands impotently.

At some point, just to show us that they know it is in the room, the NPR interviewers mention the gorilla in passing, calling it politically unfeasible. They may claim, in accordance with the gorilla's rhetoric, that the military gorilla will also be cut. The gorilla smiles and grabs more from other people's plates. He can live with that lie.

So, out of sheer desperation, I am calling for war on war. No one will notice, but I will have the personal satisfaction of making that call. And I know that, as my friend George Crocker once said, "We are going to win, and if we don't, it won't matter, since no one will be around to worry about it." Humankind and war are like host and parasite, host and disease. War has seemed to be like the common cold or a leech to many--a temporary problem that we overcome and get back to good health. But it is actually more like cancer. It will destroy us if we don't race for the cure.

The cure for war is a world of structural nonviolence, from the family to the schools to religion to politics to law enforcement to the economy to all security apparatuses and all social institutions. Like fighting cancer, prevention is key and the cures are many for different types of war. We just need to decide to engage. The rest of the world seems to be ahead of us, and our fate is unclear. Our choice right now is war and that hurts us every day, every month, every year. These choices produced our Great Recession and are fueling the erosion of our base of natural resources. These choices drop us farther behind in the race every time we make them, and the budget reflects yet another year of making exactly the wrong choices.

So I shout this call into the wilderness: time to wage war on war and race for the cure.

Palin to rule planet Earth (a legend in her own mind)

Sarah Palin has announced that "we should not stand" for an Egyptian government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. She courageously made her stand on the Christian Broadcasting Network, virtually guaranteeing that all Muslims who heard her proclamation would be rightfully offended at her disrespect for everyone's freedom except her own and that of her kind. Sarah Palin is in some sort of race to the bottom with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck for the Ugly American Award, given to Beck in 2010, Limbaugh in 2009, and now comes Palin to make a play for gender equality, presumably.

What would Sarah say if a candidate for back-up ruler (vice-president in the US) in another country declared that "we should not stand" for a particular party or candidate or governing group coming to power in the US? If Wen Jiabao, Prime Minister of China, starting spouting about which party the Chinese would "not stand" for, imagine the rhetorical blasts from Palin. There would be crosshairs all over her website and she's be clamoring to go wave our nukes in a circle around China. But she gets to pontificate about what government a completely sovereign state should have, and which kind we "should not stand" for.

When Mohamad ElBaradei claims that there is no worry about the Muslim Brotherhood being the party of jihad, we should relax a little, take a deep breath, and just cheer for the Arab street, which has been valiantly out resisting US puppet Mubarak for more than a week and a half. These brave people have not left and that is simply more courageous than anything Sarah Palin has ever done in her entire entitled life. It's more than Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh (or Sean Hannity, or Tom DeLay, or Dick Cheney, et alia) have done in their benighted existences; it is hardly the mark of a brave person to personally never risk what they expect others to risk.

As the US slides in global stature it is long past the point when we should display just a little humility. We don't rule Earth. We are showing what happens when we decide we do not stand for a particular government; we are botching the two invasions and occupations we've undertaken, they are financially ruining this country, and we are alienating huge swathes of the populations of sovereign citizens all around the world. The uprising in Egypt is theirs, not Sarah's, and it's their country and their government, not hers.

Time for a new path based on equality and humility. We had an embarrassment for president for two full terms in the first decade of this millennium; "we should not stand" for an arrogant attempt to embarrass ourselves again.

Jobs or war profiteering?

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has been spending approximately half the military expenditures in the entire world. We see the results--civil society around the world dislikes us more and more and we have hollowed out the US economy, currently breathing on partially collapsed lungs.

What could Oregon's new governor--well, the old governor who sat out a couple of terms and is now back--John Kitzhaber do with $213 million? How many jobs could he create in Oregon, a state with high unemployment and a shortfall?

As it happens, the Institute for Southern Studies notes that $213 million is the amount that Lockheed Martin got last year to deliver 20 F 16 fighter jets to Egypt. This $213 million creates about 2,000 jobs, using a methodology described by a U-Mass Economics study from 2007. These two economists concluded that "spending $1 billion on personal consumption, clean energy, health care, and education will all create significantly more jobs within the U.S. economy than would the same $1 billion spent on the military." John Kitzhaber might want to lobby our Oregon federal elected officials to vote to stop military aid to Egypt, thus gaining many friends in civil society in Egypt and throughout the Arab world and reducing the antipathy felt by so many Arabs toward the US. Use some of that $1.3 billion in saved military aid to Egypt to instead fuel job creation in Oregon and other states.

What benefits are derived from military aid to Egypt?

• We get a dictator loyal to the US.
• We can render suspects to Egypt for torture.
• US Navy warships can use the Suez Canal.
• Egypt helps starve and imprison Gaza.
• Egypt refrains from attacking Israel.

Are these actually benefits?

• We build up hatred toward the US for propping up dictators. Tear gas, buckshot and other "crowd control" materials are all made in the USA and each victim knows that.
• We create fanatical enemies when we torture anyone or hand them over for torture.
• We could draw down the wars, pull back the Navy, and stop relying on the Suez, saving outstanding amounts of US taxpayer funds.
• If the border opened between Gaza and Egypt based on our cessation of subsidizing it, the Arab world would thank us and Gazans would be treated like actual humans.
• Egypt knows that attacking Israel is like suicide by cop at the nation-state level.

From a study done by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University:

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it would take $2.2 trillion from all levels of government to bring America’s roads, bridges, and water-related infrastructure into a state of good repair.

Ending the sordid relationship between Egypt and the US crafted by Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1979 would help fund job creation in the US, make many friends where the population has reason to hate us for funding their oppression, and enable more progress on peace in the Middle East. So, why do we continue this? Because the American people have not decided that they are a more powerful and important lobby than the Lockheed Martin and other war profiteering corporations. This is a basic problem for those interested in promoting nonviolence. We will not see it succeed unless we learn to activate that power, that lobby with muscle from civil society. We see brave Egyptians trying right now, paying even the ultimate price. They are uprising. Can we get a rise out of US civil society?

Tunisia and invisibility

What lessons are we beginning to consider as worth learning from the uprising in Tunisia that has prompted such change from the grassroots to the rulers and back again in the Arab world? I doubt we've actually 'learned' much yet, except the advisability of paying attention, not to mainstream assessments of what might be afoot, but to think about the causes and correlates to civil society uprising. I would imagine self-immolations are on the Pay Attention Screen by now. The normal assessment of hot conflict likelihood is tied to indices that are basically relevant to those who carry or command guns. So, for the standard political scientist or CIA analyst, the tea leaves they read told them Tunisia was stable, highly unlikely to experience hot conflict. Boop! Missed the Tunisian Trigger, but thanks for playing!

So, we need a nonviolent civil society science discipline and a Decentral Intelligence Agency if we hope to be out ahead of that curve in the future. By we, I don't mean the intelligence apparatuses (nor apparatchiks) of the nation-states, I mean global civil society, which ought to be tuned in enough to see these things coming over the horizon. There are, of course, individual examples, the lone geniuses whose civil society noses are so sensitive they can sniff it coming long before the rest of us. Johan Galtung has shown that, and Stephen Zunes and a few others in the world of those who study civil society. Thomas Homer-Dixon showed how to set up a systemic set of predictors with regard to environmental or resource conflict, but we need to institutionalize all the Conflict Early Warning Systems in order to facilitate our effectiveness in supporting civil society, civil rights, human rights, nonviolence and justice. The days of US intelligence peremptory credibility should have been long gone since they sort of missed the Philippines nonviolent overthrow in 1986, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and a few other Big Deals, but more importantly is that we of global civil society simply have our own interests that we share and we need to learn to operationalize meeting those interests.

When we begin to learn to see the factors that produce a sort of Tunisia Trigger we can learn to get out ahead, to focus support where support would tend to enable nonviolence and attenuate violence. This ought to be a UN goal and a UN mandate, but the obvious problem is that a United Nations is an organization of nation-states, not a UGCS, a United Global Civil Society. The interests of nation-states are not a great overlap with the interests of civil society and it's almost fatuous to bemoan that. We need to simply see it and create our own parallel institutions that serve our needs. Yes, many of the markers are studied and reported out by the UN and that should make our work a bit easier--what is the Gini coefficient, what are the public health flags, how healthy is civil society in an area, who are the social capitalists, and so forth. But peace and justice by peaceable means as a driving directive is otherwise missing from our structural radar.

It would be a good starting point project if we want a nonviolent world.

Forgiving the unforgivable

"In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children."
— Herodotus

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish carries burdens no parent should have to shoulder, unimaginable to most of us. Father of eight--six girls, two boys--his wife died of leukemia 16 September 2008. Then, in a horrific attack by his country's occupying army upon his nonviolent home, three of his daughters were slaughtered on 16 January 2009, just four months after the untimely death of his wife.

Who among us could blame a father living under occupation for using such an outrage to instantly turn to hate and revenge? Losses like these are only imaginable to those who have experienced them. The absolute worst fear of any parent is what Herodotus expressed two and a half millennia ago. It is an abomination of nature and this is part of the reason some humans seem to instinctively abhor war as grotesquely unnatural. Dr. Abuelaish, a healer and peacemaker, is clearly one of those evolved beings.

His memoir of his own impoverished upbringing as a Palestinian refugee, his successful struggles to gain an education, his life and work as a career medical doctor in an occupied land in conflict with his life as a husband and father--literally blasted by the occupying army one awful awful day--is chronicled in his remarkable response, I shall not hate: A Gaza doctor's journey on the road to peace and human dignity.

For their war crimes, I'd like to see all members of the Israel cabinet, IDF officers, and anyone connected to Operation Cast Lead--the 23 days of horrific military attack on civilian neighborhoods in Gaza from 27 December 2008–18 January 2009--made to read and reflect on this book. It should also be assigned reading for Hamas and all their dysfunctional leaders. Lacking that power, I've assigned it to my Nonviolence class. They are thinking about this man and what he can teach students of nonviolence all over the world.

Cast Lead was a perfect example of the idiocy of waging asymmetric warfare using violence. Hamas precipitated that attack by its maladaptive Qassam rocket attacks that were flatly terrorist in that they had no accuracy and were just shot in the general direction of Israel. Cast Lead was 23 days of focused hell, retribution exacted with great precision against the very sort of targets Israel was so outraged by--civilians. In the end, the asymmetry was perfectly symmetrical, literally two orders of magnitude. There were 13 Israeli mortalities and a reported range of Palestinian deaths that average almost exactly 1,300. So a 100:1 ratio seems fine to both Israeli leadership and Hamas, neither of whom expressed regret about deciding to attack the other.

While Dr. Abuelaish has no theoretical knowledge of strategic nonviolence, he is a Jedi master of the inner jihad that can produce a natural nonviolent expert. He is hurt beyond belief and yet refuses to hate. I've met him twice and his authenticity is palpable. From his honest and painful memoir to his open and disarming presence, it is clear that he is extraordinary in his ability to confront his losses, acknowledge that they are overwhelming, and then work to make life better for those he loves.

His love extends much further than any victim's normally does. He speaks and writes lovingly of his family, his Gazan neighbors, but it extends to many Israelis and in the deepest sense to all humanity. His philosophical nonviolence is individual and profoundly intrinsic, even though he credits and quotes the Quran. He would quote any text he was raised with, and, as it happens, his text is the Quran. It gives him peace even as it affords ammunition for many violent Muslims who cite it to justify abominable acts of retribution, even against girls and women.

If anyone can help heal the conflict in the Middle East through plain personal power, this man, surrounded by the images of his daughters, is the one. He has no brilliant strategic plan based on sophisticated application of elegant nonviolent methods; his gift is in ending the encrusted layers of accumulated grievance burdening both parties. Dr. Abuelaish cuts the chains of hatred that drag down Israelis and Palestinians in their frothing swamp of atrocity and revenge.

There is much more to think about in this regard. Let's all start by getting this book, which is helping support the foundation for girls' advancement in the Middle East, the foundation Dr. Abuelaish started to honor his own daughters, Daughters for Life.

The first time I saw Dr. Abuelaish was when we in the Peace and Justice Studies Association hosted an M.K. Gandhi Award to him in Winnipeg, Manitoba in October 2010. I cried. Then I went to hear him speak at Powells Books just a day after the second anniversary of the killing of his three daughters. I cried again. Then I watched him on Democracy Now! and cried again.

I have photos of a little girl who lived in our Whitefeather Peace House and a little girl who lived in a different peace community I lived in back 25 years ago, both of whom brought enormous joy into my life. They are on my cork board in front of me as I work. I can no longer think of Dr. Abuelaish without thinking of those little girls and cannot see those photos without thinking about his loss. If he can rise to victory over hatred we all are called to learn from him.

Reference
Abuelaish, Izzeldin (2011). I shall not hate: A Gaza doctor's journey on the road to peace and human dignity. New York: Walker & Company.

Washington needs to listen

Joe Biden should practice some reflective listening right now, as he represents the Obama administration's evolving views on what is going on in Egypt. Instead, he is either going rogue or floating trial balloons to see how we respond. He says, for instance, that he knows Hosni Mubarak "fairly well" and that "he is not a dictator" like the communists in Eastern Europe.

No, of course Mubarak is not like the communist dictators in Eastern Europe. None of them accepted detainees from the US and then tortured them, as Mubarak has. Mubarak has kept the Arab street in his country from taking power, has refrained from bringing desperately needed assistance to Gazans in deference to Israeli wishes, and has accepted $billions in US military aid. He does what he is told by successive US administrations. None of the dictators in Eastern Europe ever did these things. And many of them, such as Poland's commie dictator Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski, fought against the Nazis in World War II, unlike Mubarak, who only fought against Israel.

But Joe should admit where Mubarak is a great deal like those dictators of yesteryear. They imprisoned people who insulted them and so does Mubarak. They imprisoned independent journalists who didn't toe the state press line, and so does Mubarak. They lived well while most of their people were poor, just like Mubarak. Many of them took years of Soviet military training, just like Mubarak did from 1959-1961. And all of them relied on violence against their own people.

Hosni Mubarak shares one other thing with the dictators of Eastern Europe. They all eventually lost power and were deposed by people power. All their guns, tanks and bombs didn't save them.

Kind of intelligent

The bloody carnage of the past 100 years should have convinced even the dullest among us that violence within and between societies is now self defeating and colossally stupid.
David Orr, At the End of Our Tether: the Rationality of Nonviolence, p. 236.

Watching the impotence of the massive militaries of Egypt, Tunisia, and other nations--militaries composed of people of all levels of intelligence--as they do damage to their own people and alienate themselves from their own futures, we might wonder about kinds of intelligence. There is the standard IQ, the intelligence quotient, and that is now 99 years old, first developed by William Stern in Germany in 1912. In 1983, Howard Gardner's Frames of mind discussed multiple intelligences, mostly concepts such as social intelligence and emotional intelligence.

But a new one is needed, an Ahimsic Intelligence we might call it, that tries to see systemically, ecologically, even as it practices compassion toward all life. I don't believe anyone can achieve the kind of Ahimsic Genius that would enable anyone to become completely harmless and still function, but it seems to me that this is our next great test as a species.

Clearly the fruitarian Gandhi taught us many valuable lessons, moving down the food chain far more than Jesus reportedly did, so I think he was a more Advanced Ahimsic, but the deep challenge to us, I suspect, is to develop that sort of intelligence that integrates the macro, micro, and temporal, to help us see seven generations down through time and make decisions that are wise, compassionate and ahimsic for ourselves and life. These decisions are multidimensional, along several continua.

If humankind applies all these intelligences, we will become nonviolent. May our collective Ahimsic Intelligence develop fast enough to begin to repair the damage our IQs have wrought.

References
Orr, David W. (2008, April). At the End of Our Tether: the Rationality of Nonviolence. Conservation Biology. pp. 235-238. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.00902.x.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind. New York: Basic Books.

Intifada gone viral: Panning for news gold

It is vitally important, of course, to believe everything reported in the various corporate and state media. How else can we get the real news? That darn Internet is sketchy and we can all have a good laugh when we think of crackpots who post and claim all sorts of wild things. Tinfoil hats is how we write them off. It is easy to find Holocaust deniers and not a few who claim that Dick Cheney is from another planet. So who can we trust? (Hint: I'd bet on the other planet crowd)

As with kissing frogs until you finally get that prince, or panning for gold in a cold gravelly stream, it's a matter of looking closely and realizing that there is always more worthwhile to discover, but it may be in association with a lot of junk. You develop a practiced eye, you learn from experience that even the hotshot award-winning journalists can make mistakes, and that some outstanding analysis and important news can be found in unregarded corners.

So, when the last election was held in Tunisia, for instance, on 25 October 2009, Zinedine Ben Ali won a landslide victory, with 89.62% of the vote, keeping his beloved visage on public buildings in 20-foot-high mugshots, just where Tunisians wanted him, right? Just a bit more than a year later, the streets filled with those who mysteriously flipped their support to demands that Ben Ali leave, which he did. The Korea Times reported that he managed to take along some 1.5 tons of his country's gold as he left. Could it be that Ben Ali really didn't have all that support when the votes were cast and counted? I think a relatively tiny amount of common sense would suggest exactly that, even though the US continued to send him military support while Human Rights Watch cited the election as deeply flawed. The people verified that and have continued, rejecting Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi's assumption of power. They have stayed in the streets and he has announced that all cabinet members who were Ben Ali loyalists will now be replaced. The Tunisians in the street are saying, great, and you must leave too. Always on top of things and keenly able to predict the future because of their mammoth budget, the CIA is, as of this morning, still showing Ben Ali as the acting President. Whoops, turns out the CIA can't even predict the past. Well, they are still smarting from their failure on that Berlin Wall, Cold War thingie 21 years ago. We can only hope more $hundreds of billions help them with their PTSD.

Meanwhile! Those yumpin' Yemenis have joined the party, with the Egyptians out ahead of them. The Arab street got heat. In Cairo, Nobel Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei has now been water-cannoned and is under house arrest--again, all paid for by US military funding and support that goes back to the Carter administration, when Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin agreed to accept massive US bribes in exchange for peace. These bribes have continued and we now see the military aid to Israel at about $3 billion annually, enabling Israel to ignore world opinion as it "settled" the West Bank, which is Palestine. It also funded the 30-year reign of Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak, by giving him $billions annually to keep his own people quashed. They are unquashing now. And anyone, even Leon Panetta, could have predicted that the growing amount of US military aid to Yemen would backfire into more opposition at some time. The US doubled down in Yemen and it has only seen more al-Qa'ida activity and widespread hostility to the US and its own government.

So, with these undemocratic, US-propped-up regimes becoming rapidly unpropped, what is the US response? Obama has tried to stay close enough to the curve to avoid landing totally on the wrong side--a bit reminiscent of Reagan suddenly switching at the last instant on Marcos and Aquino in the Philippines in 1986 and then later we saw Bush Senior flip flop on South Africa, but there has been no acknowledgment that the US has effectively kept real democracy at bay in the Middle East for decades, even as we have trumpeted that we have brought it to Iraq by force of arms. Iraq actually passed Israel as the Numero Uno US military aid recipient. That's obviously working out as more IEDs and suicide bombers continue to show the desperate results, as hyperarmed US troops vainly try to beat insurgent swords into plowshares.

So, you ask, why do we pour that money into rotten regimes? Who benefits? I know this is a shocker, but it's the owners of the war system. The aid that goes to anyone (except our 51st state, Israel) must be spent entirely on US war corporations. This is nothing more than a massive shift of your hard-earned money into the pockets of the war profiteers and it does nothing for the honest spread of democracy. It does everything, instead, for the erosion of the US image and we now see the fumaroles from Arab civil society showing signs of the Final Eruption. Those who have been transferring knowledge about strategic nonviolent struggle to civil society are the ones who are helping the most to enable the uprising to remain nonviolent, but that is so pitifully small in the big picture that all we can hope is that, like the Filipinas, like the Serbs, like the Estonians and others, the masses will somehow manage to make it both raucous and nonviolent. The bad old days of blood in the streets as a revolutionary imperative are no longer necessary in any way. May the Arab masses show the world their cost-effective version of a Velvet Intifada, a transnational wave similar to the Central and Eastern Europe wave of 1989-1991.

Stay tuned, but keep switching sources. Lots out there, but those nuggets need to be spotted by your increasingly sophisticated eye.

Feel a draft?

It was 38 years ago today that the draft ended and it hasn't come back, but its shadow looms across the American bad memory landscape, only dying out as my generation passes on and the baby boomers lose their boom. Why did it end, why did it start, and why isn't it back, since we are in a couple of wars now with more threatening?

The draft ended because civil society had grown to despise it. When the citizenry finally comes to despise something, elected officials eventually get it and act, often because enough of the unresponsive ones are defeated in elections. The rest begin to understand that a shift in public attitude makes it adaptive for them to shift too. The US history of the draft--and the resistance to it--is complicated and shocking in some cases.

The draft during the Civil War was a lightning rod issue for both class and race and the parties were not what we might assume from our notions of what parties stand for today in the minds of many.

Democrats were "antiwar," but like so many who call themselves antiwar, they were anti this war, not pacifists at all. Indeed, in the early 1860s they often referred to the war of secession as the "nigger war." They stoked the fears of poor whites, warning that if Lincoln, that meddlesome Republican, managed to free the slaves, the north would be flooded with free blacks who would take all the factory jobs and all the unskilled or low-skilled work, replacing the immigrants from Ireland and elsewhere. When Lincoln pushed through a stronger draft law, poor whites rioted in New York City in what were really race riots but which are known as draft riots. Eleven black men were lynched during the five days of rioting, starting on the Monday morning, 13 July 1863, after the draft lottery began. Huge crowds of white men beat blacks, white owners of businesses that served the black community, abolitionists, black women and they even burned the black orphanage, though they did permit the 233 children to escape. Fear of job loss fanned by inflammatory rhetoric and the most uncivil public dialog produced a chapter so ugly in the history of New York and America that it is not a big feature in most school history texts. It should be.

America had accepted the draft after Pearl Harbor, even though the threats from Nazi Germany had allowed Congress to pass the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, the first peacetime draft in US history. Dave Dellinger and some other nonviolent men from the Union Theological Seminary openly resisted that, refused to register, and were sent to prison. In a complete reversal of the racist draft riots of 1863, the World War II pacifists who served prison time organized against segregation in the prisons and succeeded in changing federal prison policy, achieving desegregation in some prisons before it would be achieved 15-20 years later in "free" society around those prisons in the South.

Draft resistance in Vietnam was sketchy at first and pandemic near the end. January 27 is a satisfying date to recall that end to involuntary servitude. The resistance to that draft in that war was complex and ranged from the stupidest (which, as a boy of 17 in 1968, I almost did, until I finally came in contact with the draft resistance movement), which was to enlist in one branch of the armed forces in order to avoid going to Vietnam, to the most principled, which was to publicly burn one's draft card and head off to prison. There were many shades of response, from the Bill Clinton model (stay in school long enough to remain exempt from the fighting) to the Ben Spock/Dave Dellinger model (even if you are not of draft age, you commit nonviolent civil resistance to it and risk imprisonment) and everything in between.

By the time it finally ended, US civil society opposed it and the generals and politicians learned to avoid it at all costs. They are the new draft resisters, using other methods to conscript nowadays. They love it when the economy tanks and young people are desperate for GI benefits, a job, and even housing. It's the Darth Vader approach: Luke, come over to the dark side. Young people, boxed in, see one way out as the recruiters shine bright lights on their option. It's not called a draft now, but it is a defacto poverty draft and I look forward to the day that ends. I hope we can all join in working to create other attractive options for our youth or we will continue our slide toward a militarized culture. Meanwhile, a moment to honor the end of the draft on this day in 1973. May it never come again.

References
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/317749.html

Beyond the rhetoric

Barack Obama gave the 2011 State of the Union and it was a fine speech, hitting many notes that inspire us to want to be better parents, better workers, better citizens, better students, and better teachers. He swore to protect the most vulnerable and to fight to close tax loopholes for the rich. One of the best moments was his rousing finish, when he told the story of Center Rock, a Pennsylvania drilling company that responded to the Chilean mining disaster by designing a drill rig that rescued the 33 trapped miners. That touched hearts. That was about saving lives using ingenuity and technology, not taking lives with more bombs and more guns.

Sadly, however, President Obama did not address the truly massive, tough budget issue, the military spending that has eviscerated our economy and set the stage for the recession, joblessness and foreclosures. Instead, he called for a five-year freeze on all the life-affirming human service spending and vaguely and briefly boasted that even the Pentagon is helping by cutting back:

The Secretary of Defense has also agreed to cut tens of billions of dollars in spending that he and his generals believe our military can do without.
--President Obama from the 2011 State of the Union address

This is grossly misleading. With an annual budget in excess of a $trillion (by the time you add in the many military items, such as nuclear weapons, that don't officially fall into the Pentagon budget), the DoD and Congress are contemplating a cut of some $78 billion spread out over several years. This is a tiny percentage of the bloated budget, and should be an insult to the intelligence of every hardworking American. While health care and education and environmental protection are frozen or slashed deeply and our ability to threaten the entire world is barely dented, it is highly disingenuous to pretend that we are truly changing to an economic model that is sustainable or sensible.

The other sour note in the address for anyone who is interested in positive peace and in helping our young people:

Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and ROTC.

No thank you. I prefer to try to get more of our young people into jobs where they don't carry guns, where they don't grab joy sticks in a trailer in Creech Air Force base to shoot missiles at civilians thousands of miles away. I want them to be safe and I want them to do work that helps instead of hurts. I want to demilitarize rather than further militarize our campuses. Being gay-friendly is supposed to make the military attractive and the war system suddenly great? No thank you.

There are other, stronger, more future-oriented ways to manage conflict than to carry on as though killing and destroying is our human destiny. I heard not one word about teaching peace and conflict resolution skills to our children or to our students. The investments in solar and wind power are necessary and welcome. But where is the investment in different ways to resolve conflict? This would take a tiny percentage of what is currently poured into the war system and would return huge gains and benefits in the form of saved lives and taxpayers' funds.

The state of the US is stuck in the war system and nothing will be truly fixed until we turn in another direction, toward a peace system. It is a shame that isn't happening.

Khan flicked

Can Muslims ever possibly develop a disciplined notion of mass nonviolence?

Within days after September 11, 2001, the place where I teach, Portland State University, had organized and conducted a talking heads panel of professors wise in all things Central Asian for our enlightenment. I learned quite a bit but there were some missing pieces, I felt, that might offer us a way forward that didn't include armed attack. Most salient to me was the legacy of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Badshah Khan, a close ally of Gandhi's as the huge area known as India struggled for independence from Britain. British law and occupation was odious. Mohammad Raqib (2005, p. 114) notes conditions:

The Frontier Crimes Regulation, a set of laws widely seen as repressive and unfair, was adopted to fight anti-government activities in the settled districts. The police were given the authority to destroy buildings that were used by anti-British elements. Authority to inflict collective punishment was also given to police to punish families, villages, or even whole communities for the acts of one person.

Khan was a giant both physically and morally, a devout Pashtun Muslim, and the honorific Badshah Khan--"Khan of Khans"--was bestowed on him by all the other Khans. He decided that Pashtuns should resist British rule using a Muslim variant of Gandhian nonviolence, involving a special nonviolent fighting force called the Khudai Khidmatgar, the "Servants of God." These Muslims took a pledge of nonviolence to the death, the kind of commitment from a warrior culture that was sincerely, totally committed. Khan had the same devotion that Osama bin Laden would garner from his suicide squads on 8.11.01, but these estimated 100,000 nonviolent warriors were nonviolent.

So, to answer the original question, yes. When a Muslim group decides to only use nonviolence and when they make that pledge in the name of their faith, they are as devoted to nonviolence as the Hindu Gandhi or the Catholic Cesar Chavez. If a Muslim leader demonstrates the kind of leadership the world witnessed in Abdul Ghaffar Khan we might see an end to the seemingly endless occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine with far less bloodshed. While nonviolence is apparently counterintuitive to so many, it has worked and may work again. The insurgents in Tunisia deposed Ben Ali with almost no violence--certainly no organized violence--and Palestinians are giving nonviolence more chances.

Badshah Khan is dead--long live Badshah Khan!

References
Raqib, Mohammad (2005). The Muslim Pashtun movement of the North-West Frontier of India—1930-1934. In Sharp, Gene. Waging nonviolent struggle: 20th century practice and 21st century potential. Boston: Extending Horizon Books.

Finding common ground in a battlefield

The efforts to build any nonviolent movement are hampered by those who favor violence. However, the numbers of people who favor violence because they are pathologically drawn to it are very small; most favor violence because they have no logic that tells them that nonviolence can actually work. The logic is there, but not taught and not held as a primary value. While nonviolence as a fine philosophy has been around for millennia, nonviolence as a way to wage serious struggle is barely a century old, and, in reality, not much more than half a century, since it took Gandhi--the originator of globally known effective mass nonviolence--until almost mid-20th century to gain his victory. In short, for most humans, nonviolence is a nice idea that they don't equate with effective liberation or national defense. (pictured above: Paul Chappell)

Efforts may be needed to support the determination to continue the struggle. The participants must believe their action is justified, the gained objectives will be worthwhile, and the means of action have been wisely chosen. Their morale is likely to increase if the resisters understand the techniques well and if the goals and means of struggle are, or can be, related to the general population’s accepted values (Sharp, 2005, p. 388).

Where is the common ground, then, to identify and reify shared values? How can a pacifist like me hope to convince dedicated violent warriors? Of course, I can cite histories, such as Gandhi, Kenneth Kaunda and Bill Sutherland, the Filipinas, the Civil Rights movement, the Serbs, the Estonians and much more--and I do. I can refer people to the great research done by Erica Chenoweth, Maria Stephan and many others, and I do. But for many who trust the warriors who serve in the armed forces, I like to refer to people like Bob Helvey and Paul Chappell. (watch the Kentucky video on the Chappell linked site) They are authentic soldiers and genuine students of strategic nonviolence.

Finding common ground in nonviolent struggle with Quakers and Anabaptist peace believers is usually easy, but they are a tiny minority. Similarly for adherents to Jainist nonviolence, certain strands of Buddhism and other philosophical and religious pacifists. But when we can establish a cadre of former warriors who have not necessarily converted to philosophical pacifism but who hold that in fact strategic nonviolence is the most effective way to win with the fewest costs, that common ground with the majority of citizens at least has a beachhead. Then it's up to all of us to take and hold more such common ground with more of our fellow citizens.

References
Sharp, Gene (2005). Waging nonviolent struggle: 20th century practice and 21st century potential. Boston: Extending Horizon Books.

Tossing a wide net

The act of protest may be intended primarily to influence the opponents—by arousing attention and publicity for an issue, with a hope to convince them to accept a proposed change. Or, the protest may be intended to warn the opponents of the depth or extent of feeling on an issue, which may lead to more severe action if a change the protesters want is not made. Or, the action may be intended primarily to influence the grievance group—the persons directly affected by the issue—to induce them to take action themselves, such as participating in a strike or an economic boycott (Sharp, 2005, pp. 398-9).

How do we achieve our goal using nonviolence? What kind of message do we craft? And to whom do we send it for what purposes?

All too often those who attempt to get a change in some policy fail to ask the questions they need to ask in order to get the job done that they wish to accomplish. Many times, it seems, it's a set of assumptions about the goal, about the methods, and about how to construct the campaign. This can have some negative results if some crucial constituencies are ignored or alienated. Sharp mentions two groups, the grievance group and the opponents, presumably a group exerting and enforcing some sort of injustice. But what about those who don't consider themselves in either group? The apathetic millions or the alienated majority is ignored at the peril of the grievance group, since those people might become either supporters of the oppressive group or supporters and allies of the grievance group, depending on the message sent and received.

So, for example, as Dr. Bernard LaFayette points out in the film A Force More Powerful, the Civil Rights movement in the US was undertaken by a grievance group that was perhaps 11 percent of the population. The majority had been apathetic, and the grievance group--African Americans, especially those denied basic civil and even human rights in the segregated South--could not win until they had the sympathy, if not the active participation, of the majority across the country. The messages sent by the Civil Rights movement were of great grievance but also of nonviolent intention and commitment. They responded to violence with immensely courageous nonviolence and slowly but surely convinced the majority of Americans to support them.

The minute the message changed to Black Power, violent self defense and Burn, Baby, Burn rioting most support screeched to a halt and began to reverse. MLK, John Lewis and a few others tried heroically to keep to the nonviolent message and conduct and could not convince broad swatches of the national grievance group to join them, which ended the advances for African Americans. The correlation is clear. From 1955-1965 almost all African American protest and resistance was nonviolent. When that gave way to a "diversity of tactics" all the political gains stopped, social indices froze and the racists were given the arguments they needed to Keep Fear Alive. Images of Newark, Detroit and other cities in flames and Huey Newton and Black Panthers with weapons killed off almost all the forward movement toward a meeting of the hearts and minds we needed.

Raise your hands if you think the oppressors learned lessons from this. Raise your hands if you think perhaps some of those who promote violence or hate in various movements might be police agents hoping to ruin the image and message of the nonviolent movement?

Yes, those who raised their hands are quite correct. Indeed, this has been proven again and again in court, from the Black Power movement to the anti-Vietnam War movement to the movement against nuclear weapons and on and on. These agents urge violence and the more simplistic and angry movement people go along. Then it comes out that the movement was duped by this and then the next movement gets fooled by it. Are we slow learners, incapable of discipline or just so angry that the first thing we shoot is ourselves in the foot? I mean, in the aftermath of the demise of the Honeywell Project in the late 1960s, precipitated by acts of throwing bricks through corporate windows and generally appearing nihilistic and enraged, it turned out that this was prompted by police undercover provocateurs. The Honeywell Project, begun in the 1960s in Minneapolis to struggle against the manufacture of cluster bombs that were slaughtering so many innocent civilians and livestock in Vietnam, won a $30,000 settlement by proving that the police provocateurs initiated all the violence.

The Black Panthers were badly infiltrated, as were the Black Muslims (one of Malcolm X's bodyguards was working for the police, for instance). The antiwar movement suffered similarly.

So, when someone advocates a diversity of tactics nowadays, do eyes roll and are they rejected? Of course not; it is the opposite. When those who advocate strict nonviolence speak up, the eyes roll and the so-called peace movement leaders often brush them off as puritanically obsessive about their pure nonviolence. In short, lessons unlearned. The exceptions to this include the campaigns led by Catholic Workers and some others who are philosophically committed to nonviolence, but the general leftist movements or progressive movements get derailed frequently by accepting this so-called "diversity of tactics," code for violence or undisciplined rage of some sort. Those who permit this are rarely police agents, but they may as well be, since the ultimate effect is to erode and shrink the movement.

When women in Britain fought for the vote, they used some violence. American women never did. British women started their struggle earlier and won the vote later. Certainly the approach taken by Alice Paul and other committed pacifists won hearts and minds much faster in the US.

We have a long road of learning; may we begin soon.

References
Sharp, Gene (2005). Waging nonviolent struggle: 20th century practice and 21st century potential. Boston: Extending Horizon Books.

Body image and social movements

Authenticity, honesty, sincerity and transparency are hallmarks of a movement that tends to both win friends and supporters at the same time it tends to reduce opposition and the desire to punish and destroy the members of that movement. On the other hand, rhetoric about peace or nonviolence accompanied by snarling facial expressions, strident chanting and clenched fists is often simply not believed. Responses are predictable.

Kinesics, the interpretation of body language cues, can drastically influence the course and outcome of a disagreement, a street protest, and even the received message from leadership. Right or wrong, most humans tend to make those interpretations. Are the penetrating stares you are receiving a sign that the others are interested in listening to you carefully and respectfully, or are they signs of hostility and aggression? All else being equal, many humans tend to interpret any discrepancies in the worst light, guarding against being duped. Convince your opponent that you have bad intentions and you can expect the worst.

Anxiety and/or anger can be shown by tone of voice, tension in the facial muscles, clenched teeth, clasping objects, dilated pupils, general body activity rather than stillness, stiff posture, perspiration, short glances, or averted stares.
--Barbara Budjac Corvette, Conflict management (p. 93)

There are reasons for many of the guidelines we often use in many movements. Appearing harmless is consonant with nonviolent rhetoric and consistency is how the sense of authenticity is conveyed and eventually believed. Open, visible, empty hands, palms up, show a willingness to expose a nonthreatening, unarmed and well intentioned attitude. This is very different from obsequious groveling, which is logically and normally distrusted. Meeting the impassive stares of the SWAT team with a look of concerned commitment is dignified and does not tend to draw down brutality.

I've been in countless street actions and confrontations at military bases. Yes, I've been harmed, physically, but that is rare and never when once I'm known to guards, police, or whatever physical troops are on hand. Showing up once, getting shoved around, and bringing a poor attitude from that point on is a guarantee of a downward spiral of abuse. As a very young man and not at political actions I responded to police aggression with my own physically defensive reaction. I did this twice and still carry the scars. I guess I am blessed that I learned this the hard way without besmirching the image of any movement.

Why court willful misinterpretation of our sincere actions for peace and justice? Training and roleplaying can reduce these problems to almost nil. Leadership that is calm and genuine sets a tone--bellowing and raging speakers tend to froth up less stable members of any movement and concomitantly sets all the warning lights flashing red amongst police and military. Bullhorns and stridency are how we guarantee we alienate instead of recruit. Is this really our goal?

The idea is to win. Winning happens more often by invitation, not alienation. Smiling faces are going to draw participation more than grimaces of rage, however justified that rage may be. Whether nonverbals are 90 percent or 50 or 10 percent of the message received is a debatable research question--I certainly don't get more than 10 percent from watching a quiet conversation in Urdu (or in English with the sound turned off), nor do I feel as though I only get 10 percent from an emoticon-free email. But larger movements work more effectively than smaller ones--this is really not debatable. Learning to give off the right message without saying a word is part of movement recruitment strategy and training.

References
Corvette, Barbara A. Budjac (2007). Conflict management: A practical guide to developing negotiation strategies. Upper Saddle River NJ: Pearson Education.

Nonviolence v corporate policy

Nonviolence is often studied as a method of changing public policy and liberation, which is appropriate but not nearly inclusive of all the problems nonviolence can solve. Most of the same principles used in liberation and public policy struggles can be applied to struggles to affect corporate policy.

Our first task is to decide it's possible, and to do that, we can look to cases of successful application of the tools of grassroots agents of change to corporate problems.

Battles for labor rights, wages, the 40-hour week, and recognition of collective bargaining units have long relied primarily on nonviolent struggle, rank-and-file participation and carefully chosen techniques that apply positive and negative sanctions to strengthen negotiations and outcomes.
From AJ Muste advising and leading the textile workers just after World War I to the formation of many unions in the 1930s, to Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers' campaigns of the 1960s and many more such efforts, nonviolent grassroots initiatives have changed corporate and industry policies many times.

The Nestlé boycott of the late 1970s (1977-1984 and periodically on and off when Nestlé is found in violation) by Infact led to a cessation of the unethical marketing of infant formula in places where it led to unhealthy babies and impoverishment of the mothers. Infact went on to help force GE to sell off its nuclear weapons corporate interests by applying that same consumer boycott strategy used so effectively by Chavez to involve the larger public in helping migrant laborers gain basic rights. That boycott faced plenty of corporate media pushback and its own ultimately unsuccessful boycott of the boycott, since GE was so wired in to major media, especially NBC. Indeed, the boycott can even be used to develop and effect the same kind of 'divide and conquer' strategy used so effectively by empires on colonial peoples. By boycotting South African white businesses seriously and long enough, black South Africans and their recruited allies from around the world were able to get the South African business community to split from the hardline apartheid government, setting the stage for a peaceful transition to democracy. Long before that, the citizens of Montgomery used the boycott of the bus system to split the ruling segregationists from the practical business-minded leaders who watched the bus company losing money for months, just because they could not end segregation. Sowing division based on fear of economic punishment is a legitimate technique that, if done in an organized fashion, works more often than pure moral appeal.

Corporations have taken not just the right to influence lawmaking—with fifty-six paid lobbyists now in Washington for every elected officeholder—but even the right to initiate and organize lawmaking to benefit them.
--Frances Moore Lappé (2006). Democracy’s edge: Choosing to save our country by bringing democracy to life (p. 90).

OK, corporations are slicker now, more sophisticated, and know how to run things with more tools and stronger techniques. Does that mean we throw in the nonviolent towel and give up? Nope. Not unless we intend to see our economy continue to favor the aggregation of money at the top and poverty at the bottom, with the concentration of both continuing to increase. If we need to fight both public policy and corporate policy simultaneously, we can do that. If we decide to, we can make corporations behave using the boycott and if we decide to, we can make Congress behave using the vote.

Yes, those are big "If"s, aren't they? If we hope to make it work, we have to pick one winnable battle after the next and start doing all the things necessary to victory, that is, publicize, recruit, educate, grow coalitions, start more conversations, bring in intellectual power and celebrity power, create an image of what the problem is and how to fix it, and make it seem possible. In other words, develop both buzz and loyalty to an idea, forcing that idea into the highest priority level for more and more people.

So, if the numbers of corporate lobbyists writing and handing over those written bills to elected officials is problematic, a multipronged campaign is the answer. Boycotts, buycotts (buying substitutes that weaken offending corporations and strengthen those whose behavior is better), competing bills outlawing the practice of corporate authorship of law, and more tactics that meet the public interest can be launched as the power of the coalition grows. Developing the narrative that convinces the niche markets and the general public alike is the work of many talented thinkers who do the research and use the results to design a strategy that succeeds.

In the end, looking at the history of nonviolent grassroots success, we see that the people were radically outspent and the corporations were overwhelmed by people power. That is the common story. They have the money power; we have the people power. The corporations are winning right now. Sometimes they have lost. In our current climate, our brief is to save our nation from them, our people from them, and even to save them from themselves, since they seem incapable.

Can we do it? Yes. Will we?

References
Lappé, Frances Moore (2006). Democracy’s edge: Choosing to save our country by bringing democracy to life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.