Think back: When did YOU last feel terrorized by somebody?

by Kathie MM

Camp Pendleton Counseling Services’ POWER Workshop is a program designed to help service members and their families overcome domestic violence and child abuse. This image is a work of a U.S. military or Department of Defense employee, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. In the public domain.

The corporate media, when it does not have enough juicy crime and scandal stories to shock and awe, often provides us with a new episode in the “war on terror”.

Internationally, the dominant approach to combatting terror appears to be using or threatening more terror.

I think we know how well that has served us. (Is the world safer for democracy yet?)

Fundamentally, there appears to be little global appreciation for the complexity, the pervasiveness, the insidiousness of terrorizing–that is,  the human propensity to “fill with terror or anxiety,” “scare,” or “coerce by threat or violence.”

Let’s face it, wherever there is an imbalance of power, there is a potential for terrorizing.

Often, throughout history, in much of the world, men have terrorized women (including husbands terrorizing wives), first borns have  terrorized later borns (think of Cain and Abel), members of different gangs have  terrorized each other, bullies have terrorized whomever they can, and, sadly, the rich and powerful have terrorized the poor and meek (who seem to have a long way to go before they will be allowed to inherit the earth).

If we are going to have a successful war on terror, we need to take an ecological approach; that is, we need to tackle terrorizing at all levels of society—in the home, in the neighborhood, in the broader community, in states, and in the international community.

Terrorizing behavior is contagious—once you allow it into your home, it can go viral.

There are lots of efforts underway that can help inhibit terrorizing as a power-wielding, power-seeking tactic—domestic violence prevention programs, anti-bullying programs, women’s rights programs, civil rights programs, and a wide range of United Nations human rights initiatives.

All of these programs have flaws; after all, they were developed by human beings.  However, if you want to participate in the most general, most far-reaching, most likely-to-succeed war on terror, then supporting , defending, trying to improve, and contributing to the success of those programs is as good a place to start as any.

How do you get there from here?

International Peace Day poster. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: VectorOpenStock.

by Kathie MM

Consistent with its goal of promoting peace within and among nations, the United Nations, in 1981,  established the International Day of Peace;  in 2002, September 21st became the permanent date for the International Day of Peace.

Did you know today was the International Day of Peace?  If not, why not? You would know if it was Labor Day, or Memorial Day, or Halloween, right? So why is there no hoopla about a peace day?

At any rate, today is an internationally declared Day of Peace, and here  we are again, most of us hoping for, praying for peace, which probably seems as elusive as ever.  How can we get there, in our daily lives, our relationships, our messages to our government?  Here is one suggestion, from my friend Tom Greening:

RISE UP

Don’t be an angry, hurtful troll.

Rise up and show you have a soul.

Don’t waste your strength in violence,

don’t do cruel deeds that make no sense.

The world needs men, not angry boys.

Help others have life’s thrills and joys.

Explore the ways in which you can

show that you are a loving man.

As years go by you will be proud

you rose above the madding crowd.

 

Tom Greening

And to learn more about what YOU can do to help move the world away from war and more towards  peace, today and every day, check out this World Without War website

Tom Greening was educated at Yale, the University of Vienna, and the University of Michigan. He has been a psychologist in private practice for over 50 years, and is a retired professor from Saybrook University, UCLA, and Pepperdine. He was Editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology for 35 years. He is a Fellow of five divisions of the American Psychological Association and Poet Laureate of the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry.

Can this be your day too?

Waterboarding From The Inquisition To Guantanamo, Constitution Ave., NW (Washington, DC).
Image by Jim Kuhn and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

June 26 is the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture—an important if mostly neglected reminder that torture continues to victimize people around the world today–often at the behest of powerful forces within the US government. Torture  destroys the well-being of millions of direct victims as well as their loved ones. The theme for 2015 is the Right to Rehabilitation (R2R); we should never forget that victims of torture may suffer for a life time.

The Miriam Webster Dictionary defines torture “as the act of causing severe physical pain as a form of punishment or as a way to force someone to do or say something, something that causes mental or physical suffering, a very painful or unpleasant experience.” This is a broad definition but useful.

How many of you still feel anguish when you remember traumatic experiences of physical or psychological punishment or coercion—e.g., beatings, humiliation, terrorizing–at the hands of family members or bullies? How many of you needed either professional or other support to deal with the effects of those experiences? Can you imagine how much worse it would be to be the victim of the more commonly-acknowledged forms of torture, such as waterboarding, prolonged solitary confinement, rectal feeding, and other atrocities outlined in the recent US Senate report on torture by the CIA?

Torture is a moral issue, one that all people of conscience can address—not only on a community, national, and international level but in their own lives. See the following links for some ideas of what you might do in honor of International Day in Support of Victims of Torture… and every day.

NRCAT DVD Discussion Guides

R2R

NRCAT film, Breaking Down the Box

Today is a good day to at least think about those things.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Malala

By guest contributor Sunanda Sharma

Malala Yousafzai is known as “the girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban,” and she casually includes that on the title page of her incredible book, I Am Malala.

Malala at the White House
Malala at the White House. Photo by Pete Souza, in public domain.

Before she was shot, Malala anonymously chronicled her life under the pen name Gul Makai for BBC in 2009.

Malala states in her book that her father, Ziauddin, has been her greatest inspiration in advocating for women’s rights and education for all children. His own sisters were not allowed to get an education, being forced instead to learn all the household chores that would be expected of them once they were wed.

Based on his observation of his sisters’ fates and his own love of learning, Ziauddin started his own chain of public schools in Swat, Pakistan, including the school that Malala attended until she was shot by the Taliban in October 2012.

The Taliban occupation of Swat was a harrowing time for residents of the Valley. Malala describes how Fazlullah, “the radio Mullah,” broadcast rules for “proper” Islamic conduct, which he claimed were written in the Qu’ran. I Am Malala

A mufti (Muslim scholar) tried to shut down Ziauddin’s schools, claiming they were “haram” (prohibited in Islam). The mufti went on to accuse Malala’s father of being an infidel. But Ziauddin said, “I am a Muslim too,”  asserting that he had never heard of such ridiculous claims in the Qu’ran.

Their conflict reflects the struggles of the modern Muslim whose religious identity is so misunderstood by Westerners who fail to recognize the divide between radical extremists claiming to act in the name of religion and the millions of Muslims who practice Islam as peaceful citizens.

Malala’s story led to her United Nations address on July 12, 2013–her sixteenth birthday–which is now known as Malala Day. Her speech is powerful but sweet, reflecting her personality.

Sunanda Sharma is a senior undergraduate at Boston University, majoring in psychology and intent on promoting peace