Towards A Vegan Essene State

Posted on 31st July 2014 in Animal Rights, Articles, Self Determination

Vegans, for as long as the word existed, have been persecuted around the world. You know, you’ve done it yourself. We’re tired of having wieners waved in our faces, we’re tired of stupid questions like “where do you get your protein?” and “so you don’t eat chicken” as if chicken were a vegetable, fungi, prokaryote or other colonial organism. We’re fed up – so to speak.

Further, we want to live in a state where no animals are cruelly treated: used in factory farming or raised as commodities for human benefit; used in testing for the safety of human ego glamor products; used to test farmaceuticals to cure the ills that humans bring upon themselves from poor attitudes, bad diet and a disconnect from the very land which gives them life.

Vegans deserve a place where they don’t have to put up with inflated vegetable prices resulting from farm subsidies to the animal slaughter industry. Vegans don’t want to smell the burning carnage billowing out of restaurants as they walk down the streets of their communities. Vegans don’t want to have to breath in the dead skin cells of the omnivorous counterparts and would like to bring that cell count to a minimum.

For our homeland we propose that we create a state within a state within a state – we can be given land in Israel – perhaps the Golan Heights, southern Lebanon, Jerusalem or maybe somewhere in the Negev since they were going to take that place form the Bedouins recently.

We choose this place because we, as vegan Essenes, follow the same beliefs that Jesus did – according to the dead sea scrolls Jesus was an Essene and therefore a vegan. Since Jesus was a Jew, since an entire religion created in his name, and since that is where the 3 or so major religions claim as there homeland, we feel we should have a homeland too.

We hope the state of Israel, created as a homeland for an oppressed, persecuted and dispossessed peoples, will understand our plight and will give us a piece of the land that was given to them by the former empires of the world on a land where other people were living. They should be able to relate to that and empathize with us.

We will soon be petitioning the UN for the right to legal veganhood and seeking funding through the Vegan Defense Fund. We shall soon be publishing a complete manifesto of how we shall go about funding this large scale emigration, assimilation into the existent community and security concerns.

 

comments: 0 » tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Breaking In/Out to/of Israel

Posted on 20th March 2014 in Articles, Nonviolence Resistance, Reflections, Self Determination

Israel, a w(W)hite W(w)estern Jewish democracy (Orwellian Newspeak), is not always that easy to get into. You have to be crafty to break into such a fortress (aka Enchanted Prison). Those amongst we holy wanderers, political dissidents and ignorant travelers have different types of preparation to perpetrate. Some just have to pack their clothes and get on and off of a plane or two. Others have to clean up their facebook accounts, look tired, and prepare names and phone numbers of friends or friends of friends or acquaintances of friends and/or family and their friends and/or associates who might lend a phone number and rough location along with a corroborative report. Others, I’m certain, spend a little extra money on the latest grunge fads to like they are already a part of the Tel Aviv hipster crowd.

 

When you arrive, your boyfriend may not be allowed to enter. He will call you when he is at the gate departing with the news that he is being sent back and he is not exactly sure why and neither were the Israeli’s who are making him go back. You might get asked a series of questions pertaining to your travel intentions, who you’re staying with, and how long you’ll be there. You might have to provide a phone number and an address or two and watch as they call the number to make sure your story holds water. If you are a known activist or know any known activists you might likely be taken to another room and undergo an interrogation. You may be asked to strip. You may be asked to open your computer and login to your accounts so they can see what you’ve been up to. You might get a stamp on your passport indicating you are not welcome back to Israel for a decade – presumably when the social and political order is a bit more chill.

 

Whether you are entering or leaving, if you are actually acting with dubious intentions (maybe you’re an intellectual studying Palestinian Art as a form of resistance, or your teaching Pal children to build skateboard parks and learn how to skate, or your a young German girl working for the UN in Ramallah), you’ve gotta do a minimum of two things to enter safely: you have to have a viable story worked out and you’ve got to de-arabize or de-palestinianize your travel articles. Maybe you won’t abring Said’s book on the Question of Palestine or the book on Dabka but would rather grab yourself a copy of Hertzl’s Jewish State and pretend your coming to visit the holy sites and explore your Jewish or Christian roots. Maybe your contemplating Aliyah to get some of your tax dollars back. You’ll learn a couple of Hebrew words to pretend your on in being in on the know. Most of all, deep down inside, you’re prepared to be carted and cordoned off, questioned, cross examined, caressed, and sent back across the Mediterranean lest you be suspected of seeking a dialogue with like minded humanists (Allah forbid they be Arabs), learning a little bit about the cultures of both sides: the indigenous Arab populations and the mostly white implants (read colonizers) in Israel proper. [Note: everyone should have the right to a decent and safe place to live but the history of colonization implies dispossessing others of their homes and land and that tends to piss people off and cause protracted conflicts – something Hertzl was well aware of and wrote about].

 

Then, of course, there is a sort of un-re-decolonizing of the mind/heart/spirit triad that has to take place. It goes something like this: you realize that your spending so much time coming up with stories so that you can continue to enter and exit Israel. You realize that realizing how much time and energy realizing it takes up more time and energy. You realize that it is this way intentionally. You realize that for a brief period of time you are Israel’s bitch because they’re forcing you to make unethical decisions – you feel boxed into lying. You invent the term “flying ethics” (once again, to mock the flying checkpoints that Palestinians are subject to): literally ethics on the fly, a tactic used to avoid telling incriminating truths in the face of arbitrary and unreasonable searches and seizures such as: I was in Hebron, I visited the Darwish Museum, I purchased olive soap and sweets in Nablus, I ate felafel in Birzeit, there is a really beautiful human being that I’ve fallen in love with that lives in East jerusalem, and/or I am an ardent supporter and promoter of human rights and I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

 

You realize its fuck all that you’re forced into this shituation to begin with and you can’t just smile and be honest and travel freely to visit a beautiful peoples in a beautiful culture in a not too beautiful circumstance. You realize that if you make it in or out you might not make it in or out again. You realize that this cycle is precisely what your being forced into again and you argue the virtues of honesty versus the virtues of lying knowing full well that they’re just toying with you and they know where you’ve been in any case and since they can’t really do to you what they do to the Palestinians at least they can have some fun with you, own your ass, watch you sweat, catalog the inventions that you’ve come up with, and determine whether or not you should be made an example of.

 

They know you’ve spent countless hours with your friends telling stories of what happened to them or people they know. They know you’ve been busy coming up with stories of your own. They know it doesn’t matter what you say, where you’re from or your station in life. If they want to fuck with you, in many splendid ways, they will. So, for just a little amount of time you are their bitch.

 

You can imagine the kind of intellectual tai chi chuan that is required to skate flawlessly through the system of checkpoints, questions and border crossings. It is, in many ways, however, like roulette. The outcome is seemingly random.

comments: 0 » tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aspects of the Neoconservative Agenda through the lens of Dahrendorf’s Social Conflict Model

Posted on 8th July 2013 in Articles, Theory, World Peace Academy Reflection Papers

I. Introduction:

Trying to reduce a complex social interaction to a general theory, as Dahrendorf states, leads to empty generalizations or to empirically unjustifiable oversimplifications. With this in mind I limit this discussion of social conflict in the United States, specifically from the beginning of the Bush Jr. Administration, noting that an analysis based on Huntington’s theory – largely the disposition of the Neoconservative agenda, which I will discuss in more detail – would make for an interesting discussion. As I hope to show, the social structure of the US closely resonates with the key points highlighted in Dahrendorf. Additionally, while I do believe there is valuable information to be obtained through a psycho-social analysis of this, or any social structure, I think Dahrendorf’s limitation on endogenous conflicts as “the task of sociology to derive conflicts from specific social structures” points out most of the main functional relationships of the two dichotomous models of society along with the principle of authority and authority structures. These aspects of the Conflict Theory model and, what I would call the general tendency toward a neo-totalitarian state are the main points of my argument.

An important aspect, and precondition, of the Conflict Theory model is that it is intended to be ‘crafted’ to suit the needs of a particular conflict and therefore avoids generalizations and oversimplifications. Further, it considers the trajectory of the system and therefore,  through empirical research, attempts to establish a reasonable set, or multiplicity, of parameters to evaluate the system and the relative intensity of each parameter in the specific context. As Dahrendorf points out, “it is erroneous to assume that a description of how elements of a structure are put together in a stable whole offers, as such, a point of departure for structure analysis of conflict and change .” Such an approach can tends to eliminate many of the assumed structural and functional relationships that may lead to incorrect interpretations of empirical data and eliminates the difficulties of distinguishing between intended and unintended outcomes and relies more on the scientific method of matching empirical evidence with stated hypotheses.

 

II. Critical Evaluation of Key Points

I will highlight the key points of Dahrendorf’s Social Conflict Model as presented in lecture at the World Peace Academy by Dr. Jürgen Endres.1 Beginning with dichotomous models of Integration and Conflict, as listed in Table 1, it is important to note that these
two contrasting models form what I would consider to be a canonical set of mutually induct and mutually restrictive pairs. This is to say that these two aspects of society are, in the case of the Unites States at least, intertwined and are the impetus for change itself.
There is always a very progressive element of society which is met with a more conservative element and the more, for example, the indicators of Conflict become dominant, the more their tends to be a reaction by the more conservative elements of society. This explains the oscillation from Democratic to Republican parties controlling the three branches of government. However, there is an added layer which, according to Dahrendorf, would be the real progenitor of the social dynamic – namely, that the real holders of authority in the United States take advantage of the Conflict/Integration dichotomy as a strategy to divide and conquer the US population while the laws and regulating freedom, liberty and justice are slowly manipulated and normalized into totalitarian state.

Click here to read more.. »

comments: 0 » tags: , , , , , , , ,

Just War and the Case of the US military action in Iraq in 2003

Posted on 16th July 2012 in Articles, Peace, Reflections, Self Determination, Theory, World Peace Academy Reflection Papers

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.

comments: 0 » tags: , , , , , , ,

The Politics of Equality

Posted on 7th May 2012 in Articles, Self Determination

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.

 

 

comments: 0 » tags: , , , ,

Dr. H.B.Danesh at the WPA – The Arab Spring: A psychosocial developmental perspective

Posted on 4th May 2012 in Articles, Self Determination, Theory

 

 

comments: 0 » tags: ,
« Previous Next »