Thinking Globally

By Michael N. Nagler

(800 words)

This Commentary is Unpublished.

I often think back to Neil Postman's 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death when I watch the mainstream media spin their stories on critical events like the recent assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. In that book, subtitled Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Postman describes how technologies of communication, beginning with the telegraph in the 1840's, brought about the end of serious journalism because now people out on the Nebraska prairie, for example, were suddenly reading about faraway issues that did not concern them. That began a steady shift from news and democratic participation to 'entertainment' — and political manipulation — as the function of mainstream journalism.

We now live in the world of instant messaging and the internet, when distant events that do vitally concern us, like the death of Prime Minister Bhutto, are presented to us in a cloud of trivialization that the real nature of our connection to them ....

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Michael Nagler is the author of The Search for a Nonviolent Future. His UC, Berkeley course on nonviolence can be reached through www.mettacenter.org. He recently received the Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for Promoting Gandhian Values Outside India.

Burma and the Press

(681 words)

As of this writing (Thursday, September 27) a nonviolent movement is reaching its crisis in Burma. In 1988 over 3,000 students were killed — massacred would not be too strong a word — when they protested the military takeover of their country. Their courageous, charismatic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, though she had faced down rifle squads in at least one critical confrontation (superbly dramatized in Beyond Rangoon, with Patricia Arquette), and won an overwhelming electoral victory to boot, was not able to prevail over the regime, which has kept her under house arrest and basically pillaged the country for these nineteen years.

Commentators are noting, correctly, several features of the uprising today: it is a massive, disciplined outpouring — the photographs of tens of thousands of red-robed monks and nuns filling avenues for as far as the eye can see are nothing short of inspiring. It relies on the immense prestige of religious orders in that predominantly Buddhist country. And — among other differences between now and 1988 — the world is watching.

But how closely? We who follow nonviolence have to point out what the mainstream media are missing in this “saffron revolution,” as they have missed in most episodes of nonviolence that have been accumulating with increasing frequency in this post-Gandhian world. 1) They mis-characterize this movement as ‘spontaneous,’ while in reality it has been well-planned for months. More to the point, it has not, like Athena, ‘sprung from the head of Zeus’. ...

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Michael N. Nagler is Emeritus, English, UC-Berkeley. He has written several books on nonviolence and taught Gandhian nonviolence for many years.

Nonviolent Action -- A More Ethical and Effective Alternative to War

(593 words)
by Randy Schutt

War is hell -- both for the soldiers who fight it and the civilians who live where it is fought. The Iraq war is a perfect example of the mess that military force can make of a country: directly killing thousands of innocent civilians, injuring tens of thousands more, and displacing and traumatizing millions, while destroying critical infrastructure -- such as roads, bridges, and electricity generation, water purification, and sewage treatment plants -- that makes a civilized life possible. Creating a civilized, democratic society out of the chaotic disaster that Iraq has become will be extremely difficult and take a very long time, even under the best circumstances.

But what is the alternative? In the last three decades, nonviolent action has demonstrated that it is very effective in overthrowing horribly repressive regimes. For example, nonviolent action toppled the apartheid regime in South Africa, deposed the dictatorships of Slobodan Milosevich in Yugoslavia, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and brought down the former Soviet Union and its communist satellite states (including Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania). Overthrowing those regimes incurred relatively few casualties and wrought relatively little destruction. The nonviolent overthrow of these vicious regimes has mostly left these countries stronger, more civilized, and much more free and democratic.
...

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Randy Schutt is Vice-President of Cleveland Peace Action, a member
of the Cleveland Nonviolence Network, and the author of Inciting
Democracy: A Practical Proposal for Creating a Good Society.
http://www.vernalproject.org

GET TO WORK!

(1,350 words)
By Kathy Kelly

Amman, Jordan

“GET A JOB!” These three words are very familiar to activists bearing signs calling for an end to war, whether standing on street corners, walking along highways, holding vigils, or nonviolently occupying the offices of elected representatives. Listen to the activists, and you’ll often hear, “We’re doing our job. We’re trying.”

I’m convinced that our work must always have one foot placed in nonviolent resistance to the forces that design and wage wars, with the other foot standing among people who bear the physical and mental affliction caused by these forces. Today, I’m thinking especially about two young women who found themselves in nightmare circumstances because, in their view, they simply wanted to have a job.

When American troops invaded Iraq in 2003, Noor (not her name), was living with her aunt in a small town near Baghdad. The aunt received a minimal “retirement” salary from the former Iraqi government. As a young teenager, Noor had left her family to assist the aunt and to enter college there. She felt deep and strong attachments to people in her town, and she loved her aunt intensely. After graduating, still living with her aunt, Noor didn’t want to become a burden to her parents who were already being supported by her brothers. She wanted to earn money and a measure of independence. When a neighbor suggested she come with him to the place where he worked, she was surprised by how easily she had become employed, working to inspect the handbags and purses of people entering the workplace of a large American contractor. Initially, when troops began occupying her town, residents could walk the streets without much anxiety. Working for an American company didn’t seem to carry grave danger. ...

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Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) which is organizing “The Occupation Project.” a campaign of nonviolent resistance to U.S. funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For more information about support for Iraqis who have fled to Jordan, see http://www.electroniciraq.net/news/abouttheproject/Direct_Aid_Initiative.shtml

She Stands At Every Door

(910 words)

By Kathy Kelly
Amman, Jordan
At a small, informal school in the basement of a church in Amman, many strings of colorful paper cranes bedeck walls and windows. The school serves children whose families have fled Iraq. Older children who come to the school understand the significance of the crane birds. Claudia Lefko, of Northampton, MA, who helped initiate the school, told them Sadako’s story.

The Japanese child survived the bombing of Hiroshima, but suffered from radiation sickness. In a Japanese hospital, she wanted to fold 1,000 origami crane birds, believing that by doing so she could be granted a special wish: hers was that no other child would ever suffer as she did. Sadako died before completing the task she’d set for herself, but Japanese children then folded many thousands more cranes, and the story has been told for decades in innumerable places, making the delicate paper cranes a symbol for peace throughout the world. Today, August 6, children who’ve recently joined the informal school in Ammam will learn Sadako’s story.
Having survived war, death threats, and displacement, they may be particularly aware of the enormous challenge represented by Sadako’s wish. ###
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Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence www.vcnv.org