THE STANDING ROCK PROTEST: Part 1

The iconic sacred Standing Rock of the Sioux. According to Dakota legend, it is a body of a young Indian woman, with her child on her back, who refused to accompany the tribe as they moved south. When others were sent back to find her, she was found to have turned to stone. The stone overlooks an area that was once the empire of the mighty Sioux Nation. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Author: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1963.

By Anthony J. Marsella

I have two major purposes in writing this commentary:

  1. To call attention to the national media’s intentional lack of coverage to the Standing Rock protests. This lack of coverage is an egregious affront and insult to Native American Indians and their supporters, and also to indigenous peoples everywhere caught in struggles against oppression and exploitation by the national and global political elite and cabal: corporate-governments-military. We are witnessing Genocide, Ecocide, and Nationcide!  And still the silence!

2. To address the tragic state of our nation’s alleged commitments to our sacred documents enshrining human rights, participatory governance, equality, and transparency in decisions and policies.

STANDING ROCK: AN ICONIC EVENT DENIED VISIBILITY

Amid the preoccupation with Donald Trump’s election regrets and elation, and his ascendancy to the power and privilege of the USA presidency, there is a conspicuous absence of attention to the what may be the most critical struggle for human rights and human dignity in the United States since the civil rights protests of African American and Women’s Rights born in the 1950s and continuing today.

Even within the context of the continuing struggles for equality and human rights of our times, the unfolding events at Standing Rock promise to dwarf past struggles in their ultimate consequences for revealing the egregious realities of corporate dominance, federal and state government betrayal, and militaristic control and aggression of USA society today.

Protests at Standing Rock by Native American Indians and supporters of law, justice, and conscience, are conspicuously absent from front-page coverage and editorials, and also from TV news shows. Newspaper headlines and opening news coverage stories should be blaring the events at Standing Rock, the origins, historic course, genocidal process,  promoted and sustained by corporate-government-military cabal complicity in the wanton destruction of the Native American Indian land, traditions, and people. It happened and is happening on your watch!

The media coverage should be relentless, and not be left to independent media sources struggling to survive financially as national media stocks soar! This is a national tragedy, and is far more important to our national identity and survival then the vast majority of topics covered. Shame on you New York Times! Shame on you Washington Post! You reveal your ownership and control!

The national political elite have spoken; once again human life and dignity will be sacrificed on the altar of greed and dominance; once again, the concentration of wealth, power, and position in the hands of a few, rule. Must I list the names of the billionaires, political figures, and military luminaries, we have elevated to positions of respect and admiration? Must I cite the award celebrations attempting to establish “icons” to be followed as admirable examples of the status quo? Must I list the celebrities who prance before the media in expensive couture, baring bodies, guarding conscience, and protecting image?  It happened, and is happening, on your watch.  Native American Indians are dying once again in a struggle for their inalienable rights. Where are you?

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a  member of the TRANSCEND Network, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and 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 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.

 

Morally disengaging from drone warfare

The headline of a Sunday New York Times article by national security reporter Scott Shane declares “The Moral Case for Drones.” A more appropriate title might well be “A Case Study in Moral Disengagement.”

The arguments in the article illustrate many of the principles of moral disengagement  previously discussed in this blog, including:

Drone launched off Navy ship
Drone launched off U.S. Navy ship. Image in public domain.

Shane begins by noting that critics of President Obama’s drone program focus on issues such as “collateral damage” (a favorite euphemism for killing children and other innocent civilians). He then comments that people may be surprised to learn that “some moral philosophers, political scientists and weapons specialists believe armed, unmanned aircraft offer marked moral advantages over almost any other tool of warfare.”

As an example of a moral philosopher, he cites Bradley Strawser, a former officer in the Air Force and assistant professor of philosophy in the Naval Postgraduate School who told him that using drones “to go after terrorists” was “not only ethically permissible but also might be ethically obligatory.”

Why? Drones are advantageous for “identifying targets and striking with precision.”  In making such a statement, Strawser is using euphemisms for murder (“striking targets”) while framing it in pseudo-moral language (“ethically obligatory”).

Strawser identifies “targets” as “terrorists” and “extremists who are indeed plotting violence against innocents” (demonization). He says drones are better than any other weapon in avoiding collateral damage (advantageous comparison), and suggests that drone operators can time their strikes so that innocents will not be nearby and can even divert a missile if a child happens to wander into the target area (misrepresentation of consequences).

Most historians seem to agree that one of the major causes of World War I was not the killing of an archduke, but the eagerness of weapons specialists in different countries to try out their great new weapons and prove how invincible they were.

One can argue that World War II ended up with the U.S. trying out its great new atomic weapon to prove how invincible it is—and thereby initiating an arms race that continues to threaten life on earth.

Might we make better moral choices than unleashing the favored weapon of the hour?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Saving books from destruction

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today we are pleased to feature another book review by Rachel Tochicki.]

The Librarian of Basra: A True Story From Iraq by Jeanette Winter tells the story of a real-life hero, Alia Muhammad Baker, a librarian at the Basra Central Library who managed to save 30,000 of the library’s books from destruction.Librarian of Basra

Prior to the war, government offices had been moved into the library, and Alia had the foresight to see that this put the library at risk of attack. Indeed, the library was subsequently burned to the ground, but the books had been safely stored in every nook and cranny of Alia’s home.

The Librarian of Basra is based on a 2003 article in the New York Times by Shaila K. Dewan, telling Alia’s story of the British invasion of Basra.

This is a wonderful book to start young children thinking about the war in Iraq, and about how war can affect civilians on both sides.  It also sends a universal message about the importance of books and literacy.  Alia not only saved most of the books in the library, but she also preserved history by preserving books and manuscripts that were hundreds of years old.

Although The Librarian of Basra: A True Story From Iraq demonstrates the negative effects of war, it ends on a positive note with Alia dreaming of a new library and of peace.  Let us all hope that someday soon her dreams will become a reality.

A portion of the proceeds from sales of Winter’s book goes toward a fund by the American Library Association, which is working to restore the 30 percent of the collection in the Basra Central Library that was lost on the fire.

Rachel Tochicki