1. Like so many in Congress we can ignore nuclear weapons and hope they go away—some in the new administration want to restart talks—that’s progress
2. The pope condemns war and nuclear weapons every so often but diplomatically hasn’t mentioned anyone by name
3. Political oppositions must rise up in all nuclear nations and press
governments to reduce their numbers—zero’s a nice number.
4. Convince the military to dismantle them—gotta include that one
5. Wave a magic wand
No one knows how effective the new government will be. Obama promised to rid us of nukes and to close Guantanamo—still waiting. The pope has spoken for himself but most bishops are hardliners. Activist efforts continue despite setbacks. The fourth method is an outlier, but it has been tried. Ground Zero’s attempt last year to urge submariners to disobey unlawful orders (viz.,“Fire the missiles”) didn’t dent Trident. So keep waving that wand, Bubba. What do you do if writing your congress-person or upholding honkable banners is not yielding the desired results?
One method I didn’t mention is direct action (civil disobedience/ nonviolent resistance) which was first advocated by Henry David Thoreau against slavery and the war with Mexico. Ghandi employed it for civil rights in South Africa and against colonial rule in India. More recently Martin Luther King, Jr., and others used the same principles effectively in the struggles of the ‘sixties. However, the tactic has a risk not characteristic of the others of financial loss and/or incarceration.
It’s one thing to claim imprisoned heroes like Plowshares7 Jesuit priest Steven Kelly or Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange or soldier and intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, leaker of National Security Administration surveillance methods; it’s quite another to follow in their footsteps.
In May of 2019, the Ground Zero Center for Non-Violent Action (GZ) emailed me about their proposal to protest at the Bangor-Kitsap Trident Base the weekend of May 11. Activists were invited to perform brief gestures of non-violent civil disobedience. They scheduled a morning of inspirational talks by GZ leaders and a keynote by Kathy Kelly, a well-known war-crime protestor and Afghanistan activist. In the afternoon a lawyer sympathetic to the cause would present legal information and instruction. Replying I’d attend, I ordered an 8’ x 3’ vinyl banner and contacted other Olympians to rideshare that day.
By scheduling the event the day before Mothers’s Day they wished to remind people that holiday had close connections to peace advocacy. Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia used her Mothers Friendship Day in 1868 to reconcile former Union and Confederate soldiers. Two years later the suffragette and abolitionist Julia Ward Howe authored her Mother’s Day Proclamation urging mothers to unite in promoting world peace.
At the entrance of the Trident Base a one-foot-wide blue line, labeled US Government brightly in white, has been painted on each lane of the highway at Trident Boulevard, the Navy property. Knowledge of this line is critical to the nature of the GZ protests.
After lunch GZ’s legal advisor clarified for us that protestors who stand (dance, read poetry, sing peace songs, etc.) blocking highway traffic on the state side of the blue marker who also refuse to disperse when ordered to do so by the highway police will be cited for blocking access on a state highway and must report to a state court as notified to answer the charges. Those protestors who cross the blue line onto the base and stand (dance, read poetry, sing peace songs, etc.), who refuse to return to the state property when ordered by base security (the Marines) will be cited for federal trespass and informed they must report to a federal court. He could not make it plainer the federal violation is regarded as more serious—occasionally much more serious—than the state offense.
We were then asked as to what course we’d choose without judgment as to our sincerity or dedication to the cause: 1. to stand alongside the highway; 2. to violate the state law; or 3. to violate the federal law. Eight stalwarts opted for the state side; I chose the federal side: the rest, about fifty in number (and average age), chose to march, sing, witness, and cheer.
GZ and Navy base security had earlier agreed on the site and timing to avoid dangerous surprises. Banners and signs in hand we proceeded to the base as state police cars gathered on an overpass, and Marines with protective vests and weapons, parked their van near the blue line.
First the eight formed a line in front of the blue demarcator and began with a song, followed by each demonstrator via bullhorn presenting his or her rationale for blocking the road: citing international law, recounting other heroic stands, praying and announcing recent comments of the pope. Finished, they stood in place, and as each was approached by the highway police to move off the road, they refused, and were in turn politely taken by an arm and led off to the berm where individual citations were drafted and delivered.
As the last was led away I stepped forward with my banner held chest high, got to the center of the road, and took two steps behind the blue line. A Navy security officer told me to step back to the state side. I stood still and did not answer. Then he asked if I knew the meaning of the word trespass. I acknowledged I did and was approached by two guards, one who took the banner out of my hands while the other led me behind the van out of sight of the crowd.
They took several photographs (presumably for Navy and NSA records) while a guard asked for my ID and address.
One guard, fearful I might faint, inquired if I preferred to sit on the van floor where the side was open. I did and gladly accepted a paper cup of water besides. Despite our training to remember carefully everything we were asked and said, there was some casual conversation before they returned my banner and took me back across the blue line. My allies cheered my return. The citation told me I would be advised within ninety days of my court date.
You Call It Torture; We Call It Upholding the US Constitution
[continued from 9-16-19] So how did the four states [the US, the UK, Sweden and Ecuador ] respond to this historic test [i.e., to step forward and protect Julian Asssange from further persecution or hold back and allow the attacks against him to continue]? How did they answer the charges that their governments, judiciaries and media have joined forces to psychologically torture a publisher for journalism? How did they square this with their stated commitment to human rights? What about democracy and rule of law?
They thumbed their noses.
Ecuador and the UK didn’t even bother to reply to the UN Rapporteur.
Human rights? What human rights?Talk to the hand.
The US and Sweden issued what appeared to be stock-standard perception-management sound-bytes, cut-and-pasted into document form.
As refutation to Nils Melzer’s concerns, both Sweden and the US opted to simply prime and exploit the same psychological vulnerabilities that have been primed and exploited throughout the long smear campaign against Julian Assange, and against victims of war crimes such as Namir and Saeed. Ultimately, their responses sought to turn reality on its head such that war crimes are virtuous, reporting war crimes is reprobate, truth is dangerous, censorship will set you free, and persecuting a publisher for journalism is “free speech”.
But what perception-management sound-bytes? What psychological vulnerabilities? Exploited how?
Paradoxically, when populations are confronted with ugly realities about their social and political worlds, such as corrupt elites rigging primaries, vainglorious celebrities who threaten and vilify minorities becoming president of the United States, civilian slaughter in illegal wars, and so-called democratic states torturing a publisher for journalism, it is the perfect time, psychologically, to glorify the status quo.
A robust program of psychological research indicates that many people are motivated to perceive the systems on which they depend as being right, good, fair and just, even in the face of powerful reasons not to, and even when suffering at the system’s hands. Psychologists call this tendency system justification.
A counterintuitive finding of system justification research is that flaws in a person’s social and political worlds typically exacerbate rather than quell system-justifying reactions. When presented with systemic failures such as corruption, injustice or abuse, many people are inclined to double down on the status quo and defend the system’s legitimacy, so as restore their sense of stability, security and wellbeing.
System-justifying reactions can include just-world beliefs, which entail victim-blaming and otherwise subconsciously distorting reality-perception to preserve the illusion that life is fair, along with all manner of other self-deceptive biases and blind spots that serve to rationalise the status quo.
Examples are double standards, moral justification, dogged patriotism and exceptionalism, or just plain mouthing empty, self-aggrandising platitudes.
All of which pervaded the replies to Professor Melzer from Sweden and the United States.
“firm commitment to freedom of expression, including for members of the media, consistent with the U.S. Constitution and the United States’ obligations under international human rights law”.
Without irony, this statement was issued in the same breath as defending the arbitrary detention and Espionage Act charges against Julian Assange for exercising his freedom of speech, in violation of international human rights law, two UN Working Group rulings, and the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The letter continued,
“U.S. law protects individuals in the U.S. justice system from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including through protections under the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”
Tell that to Chelsea Manning and the scores of innocent people detained indefinitely without trial by US authorities, while being tortured, horrifically and mercilessly, as detailed here.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
In short, at this crossroads, our leaders have signalled their intention to ignore the warnings of the world’s designated authority on torture, operating under the mandate of the world’s designated authority on human rights. The states named as persecutors of Julian Assange have similarly made it clear that they intend to continue down the path of censorship-by-torture, with all the anti-democratic tyranny that that entails.
Which is to be expected, given that governments can only be relied upon to uphold human rights when their citizens demand it of them, as Human Rights 101, from the Science of Human Rights Coalition, cautions.
The question going forward from Nils Melzer’s final report, then, is not whether our governments will respond by upholding the principles of democracy, human rights and rule of law. The question is whether we, as citizens, will demand it of them.
Which is why the psychology profession teaches that atrocity and collective violence, like human rights, live and die on bystanders. Just as human rights depend on active citizenship, so collective violence, such as torturing a publisher for journalism, depends on citizens standing quietly and idly by.
Accordingly, it is crucially important for perpetrators of atrocity, such as the UK, the US, Sweden and Ecuador, to ensure that publics are psychologically primed for compliant, passive bystanding to torture of publishers and war crimes.
But how is that achieved? How can populations be subdued?
Bystanding, Moral Disengagement and the Media
When states seek to get away with murder and other forms of state-sanctioned abuse, in addition to issuing empty system-justifying platitudes, perpetrators must incite what psychologists call moral disengagement.
Moral disengagement is a psychological process by which a specific event, such as torturing a publisher for journalism, is placed outside the boundaries of one’s usual morality. Most people, for instance, would find the notion of torturing a publisher for journalism wrong. Yet many are morally unperturbed as that very thing unfolds in real time.
Similarly, most people deem murder to be morally repugnant, yet are capable of placing the murder of a tender-eyed Iraqi photo-journalist outside that moral frame, letting not only the killers off the hook, but letting themselves off the moral hook to care.
But what causes people to morally disengage? How can otherwise good people, and kind people, look away?
Fortunately for state-sanctioned abusers, psychological literatures offer well-researched insights on how to incite people to morally disengage. Those literatures, of course, are intended as preventative offerings, by way of self-awareness and insight. They can, however, equally serve as instruction manuals.
According to psychological research, moral disengagement is stoked by dehumanising and demonising targets among other things. Which is where the establishment media comes in.
Along with perpetrators and bystanders, psychological understandings of atrocity and collective violence point to instigators as playing a critical role. Instigators are those who control the flow of information. In other words, those who control the media.
The ABC’s studios in Southbank, Brisbane. (IMAGE: Ash Kyd, Flickr)
Controlling the flow of information gives instigators the power not only to cover perpetrators’ tracks, but to dehumanise and blame the victims, thereby bringing bystanders passively into line. Controlling the flow of information in corporate-states, moreover, such as the US and the UK, means exerting state-corporate control of media. Which is precisely what has been taking place for decades.
Under the guise of a “free press” throughout the Western world, legacy media is now not only owned by a small handful of corporate interests, it relies on corporate advertising dollars, including from arms manufacturers, along with government money, and a military-intelligence-corporate-PR machine that funnels press releases through just three gatekeepers, to journalists who are too overworked and underpaid to investigate what they are fed.
In other words, a military-industrial-media empire feeds newsrooms their narratives, such that most news is “managed by governments, corporations, and PRP (public relations and propaganda) firms” writes Professor of Sociology and former director of Project Censored, Peter Phillips. Cut and paste-journalism, in which reporters recycle one another’s material, takes care of the rest.
There are, of course, exceptions. However, according to scholarly analyses, upwards of 80 per cent of mainstream news now fits this model.
In such an environment, persecuting states, such as those named by the UN Rapporteur on Torture, are perfectly poised to incite what psychologists call an atrocity generating situation. All that is required is to feed newsrooms narratives that normalise, sanitise, trivialise and rationalise atrocity, while dehumanising victims, thereby inciting publics to morally disengage. In this equation, what is omitted is just as important as what is woven in.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Four Corners program, for instance, recently showcased a range of such tactics in its two-part ‘investigation’ of Julian Assange. From overt and covert dehumanisation and demonising, to narratives woven from omitted facts, along with baseless and discredited claims asserted as gospel, it was a case study in inciting moral disengagement from collective violence. The program deployed all the psychological tricks in the book to recycle the very vilifying, manufactured media narratives that Nils Melzer has denounced as abusive, while posing as a balanced report.
But how did the program reconcile this with Professor Melzer’s damning findings, which had been available in summary form for 60 days at the time of broadcast? How did it fend off the obvious charge that the program embodied the very “fabrication and manipulation” Melzer described, in which “many media outlets and individual journalists have shown a remarkable lack of critical independence and have contributed significantly to spreading abusive and deliberately distorted narratives about Mr Assange”?
Simple. It didn’t. It didn’t even try.
Instead, the Four Corners program buried Nils Melzer’s report. Over an hour and a half of discussion of Julian Assange, not one mention was made of the fact that the world’s designated authority on torture has found the states at the centre of the Four Corners program responsible for mobbing, judicially harassing, defaming and psychologically torturing Julian Assange.
Not only is this complicit in the torture that Nils Melzer describes, both by inciting passive bystanding and perpetrating the psychologically abusive smears, it is complicit in the suppression of dissent, by suppressing the UN Rapporteur’s report. Suppressing dissent and political opposition, moreover, is the whole totalitarian point of persecuting Julian Assange.
If nothing else, the Four Corners program illustrates the establishment media’s contentment to follow their leaders down the anti-democratic path of censorship-by-torture, while taking us all along for the ride.
At this democratic crossroads, although establishment media have signalled their reluctance to support Espionage Act charges, in the knowledge they could be next, many nevertheless appear willing to act as instigators of torture, inciting publics to morally disengage, so that states can continue persecuting Julian Asssange.
Every act of ‘journalism’ that buries crucial information, and every utterance that vilifies or dehumanises Julian Assange, or sanitises his abuse, is complicit.
“As you watch [Julian Assange] pay for the audacity of exposing corruption and crime, please ponder what this means for you, your country, and your family. Ponder deep and ponder hard, and then use your democratic rights to hold your Government to account. For once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, then your own rights may well be next in line.”
Dr Lissa Johnson is a clinical psychologist in private practice. Prior to becoming a psychologist she qualified in Media Studies, with a major in Sociology. She has a longstanding interest in the psychology of social issues and the impact of social issues on psychology, and is a former member of the Australian Psychological Society Public Interest Advisory Group.
Talk to the totalitarian hand:While Julian Assange rots in prison for publishing journalism, clinical psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson explains some of the science behind how we got here, and also how we push back.
(IMAGE: Steve Rhodes, Flickr)
6 Aug 2019 – On Sunday June 28th 2019, Western democracy arrived at an historic crossroads. Moving forward from this day, citizens of Western nations will head down one of two paths.
The first path leads towards genuine democracies, wherein governments are accountable to the publics they govern, and publics have a right to know what leaders do in their name. It is a path along which a free press fosters an informed electorate, capable of making informed decisions at election time. Such principles are not only fundamental prerequisites for democracy, but essential protections against government abuses of all kinds.
The second path heads down totalitarian terrain, currently being blazed by the Trump administration, wherein governments decide who is free to speak and who is not, including who is a ‘journalist’ and who is not, by granting themselves the power to silence those who make them look bad. This pathway not only spells death to democracy and the public’s right to know, it is a recipe for state-sanctioned abuse.
As the Science of Human Rights Coalition warns in a document titled Human Rights 101, “Unless citizens want their governments to support human rights, government leaders rarely will do so… [Human rights principles] carry no weight unless the people know them, unless the people understand them, unless the people demand that they be lived.”
People kept in the dark about their government’s activities, however, are in no position to demand anything of their governments at all, as political philosopher Hannah Arendt reminds us. Down the pathway of governmental secrecy, citizens can kiss goodbye not only to respect for human rights, but to holding their leaders accountable over any issue in which the interests of the elites and the majority clash, whether fossil fuels, climate emergency, racial and economic inequality and injustice, endless wars, mass surveillance or any other public interest matter one might care to name.
Judicial Harassment, Public Mobbing and Holding Governments to Account
But getting back to Sunday, June 28th 2019; what happened that placed Western societies at such a crossroads, faced with a choice between democracy and autocracy, freedom and tyranny, knowing and not knowing, light and dark?
On that day, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, published letters to four ostensibly democratic states, detailing the ways in which those states have joined forces to mob, persecute, silence, harass, defame and psychologically torture a publisher of journalism.
Importantly, the states concerned have targeted the publisher in question not for causing any harm nor publishing misleading content. Quite the reverse. The publisher under attack stands out amongst his peers for his unblemished record of 100 per cent accuracy. Which makes that publisher Julian Assange.
WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange is being mobbed not for perpetrating harm or deception, but for making powerful leaders look bad. By publishing the truth about them.
Professor Nils Melzer, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. (IMAGE: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe)
In democracies founded on informed electorates, such journalistic activity is a welcome development. In totalitarian states, however, where powerbrokers’ interests reign supreme, it is not.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines totalitarianism as “a politicalsystem in which those in power have complete control and do not allow people freedom to oppose them”. A political system in which a publisher languishes in Belmarsh Supermax for journalism would be an example.
In fact, Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges has long argued that Western societies are undergoing a gradual transformation from democracies to corporate totalitarian states, through a slow motion corporate coup d’etat, in which power is seized not by a demagogue but by “the faceless anonymity of the corporate state.” A Princeton study in 2014 lent empirical weight to that view.
The violently oppressive reaction of powerful state-corporate interests to the publishing activities of Julian Assange appears to illustrate Hedges’ point even more powerfully still.
As punishment for keeping the world’s population so accurately informed about the inner workings of power, Nils Melzer reports that Julian Assange is not only incarcerated in Belmarsh prison, but has suffered nearly a decade of “prolonged, involuntary and arbitrary detention… [along with]sustained and unrestrained public mobbing, intimidation and defamation… [ranging from]judicial harassment… [to]open threats and instigation of violence, [including]repeated calls for his assassination or murder.”
Professor of international law Nils Melzer has succinctly pointed out that none of this has anything to do with facing ‘Swedish Justice’. Melzer explains that the Swedish investigation surrounding Julian Assange has been, from the start, “a relentless campaign of judicial persecution… [involving]abuse of the judicial system in order to try to extradite [Julian Assange] to the US”.
Most recently, that judicial persecution has entailed locking Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison for 50 weeks over the pseudo-legal concoction of defunct bail infringement. Even the Secretary General of the Swedish Bar Association has called the Swedish investigation “deplorable”, fearing that it has “damaged the reputation of the Swedish judicial system”.
Altogether, Professor Melzer’s letters, which constitute his final report, lay the responsibility for the near decade-long campaign of persecution and psychological torture of Julian Assange squarely at the feet of the UK, the US, Sweden and Ecuador. In his letters to those four states, Melzer notified each government of their culpability via “direct perpetration or, as the case may be, through instigation, consent, or acquiescence, as well as through failure to prevent” the various forms of persecution described.
In addition to detailing the states’ culpability, Professor Melzer requested a response from each state outlining their plans to investigate the allegations in his final report, and to protect Julian Assange from further harm, as well as ensuring redress for harms caused to date. In the event that no such measures were forthcoming, Professor Melzer asked the states to “explain how this is compatible with [their]human rights obligations”.
Posted on the website of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, alongside Nils Melzer’s letters, are the states’ replies. Before examining those replies and their implications for Western democracies, it is worth briefly revisiting how and why the persecution of Julian Assange began.
A Tender Eye That Brought Humanity to a Vicious War
In 2007, two Reuters employees set out on assignment in Baghdad. They were Namir Noor-Eldeen, a 22-year-old photo-journalist and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40, a father of four.
He was “one of the most beloved members of the Reuters staff, a cheerful, funny, smart young man who loved motorcycles” a colleague recalled. A former Reuters Chief Photographer in Iraq described Namir as an “editor’s dream… [whose]quick smile and energy never faded…it’s very, very sad to know I’ll never get one of his bear-hug greetings again.”
A screencap from the infamous ‘Collateral Murder’ video, which sparked the global hunt for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
While on assignment in Baghdad, after walking calmly across an open square, the two unarmed men found themselves showered with gunfire, raining down from a US Apache helicopter above. Namir’s body was “riddled with bullet holes”, killing him instantly. His wounded colleague, Saeed, attempted to drag himself on his stomach to safety, out of the helicopter’s sights.
As Saeed crawled away, two young children, aged five and ten, arrived on the scene in a van. Their father and his friends, all unarmed, stopped to rescue Saeed from the carnage, dragging him into their vehicle. The man’s children sat and watched as their father was ripped apart by gunfire, unleashed from the helicopter above, while being strafed by bullets themselves. As they cried and bled, surrounded by death, the children had no-one to cradle them through their pain, their father lying lifeless on the ground.
“Look at those dead bastards,” one of the soldiers gloated. “Nice.”
Three years later, in 2010, for posting a leaked video of the massacre, offering the world a human glimpse of the war on Iraq, as well as exposing tens of thousands of other civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan, Julian Assange was placed on an FBI manhunting target list.
A whole-of-government operation was launched against him, replete with a ‘war room’ under the direction of a Brigadier General, involving a “suite of government offices not far from the Pentagon”, where “120 intelligence analysts, FBI agents, and others” worked “24 hours a day, seven days a week”, targeting WikiLeaks.
In 2010 Barack Obama even urged foreign allies to file criminal charges against Julian Assange, just weeks before the legally “deplorable” Swedish investigation was instigated. As if that weren’t enough effort to silence a journalist, a grand jury was also convened, where Julian Assange now faces 17 counts under the Espionage Act and 175 years in US prison, for reporting on Namir and Saeed’s deaths, the deaths of their rescuers, and the trauma of the children who watched from a van.
For turning these carefully dehumanised foreigners into living breathing human beings, bringing humanity to a vicious war just as Namir had done, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning have been made to pay. As punishment, both have suffered years of detention and both have suffered torture, while those responsible for the killings have walked free.
Nils Melzer warns, “When you prosecute a whistleblower and a journalist for exposing war crimes and corruption, you have to be very careful, because if you don’t prosecute the war crimes, then clearly you don’t have equality before the law… then prosecution becomes persecution.”
A Line in the Sand
The murderous acts that WikiLeaks exposed in 2010 are the very kind of acts that the US-led persecution of Julian Assange has served to bolster and protect, along with a raft of other state-corporate crime and abuse such as torture, exploitation of vulnerable populations, for instance in Haiti and the Chagos Islands, CIA domestic spying tools, predatory pro-corporate deals such as the TPP, environmental abuses by oil and mining companies, and on and on and on.
Not only has the near-decade long campaign of mobbing, judicial harassment and vilification of Julian Assange served to distract from these state-corporate abuses and crimes, creating a climate of impunity for the perpetrators, it is now poised to create a precedent of legal impunity, via the Espionage Act charges.
As numerous leading legal minds and even establishment media have warned, the Espionage Act prosecution awaiting Julian Assange in the United States stands to criminalise journalism worldwide, green-lighting cross-border pursuit of publishers around the globe. The legal upshot will be that states can get away with murder simply by slapping Espionage charges on those who expose their crimes. Or, alternatively, by torturing them to death, whichever comes first in the Assange precedent.
Either way, Nils Melzer has expressed his grave concern that “US authorities intend to make an ‘example’ of [Julian Assange], in order to punish him personally, but also to deter others who may be tempted to engage in similar activities.” Similar activities being holding power to account by publishing truthful material in the public interest, a cherished bedrock of democracy and human rights.
WikiLeaks publisher, Julian Assange, being dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in April 2019.
Chris Hedges writes that the persecution of Julian Assange represents not only a sharp downhill turn on the corporate totalitarian slide, but “the destruction of all protection of the rule of law”.
Speaking at a rally for Julian Assange in Sydney, Mike Head, of the World Socialist Website, adds that it is “not just about the past crimes [that Julian Assange]has exposed. It’s also a warning of the future crimes being prepared”.
In short, the implications of Nils Melzer’s letters to the US, the UK, Sweden and Ecuador could not be more serious nor more dire.
WikiLeaks’ editor Kristinn Hrafnsson says, “A line has been drawn in the sand and either you are going to support Julian and fight this retribution and those indictments, or you basically step back and the lights will go out. That’s how serious it is.”
The UN Rapporteur on Torture’s letters stand on that line in the sand, by demanding that the states involved publicly confirm where they intend to head from here: down the path of lights-out for rule of law and democratic freedoms, or down the path of democracy and human rights?
Note from KMM: In the next post, Dr. Johnson demonstrates the role of moral disengagement in the torture of Julian Assange, and the role of the corporate media in the process. Article originally published by Transcend Media Services, September 16, 2019.
By Anthony J. Marsella and Kathleen Malley-Morrison
Note from Kathie MM: Enjoy this culmination of the quest in which we have engaged the past two weeks to identify 100 examples of peace and justice leaders, illustrated with enticing and enlightening new charts.
Introduction
26 Jan 2018 – The annual memorial holiday on January 15, 2018, celebrating Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s enduring contributions to peace and justice, has passed.
The events of the day linger in our minds, eternally grateful for Reverend King’s efforts to free people and nations from the brutal oppressions imposed by governments, nations, societies, organizations, and individuals, who willfully continue to support and sustain the evils of racism, prejudice, violence, and war.
Reverend King’s commitment to freedom from oppression and abuse compel us to continue his efforts far beyond the words, songs, and promises of his day.
To this end, we, (i.e., Kathie Malley-Morrison & Anthony J. Marsella), the authors of this article, have chosen to demonstrate our responsibilities to continuing the work of Reverend King, by identifying 100 living peace and social justice leaders and models.
The number is arbitrary for there are tens of thousands more who deserve citation. Many are not listed, but will be listed in future efforts. Do not be dismayed! Patience! We believed it essential to create a dynamic list of living peace and justice activists and advocates to encourage peace and justice work.
The individuals included on our list are from all genders, ages, roles. They are from many nations, ethnocultural groups, and “races.” We sense a rising tide of commitment to peace and justice, and an intolerance of the corruption, cronyism, and asymmetric power sustaining current abuses.
We consider our efforts a beginning, and we will continue to publish new lists. This is because the struggle for peace and justice is endless, and each day new people are rising to the call.
This is as it should be, and must be, until such time the forces of oppression yield to the forces of good; evil will continue, but human virtue, endowed in conscience will triumph! While the work of many included will be recognized, some of those listed may not be apparent. We have attached website information after each name to offer insight into their efforts.
Before sharing our list, however, we wish to include two charts offering graphic displays of essential material for understanding and appreciating living leaders.
CHART 1: PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PEACE AND JUSTICE LEADERS AND MODELS
CHART 2: ROLES AND STATUSES OF LIVING PEACE & JUSTICE LEADERS AND MODELS
TABLE 1:
One Hundred Living Peace and Justice Activists, Advocates, Models
This is our continuing contribution to the legacy of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. His work continues in the lives of those who share his commitments.
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Kathleen Malley-Morrison, Ed.D., Director of the Group on International Perspectives on Governmental Aggression and Peace (GIPGAP), is Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University. She is the author or coauthor of several books, including Family Violence in a Cultural Perspective, and Family Violence in the United States, as well as editor of the four volume series: State violence and the right to peace: An international survey of the views of ordinary people. She has authored numerous articles and book chapters on violence within relationships and nations. Her current efforts to advance peace and social justice are centered primarily in her blog, Engaging Peace. http://engagingpeace.com. She can be reached at: kathiemm@engagingpeace.com
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Emeritus Professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa Campus in Honolulu, Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 21 books and more than 300 articles, tech reports, and popular commentaries. His TMS articles may be accessedHERE and he can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.
