Where have all the flowers gone?

Posted on 30th January 2016 in Articles, Nonviolence Resistance, Notes, Peace, Peace Pedagogy, Practice, Self Determination
By h. Gibrain

Not long ago I was standing in a veritable war zone amid the tear gas, rubber coated bullets and stun grenades looking at the little yellow flowers I was unfamiliar with and thinking about how the western main stream media portrays this particular conflict in the usual fairly unbalanced thought-bytes and the only lives that are ever considered are the human ones: some humans matter more than others but the rest of flora and fauna has, essentially, no representation in the media and apparently doesn’t matter at all.

We all know how important the environment is – ever since the word came to be in use – and, as a culture of refugees, colonialists, conquistadors and anything but the indigenous, we are indoctrinated in a culture of denial and disconnect from nature (the environment outside of your skin) and our minds and the language we think with does not contain the right sequences of words to express or question not only human rights and equality in the eyes of international law and human rights law (if that’s your thing), in the eyes of god (if that’s your thing), through a lens of your indigenous roots on Earth (regardless of where you’re from and all of the defining characteristics of your identity), but we never consider the impact of human conflict on the environment.

Trying to unravel the entangling alliances between state parties is as angrifying as actually understanding the often dubious relationships, based on economic and military power, which reak havoc on innocent people the world over. I’m specifically avoiding examples because there are so many to choose from I don’t want to single out one perpetrator over another and draw a chorus of “what about the others’ “. Besides that’s not my point. My point is that all of that is somewhat irrelevant – the behavior is basically universal in that people are making, selling, buying, and using weapons to kill innocent people and it’s generally not sanctioned by the respective civil societies of the nation-states doing the killing. The underlying issue, which gains absolutely no attention in the press, in social media, from political pundits and the politicians themselves, is the simple set of questions everyone should be asking themselves with their morning coffee, afternoon cocktail, dinner and a joint, is “Who is making all of these weapons? Who is selling all of these weapons? Who is using all of these weapons? And why are they being made, sold, bought, used and not regulated in any consistent fashion, let alone produced at all – when they have only one purpose?”

 

I’m not gonna answer that simple set of questions. I have my own thoughts and beliefs about why this is taking place. The once in a while that I can bear to think about it I just ask myself “why isn’t everyone talking about this and trying to do something about the way these forms of commerce take place?”

Generally, energy flows where attention goes so let us all put some form of attention to this issue. It can be in the form of prayer, mediation, poetry, music, dance, food, letters and phone calls and general lobbying of government officials and weapons manufacturers, letters to editors, peace journalists can participate in focusing their attention on this matter as well. Of course, there are more than one hundred and ninety-eight methods of non-violent armed resistance according to one Gene Sharp (If you’re reading this you know how to use a search engine). I can’t do all 198, but I try a few here and there in a way that doesn’t interfere too much with my white male American middle aged middle classed privilege. I’m asking you do something too. Few are guilty, all are responsible.

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

United Nations General Assembly Declares Decade of Reconciliation

Posted on 16th February 2015 in Peace, Self Determination
by h. Gibrain

Under the directorate of the United Nations Secretary General, the UN’s General Assembly has been instructed to exercise its full legal authority under international law by instituting a number of programs and reforms to the structural organization and function of the UN – as a whole and for each of its specific organs.

 

This action, according to a spokesperson for the office of the Secretary General, has largely come in response to a symbolic lawsuit presented to the International Criminal Court suing the General Assembly, the International Court of Justice and the Security Council on the basis that, though it is commonly perceived that those organs have no legal authority and are, essentially, a whole lesser than the sum of its parts in that the member states are responsible for the net result of the respective UN organ, the UN Charter does, in fact, grant legal authority tantamount to statehood to each of these organs and therefore those UN bodies can be tried under international law as states for failing to carry out there respective mandates.

 

Accordingly, while it is argued that, for example, the Security Council is only as effective as the veto of its member states and, historically, this veto has been used by the permanent members to block any initiative, legal action, or principle on the grounds that it doesn’t fit in with the narrative of their hegemonic future, it is the absolute responsibility of both the Secretary General and the General Assembly to take actions to hold the member states accountable that fail to live up the their legal obligations.

 

To counter a potential “legal” battle between the ICC and the ICJ the UNGA has begun to take steps to exercise the full might of its authority. However, they have expressed the intention to cast a positive light on these initiatives; rather than take legal action against states, they are taken proactive steps to support relations among states and between states and their respective civil societies. The biggest initiative release to the public thus far is the United Nations Decade of Global Reconciliation. “Well, let’s face it, the globe is a wreck and the only thing that is going to change it is a long process of global reconciliation,” states C. James Ernstrum, a spokesperson for the office of the General Assembly.

 

The main idea between the UNDOGR comes from the acknowledgment that the UN, itself, and international law is largely formulated by the victors of war – empires. This structure and formulation entirely leaves out indigenous perspectives. IN recognition of the fact that the western model has proven to be both destructive and increasingly violent, the UNDOGR is attempting to incorporate the reconciliation and mediation processes of indigenous cultures who survived and thrived for thousands of years in relative peace without all of the incredibly powerful destructive forces preeminent in the last century and a half.

 

“The indigenous peoples relationship is to the land and the narrative is one of survival as a part of the infinite web of life. The western mentality is based on possession and domination which, as we are all witnessing, has incredibly destructive power and natural processes can’t compensate for this without the help of human beings repairing the damage they’ve done to the environment – to the extinction of species, to the natural patterns in the weather cycles and perhaps most importantly, to the realization that we are in fact all tied together through water, blood and the great spirit that keeps our hearts beating as one,” spiritual leader of the Wasichu Thunder Clan notes in the UNDOGR’s publication soon to be released to the public and the member states of the UN. He continues, ““This is to be a global effort incorporating member states, civil societies and indigenous cultures and, the indigenous peoples of this planet will have the role similar to the UNGA for this initiative – not the member states, who have proven that they do not represent the will of the people nor can they unite on any particular initiatives for the benefit of the global civil society that stand counter to their respective hegemonic goals.”

 

“The first actions should be a symbolic giving back of stolen lands to the indigenous people,” said former UN Undersecretary General Robert Mueller. Obama would have to symbolically return the lands of the US to the indigenous – with the understanding, of course, that the Native Americans would let the descendents of immigrants and colonialists to remain since they are now, too, indigenous to this land. Netanyahu, or his successor, will give the land back to the Palestinians. Australia would give the Island Continent back to the Aborigines, and so one. The process, you can imagine, would continue until all stolen lands were given back to their original owners and, the underlying mission and intention, is to highlight the fact that we are one species living on one planet and we will, necessarily for our survival, need to live beyond the nation state: trans-nationally; acting with the intention to promote our own welfare in that our welfare is directly related to the welfare of all species and the organic systems upon which they rely and we must work to protect the children of all species.

 

“Beyond that there will need to be fortuitous gestures of reparations to the enslaved, dispossessed and murdered victims of empires and colonialism. This would entail reparations to the ancestors of slaves in the US and all around the world. Compensation to victims of war, refugees and internally displaced persons and so on,” adds Mueller. Again, the underlying intention is to illustrate that the “initial insult” can be traced back to some point in our common history through this series of reparations since each group will likely at some point in their history committed some injustice against another.

 

When we’re all done acknowledging the injustices we’ve perpetrated, apologizing, paying each other back and reconciling our pasts we will achieve a state of equality necessary for us to move towards our common destiny in cooperation and not in competition through the injustices perpetrated by states against nature and civil societies for profit and domination. Somewhere in our common history our narratives became dominated by a proclivity towards an unjust hierarchical system yet we have now reached a time where civil societies have become organized to counter the injustices of their respective states. We’re taking it to the next level through this initiative to weave together a global civil society who all share the same aspirations for peace, equality and a unity based on our common humanity and destiny.” Mueller concludes.

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

… by peaceful means, …

Posted on 28th January 2015 in Nonviolence Resistance, Peace, Reflections, Self Determination, Theory
by H. Gibrain

“To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;” – Article 1.1 UN Charter

 

Signatories to the UN Charter are bound by international law to settle disputes peacefully and only resort to force when all other avenues for dialogue, diplomacy, negotiations and other means to settle disputes have been exhausted. The language of the UN charter is, in and of itself, profound in its implications yet fails miserably to live up to its own standard; needless to say this is a function of the member states and not the organization itself – yet the organization lacks the means to hold its members accountable for breeches of this fundamental.

 

One of the major flaws of the structure of the United Nations is that it is in fact not a united nations at all – it is a group of states – and does not have any body that represents nations of peoples. If the settling of disputes were left to nations, be they ethnic groups or imagined groups, I think the world would be in a much better state than it is now – where our collective fate is determined by a global corporate mafia that call themselves governments.

 

For starters, most normal members of civil society know how to party in the tradition sense as opposed to the sense implicit in the phrase “political party.” People would settle their disputes through drinking – which could lead to sex, sleep, vomiting, brawling and brotherly love; a far cry from settling disputes with bunker busters, tear gas, white phosphorous, hellfire missiles and the be-all-that-ends-all: nuclear war.

 

Sports are a very physical way to incorporate competition with cooperation with some minor injuries and the occasional fatality though nothing like that of war. The Olympics are a perfect example of settling disputes by peaceful means; may the best person/team win based on their dedication, discipline and an intelligent strategy.

 

The arts are also a wonderful means by which people can explore their differences. The display and performance arts are a great playground for our commonalities as well as our differences: theater, dance music, painting, sculpture, and so on are a great way of exploring differences in culture which offer an opportunity for appreciation rather than disdain.

 

The culinary arts, too, should not be underestimated as a means by which nations can settle disputes. Exploring flavors – what could be better.

 

If music is the universal language of humans then numbers are the universal language of nature. Why are there so many languages and only one set of numbers (except for the Romans)? We all speak the same numbers and live on the same planet with the same paragon of flora and fauna. Why do we not learn to play peacefully with numbers to explore the vast realms of organic organization. This would keep us busy for a long while – as it has.

 

We don’t see too many natural scientists and mathematicians calling for war, going into battle, or bludgeoning each other in the streets. Similarly, short of a battle of the bands, musicians tend to be a peaceful lot not smashing in each others skulls and taking fingers as trophies. Chefs, dangerous as they may seem, are clearly out for the betterment of society providing blood and soul sustenance. Similarly, athletes are all about the competition and victory but most sporting events tend to end with fewer deaths than wars.

 

The world needs to be run by an organized civil society transcending the idea and reality that nation states have been able to muster in terms of creating a peaceful planet devoid of blood lusting greedy murderous corporate fascist war mongers: megalomaniacal psychopaths. When the United Nations becomes a forum for the united nations of peoples from the respective civil societies of what are now nation states perhaps the prospects for human peace will be realized. I’m sure our plant and animal sisters and brothers are longing for the day when they are no longer subject to our collective insanity.

 

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

The Zero State One Nation Solution: Terra Nullius

Posted on 30th December 2014 in Nonviolence Resistance, Peace, Peace Pedagogy, Self Determination, Theory
by H. Gibrain

A viable solution which would respect the human rights of all concerned and which would solve the problem of borders and resources, as well as demographics and the right to return for all peoples, Palestinian and otherwise, would be to declare the geographic boundaries defined by the Palestine Mandate as terra nullius – no one’s land.

Since this “disputed” land (annexed and occupied by the UN and Israel and the US and others by proxy) is really the last great colonial product of the British Empire – now perpetuated by the US and the other former colonized British states – let it be the first place on earth where there is no state control based on any discriminatory factor, where no one owns the land and where all people are seen as equal under the moral code of the nation as determined by what could be a stateless nation with a constitution (not defining a government structure, per se, but defining a moral code analogous to the Bill of Rights in the US and other international declarations based on equality, peace, justice, liberty, freedom, truth, dignity, trust and the rest of the virtues.

Such a move will require a great deal of courage from the United Nations organs and member states who are willing to uphold the law through their words and actions, an organized popular resistance from Palestinian civil society – and potentially the PA (as, say, exhibited in Abbas’ speech at the UN (in 2011 I think it might have been), and the international solidarity movement through BDS and other means of non-violent popular struggle.

The UN, in order to overcome the inertia of the security council and other organs that prevent the UN organizations – as an expression of its member states – to carry out its functions as prescribed by international law, the UN will likely need to change the structure since the current structure is not properly carrying out its function. The possibility and effects of a Second UN Charter convention should be seriously contemplated by the General Assembly and other appropriate bodies of the UN. Primarily, a restructuring or elimination of the Security Council, the veto, or how it can be used needs to be evaluated and the creation of some body representing civil society needs to take place – a people’s parliament.

In a Newtonian sense, when there are forces acting on a body creating a certain trajectory, in order to alter that trajectory and get it to go in the direction of an international law and human rights based system, the right actions need to take place from the right forces. In this case, as history has shown, there is no political will or skill from the main stakeholders to change the trajectory, so the Palestinian civil society and the respective civil societies of the world need to learn the principles and practices of non-violent popular struggle – which has shown, historically, to be a much more effective means of conflict transformation. It is not the military might that will win the struggle for legitimacy, it is the struggle for equality and justice from international solidarity with the Palestinians that will usher in a durable peace.

 

 

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Toward a Pedagogy of Liberation: Holotivity and the Internal Arts in Peace Education

Posted on 9th June 2013 in Peace, Peace Pedagogy, Self Determination, Theory

Abstract: The evolutionary trajectory of many fields of discourse teleologically suggest a pedagogy for peace studies with an analogous trajectory towards a holistic inclusivity, an understanding of complexity, and an epistemological understanding that the rational limits of knowledge acquired through western intellectual discourse and deductive reasoning, or positivism,1 are not the actual limits of knowledge; rather, they can be considered as the boundaries for the nascent spaces and phases of the metaphysical and transcendental. Drawing from the fields of the natural sciences, philosophy, psychology, the internal arts, futures studies and peace studies I elucidate a concurrent trajectory of these respective fields as an argument for incorporating the internal healing arts into the pedagogy of a peace studies discipline.

 

I. Introduction:

This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. – Paulo Freire

In this paper I propose a rationale and justification for a pedagogy for peace workers to incorporate practices and principles from the internal healing arts. Drawing from many diverse fields of the natural sciences, transitional justice, philosophy, psychology and future’s studies I will elucidate the analogous trajectories of these fields converging on a holist dialogical2 conscientization3, or re-
indigenization (Nelson, 2006), towards empathy and the ‘self-actualization’4 of the peace worker which is very closely related to the goal and role of the Shaman – or internal healing artist. This lends to the notion that we should potentiate any and all possibilities for expanding the knowledge, skills and personal qualities of peace workers.

 

Two working assumptions for the following discourse are: 1. The broader and deeper a peace worker’s knowledge and skill set are, the greater will be their effectiveness in helping others transform from a state of internal and external conflict to a state of internal and external peace, and 2. the effectiveness in a peace workers ability to transform others from a state of internal and external conflict to a state of internal and external peace is greater when that peace worker has undergone an internal transformation towards self-actualization.
As I shall argue in this paper, there is not one working definition of such terms as peace, peaceworker, transitional justice, shamanism, or intervention. However, for the sake of establishing some of the positivist limits imposed upon such terms I shall introduce some working definitions for this paper. Later I will introduce the idea of ‘spectral composition’, providing several examples, to indicate that we need not limit ourselves to rigid ideas but, rather, we can incorporate a more inclusive, albeit more loosely defined, set of definitions expanding both the meaning of the language used to describe such peace praxes and, therefore, the praxes themselves.

 

Read the entire article  (PDF) >>

comments: 0 » tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
« Previous