Efficient breach of public law: Civil society v corporate polluters

In the world of environmental regulation, any time a polluter can pay a fine smaller than the amount of profit taken by violating the law, that is termed an "efficient breach of public law" (McBride, 2012). It essentially means that BP can pay for killing vast stretches of the Gulf of Mexico, but if the payouts are less than the income from selling the oil from those wells, they will rationally choose to continue to pollute.

This is because corporations are coldly rational immoral "people," not "people" who share a social contract that would act in a decent fashion. The larger and more lucrative a corporation, in general, the greater the tendency to make efficient breaches of public law. Indeed, on back in 1897 in the Harvard Law Review, US Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote (apropos of, but not contemplating, the Citizens United travesty of the Roberts court more than a century later): 

If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict, not as a good one, who finds his reasons for conduct, whether inside the law or outside of it, in the vaguer sanctions of conscience (qtd. in McBride, 2012, p. 406)

From the standpoint of strategic nonviolence, each movement and every potential nonviolent resister shares the same calculus, with one screamingly key difference; movements and individuals are expected to consider morals and ethics ahead of everything else, and generally, we do. We are better, in general, than corporations. That's saying little, of course, if we look to the behavior of giant energy companies, huge mining corporations, or sadly, even the companies that make shoes. 

What sort of calculations, then, are required to pit civil society against a corporate malefactor who is endangering the environment, public health, or creating other social ills? That is a major, complex consideration, of course, but a list of select factors to include in those calculations might help strategists think about it: 

• What are the strengths or potential strengths of the movement?
• What the strengths and weaknesses of the offending corporation?
• What numbers of participants are available to offer nonviolent opposition, even resistance, to the corporate polluter?
• What is the potential for growth in those numbers?
• What is the commitment of those who are seriously involved?
• Are there ways to help strengthen that level of commitment?
• Is there a social map of participants, of organizational partners, of collaborators in multiprongs of the campaign?
• Are there lawyers and paralegals available to help with either the defense of resisters or a civil action directed at halting the corporate pollution?
• Can elements of the government be recruited to take some of the burden?

There are many more pieces of this puzzle, of course, and taking cues from three general sources can help. 

First, what similar or analogous struggles have occurred that might have lessons to offer? Every campaign needs historians to excavate the records for lessons of value.

Second, are there allies who can offer advice and support?

Three, after learning as much as possible, engage creativity. Keeping the lessons learned from others in mind, how can the current movement adapt and synthesize principles, strategies, and tactics in unique response to unique situations? 

These are separate strands and are all important. With an ahistorical approach, really clumsy efforts can result that are embarrassing to watch. Without allies, a movement can sputter along for a long and ineffectual start. And without fresh consideration of all the possibilities, innovation doesn't occur. 

Pitting civil society against corporations is a combination of brute force and finesse, people power and knowledge-sharing versus money and smart strategic preparation of participants versus a phalanx of lawyers and public relations propaganda professionals. Metaphorically, the hired guns against the indigenous guerrilla, but civil society warriors use nonviolence and can seriously outflank corporadoes who cannot match the passion and commitment of a dedicated mass of participants. 

Gandhi, coming from a culture rooted in a combination of religious beliefs in either reincarnation or paradise for martyrs, could speak freely about courage to risk death and willingness to do so. Many lessons from Gandhi are seriously helpful; that one is seriously unhelpful in modern strategic nonviolent resistance unless there is serious, credible, existential threat that makes risks of nonviolence seem relatively easy to choose. The Gazan who contemplates the risks of nonviolent resistance versus sitting it out on the sidelines--when there are no sidelines--could be moved to action by an effective Palestinian Gandhi right now. But this is relatively rare; most of our nonviolent struggles are serious, but the consequences are usually incarceration, not death, and when people have a fair amount to lose, they cannot be expected to come out in numbers to pay the ultimate price. So keeping your people as safe as possible is a far wiser approach, and rhetoric which doesn't include grand promises to willingly die for your cause is a better recruitment strategy, wouldn't you agree?

The bottom line is the bottom line for corporations, usually. Unlike people, and unlike governments led by people, corporations will cave when costs are too high. Thus the "vaguer sanctions of conscience" can triumph, if the movement strategists are successful at what they should do.

Reference List


McBride, Cody. 2012. "Making Pollution Inefficient Through Empowerment." Ecology Law Quarterly 39, no. 2: 405-438. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed July 29, 2014).

American voters could stop Gaza/Israel bloodshed

More than any other time in the history of the conflict over the tiny ancient land we call Israel and Palestine, voters from a land across the sea hold unused power to change the basic course and outcomes of that conflict. At this time, those voters--who are also largely taxpayers--are keeping the conflict hotter and more bloody by their failure to prioritize the issue.

Polls are interesting to politicians. As of July 18-20, according to a CNN poll, a 57-34 percent majority of Americans side with Israel in the current conflict, calling Israel's violent efforts to root out and destroy Hamas's capacity to attack Israel "justified."

Four days later, Israel knowingly bombed one of the very rare sanctuaries from its missiles, a UN school in Gaza packed with women and children. The UN had been entirely forthcoming with precise coordinates of the location of the school in an effort to be sure that the highly sophisticated, precision guided Israeli Defense Force missiles would never hit the school. Instead, the IDF apparently programmed those specific coordinates into multiple missiles and struck the UN school in the lowest blow so far. The IDF has also cravenly bombed several hospitals in Gaza, with tired claims about Hamas storing weapons "nearby."

When Hamas and other terrorist organizations were sending suicide bombers into Israeli pizza parlors or onto Israel's campuses to inflict intentional damage to young Israeli civilians, the world, including American citizens, reacted with general horror and disgust, and rightly so. This level of incorrigibly blind hatred is clearly absolutely morally bankrupt. Satire service The Onion has captured the sick symmetry the best.  Hamas fires impotent rockets insanely straight into Israel's missile-destroying Iron Dome, stupidly targeting civilians and giving Israel a military justification for attacking Hamas, but nothing can give anyone any excuse for what Israel has done to hospitals and the UN school shelter. Nothing.

So Israel has officially joined this bloody dive into the moral cesspool, and American voters hold a huge piece of the responsibility for this, supplying the IDF with much of its war materiel and a massive amount of general military aid every year, $121 billion to date, according to the US Congressional Research Service report of April 2014. No other country gets this much and no other country ever gets the "no strings attached" beneficence awarded and afforded Israel, even including huge outlays of my money and yours to give straight to Israel's war profiteering corporations to use as they see fit. This means Israel is funded to do military research that even puts it ahead of US war profiteering corporations and the US military in some respects. Wow. And there are no human rights expectations on that money, nor is it required that Israel follow internationally accepted rules of engagement, laws of war, or laws prohibiting crimes against humanity.

Seriously. It is time to help Israel decide to negotiate with all its adversaries in good faith, something it has failed to do again and again. Stop all aid from you to them, from the US treasury to the Israeli government, from the Pentagon and State Departments to the IDF.

Obviously Israel has stockpiled enough weapons and ordnance to wreak hellfire for a long time, but they expect and clearly assume arrogant entitlement to this unique and grotesquely large condition-free military support which enables their increasingly rotten, inhumane conduct. They commit war crimes and know that it doesn't matter because their tsunami of war arsenals supplies and huge amounts of unrestricted funds is never going to stop.

Let's help Israel. Stop all aid. They would become much better citizens, neighbors, and world citizens if we could muster that domestic political will to require it of our elected officials. Start with our US senators, who passed a unanimous resolution supporting Israel's bombing of Gaza, Senate Resolution 498, as soon as Israel attacked. No US Senator voted against this, remarkably and shamefully, and Rand Paul even called for further US action, to cease the relatively small amount of US aid to the Palestinian Authority until they kicked Hamas out of the unity government. Perhaps Senator Paul has a small point, but the larger point, by far, is to end all US aid to the IDF. That is the single biggest step toward peace anyone could take right now and if you are an American voter, you have a say-so in this. Let's start saying so.

Israel drives away her friends

I have been a friend of Israel's since I was a boy, when the European Holocaust was a fresh memory and buttons were common that read "Israel must live." But each time Israel commits another war crime I join many around the world who are losing hope that Israel will regain some of the reputation for fairness and civilization that she used to have with so many.

Yes, I am aware that the founding of the nation-state of Israel was undemocratic, that it was an act of imperialism by Britain, the US, and other post-WWII powers, that 400 or more Palestinian villages were basically driven out of existence, into exile, and that Palestinians were not asked if they would mind just giving up their lives and livelihoods to satisfy the needs of peoples who had been persecuted in an entirely different region of the world. The fact is that no people in modern times have had to endure what Jews did in Europe. Two-thirds of all Jews in Europe were genocidally murdered by German Nazis and their collaborating Poles, Ukrainians, French, Dutch and others. Jews wanted a tiny homeland in their own historical homeland in and around Jerusalem. Was that asking so much for these victims?

But now, after all these years of persecuting Arabs, of treating Arab Palestinians like second-class citizens, and now bombing hospitals and UN schools with precision guided munitions fired knowing they would murder children--while Israeli civilians watch and cheer--Israel has turned away from civilized society and become a murderous terror state, even to her long-time friends. During the 2009 Cast Lead debacle the IDF was under great suspicion when it bombed a UN school and claimed Hamas terrorists were hiding there, and when it shot a rocket straight into Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish's home, a wonderful Palestinian doctor and gentle father of daughters. But now suspicion has given way to certainty that Israel would rather commit war crimes than offer justice and security to Palestinians.

Palestinian man who just brought injured child from UN school to hospital (CNN)

I am sad to let my love for Israel go from my heart, but I cannot feel it any longer. For a long time I felt, well, both sides in this stupid struggle use violence and Israel is simply better at it, but I now see that they intend to murder children. They were given the coordinates of the hospitals and UN schools. They targeted them with precision.

Hamas has been cruel and terrorist all along, celebrating the slaughter of Israeli civilians and oppressing its own people mercilessly. Israel has joined them in the race to the ethical, moral bottom. I am now a former friend of the nation-state of Israel. Some will say it has taken me too long and some will say I'm wrong to abandon the government of a people who have been treated far worse than Palestinians ever have been treated, but this is just my own personal turning point. Bombing a UN school on purpose, multiple times is a war crime that delegitimates an entire government.

I am grateful that some Israelis continue to work for peace, including IDF members refusing service in this fresh hell. I am grateful that some Palestinians and some Israelis alike are just, nonviolent, and working for peace and reconciliation despite all the terror being committed by the "leaders" on both sides. Those are the people and organizations who have my admiration and loyalty. For me, on a personal level, it is now just an emotional wreckage. I can only see the struggle now as an analyst, as someone who examines conflict professionally as a professor, writer, and researcher. Israel has now broken my heart and I need to mourn that even as I continue to follow the current disaster and place it into its conflict context. I wonder if Israel knows just how many of us old friends are now departing from that friendship? Do they care?

For huge losses and massive victimization of your people, use violence!

There is violence everywhere in the world. Obviously, there is no hope for nonviolence. Not now, not ever again. Give it up, get your guns, and get something done for once! It's working for Syrians. Um, well, it's working for Ukrainians. Hmmm--it's certainly working for Gazans.

OK, so maybe it's working for those who currently have the power and not working so hot for those fighting for freedom. That's it! If you are Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, or the Israeli Defense Force, keep being violent--you're winning! See? Violence works Just Fine, thankyouverymuch. It all depends on who you are. Works well for everyone worth mentioning.

If you are the despot, stay the course and keep shooting. If you are the insurgency, well, man up and take your losses. Keep your dignity and your big guns. You will lose in most cases (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2014), but you'll show your cajones, and that's all that counts in the end, dead or alive.

On the other hand, if you are one of those wussies who likes to win and keep most of your people alive, alright, you can use strategic nonviolence, but don't expect to get on the cover of Ultimate MMA or 1st Freedom.

How can you worry about the costs? Hamas doesn't, and they've lost about 600 so far, including at least 125 children. Libyans didn't and about 20,000 of them died. The brilliant Free Syrian Army has made sure that the violence is constant and more than 150,000 are now dead, mostly civilian, including thousands of children.

The girly types in Tunisia did their revolution, toppled their dictator of 23 years using no violence at all and so only lost about 320 civilians, the Egyptians ended the 29-year rule of Mubarek using almost all nonviolence and approximately 900 civilians were killed. Ukrainians ousted Yanukovich and it only cost them about 100 dead. Where's the glory? Where's the chest-thumping testosterone in those measly body counts?

Stick with the manly way to resist. It's what we know and the costs are acceptable.

Reference List

Chenoweth, Erica, and Maria J. Stephan. 2014. "Drop Your Weapons." Foreign Affairs 93, no. 4: 94-106. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed July 23, 2014).

Making activists look better--or worse

What happens when a radical flank emerges from some campaign, some movement, or some organization? There are two stock answers.

One, the existence of a more radical element tends to make the formerly labeled extremists now seem moderate and they are better and more likely picked to be negotiating partners. Progress therefore was made possible more quickly by a radical flank and the threat it implied.

Two, existential threats or actual physical violence by a radical flank closes down negotiations, stiffens resolve, and increases brutality, even smearing it over onto the moderate majority of the campaign, leading to a failure, and a longer struggle toward smaller gains.

Which is true?

Much like we teach in conflict resolution, it's a both/and answer. It depends. 

Malcolm X claimed that his fiery rhetoric made Dr. King look like a good person with whom to negotiate. This is an interesting claim. There is no real test and evidence points in different directions. Yes, Malcolm X was scaring the white power structure and Dr. King looked much nicer. On the other hand, Dr. King's direct actions compelled public officials to negotiate and did not afford them any justification for refusing to deal. Dr. King was the one in the streets. Malcolm X was a powerful recruiter into the Nation of Islam and never dealt with public policy as Dr. King did. So it is less than clear but worth compiling thoughts and connections.

Israeli settlers beat up some Palestinian kids. Unknown Palestinians kidnap and kill three Israeli youth. Unknown Israeli radicals beat and burn a Palestinian youth to death. Hamas shoots rockets toward Israel. Israel bombs everything in sight. This is all the work of radical flanks on both sides capturing and controlling the narratives in their respective societies. No one wins and the day of peace is pushed further into the murky future. Radical flanks are a destructive waste of humankind and resources and tend to slow and even reverse progress toward freedom and justice.

Penn State researcher Mark Anner (2009) looks at transnational labor organizing and concludes that the left-wing labor organizers tend to be the Malcolm X factor to the more local conservative labor organizing goal of a local union. The left-wing radical flank tends to prompt the owner class to negotiate with the more conservative organizers who are willing to engage in cross-class collaboration. Anner did his field research in Honduras and El Salvador and used a robust methodology and strong analysis. Sadly, the unions in those two countries have not been any sort of panacea, as we now see tens of thousands of children fleeing unaccompanied toward and into the US, enough to prompt Rick "Radical Flank" Perry into calling up his Texas Republican Nationalist Guard. 

I'm going to suspect that when the actions of the radical flanks cross the line and become violent, all bets are off. Big buff intimidation is one thing. Rhetoric about taking over is one thing. Strident nationalism or any populist identity-thumping sloganeering is one thing. But killing children is atrocious. And when atrocities occur, that radical flank action is almost certain to intensify all negative, destructive aspects of the conflict, generalizing it, seizing the public narrative, driving the nonviolent elements to the margins or underground entirely, and drastically increasing all costs to everyone. Malcolm X was dignified and precise and never counseled anyone to do what the Black Panthers later urged, that is, to "kill pigs" (police) (as a young man I subscribed to the Black Panther Party paper and the violent rhetoric was truly intense). It is entirely possible that Malcolm X was indeed the exception, just as the apparel unions in Central America seemed to benefit from the radical flank leftist internationalist rhetoric, according to Anner. 

The mere threat of aggression or violence can diminish some movements quite surely. I have witnessed that directly, if anecdotally, as an organizer in my town, Portland Oregon. As long as the radical flank and the mainstream movement worked together and the radical flank only did its most rowdy (and I would argue reckless) actions at its own events and avoided such provocative behavior at our mainstream events, our numbers grew. When that dialog and collaboration ceased and the radical flank felt no constraints and acted out at all events, the movement shrank steadily. 

This is a complex question. For organizers, frankly, it seems most advisable to err on the side of caution. If the radical flank (which will always be with us) can be convinced to maintain a certain standard of agreed-upon behavior (or if they already do that by their own unilateral choice, as did Malcolm X), they can have either little effect or a positive effect. But sliding away from that in any way courts campaign failure and movement disintegration. At the least, organizers need to think quite carefully about how this figures into their decisions.

Reference List

Anner, Mark. 2009. "Two Logics of Labor Organizing in the Global Apparel Industry." International Studies Quarterly 53, no. 3: 545-570. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed July 22, 2014).

US Marine General: US military must buy Russian war machines. Seriously?

An alternative to violent force is nonviolent force. This can look like many things, but economic sanctions are a major category of compulsion by nonviolent means. Do they always work? This question is answered best with another question, does violence always work? In fact, no method of compulsion always works (with the possible exception of a crying baby).

When we consider trying to make an extremely powerful opponent behave in a certain way that we like, and to stop misbehaving in our estimation, economic sanctions are one of the only possible approaches. Flying to Russia with bombers and rolling into Russia with tanks is mutually assured suicide and clearly irrational at any level, no matter what Bill O'Reilly or Sean (Ins)Hannity might claim.

This leaves us with a few options, including global opprobrium, sanctions, and aid to Russian civil society opposition. Putin is nearly impervious to public embarrassment and scoffs at all such attempts. It is highly dangerous for Russian civil society to be branded as tools of the US or EU, so that limits support for their civil society dissidents, even if Russians come to know how much the West loves Pussy Riot. And so we look to sanctions.

By far the most screwed up approach to compelling an opponent to behave better is to be dependent on him. This is precisely what the US has done with Russia and most stupidly and astonishingly, with military contracts. It is beyond belief that the Pentagon should self-sabotage so utterly, but that seems to be their modus. A 17 July 2014 Reuters story details the missteps and the inevitable self-defeating outcomes.

President Obama announces more sanctions on Russia, including blocking new military contracts with them. His nominee for Commander DuJour in Afghanistan, Marine General Joseph Dunford, goes public and calls that "catastrophic." He says that "young Americans" will be exposed to increased attack in Afghanistan, primarily because the US won't be able to order spare parts for all 88  Russian Mi-17 helicopters it is gifting to the oh-so-democratic government we've installed in Afghanistan.

Are there words for the depths of corruption, incompetence, and inanity this situation reveals? I mean, I'm a pacifist but even I know how poorly it redounds on the US military to buy gear from the opponents, if not enemies. And Dunford even asserts that the US could not keep those helicopters in running order without Russian parts. Seriously? The US arms industry, by far the largest on Earth and in most respects the most advanced, cannot reverse engineer some spare parts?

It's one thing to buy some Russian ballet DVDs or Russian chess master instructional texts. Cutting off the supplies to those would not degrade anyone's security. But to seek out purchase of military hardware and then become so dependent on the adversary that Russian behavior toward Ukraine--possibly including providing the anti-aircraft missile that just shot down nearly 300 traveling people on Malaysian Flight MH17--is unanswerable by sanctions, that is by far the most short-sighted military policy imaginable, and the Pentagon imagines many of them on a daily basis.

Obama has tried sanctions to a greater degree than ever, but his White House team needs to replace many of the Pentagon team with those who can think a bit more clearly. Taking the Russian Mi-17 helicopters out of the equation, and never again purchasing a single military item from the Russians, would seem like a barebones basic first step. As it is, the US military knows it has zero military response to Russian aggression in Ukraine and the US military has now thus compromised the security of Ukrainians, Afghans, and US personnel. Brilliant.

Spiritual warriors or fear-based followers?

Analysts often note that resolve and resiliency are needed to prevail in nonviolent struggles for justice (Ackerman & DuVall, 2000; Sharp, 1973). Are these naturally occurring characteristics or can we identify some cultural factors that tend to produce more resolve and more resiliency?

Some cultures question those who fight, who make waves, who disrupt social harmony. These cultures tend to want peace at almost any price and at times are perhaps the most passive-aggressive in some ways, tending to gunnysack grievances until there is some explosion. When China explodes, it's devastating, and before that they seem to seek to maintain the appearance of harmony. France, on the other hand, is bubbling over all the time and only in the most marginalized neighborhoods (e.g. North Africa immigrants) are there paroxysms of social upheaval. Intercultural experts note that social harmony is a high value in some cultures and not so much in others. Resiliency is affected by the perceptions of conflict management styles and outcomes.

Another factor that tends toward more or less resiliency in a particular society is its intergenerational ties, strengths, or conflictual weaknesses (Seedsman, 2006). In cultures where great respect is shown for elders, resiliency tends to be greater. This is not necessarily because the elders have a corner on wisdom and certainly not because they are more talented than youth, but because this characteristic tends to make human resources more available to the community for all to share. These ties will weave a much stronger social fabric able to withstand setbacks, oppression from an external power, and even many years of apparent defeat.

We do not admire the warrior for her ability to kill, even in a violent military or quasi-military setting. We admire her because she is willing to die for us. This is why nonviolent warriors--those who imbue their preparation with a fighting but respectful spirit--are admired as much as soldiers. Name an African American Vietnam War hero (pretty silent......). Name a Civil Rights hero (MLK, Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, John Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, James Lawson and on and on). These were people who went nose-to-nose with terrorists using only their spiritual resources, and who grew their community bonds as well as building bridges to other communities through actions that were so obviously spiritually grounded in goodness. They didn't need to beg for support; their actions were seeds that grew the support organically and swiftly.

There is also a religious mandate for nonviolence in some traditions, usually quite tiny compared to the megachurches. This mandate can help intracommunal resilience if the mandate is systemic, as it is with Quakers, Amish, and the various religiously pacifist Anabaptists. But if the mandate is akin to Leo Tolstoy's paradigm--basically, "God says be nonviolent or go to hell," it may not contribute so much to the resiliency needed to endure long struggles for justice, for policy change, or for protection of some valued status quo.

In sum, gratitude, hope, and nonviolence arrived at by kindly persuasion and example will tend to have strategic value; nonviolence based on fear is not conducive to strategic development.

references

Ackerman, P., & DuVall, J. (2000). A force more powerful: A century of nonviolent conflict. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Seedsman, Terence A. 2006. "Keynote 2. Viewing Participants as Resources for One Another, Communities and Societies: Intergenerational Solidarity Toward a Better World." Journal Of Intergenerational Relationships 4, no. 1: 23-39. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed July 17, 2014).

Sharp, Gene (1973). The politics of nonviolent action: Part three. The dynamics of nonviolent action. Boston: Porter Sargent.

Fight them there if we want to eventually fight them here

"Bring the fight to them over there or they will bring it to us on our home soil." So say the (and I use this term with all due respect) warmongers whose rationale for bombing and shooting, possibly invading and occupying other peoples' lands is the all purpose fallback to those who know that they are recommending a disastrous policy.

Those are the two options, according to these people. Either we start strafing the enemy or we can hide like cowards and wait for them to sweep across the US. Seriously.

Facile false dichotomies like this are the building blocks for senseless violence, loss of life on all sides, a broken economy (except for war profiteers like Dick Cheney's Halliburton, which netted some $39.5 billion from our 2003-2011 imperial adventure, every cent of which came straight out of the pockets of working Americans), and another round of generating hatred toward the US.

Why do they hate us? Um...because we support their most corrupt leaders, like the Saudi Royals, the Bahraini Royals, and the Egyptian generals? You think? Because we invaded Iraq on two Big Lie pretexts (Saddam had WMD and was buds with bin Laden). Could be, eh?

As usual, the war profiteers--arguably the least patriotic of all Americans, since they routinely send thousands of Americans to their deaths and rob all other sectors of our economy of federal support--are calling for violence. As usual, they are wrong.

They would have us fear that those who are taking over the Sunni Triangle--the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria--have their sights set on the US next. In truth, the only way we can reliably be sure that ISIS will attack the US is to send troops there. They will then attack those US troops. Brilliant. They will do so using US weapons, since we gave so many of them to the Iraqis, stupidly.

Why do we leave so many weapons with troops who obviously have zero interest in fighting for the country that foreign invaders have tried to create in their own image? Again, it's profitable to an elite group of war profiteers. Waste is their friend; keep the assembly lines building more, suck more profit from the American taxpayer into the deep pockets of the weapons corporations. Use it all up, even if you have to turn it over to those who will use those weapons against Americans. The only Americans they will use them against--soldiers recruited from the poor and underemployed sectors of the US--will not be those who own the weapons manufacturing corporations, so who cares?

I am not even being cynical in my assertions; this is just reality. What history teaches us is that the Islamic jihadis have many legitimate grievances and eventually attack using terrorist, immoral methods. Why give them more grievances?

The elites in Congress will not change this reality until the citizenry changes Congress. Let's do that.

Dear America: It's Over (Rulers of the World Era)

Reinvade, reoccupy, and redestroy Iraq. That is the solution to the inevitable civil war that happens when the US pulls out? Will we do it until either Iraq is remade in our image or until the US economy, political environment, and culture is also destroyed?

Eight years ago a group of Portland peace activists raised the funds to bring together a number of experts to produce an exit strategy from Iraq. Ours was done, as it turns out, at the same time that the Iraq Study Group did their work. We were just unaware that the government had finally at long last decided maybe it was time to think Exit Plan. Duh. I expect we were all simply inspired and challenged by the insightful and cogent strategy published shortly before in the widely cited peer-reviewed journal, The Onion with the supplementary promotion by Bill Maher.

Still, despite the obvious--and our group, which was informed by military experts and conflict transformation experts alike, noted well that no matter when the US left the Iraqis would have a bloody civil war and settle on a new autocratic government that shot its way to power and repressed its citizenry--it took the US three more years to begin to leave, longer to finish leaving, and now the correctly predicted violent settling-out process is happening in earnest.

Naturally, the US conflict industry is dismayed when the US isn't spending every last centavo on weaponry and other military profiteering contracts. Time to respond! Go bomb! Send in "advisers." No-fly attacks, hunt down insurgents with drones and war jets. Remobilize US troops because if there is one glaringly blatant truth, proxy troops no longer work in this post-Cold War era. They seemed to be Just Fine and a great way to drain the American taxpayer when their loyalty was fairly dependable. But the era of "he may be a son of a bitch but he's our son of a bitch" (ascribed a bit dubiously to FDR about our boy Somoza, the Nicaraguan dictator) is over. Our SOBs are now routinely driven from power by the ballot, the bullet, or the bodies--that is, by the elections we no longer control, by violent insurgencies, or by civil society nonviolent revolution.

Stop it. Stop interfering in other countries. Stop sending arms. Stop the drones. Just support civil society with helpful and requested aid, never guns or tanks or war jets or anti-insurgent helicopters or anti-government rocket-propelled grenade launchers. And for any chance of success, keep US troops at home. Let Iraqis work it through and then try to be a friend to their citizenry with our goods of life. It may not be as fast as the "I've got a gun to your head so go vote!" model of spreading "democracy" that is favored by our leaders and our military industrial congressional complex, but it is the only one that actually works. Can we please start now?

Department of Ironic Defense

Like so many other US military bases overseas, the Okinawan locals who oppose the base are told that the US military is there to protect them. Indigenous opposition is brushed aside by the presumption of position--there is one way to protect people and the US military is the best at it.

Increasingly, Okinawans resist such arguments. Land usurpation,  sovereignty cancelation, foreigners with guns who commit crimes with legal and extralegal immunity, infernal jet and truck noise at all hours, clogged roads and traffic accidents, human trafficking and military personnel sexual crimes against locals, ruined coastline, contaminated air and water, military aircraft crashes, massive local resource consumption and the endless experience of living under occupation frustrate indigenous Okinawans and they are not alone. Who's watching the watchers? has now become protect us from the protectors.

The latest small but telling twist of profound irony is the discovery that a US Kadena Air Force base building used to screen children for developmental concerns has drinking fountains that have been delivering water-borne lead to those children for many years--even despite reports that the lead content was at unsafe levels in that building more than a decade ago.

A single incident like this is alarming to locals who want the foreigners to leave--isn't 69 years of foreign military occupation enough to assess and neutralize the Okinawans' desire to conquer the world? But this happened at similar buildings on two other US military bases last year in Okinawa. Thanks for your care for the children, US military! Please show even more care and leave, at long last.

It has never stopped hurting Okinawans that they have been repeatedly devastated by foreigners and many even regard Japanese as foreigners. As usual, the UN is far ahead of the US on this question, pointing to history of independence and national separation so profound that even the islands' (an arc of them some 683 miles long) have evolved unique flora and fauna--and human culture.

One of the four primary steps in principled negotiation is to insist on fair standards. This has been a failure at every level of this occupation for nearly 70 years. This small but telling issue of lead in the water (yes, the fountains have been ordered disconnected, presumably by a touchingly sensitive USAF public relations officer) is an example of abuse of those standards. The US Environmental Protection Agency found that there is no safe level of lead in drinking water. No lead at all is the only safe standard. So of course the USAF decided that 20 ppb is a safe standard. The child development buildings had levels even in excess of that manipulated 'safe' standard. This is a bit like the state legislature of Indiana almost declaring a new value for pi in 1897 (3.2, much simpler). Neither that legislature nor the USAF gets to change reality to suit their fancy.

The only thing worse than all the occupation for almost seven decades is the Asian Pivot, sending massive US military forces to that region, presumably to protect everyone from China. It is time to pivot home, to stand down, to close foreign bases and stop polluting everyone else's countries. There is enough remediation to do back here in the US. There are hundreds of US taxpayer $billions to be saved doing this, and a huge amount of goodwill we can generate by closing down, cleaning up, and coming home. It's time.

Support Syrian strategic shift to nonviolence

As anyone can plainly reason, when anyone gets violent, the conflict in question tends to degenerate toward more violence, with a natural human vengeance for any violent attack driving that series of responses steadily downward toward the worst in human nature. One side gets violent, the other side responds in kind, and the race to the bottom is underway. We can all name any number of examples.

What happens when, at some point, a strategist gains the ear of a sector of the conflict parties and mentions that continuing this response is maladaptive, costly, and ineffective? Is there any hope that a violent conflict can somehow right itself increasingly toward nonviolence?

Of course. We saw that in the Philippines, in South Africa, in the Balkans and elsewhere. Violence begins to lose its luster when logic begins to replace the limbic system response. That is when nonviolence can save the day.

Many of us are hoping for that in Syria. The hearts and minds are there--arguably, the Syrians have the strongest faith in themselves, faith that seems quite lacking from those who are external "supporters," whether that is Putin supported al-Assad or Kerry and Obama supporting the "Free Syrian Army" or its other violent insurgency factions. The external supporters may not be crucial to the defeat of their violent foes--neither al-Assad nor the various armed insurgents are close to a military victory and all those parties are further than ever from winning hearts and minds--but they certainly can protract the misery by adding weaponry to the scene.

Zack Baddorf (2013-14) found evidence that, far from disappearing, the nonviolent civil society resistance in Syria is increasing.

http://forusa.org/blogs/mohja-kahf/middle-madness-four-women-march-for-nonviolence-syria/11408

There is increasing rejection of the clearly failing violent insurgency--one that is linked here and there to radically differing positions and interests and demographics, from the US to al-Qa'ida to various religious or ethnic bases. There is also a growing worldwide realization that strategic nonviolence is an effective tool available to insurgents who don't have foreign patrons or a big bank account. Nonviolent uprising can be run without funding from kidnapping or drug sales. It is by far the most pure form of democratic opposition to an autocratic regime and can be led by housewives banging pots, students sitting in blockade, strong statements from moral and ethical leaders, and small business owners refusing to sell to any armed force.

Well, what can we do if we are not Syrian and if we don't live there? We can do many things, including but not limited to:

• write to or visit to lobby our federal elected officials and tell them to stop funding or giving war materiel to violent insurgents
• educate our fellow citizens about the poor practice of our government in sending arms to Syria
• support Syrian refugee assistance groups, such as the Syrian American Medical Society, http://sams-usa.net
• support Syrian civil society groups
• encourage churches, mosques, and various other affinity groups to support nonviolence in Syria (the editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor (2012) rightly noted that only nonviolent resistance tends to work toward a free Syria for all, rather than one dominant group)

While most militarists bemoan the Obama administration's decision not to engage in a military response similar to that of Libya, it is becoming more clear by the month that such shortcuts only cost more in the long run. Find the Libyans who now love the US because Obama led the air attack on Qadaffi--oh, that's right, Libyans generally hate the US and even killed our ambassador to underscore that hatred. Adding to the violence gains little in the long run and usually is a substantial net loss. We can still help Syrians by working to stop the flow of arms and the materiel of war to that suffering country.

References

Baddorf, Z. (2013). Practicing Nonviolence in Syria. Progressive, 77(12/1), 54-55.

Monitor's Editorial, B. (2012, May 14). Nonviolent tactics may be Syria's only path to freedom. Christian Science Monitor. p. N.PAG.

May 17, 1968

It was 17 May 1968 and the Catonsville Nine were ready to enter that Maryland draft board, ready to act on their long plan, ready to go up in flames. They entered the Selective Service office--the draft board--and found the files marked 1-A, the next round of boys to be sent to kill, die, wound, be wounded in Vietnam. Every single fighting man, every single Vietnamese civilian and fighter--everyone in that criminal war was wounded. Even those of us who were mere conscientious objectors to that war were spiritually wounded, knowing our brothers were doing those godawful things and having hideous things done to them.

My friend Greg came back in a chair, a paraplegic. My friend Jeff lost a toe to his own hunting rifle in a bid to make himself undraftable. My friend Dave became a medic and dropped out of sight. Dave's girlfriend's brother was killed. Every young American male of able body was a target and an agent of imperial America. Every one of us across the land knew of these remarkable lousy things happening to friends and family. For nothing. No Vietnamese had fired a single shot at America. No sampans were coming up the Hudson or Columbia or Mississippi rivers. It was not our fathers' war; it was unjust and illegal, immoral and spiritually bankrupt. By 1968, even our strongest religious figures were proclaiming that and sacrificing themselves to make it known.

The Berrigan brothers and seven others were opposed to the war and indeed, rapidly became opposed to all wars. This was Dan's natural temperament; Phil, however, had been a soldier in World War II, fighting his way across Europe, and only came to the peace movement via the Civil Rights movement. Phil only became a pacifist after being exposed to Dr. King and some of the other radical Christians.

So several of these radicals took metal wire mesh wastebaskets full of the 1-A draft files (1-A meant first to be drafted), brought them to the parking lot outside the draft board, poured homemade napalm on them, lit them up, and stood in prayer, waiting for their arrest, which indeed came. While incarcerated, the pacifists were criticized by some other clergy. Dan Berrigan, master of the image and figure of speech, wrote in response,

"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children."

 Part of their planning were many discernment discussions and communiques. Their code word for their upcoming action became "99 and 44/100 percent pure," which was their tongue-in-cheek use of a sudsy commercial for a liquid soap--one of the main ingredients from the Green Beret recipe for the awful flaming weapon that would hit on a child's skin, stick, and burn through to the bone. The Catonsville Nine used that corporate ad language to satire the corporate frame of manufactured purity, to self-deprecate their own tendencies toward moralizing in the face of such massive war crimes, and to simply engage in the sort of gallows humor that has to lighten the knowledge of the terrible prices paid by everyone in war, even including the nonviolent resisters on their way to prison.

This one action--not the first draft board raid, but the one which literally and figuratively caught fire--continues to this day, with the draft board raids of the Vietnam War era giving way to the Plowshares movement. Those of us who engage in this sort of thing believe in public accountability--we don't skulk, flee, wear masks, or avoid responsibility. This is one of the primary differences between these actions and the smash-and-dash sneaky actions that alienate Americans. The style of the Catonsville Nine and all who have followed in their footsteps may cost the individuals more, but it builds sympathy and following and participation. Indeed, in a country increasingly looking more like an oligarchy, this is what democracy looks like.

The military and its crime spree illustrated by Ben Tre

God save us from those who would 'save' us.

"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."
--Unnamed US major from a Peter Arnett story in The New York Times, 7 February 1968, about US bombing of a Vietnamese town

There are two rogue sectors most often in overall noncompliance with environmental law--fossil fuel industries and the military. When they coincide it's even more egregious. It is astonishing how much brazen disregard the US military has for the land they claim to defend but instead despoil. The latest outrage is the announced intention of the Air Force to use the "solution to pollution is dilution" approach on Cape Cod, concerning pollution from Camp Edwards. The primary two sources are fuel spillage and leakage as well as chemicals from a firefighting training area.

Historically, the militaries of the world have created environmental havoc and have always just been above the law. But as they become less relevant perhaps we can ask them to be more considerate. If we focus on making the military completely irrelevant through a combination of strategic nonviolent approaches we can end the long destructive relationship between the forces who are supposed to protect our lands and their ruination of that land. If there were ever an irreducible statement reflecting that twisted relationship and the sick logic of militarism, it was that statement by the US major about the poor Vietnamese town of Ben Tre.

Cape Cod is Ben Tre. Albuquerque is Ben Tre. Much of the world is Ben Tre and given the threat of nuclear weapons, Mother Earth is Ben Tre.

We need another model of protection. Fire the military. Learn strategic nonviolence.

Avoiding the contamination of the provocateur starts with commitment

I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.
--Lily Tomlin

Watching movements implode from a failure of self-disciplined nonviolence is painful. Inadvertently, I participated in both sorts of movements over decades, and only in retrospect am I finally able to apply some conflict forensics that help me understand my own experience.

I was part of a movement in northern Wisconsin to get rid of a US Navy thermonuclear command base that sent commands to all US nuclear subs of all classes. We wanted that cleared out, not just NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), but NOPE (Not On Planet Earth).

I was also part of several peace and justice efforts some 200 miles southwest, in Minneapolis.

The movements in northern Wisconsin were led by and primarily affected by Nancy and Max Rice, founders of Dorea Peace Community. They were convinced pacifists. Max was almost killed in an attack on him by virulent, violent racists in the Deep South during the Civil Rights movement. Nancy was on the board of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and went to meet with them once or twice a year in Nyack, New York. They convinced us to move from protest to resistance and they were quiet leaders for the initial actions. I was first arrested with Max in our campaign's very first nonviolent action on Labor Day, 1983 (although we had been doing nonviolent sabotage in Michigan beginning that summer). Then I was arrested with Nancy at the next nonviolent action. Their grace and calm philosophy permeated everything we did and I learned so much from them. Then we got reinforcements from Jonah House, more radical pacifists used to robust nonviolent resistance and high discipline, Barb Kass and Mike Miles. The core of our leadership was philosophically and religiously pacifist. There were no doubts about our codes of behavior nor about our commitments.

On the other hand, I never knew who or what I might find in Minneapolis. There was a large group of activists who fancied themselves more radical than anyone and who flirted with violence, wore masks sometimes, and regarded all cops and all corporate officials as the enemy. The Minneapolis movement that did the best job in keeping them from doing damage to their movement was the Honeywell Project, since that movement had been destroyed in the 60s by allowing that sort of activist free rein. Turns out many of those 'radicals' were agents provocateurs, either police themselves or agents of the police rat system ("Go out there and stir up violence and we will keep you out of prison for the crimes we've caught you for."). They eventually found that in a Freedom of Information Act motion.

The Minneapolis radicals were pretty puffed up with themselves, always seeing themselves as the real radicals, though I can't think of a single victory they achieved. I guess radical=ineffectual. (Ukraine could have gone so much better than it did if they would have kept their 2005 discipline, for instance).

On the other hand, once the Jonah House folks moved to our woods and were part of our leadership, we met the actual radicals, the Berrigans and others who went nose-to-nose with the War System and fought it to a draw with movements like draft board raids (which helped grind the Selective Service system to a near halt in the Vietnam War era) and the plowshares movement (which features individuals or small groups physically dismantling weaponry and then turning themselves in so the case could be argued publicly). I knew in short order who the radicals were. 

This is why, over the years, I've been interested in and exploring ways to allow movements to grow without the eroding effects of the violent ones who scared away the masses needed to effect real change, and who gave the elite rulers all the justifications to smash our heads. One of my conclusions is that each campaign needs a trained team of nonviolent security workers to confront and blunt all such provocateurs. The so-called "radical flank effect" is often seen as a way to make the rest of us look moderate by contrast and therefore strengthen a movement, but the evidence belies that assumption and turns out that movements with a radical flank are less effective, that is, achieve their stated goals less frequently.

Not so fast, says Mark Anner (2009). Some Central American labor unions have been substantially strengthened and their goals more easily achieved by the radical flank effect of having a threat to organize a transnational left-wing union, which makes management/owners more eager to negotiate with more collaborative, conservative, local emerging unions. Fair point, under the right circumstances, but that sort of radical flank is more politically ideologically radical, not burn-it-down-and-invite-brutality radical. This, I believe, is why the highly disciplined implied threat of self-defense justified rhetorically by Malcolm X might have been on a path toward Dr. King, while the overtly guerrilla army stance of armed Black Panthers invited and got state terrorism and relegated them to a footnote status. Malcolm X was a brilliant, charismatic rhetorical genius, not a military leader. Huey P. Newton began brandishing arms and quasi-Special Forces berets in the streets, virtually demanding police attack. Tragically, the police complied. I was a boy then and hated the police. Now I'm an old man and I get the emotional need to threaten them, but cannot see a single advantage to the community in doing so.

Hirsch-Hoefler, Canetti & Pedahzur (2010) studied the radical flank parties in Israel and determined that they also were purely ideological, both secular and religious, and were essentially challengers from within the electoral system and a parliamentary system at that, where outlier groups can much more easily have a say than in our representative majority-rule democracy. Still, it is of interest that when those radicals attempt to do in the streets what they routinely do in the Knesset, they are thumped by the IDF and rendered unpopular and ineffectual with almost a PLO-level of say-so. This distinction is unresearched, to my knowledge. Simply put, once voting and rhetoric move into the streets, the really only acceptable radicalism is radical nonviolence.

One more academic study of a radical flank phenomenon (Isaac, McDonald & Lukasik, 2006) shows that the demonstrative model of union organizing has not been effective in the private sector but helped vitalize and mobilize a generation of public sector employees. One might wonder, however, if that train has run out of tracks since the economic derailment of the Great Recession, as evidenced by the sincere and doomed efforts by public employees in Wisconsin and by the machinations undermining the US Postal Service. While the study was quite robust, it needs a bit more longitude to gain the validity necessary to establish overarching conclusions. 

In the end, robust and disciplined nonviolence, combined with the reconciliation and invitation that is part of the basic pacifist philosophy, has the most strategic value. When movements learn that (and they could do so by asking practitioners who have done this), they move further, faster. When they incorporate all this into a strategic plan, they generally win. As Lily Tomlin notes, sometimes the efforts of just one key person can shift an organization, a campaign, or a movement. That could be you. Why not?

References
Anner, M. (2009). Two Logics of Labor Organizing in the Global Apparel Industry. International Studies Quarterly,53(3), 545-570. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2478.2009.00546.x


Hirsch-Hoefler, S., Canetti, D., & Pedahzur, A. (2010). Two of a kind? Voting motivations for populist radical right and religious fundamentalist parties. Electoral Studies, 29(4), 678-690. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2010.07.003

Isaac, L., McDonald, S., & Lukasik, G. (2006). Takin' It from the Streets: How the Sixties Mass Movement Revitalized Unionization. American Journal Of Sociology, 112(1), 46-96.