China – Engaging Peace

NUCLEAR WAR AND ME: Annihilation Inscribed Across Time and Place, Part 2

Posted on January 2, 2019January 1, 2019 by kathiemm

by Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.

Crouching Under School Desks as Warning Sirens Blared

By the latter days of the WWII, fear of nuclear bomb attacks gripped our nation. For children in elementary school, the shrill blaring sound of a siren meant you were immediately to stop what you were doing and crouch beneath your heavy wooden desk.

As l learned more of the atomic bomb’s total destruction in Japan, I wondered how a desk would protect us? There was barely enough desk-top for coverage.

Was this the best our school, our city, our nation could offer for protection? Did they care? I believed neither I, nor any of my school mates, would survive. I was bewildered! Should we stand bravely and sing God Bless America? Was this assertion of courage better than hiding beneath a desk, cowering, awaiting death? Should I assume leadership for the class: “Get up from your knees, if we are to die, then let it be as brave children, not hunkered victims? We don’t kneel to foes! John Wayne never did!”

I awaited death for reasons I could not understand. We were told there was the possibility of another war. War! What do I have to do with war? I am just a kid living in a basement, trying to survive, caring for family and friends, hurting no one! I was confused, torn between passively awaiting death, and struggling for survival. Movies were socializing my mind! War movies, cowboy and Indian movies, cartoons imitating good and bad in life.

I reflectively complied with the teacher’s orders: “Get under your desk! Stay there until I tell you to leave.” Where did the teacher go? Did she hide under her big desk? That was protection!” Her desk was an old-fashioned wooden four pedestal teacher desk. I remember she turned it away from the windows. Did she take off her high heel shoes? No email or tweets at the time.

Was this a drill or the real thing? In the moment, we never knew. We relied on the teacher to tell us! What would she say? Some kids were frightened, I could see it on their faces.

I tried not to show any fear. My uncles, veterans of WWII, told me always be brave! Do not cry! That’s what a soldier would do. This was my foxhole. We stared at each other, smiles, fear, resignation on faces. Some classmates whispered: “Are we going to die?”

So be it! I would die with my buddies, and with some pretty girls dressed with ribbons and bows in their hair, crouching modestly protecting any stares at their panties from peaking boys who took advantage of the situation. “Hey, Patti has pink panties! I saw them when she crossed her legs.” Patti stuck her tongue out at Howard; Howard laughed!

The all-clear siren blared. We had survived the unimaginable. At least for the time. No annihilation!

1950s – 1960s New Wars, Threats, Villains, Words:

Childhood fears of war and nuclear annihilation were compounded when the end of WWII did not bring an end to war. Within years, the Korean War furthered my fears of injury and death.

“Where the hell is Korea?” New battle fields! New terms and villains: Communism, China, Russia, Stalin, North and South Korea. Does it ever end? These guys have atom bombs too; some American citizens gave them the plans. Who did that? The bastards!”

Mid 1940s’ war movies added to my fears. For ten cents, I could sit in the Union Square Theater all day: Back to Bataan, Wake Island, Guadalcanal Diary, Sands of Iwo Jima. John Wayne could not protect us! Neither could William Bendix, Lloyd Nolan, Richard Jaeckle, Henry Fonda, Errol Flynn, Randolf Scott, Anthony Quinn.

Screen images were burned in my mind. I watched bayoneting, shooting, flame throwers, bombs, machine guns, and dead bodies. “Jesus, a soldier shoved flame throwers into a cave and pill box filled with people!”

I recall a dream! A nightmare, returning today, usually prompted by some words or events I see on TV. My recurring dream:

The Chinese Communist soldiers are running down a hill toward our position, screaming, firing guns. There are endless numbers. We wait for commands to fire. We are afraid, and know we cannot win! I accept my fate! I look at my rifle. It’s my toy rifle, bought for me by my uncle in the 1940s. I have no weapon! I need a real rifle! How can I protect myself or others? I am going to die. I wake up sweating, breathless, afraid.

Does nonviolent resistance work? Part 2c

Posted on May 8, 2014May 24, 2014 by kathiemm

March of Peace, Ukraine mothers for peace.
Photo by Bogomolov.PL, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This is the third of three posts comprising Part II of a series of posts in which Dr. Ian Hansen shares his thoughts on nonviolence.

See also Part 1a, Part 1b, Part 1c, Part 2a and Part 2b.

Nonviolent movements are less likely to catch oppressors by surprise than they once were. As machine gun-firing, molotov cocktail-throwing, bomb-detonating revolutionary violence goes increasingly out of style in our post-Cold War age, nonviolence becomes a more common strategy. And governments have increasingly devised a large array of strategies to infiltrate, corrupt, disrupt, distract, and—if necessary—crush these movements with an efficient minimum of brutality. The U.S. government did a particularly elegant job of effectively erasing the beautiful and exclusively nonviolent Occupy movement, for instance, and without killing a single person (though apparently they had plans to launch sniper attacks against some movement leaders). Another example is China. Since the public relations disaster of the Beijing Massacre in 1989, China and the U.S. have developed very similar means of crushing internal dissent—maximal repression with minimal murderousness.

And, as the popularly-supported coup in Ukraine makes clear, governments also appear to have figured out how to create economic conditions for, and then mobilize, nonviolent revolutions in other countries in a way that suits their strategic interests. When a nonviolent movement is “successful,” there is reason to suspect that its success was not entirely a matter of “people power” but also of other regional or global power plays behind the scenes.

Take home message: big powers can turn even a disciplined (mostly) nonviolent mass movement to their advantage, and against the interests of those who struggled in that movement. Originally nonviolent mass movements (like the massive street protests against Morsi in Egypt and against Yanukovych in Ukraine) can even be manipulated to enable the violent coup-like overthrow of unpopular but democratically-elected governments. As bad as these unpopular governments sometimes are, overthrowing them with popularly-supported coups may be inferior to impeachment proceedings or voting the offending party or person out in the next election. Nonviolence wears a halo compared to violence, but not every mostly nonviolent movement deserves our moral adulation.

Ian Hansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. His research focuses in part on how witness for human rights and peace can transcend explicit political ideology. He is also on the Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

Death to the death penalty

Posted on October 10, 2013October 12, 2013 by kathiemm

October 10 is World Day Against the Death Penalty, launched by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty in 2003.

Every year since 1997, first through an initiative from Italy and then from efforts of the European Union, the United Nations Commission of Human Rights (UNCHR) has approved a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions. The ultimate goal is an international ban on capital punishment.

In its 2007 resolution (62/149), the United Nations General Assembly, appealing to the General Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, reminded the world of the following points:

the death penalty undermines human dignity
a moratorium on use of the death penalty contributes to the development of Human Rights
there is no conclusive evidence that the death penalty has any deterrent value
any miscarriage or failure of justice in use of the death penalty is irreversible and irreparable.

Amnesty International also takes on the death penalty, calling it “the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state.”

As indicated in the Amnesty International 2012 video at the beginning of this post, support for a moratorium has increased, but the United States joined such countries as China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Zimbabwe in opposing the non-binding moratorium resolution in the General Assembly’s rights committee.

This year, Maryland became the 18^th U.S. state to abolish the death penalty.

Time for more states to join the odyssey.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Military sexual assault, redux

Posted on May 23, 2013May 29, 2013 by kathiemm

Preventing sexual assault Navy poster — Image in public domain.

The Japanese government has formally apologized for forcing women seized from China, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan to act as “comfort women” (sex slaves) for the military during World War II.

Recently, Toru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka, Japan, sparked considerable rage by saying that wartime brothels “were necessary…to maintain discipline in the army,” and suggesting that the former comfort women were part of “the tragedy of war.”

Similar views, although somewhat less explicit, can be found in the American military establishment.

In response to a Pentagon report indicating that military sexual crimes against women in uniform are increasing and that only a small percentage of the cases are being prosecuted, U.S. General Martin Dempsey suggested that the problem may be linked to the strains of war.

His remarks also provide evidence of a readiness to excuse sexual assaults committed by members of the military: “If a perpetrator shows up in a court martial with a rack of ribbons and has four deployments and a Purple Heart [Medal], there is certainly the risk that we might be a little too forgiving of that particular crime.”

The good news is that the problem of sexual assaults on American women (and men) in uniform is once again getting some attention in the mainstream corporate media and that several women Senators are pursuing the issue.

The absolute failure of the military to solve the problem with educational programs and trained personnel is all too obvious when officers conducting the training perpetrate sexual violence themselves.

Sexual assaults are one more example of the kinds of aggression tolerated in a culture of violence. Apologies are not enough. Justifications are abominable. Abstract educational programs are useless. Time for a Zero Tolerance program for all kinds of violence.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology