by Joe Kandra and Kathie Malley-Morrison
Tag: Iraq
Watch for our enemies (We are they.)
Note from Kathie: Wherever possible, we attempt on this blog to provide psychological perspectives on violence and nonviolence. Today, we share this slightly condensed Open Letter from Canadian Psychologists regarding Donald Trump’s travel ban.
“We as Canadian professors of psychology and practitioners condemn the executive order signed on January 27, 2017, to ban people from specific countries from entering the U.S. We also condemn the right wing rhetoric, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and xenophobic actions that are dominating political discourse in the U.S. and some European countries.
[We] believe that the following principles have been well-established:
1. When people feel secure and accepted in their society, they will tend to be open, tolerant and inclusive with respect to others. Conversely, when people are discriminated against, they are likely to respond with negative attitudes and hostility towards those who undermine their right. Rejection breeds rejection; acceptance breeds acceptance.
2. When individuals of different cultural backgrounds have opportunities to interact with each other on a level playing field, such equal status contacts usually lead to greater mutual understanding and acceptance. Creating barriers between groups and individuals reinforces ignorance, and leads to mistrust and hostility.
3. When individuals have opportunities to endorse many social identities, and to be accepted in many social groups, they usually have greater levels of personal and social wellbeing. Individuals who are denied acceptance within many social groups usually suffer poorer personal and collective well-being.
In addition to supporting these three principles, we note the following:
A. Global humanitarian crises do not happen overnight. Such chaos begins in small steps, which may appear benign, somewhat acceptable and even justifiable under given conditions. The world witnessed too many humanitarian crises during the last century.
Not speaking out against such events right at the outset contributed to the escalation of evil and its dire consequences. The current immigration ban applied to seven predominantly Muslim countries (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen) may not be felt by majority of Canadians. However, it can contribute to the escalation of the unfair treatment of a wide range of groups.
B. Studies show that blatant “us vs. them” categorizations contribute to prejudice, discrimination, group polarization and intergroup antipathy. We argue that it is in no one’s interest to narrow the membership of “us” (e.g., Canadian, American, or European) and to widen the membership of “them” (e.g., Muslim, Mexican, members of the LGBT, feminist, and refugee communities). Such polarization leads to fear, rejection, and discrimination, with the negative consequences noted in the three principles described above.”
Signed: John Berry, Ph.D., Queen’s University; Gira Bhatt, Ph.D., Kwantlen Polytechnic University; Yvonne Bohr, Ph.D., C.Psych. York University; Richard Bourhis, Ph.D. Université du Québec à Montréal; Keith S. Dobson, Ph.D., R. Psych., University of Calgary; Janel Gauthier, Ph.D., Université Laval; Jeanne M. LeBlanc, Ph.D., ABPP, R. Psych.; Kimberly Noels, PhD. University of Alberta; Saba Safdar, Ph.D., University of Guelph; Marta Young, Ph.D., University of Ottawa; Jeanne M. LeBlanc, Ph.D., ABPP, R. Psych.
All the light we must learn to see, Part 2
A more recent novel stimulating empathy for characters on opposite sides of a horrendous war is All the Light We Cannot See, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; this novel weaves together the stories of a young German boy and a young (blind) French girl, as Europe moves into and struggles bloodily through a devastating second World War.
Regarding his motivations for writing the book, Anthony Doerr tells Scribner Magazine that he asked himself, “Could I tell a story about how a promising boy got sucked into the Hitler Youth and made bad decisions that led to terrible, unforgivable consequences, yet still render him an empathetic character? And could I braid his story with the narrative of a disabled girl who in so many ways was more capable than the adults around her?”
He also explains, “My attempt in this novel is to suggest the humanity of both Werner and Marie-Laure, to propose more complicated portraits of heroes and villains; to hint at, as World War II fades from the memories of its last survivors and becomes history, all the light we cannot see. [See more here, and here. A mostly positive review in The Guardian asserts, “There is a worrying even-handedness in Doerr’s treatment of the Germans and the French.” I disagree. There are horrendous passages on cruelty by German officers and nothing comparable for French characters. It is true that one can empathize equally with the German boy and the French girl, which is, I believe, one of the gifts of the book.
I suggest that while reading the novel or shortly thereafter, you participate in the following exercise. Reimagine the basic story in today’s world, with the technology updated and the warring powers being the United States and say, Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
Remember that in the book, Germany was the aggressor and France the occupied country; thus, in your reimagining, the Werner character must be an American boy, and the Marie-Laure character a Middle Eastern girl. Can you do this? Can you see these characters? Can you envision feeling empathy for individuals on both “sides” of the conflicts in which the US is embroiled today?
THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, Part 3
by Stefan Schindler
Disturbing facts from American history, continued:
11 – The first 9/11 occurred on September 11th, 1973, when Nixon and Kissinger overthrew the elected government in Chile, the longest running democracy in South America, beginning’s America’s subsequent support of the 16-year Pinochet dictatorship and slaughter of liberal activists.
12 – The Carter administration launched a terror campaign against the newly elected social democratic government of Afghanistan in 1979, leading to the Russian counter-intervention in 1980, which led to Reagan’s eight-year creation, arming and financing of Al Queda to fight “the godless communists” occupying Afghan territory and preventing the installation of American pipelines for the transport of Iraqi oil.
13 – In the first five years of his administration, Ronald Reagan transformed America from the largest creditor nation in the world to the largest debtor nation in the world.
14 – Ronald Reagan conducted an eight-year terror campaign against the social democratic government of Nicaragua, which had finally overthrown 40 years of American supported dictatorship.
15 – The Bush-Cheney wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were an updated repeat of the lies that led to America’s Indochina Holocaust (euphemistically called The Vietnam War to obliterate memory of U.S. devastation of Laos and Cambodia).
16 – The Bush-Cheney Administration’s continuation of Reagan’s attempt to unravel Roosevelt’s New Deal for the American people, with its regulatory safeguards, led directly to the all too predictable economic meltdown of 2008: the largest stock market crash since 1929, from which millions of Americans, and many people around the globe, are still suffering.
17 – The single greatest factor leading to the outbreak of World War Two was the U.S. stock market crash of 1929. That crash had ripple effects around the globe, including the implosion of Germany’s already impoverished economy. In desperation, the German people elected a charismatic lunatic named Hitler.
18 – America’s neutrality during the so-called Spanish Civil War (actually a coup d’état) from1936 to1939 – the only place in Europe where ordinary citizens were actively fighting the rise of fascism – led to the overthrow of Spanish democracy by a cabal of Hitler-supported bankers, bishops and generals, and persuaded Hitler that he could continue Nazi expansion into other parts of Europe, including Czechoslovakia and Poland.
19 – American banks and corporations (including Ford and General Motors) helped Hitler build his war machine, and sanctioned Hitler’s persecution of German socialists (hoping that Hitler would invade Russia and put an end to the Soviet experiment in communism).
20 – Japan was begging to surrender in late 1945, asking only that their emperor, Hirohito, be left in place as the nation’s nominal leader. Truman refused to accept Japanese surrender because of that single condition. No American troop invasion of Japan was necessary to end the war. Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki primarily as a warning to the Soviets. After Japan’s surrender, Hirohito was allowed to maintain his nominal political title.
21 – During World War Two, the American air force was ordered not to bomb Nazi war-making factories owned by Ford and General Motors. After the war, the CEOs of Ford and General Motors were awarded millions of taxpayer dollars in compensation for “collateral damage,” instead of being tried and convicted for treason.
Co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a recipient of The Boston Baha’i Peace Award, and a Trustee of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey Foundation, Dr. Schindler received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College, worked one summer in a nature preserve, lived in a Zen temple for a year, did the pilot’s voice in a claymation video of St. Exupery’s The Little Prince, acted in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and performed as a musical poet in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City. He also wrote The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Awards for Howard Zinn and John Lennon. He is now semi-retired and living in Salem, Massachusetts.