Gene Sharp, interview talking about his first visit to Norway and his meeting with Professor Arne Ness. Gene sharp gives his perspective on non violent resistance, and how to throw government.What lay behind his motivation and dedication that could make him devote, his entire life to the fight against brutal regimes? The answer was about reveal itself as we sat down with him face to face.
Just War and the Case of the US military action in Iraq in 2003
The issue of just war elicits a gross interplay between competing and cooperative concepts such as the moral worth of the individual, competent authority and state sovereignty – to name a few. At this time in the moral evolution of human kind we see international agreements yielding the effect that state to state conflicts are virtually non-existent. However, there is a rise in non-state vs state conflict (terrorism) and intrastate (civilian vs state authority) conflict. Both cases call into question the use of different types of intervention: humanitarian intervention and preemptive use of military force. Both of these issues are dealt with in International Law – International Humanitarian Law (ius in bello) and International Human Rights Law; they can also, in specific cases, fall under the jurisdiction of International Criminal Law. In highlighting the relationship between the moral and ethical foundations of the establishment of a just peace, it is necessary to note that International Law is largely the result of several thousands of years of philosophical discourse, dialog and debate on the morality of armed conflict and establishing and maintaining peace as a response to long and brutal history of human-kind engaging in armed conflict – most notably, the two world wars that led to the establishment of the United Nations.
This reflection paper will look through the lens of International Law (IHL, IHRL, ICL) – as a culmination of a moral ethical evolution of humankind – at the case of the US military action against the sovereign state of Iraq (2003) as a preemptive war which violated both US domestic law and International Law and, because of the relationship between moral/ethical principles and international law, the United States has violated fundamental ethics which govern the relationships between sovereign authorities as well as the responsibility to protect the peoples of Iraq. In this light, we note that the basic mechanisms of international law are substantial to deal with the illegality, and thus moral irresponsibility, of the United States and the high ranking members of the George W. Bush administration; yet, the means of enforcement are not in place to hold those responsible for such violations accountable and bring them to justice.
While it can be argued that all branches of ethics have a part in the formulation of International Law, I believe the preeminent ethical formulations – based on my brief introduction to the field of Ethics – are founded in the Utilitarian, Contractualist and Kantian Deontological formulations with the addition of the Ethics of Care and Feminism adding to more recent developments such as the responsibility to protect. It should be duly noted, as well, that the ideas of pacifism espoused in the New Testament would, in essence, prevail in preventing armed conflict and, thus having been challenged by protestations within the christian church to pacifism, the need for international agreements became paramount.
As NATO claimed in it’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Kosovo, the war was not legal but it was ethically justifiable because of the grave humanitarian crisis unfolding. The United states argued numerous points – in succession – as justification for the use of preemptive military force against Iraq; I shall consider only two of these arguments. In the first case the US argued that there was an imminent threat from Iraq – that it had chemical, and potentially nuclear weapons and could launch an attack against the United States – and that the only way to prevent this potential attack was to attack Iraq first. The US sought authorization from the UN and was given conditional authority. However, the US could not prove to the UNSC that it had demonstrated an imminent threat since the inspections regime had neither verified US claims nor was given enough time to further investigate before the US began military action – in violation of both U.S. Law (The War Powers Act) and International Law (the UN Charter).
In the second case, the US argued that it was liberating the Iraqi peoples from a brutal dictator – essentially employing the principle of a humanitarian intervention based on the responsibility to protect the civilians of foreign states from crimes against humanity and genocide. While it may be true that Iraq’s president was brutal, there was no case for humanitarian intervention under international law. Again noting in both of these cases, the standards of international law are developed as a result of a long history of discourse on the subject of ethics and morality with particular regard to the use of arms in conflict.
At the time of the US preemptive military action against the sovereign Iraq, there were numerous alternatives that could have been employed. Primarily, the current course of UN inspections could have been allowed to proceed to completion. Diplomatic efforts could have been employed but the United States did not appear to have an interest in diplomacy, offering the Iraqi president a deadline which did not allow for reasonable alternative means. One has to question the motivation of an entity that will not allow for reasonable attempts to solve a dispute by peaceful means. It is not unreasonable to speculate, in this case, that the US’s intentions for invading Iraq were dubious – however, this question is beyond the scope of the nature of this paper and I shall not address it here.
In addition to the UN inspections regime, UNSC resolutions, and diplomatic alternatives, the US media and world media could have made a concerted effort to highlight the current political discourse in Iraq (albeit under a repressive regime, but there are means to get information out to the public) along with the history of Iraq and Iraq’s role in international relations politically and economically for the sake of simply creating a more educated and aware public. This would be counter to the role of the US government and media in instilling ignorance and fear into the US population (again, the subject of another discourse) in order to gain support for an unjustifiable preemptive military action.
In view of the arguments used by the United States under the lens of International Law, we see there is a clear violation taking place. This violation indicates, in the least, that there exists an ethical and moral foundation in international law to test the nature of military interventions. The conclusion can be drawn, then, that international law, in its principles, is fully equipped to judge to the value of such actions regarding interventions of the types discussed here but it is not effective, in this case, in enforcing the laws. It may be that in this case the ineffectiveness of the UN in enforcing international law might be due to the fact the the country in question of violating international law is the world’s only superpower. This indicates the difficulties of entangling international alliances as well as a non-equality of sovereign states.
That the UN was incapable of utilizing its established bodies to attempt to hold the US accountable for a preemptive military intervention on fallacious grounds – causing in wake of the invasion, gross violations of International Humanitarian Law, as well as crimes against humanity, crimes against the peace, and violations of state sovereignty – shows the violability and vulnerability of International Law. In order to restore justice and the principle of “pacta sunt servanda”- the legitimacy of the UN and it’s member states, I believe that the United Nations should heed the words and deeds of some of it’s member states who have taken action against the Bush administration as well as individuals and organizations who have called for justice. In the case of member states, several heads of state and/or state authority’s have banned hih ranking members of the George W. Bush administration from entering their country in protest to their violations of international law, and numerous citizens tribunals have been held to show the egregious violations of IL – which, ultimately, amounts to the killing of individuals, amongst other things, and calls into question the ethics of who determines who will live and who will die; the value of individual human lives.
The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court are the two bodies that could and should take action in this case. The ICJ should be challenging whether the US invasion of Iraq was just. If it showed any willingness to do so I believe there would be numerous member states that would challenge the US. A potential case for the ICJ would be Spain vs the US regarding US violations of international law in the case of its military actions against the sovereign state of Iraq. In a similar fashion, the Brussels tribunal, the Tokyo tribunal, and numerous other civilian run organizations/tribunals, and individuals, have valid claims against individuals in the Bush administration who were responsible for violations of humanitarian law and human rights violations, as well as violations of international criminal law. The ICC could handle such cases.
If the ICJ and the ICC were to engage in a fair juridical process, regardless of the outcome, the UN could show that is, and has, the authority to enforce it’s own rules and, through this, could establish its credibility and legitimacy. Without challenging rogue states, regardless of size or power – that is, treating the all sovereign states as equals – the UN, enforcement of international law, and the moral and ethical principles guiding humanity towards peace and security can not be taken to be equitable or just.
Lunchtime on the Playground of Our Commonalities
“Don’t take my love for you personally” — Polish Proverb
a flute a guitar a violin an accordian
and a case of vodka
accomplanied by
a dancer a trickster a warrior a crier
cursing along the backroads of the nowe miasto
to where
we once gathered to play
our love songs
after the invasion
and the next to the places our father’s
fought to their deaths
to play for them
to drink for them
to sing to them
to smoke their last cigarettes
until we were drunk
hurled on the ground
our cold red faces pressed against
white crystals formed around
the edges of bootprints in the mud
sleeping as they do
a few meters underground
buried by decades of war
covered by the new world order
and a fresh layer of snow Now mostly sober
we carry our corpses back
from the Cytadela
half pickled half fermented
gathering unearthed ordinance
and dislodged shrapnel
to place inside the violin’s F-hole
drop into the sound hole of your guitar
jam into the end of her flute
pierce the trickster’s accordian
and ram down our throats
until there is no memory of the fighting
save the muted sounds of instruments
doing their dirty work
You’ve all heard about the “Falafel Stand in No Man’s Land,” of course. Certainly, it highlights the irony of war. Such things do take place during war when people will take little breaks from fighting to smoke opium, masturbate, medibate, and even kill some more; Such things do take place on both sides of Terra Nullius (No Man’s Land). That is, in their hatred, both sides are the same. In the way they masturbate, both sides are the same. There are cultural differences in toilet paper, no doubt, like sheet size and overall accepted textures, but toilet paper serves the same function across conflict boundaries.
The irony runs deep. Our most fundamental needs as human beings, our commonalities, are a cause for struggle. How do we transform competition for provision of our human needs into cooperation for the provision of our human needs. Yo, I’m not just talking about food, clothing, shelter, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. We have spiritual needs. We humans have emotional needs. Human beings have psychological and psychical needs as well.
Still, we can do much better than cooperation. We can actually have fun hanging out together in between the bullets and the bombs, the fists and the knives. Yes, it can be like recess – with the broken monkey bars, the tire swings, the cigarette butts from last nights hoodlums – during Lunchtime in elementary school before our egos are developed enough to take our differences to war.
And why not learn to play nicely together since we all need the same things? Well, it has to do with desire and expectation of course. That is where the struggle comes from. Maybe it is true that the tapeworm in your gut actually pulls the trigger, or the spirochete in your mitochondria deludes you into thinking you’re in love. More likely, it is the self love/loathe — you know, when your self hatred cultivates narcissistic asshole behavior, apathy, and/or self-deprecation — which prevents us from seeing self as other, gears us towards exploitation of others as we try to control them; steal their resources to acquire our desires (not mutually beneficial) not our human needs ( “They” could be a person, place or thing).
Of course, what I am suggesting is the Unified Field Theory of Human Endeavors – that which draws us to the Playground of our Human Needs. It requires a transformation of our core temperament with the intention of transcending the border between self and other. Perhaps when the human population was approximately 18 it was not such a difficult task to perform.
Yet, even the internal workings of a persons fwang can, and often do, cause conflict. When our emotional, physical, sexual, psychological, psychical, and spiritual needs are not thoroughly understood – that is, when our internal states are not clearly defined and in resonance with our core temperament- there exists a fertile ground for conflict. Toss into that internal mix the external forces of 7 billion people working towards the same thing among the external forces of economy, environment, politic, media, and other socal influences and you are left with a highly complicated system in which there is a great deal of friction and uncontrolled oscillations.
In the language of Natural Philosophy this dynamic is considered to be a ‘many body problem’ for which there is no exact solution. However, this does not mean an empirical solution can not be expressed. That is, the way we live can be transformed – through a series of practices and rituals – to unravel our fwang and re-ravel it with a new formulation more in resonance with our original instructions – this time derived from our practices and spiritual advisers who will prompt us towards expressing who we are supposed to be. This guidance and practice, along with the tools of non-violence and conflict transformation, will instruct us in a way that we can learn to play nicely among the commonalities of our human needs.
From the Polish Book of the Dead and Other Drunk Incantations
Bardzo VII
bardzo zimna we carried our corpses
a flute a guitar a violin an accordian
and a case of vodka
accomplanied by
a dancer a trickster a warrior a crier
cursing along the backroads of the nowe miasto
to where
we once gathered to play
our love songs
after the invasion
and the next to the places our father’s
fought to their deaths
to play for them
to drink for them
to sing to them
to smoke their last cigarettes
until we were drunk
hurled on the ground
our cold red faces pressed against
white crystals formed around
the edges of bootprints in the mud
sleeping as they do
a few meters underground
buried by decades of war
covered by the new world order
and a fresh layer of snow Now mostly sober
we carry our corpses back
from the Cytadela
half pickled half fermented
gathering unearthed ordinance
and dislodged shrapnel
to place inside the violin’s F-hole
drop into the sound hole of your guitar
jam into the end of her flute
pierce the trickster’s accordian
and ram down our throats
until there is no memory of the fighting
save the muted sounds of instruments
doing their dirty work
© Adam Roufberg
The Politics of Equality
by Johan Galtung, 23 Apr 2012- TRANSCEND Media Service
http://www.transcend.org/tms/2012/05/the-politics-of-equality/
From Washington, DC – USA
US politics has for a long time, since the 1970s, been the politics of inequality. Not only have the indicators of inequality, like the ratio in average income between the top and the bottom 20%, or the salary ratio between a CEO and the average employee in a corporation, increased (from 50 to 1100). But the top 10 or 1 or 0.1 percent, has acquired wealth so far unheard of. And the bottom 90, or 99 or 99.1 percent see the average family income in real terms decreasing; for the lowest down below the poverty line, way down into misery like worrying about where the next meal comes from (from the soup kitchen for very many).
With these processes going on at the same time–increasing accumulation at the top, increasing inequality, and increasing misery at the bottom–whether the total average increases, so-called economic growth, fades in significance. And yet economists feed up with growth data, for the real and finance economy, and much less with (in)equality measures; domestically and globally.
There is a reason for that: the optimism related to economic growth. Inequality is seen as incentive to invest, create jobs, and produce; and the fruits of that activity will trickle down. Social ills will disappear, and trade will link countries and make wars irrational, counter-productive; something of the past.
Today that optimism is of the past. So many of yesterday’s “more developed countries, MDCs” are today in a process of de-development, “en via de subdesarrollo” in Spanish; and some of the “less developed countries, LDCs” are coming up and passing former MDCs. Even Washington DC, WDC, is suffering the Great Recession, and nobody knows its future (prediction: a Great Depression fueled by the contradictions between finance and real economy, serving debts and serving people, and between printed money and reality.)
Then comes the book changing the discourse from growth to equality, written by two public health officials, not economists: The Spirit Level, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue convincingly that social ills are more correlated with inequality than with growth: affluence and misery, homicide and suicide, incarceration rates, physical and mental illness, even obesity, not only lower down but also higher up. More social distrust, of course, across increasing distance. There is more to gain from “greater equality making societies stronger”, they argue already in the subtitle, not by that arguing zero growth.
Robert Reich, in his preface to the book, explains the rising inequality in terms of market competition (outcompeting others by rewarding a few inconsiderate CEOs, and saving on the wages of millions), and on the race for status, “class”. To that can be added what happens when those lower down try to survive: crimes for the boys, and prostitution for the girls with HIV and slavery.
And what happens when those higher up have more liquidity than they can consume and invest: speculation, with long chains charging commissions whenever derivatives change hands.
And, add what those lower down do: long chains charging commissions whenever drugs change hands. The trick is to be the penultimate before the finance economy crash taking the last dealer with it, or the killing in Ciudad Juárez of the last and richest link in the chain from thetriangulo blanco down south.
Many in peace studies have argued for decades that equality domestically and globally is a major condition for peace. Imagine a conflict across some fault-line, within or among countries, like race or class, nation or territory (provinces, states, regions). The less inequality, the easier to sit down and talk it over, or accept a mediator shuttling between the parties.
The less inequality, the easier to clear past traumas, to reconcile; one reason being that they may have traumatized each other, and have a more symmetric perspective on the past.
The less inequality, the easier to solve conflicts by trading or compromise, or transcending the issues, finding something new.
The less inequality, the easier some cooperation for mutual and equal benefit can come about.
The less inequality, the easier for empathy to grow, making parties suffer the other’s suffering, and enjoy the other’s joy.
These four–reconciliation, resolution, equity, harmony–are not conditions for peace. They are peace. Reconciliation, empathy, cooperation and resolution can be done across vertical fault-lines, but with more difficulty. Chances are higher for the top dog to impose his “peace” will on the underdog: the underdog must apologize for any act of direct aggression against mountains of structural violence, solutions favor the top dog, cooperation will be lopsided, and the empathy the top dog wants is admiration and emulation. Just think of the former slaves in Haiti paying compensation to the slavers for having claimed their liberty–.
Inequality means friction in the social machinery, lasting traumas, unsolved conflicts, unequal exchange and hatred across fault-lines. Small Nordic countries came onto the global stage not by being rich like Gulf states but by having strong societies.
The Spirit Level is mainly focused on economic inequality. But the military monopoly on violence is today challenged in many parts of the world. So is cultural domination by one nation in a state. So is dictatorship by autocrats, by a political class of party bosses, also by a majority democratically elected. Answers: federalism, direct democracy. Add more equality, and peace. And violence may decrease; wither away in favor of conflict resolution.
________________
Editorials by Johan Galtung and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgment and link to the source, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, is included. Thank you.
Sex, Lunch, and Rock and Roll [or Mad Dog 2012]
Adam Roufberg reads his parting words on Radio Active Lunch after 4 years of broadcasting live music in the Mid Hudson Valley on WVKR:
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I tried to warn you people. some of you listened. some of you were too busy earning a living to listen. Some of you were too busy being stoned, or lazy, or busy being creative or helping others. Helping other’s who may not have wanted the help. Helping old ladies cross the street to steal their purses – until you came across kung fu granny. Trying to help social workers burnt out by the sickness of society by bringing them to orgasm while you vampired their energy. Teaching children about self determination while you stole their souls from the dark forces of the new world order who tried to occupy their identity. Liberating the world from struggle, war, violence, disenfranchisement and dispossession of the land and the law of heart.
I tried to warn you people about occupying the government. So many of you went ahead and did it anyway. you didn’t realize that they stole your brain and infused it with strawberry water, and bad words, and ideas rotting from the inside out such that you would mimic them in greater toxic ways creating more waste while they laughed at you and stole even more of your money while you took a break from unemployment to sit in the rain in solidarity with everyone who is sick and tired of fat cat big wig gaping anal retentive sphincters raping the earth, exploiting your children, toxifying the land, engineering your food, stealing your donuts conducting your rivers to mouth an ocean rising from the effects of black magic conjured by the narcissistic assholes who were willing to note that you would sit in the rainy may day parade protest demonstration telling them what they already know while you fight for your rights that they don’t have the right to disposes you of. But you’re satisfied with the solidarity of the union workers, police chiefs, kong fu grannies, hippies, peace loving people, and the falafel stands, and the strangers bringing food and water, and the artists, and the poets, and the public speakers that carry on the tradition of community building in the spirit of love for the sake of survival of a peoples of a particular will that you call nation.
I tried to warn you about dynamic struggle between what you people call good and evil – mutually inductive, mutually restrictive forces shedding light on others, shedding the blood of others, shredding the fretboard, sharing the creation of balance through chaos trajeculating along divergent paths and hyperbole coming out of rhetoricians ass. I did. Some of you listened. Some of you forgot. Some of you weren’t paying attention. Some of you were too busy smoking pot, playing music, harvesting medicinal herbs and foraging in the wilderness for food and love. Other’s too distracted by the coming end of times, the alien invasion, the new world order crack down, 2012, Nostradamus, gorge Balanchine, Julio Iglesias, Woodstock, Snoopy, video games, blunts, dmt, other peoples lips and ass and saliva, bananas fried in coconut and agave with dark chocolate cherries served on almond iced cream with midge larvae sprinkles battling internally with will desire and expectation in conflict with the will desire and expectations of your lover and your government while you pander and ponder not knowing the difference between …because you’ve been sucked into the vacuum of dark sorcery.
I tried to remind you fuckers that music is the only thing that really matters. That we should replace guns and all weapons with musical instruments so that we are not cowards in the face of adversary. that we meet our competitor, face to face, and bludgeon them with our instruments lest we accidentally engage in the plucking of strings, the blowing through reeds, the pounding of skins, the stroking of hair on gut tied to the hollows of trees. lest we accidentally note that all of the world is an orchestra and everyone is playing wildly their sombre songs, dancing in the streets, naked walking Gymonopodie, death metal thrash whatever but their is no audience, no one really listening.
I hoped to imbue you with the notion that without equality there is no justice and without justice there is no peace and without peace there is violence, control, occupation, subjugation, exploitation, enslavement, brutality, and fear and there is simply no need for this when we have enough in common to learn to play nicely on the battlefield and compete intentfully on the playground of our commonalities – the culinary arts, the visual arts, the literary arts, dance, music, the quest for knowledge, a richer spiritual life, an understanding of the principles and practices of love, physical love, emotional love, spiritual love, a love superceding race, superceding gender, superceding spiritual beliefs and practices, superceding national boundaries, superceding species, superceding any of the apparent artificial constraints and projections that seem to separate us and present us with irreconcilable differences that keep us all locked in the enchanted prison.
I delivered poetry and prose from some of the greatest master’s present and past. Words to spark your imagination. Words to make you feel and think. Words that make you bleed. Words to heal. Words to draw anger and all emotion. Words to paint a picture in the sky. Words to tear down structures. Words to eradicate the past. Words to erase the future. Words to fertilize the flow, the flower, the flowering of ideas, the exponentiation of expression of DNA along the numeroligical rift of space and time, yin and yang, healing your ancestry and pushing you, thrusting you, tearing you, burning you in the direction of the gate keeper, the prison guard, the torturer, your death, to prepare you with the tools you will need to survive your death and stay cool on the other side.
We, all of us who participated in this beautiful disaster, this maelstrom of bodily fluids from the earth, this mutiny of flowers, this mad dance across the fretboard of spontaneous decision flowing through us as the spirits weave their way through our nerve cells, our impulses, giving us instruction on how to conduct our musculature to find the next note, the next word, the next tear, the next kiss, we are all responsible for pushing the boundaries of heart and head, breaking the sound barrier, challenging the darkness born of a slight asymmetry in the astral light pulsing across the great expanse of time as an infinite matrix of interconnectedness sewn together by the thread separating hatred from love.
You. My dear friend. My lover. My family. my tribe, my culture, Orenda. You, Who listened to this radio show on this radio station , dedicated or otherwise, to your community, to promote and support the music, the history, the spirit and the ancestry of this valley. I thank you for your participation on the receiving end of this transmission and I wish that you all find your relative path towards peace, love, reconciliation, creativity, effectiveness and personal truth. I am with love for you and I will that you all engage this world, that you all engage in this world in the spirit of finding our commonalities on the playground of our human needs.