Keeping a Cool Head as a Worker for Peace, Justice and Equality While Navigating the Complexities of International Law

Posted on 30th June 2012 in Notes, Reflections

“International law and the international legal system are not static and have changed over time.”
- Joseph Weiler

The principles of International Law (IL)¹ are devised to establish a foundation for international relations and to protect, essentially, the self-determination of states and individuals.²  This is a very idealistic and broad statement covering a lot of ground. The principles and practices of international law and their effectiveness are questionable and often garner a great deal of criticism. The question of the effectiveness of IL is paramount in understanding its evolution, its application, and whether it is just. This brief survey discusses what I consider to be critical for peace workers who will engaged directly, or by proxy, in IL’s application – subject to its stipulations and boundary conditions, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad (the determination of which is highly subjective). The basic principle I am interested in is the dynamics of international law; analogous, in this sense, to IL would be the theoretical principles of fluid dynamics which, by its language, implies the fluidity of IL. 3

The notion of peace as an absence of violence4 and the intentions of peace workers to establish such conditions, subject to the boundary conditions established in IL often cause internal conflict in the attitudes of Peace workers.5 Rightfully, it is frustrating to observe the unequal distribution of justice – especially if you’re in the midst of a crisis situation and in dire need of assistance to protect people and save lives, or if you’re in an academic environment arguing for/against the validity of the UN, the ICC, and other international bodies – who enact and enforce IL – based on a limited number of historical applications to conflict and crisis situations.

Looking at the latter case, that limited view tends to skew ones’ understanding of the intentions of IL and the fact that, from an historical perspective, the battery of IL is still relatively new. This argument does not promote or negate the validity of IL and the bodies that enact and enforce it, it rather asks that a peace worker develop an understanding that international law is a young and dynamic process that requires great intentions, great minds, great hearts and great souls to engage in its processes, further the field, establish accountability, work with great intentions, and not develop an attitude of anger, fear, and hatred towards the structural and procedural integrity void of the remarkable intentions of human beings trying to become, essentially, decent people and overcome, universally, the struggle for identity and legitimacy.

There is a substantial body of IL that establishes a base set of principles which seem to be accepted by most states – though, there is still a degree of fluidity with respect to the firmament of international law, which, arguably could be considered the: UN charter, Rome Statute, Nuremberg Principles, Hague Conventions, and Geneva Conventions. There is, still, a very young branch of IL which regards and responds to more recent developments in both international relations and new technologies of violence and war.

Regarding international relations we can consider the more social aspects of attitudes and opinions towards race, gender, social class, religion and other aspects of a persons individual and groups. The attitudes engendered regarding existing statues – old and new – and their employment are sometimes dubious in nature – typically being generated for the purposes of resource exploitation and territorial domination for strategic purposes. For example, we have seen in the last two or so decades a rise in non state actors engaging in what is defined as terrorist activities. Such activities called for new interpretations of existing statutes, development of new statutes for very specific situations for which there was no precedent in international law, and shifts in support for existing statutes.6 For example, the US withdrew in intent to support the ICC, has violated the right of non-intervention and has engaged in unilateral military operations in Iraq and Pakistan (which, by omission, does not suggest the US”s military action in Afghanistan were legally or morally justified).

With particular attention to the US, in this case, my observations of the anger and hatred it engenders among some of the students of Peace and Conflict Resolution at the World Peace Academy, I believe it is critical to acknowledge the difference between the intentions of IL and the equity and justice of their application. Again, the peace worker has a responsibility to understand the inherent difficulties of administering a highly complex system when the intentions of the state (or non-state) actors are not always clear or honest and it is precisely this reactivity engendered by the system that limits a peace workers ability to function effectively

Further, as implied in this reflection paper, the notion that law is a fluid process suggests that the statutes of law, as they exist now, and as new statutes are created as a result of new situations, should be challenged rhetorically and in practice and that new approaches and new systems should always be explored to evaluate whether there is, in fact, another process or processes available to accomplish the task of what the current infrastructure intends to do – enforce the provision for basic human rights (somewhat arbitrarily defined) and human needs (defined by the needs of basic physiological function). Thus, one should remain critical of such institutions and, as peace workers, should find creative and constructive approaches to furthering the discipline, and/or suggesting other means to ensure the basic principles of IL are upheld or transformed to accomplish their fundamental goals.

 

Footnotes:
1. International Law being defined as the statutes of International Human Rights Law (IHRL), International Humanitarian Law (IHL), and International Criminal Law (ICL)

2. Antonio Cassese, International Law Second Edition (2005), Oxford University Press. Caseese outlines the basic principles of IL: the sovereign equality of states, non-intervention in the internal or external affairs of other states, prohibition of the threat or use of force, peaceful settlement of disputes, respect for human rights, self determination of people.

3. Joseph Weiler, The Geology of International Law, Heidelberg Journal of International Law, 64 (2004): 547 – 562

4. Baljit Singh Grewal, Johan Galtung: Positive and Negative Peace, School of Science Aukland University Of Technology, 2003

5. personal observations of the author during seminars at the World Peace Academy in Basel, Switzerland

6. Marc Weller, Settling Self-Determination Conflicts: Recent Developments, The Europeran Journal of International Law Vol. 20 No. 1, 2009

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Lunchtime on the Playground of Our Commonalities

Posted on 19th May 2012 in Peace, Poetry, Self Determination
 
 
“Don’t take my love for you personally” — Polish Proverb
 

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

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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.

 

 

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Sex, Lunch, and Rock and Roll [or Mad Dog 2012]

Posted on 3rd May 2012 in Self Determination

‎

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.

 

 

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Occupy Identity

Posted on 13th April 2012 in Notes, Self Determination

One of the most profound principles and practices I have recently been exposed to deals with the occupation of one’s identity. This came at a time when I was investigating the nature of occupation vs inhabitation – a concept introduced to me by a friend, poet/publisher Michael Annis, who was talking about Derrick Jensen and his discussion of that issue. Basically, occupiers are selfishly motivated and the result of their actions are exploitation of living beings and the land base which sustains them whereas inhabitors enter into mutually beneficial relationships with all of their surroundings – Mitakaye Oyasin (“All of my Relations” – for seven generations, baby!).

 

I was discussing this idea with my Michael –  before the Occupy movement started – as I was experiencing an internal conflict over my external environment. The reasons for this are many and I may or may  not get into them later. Certainly, they would be instructive but perhaps too revealing about my personal life which is unnecessary for my ends – as far as I can tell now. In any case, if there is some insight to be gained from my personal life I shall divulge what is necessary.

 

Essentially, what I was experiencing was a loss of identity based in trauma. In my case the trauma was from a death in the family – a normal course of life. What it bred, internally, was a conflict between the principles I believe and espouse vs my conditioned behavior – reactions and responses to external stimuli. That is to say, my practices and principles were not in resonance with one another and, in this state of dissonance, I experienced what can be considered [albeit, on a small scale] an attrocity producing circumstance. As one friend put it, “You got sick on your own medicine.”

 

In any case, I do believe that the conditions that led to my experience are similar to circumstances leading to atrocity producing conditions  on a larger scale. That is, the trauma is not inflicted as a perpetuation of one’s own choices due to an irreconcilable situation that is part of the normal course of life. Specifically, discussing the plight of the Palestinians under military occupation and decades of violence, the trauma inflicted is carefully calculated as a means by which to occupy one’s identity  as Jonatan Stanzcak, one of the co founders of the Freedom Theatre of Palestine said during an interview for a benefit concert I promoted:

“… the occupation is not only a physical phenomena, it is not only the checkpoints and the wall and the settlements and the military invasion, it is much deeper than that. It is a fear, it’s a sense of suspicion that is everywhere. It’s the occupations ultimate aim, the occupiers ultimate aim is to occupy the identity of the people. It’s to manage to inject fear into the core of society and to make people suspicious between themselves. In that kind of situation all kinds of coming together and challenging that fear is a form of resistance…”

 

Of course, the contrast between a calculated occupation of one’s mind in the case of the Palestinian peoples – as pointed out by Stanczak – vs. my personal experiences are quite different in the sense of the origin of the trauma and the magnitude yet, at the same time there is an important similarity between the two circumstances – namely, the occupation of identity can be a continuous presence as in the case of the Palestinian people and it can also be a cultural indoctrination that is invisible and works its way – like a disease – through the core of one’s being. Elucidating this inculcation – that is, psychically unravelling to understand how this indoctrination into a culture of denial and disconnect functions, one realizes that the goal of the occupier of one’s identity is the same as the goal of military occupation.

 

The fact is that we are not educated to understand who we are as free willed individuals. Rather, we are bred in ignorance and fear to serve something other than ourselves most often without any personal gain. In my case, which really serves as an example of a human living in a ‘free’ society, my servitude in the enchanted prison was less obvious – certainly to myself at the time. In the case of the Palestinian people, their enslavement is completely obvious to most of the so called free-willed of the world.

 

Some of the basic principles of conflict deal with will, desire and expection. I would add “need” to this this list as well. A first round of things to cosider is where do our will, desire and expectations come from. Are they driven from our core temperament or are they derived by messages from an external force who is out for personal gain (i.e. God and the State) by controlling our thoughts and actions. Cast these principles into the realm of reality (what is happening), possible realities (what could be), and irrealities (what can’t be, though we may have the will, desire and expectation to create such a reality depending on our level of delusion) and add to that the internal and external forces influencing will, desire, and expectation and you’ve got a very complex situation at hand.

 

Those of us who have experienced personal trauma and have worked our way through it understand the difficulties of drawing resonance amidst all of the competing principles, forces and messages we receive. Those stuck in an environment where the external forces are ever present and relentless in their tactics to control are, essentially, in an intractable situtaion.

 

Understanding the nature of the forces, principles and messages and how to manage them to transform and transcend this occupation of identity is to be a focus of this blog and, so, I will continue to elaborate on these ideas as I learn more and gain more insight into the nature of occupation carried out by a power structure that wants nothing more than to keep us in mental slavery locked up in the enchanted prison.

 

Listen to the interview with Jonatan Stanczak

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