Ending Syria's violence

As John Kerry prepares to start arming violent insurgents trying to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria, we on the nonviolent side wonder if this is just one of those wars with no chance for nonviolent solutions. Isn't it a bit like the communists shooting at dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in the 1970s and 80s? Isn't it something along the lines of the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic slaughtering civilians as the armed Kosovo Liberation Army fought back hopelessly? Couldn't we say that this is just one of those times that is similar to the civil war in Liberia, with "Christian" dictator Charles Taylor in a death match with the violent warlords in a coalition charmingly calling themselves the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD)?

Oh, that's right. All these wars were stopped and resolved by nonviolent people power. 

In 1989 a civil war began in Liberia, led by Charles Taylor, who had strong relationships to both Moammer Qaddafi and evangelist Pat Robertson. Can you say, "Odd bedfellows?" Both helped fund Taylor's war, Qaddafi by diverting oil funds from Libya and Robertson by purchasing rights to diamond mines in Liberia. Taylor and Samuel Doe and Prince Johnson were among the squabbling leadership and eventually Taylor came out on top, only to find his presidency attacked by a new crop of warlords.

Finally, in 2003, after suffering massacres, rapes, abductions, child soldiering, and the impoverishment of war long enough, the women of Liberia united and stopped that war. They were the ones. They not only brought all parties to the table in Accra, Ghana, they forced them to stop dallying and then they made sure the warlords in the transitional post-Taylor government gave way to the first African woman head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Leymah Gbowee (pictured, from Nobel site) and Johnson Sirleaf  received the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize (along with amazing Yemeni Arab Spring organizer Tawakkol Karman) for this remarkable achievement.

Syrian women could end their civil war and topple the Assad regime. Syrian civil society could use nonviolence in a number of ways to finish this horrific war and overthrow this bloody murderous ruling party. Learning from others in similar situations, we can devise our own ways to win without war, to stop wars in their blood-soaked tracks, and to bring peace and justice to our world.

John Kerry should return to his antiwar years and start a new US era of helping nonviolent civil society, not arming those who commit mirror atrocities to the dictators they fight and then establish new dictatorships once they take power.

An immodest proposal

We are saved--so our politicians tell us--from a plunge off the fiscal cliff. In all reports, however, it is mentioned that President Obama settled for a slice of what he claimed to be after, which was to raise taxes on those whose income is more than a quarter million annually. Instead, the Republican bravehearts kept that rapacious goal at bay and made certain that taxes would only increase for those making more than $400,000 per year. Brilliant!

According to media reports, the only actual spending cuts contemplated were those that would affect luxuries for the average person, such as Social Security benefits or medical care for the elderly or disabled. That's the spirit, boys!

It's important that the American media avoid all mention of the Pentagon budget and how each $billion cut there would free enough funds to create a net gain of thousands of jobs. Instead, it's crucial to take all Pentagon claims without factchecking, and convince the American people that the slightest cut to DOD would slash jobs wholesale and strip body armor off US troops and leave them driving used Ford Festivas. Framing any threat to Pentagon funding as seditious is key.

Do not repeat not mention that the nuclear arsenal, for instance, provides the US with no usable defensive options and above all avoid any writing that calculates the projected increases of some $600 billion in upgrading those nukes over the next decade. This is not the time to question the value in threatening the unthinkable and certainly not the time to release the figures on what some say could be saved by starting to mothball these weapons. Ignore any exceptions to this guideline and do not cite any reports that show which nuclear weapons contractors lobby and contribute to which politicians.

Thank you, politicians and mainstream corporate media, for your careful framing of these Big Issues so that we, the dumb apathetic citizenry, can proceed with our credit card shopping in anticipation of the next national holiday. Don't we all gain 10 lbs. each MLK Day?

Guns are not sacred, children are

It is now long long past time to repeal the Second Amendment. It serves evil, not good, violence, not peace, hatred, not love. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution is a relic of a time when the citizens accepted their general powerlessness and seemed to live without imagination, just fear.

Still, it will likely take independent-minded gun owners to lead the overdue effort to rid our society of this curse. We need gun owners with conscience to finally, at long last, face morality, face the truth, face the irrefutable terrible facts on the ground, in the ground, that perfectly innocent children are victims again and again and again to the lack of backbone of gun owners.

I'm a peace person, as are my friends. I am striving to be nonviolent and have tried to learn nonviolence for years. I can point to alternatives to guns, I can argue against them, and that's about it. What we need--what would dramatically change our national discourse on this--is for gun owners to stand up and tell the rest of us, "We no longer want our possessions to be regarded under our Constitution as sacred and above the law. We reject the kneejerk response from the NRA and the gun industry every time there is a tragedy. Not once--never, ever one single time--have they admitted that guns can ever be a problem and are just things that should be subjected to laws like anything else."
When I worked on high-rise construction projects in my 20s and 30s I was very glad for OSHA. They inspected just often enough to help us stay relatively safe, even 300+ feet off the ground in the Minnesota winter. We didn't have company owners lobbying to declare scaffolding or tie-ropes or other safety devices somehow related to near sacralization. The OSHA inspectors would pick up a faulty extension cord, pull out their wire snips, and cut it into short, unusable pieces, and would then write up a fine. Did that cost our companies? Only once--then they told the foremen to be careful to keep it all legal.

We regulate cars, motorcycles, boats, and much much more. Some things are simply outlawed. People cannot have a marijuana brownie but they can have a handgun?

The lives of children are sacred; guns are just objects. We choose guns over children every day that we do not get rid of that long-antiquated Second Amendment.

Am I suggesting ridding ourselves of the Second Amendment would solve everything? Obviously not; guns haven't solved much either. We need to learn new ways.

Learn nonviolence. Work to end poverty. Share. Support candidates who will reduce military expenditures and increase subsidies to all the many new ways to manage conflict that do not involve violence and the threat of violence. Learn about Gandhi. Learn about mediation. Learn about de-escalation. These are how we negate the "need" for guns. Are they foolproof? Nothing is. But the Second Amendment is not serving us well, not at all. Time for change.