Tag: Syria

The power of one

Posted on by kathiemm

This year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is a well-deserving intergovernmental organization—the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The OPCW works in collaboration with the United Nations to administer the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWP).

As of January 2013, the OPCW had overseen the destruction of nearly 80% of the world’s acknowledged stockpile of chemical weapons. As I write, it has a team in Syria, working to dismantle that country’s chemical weapons in the middle of a bloody civil war.

As I read the history of their work, I am fascinated. When I think of the bravery of their workers in Syria, and contemplate the potential of their efforts for peace in the Middle East and survival of humanity, I am awed and grateful.

Yet, when I view the video showing their fine exhibits to the public, my thoughts turn immediately to Malala Yousafzai—the Pakistani teenaged girl who was shot twice in the head to punish her for promoting education for girls in a district where they wanted no girls in school.

People around the world were aghast at the effort to assassinate her, prayed for her recovery, and were thrilled to see her nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize—the youngest nominee in the history of the prize.

Malala did not win it this year, though she continues to be recognized for her courage, integrity, activism—and readiness to speak truth to power. When President Obama invited her to the White House “”to thank her for her inspiring and passionate work on behalf of girls education in Pakistan,” she told him she was concerned that “drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people.”

President Obama would do well to heed the words of this young woman.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Death to the death penalty

Posted on 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 18th U.S. state to abolish the death penalty.

Time for more states to join the odyssey.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

The U.S. government’s assault on children

Posted on by kathiemm

We’ve heard considerable rhetoric recently about the vileness of subjecting children to poison gas–and vile it is. So are other means by which children are maimed and murdered, and the government of the United States is complicit in vile acts against the world’s children.

For example, being burned to death–as happened to thousands of children in the World War II firebombing of cities in Japan and Germany–is ghastly, whether it kills or scars for life.

Being born with birth defects related to Agent Orange, or being killed or maimed by unexploded ordinance (a continuing scourge for children in Vietnam) is a legacy of U.S. government intervention.

An article in the Independent reports, “Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.”

According to a 2012 Children’s Defense Fund report [opens as pdf], “In 2008, 2,947 children and teens died from guns in the United States and 2,793 died in 2009 for a total of 5,740—one child or teen every three hours, eight every day, 55 every week for two years.” Any government that does not fight the gun lobby is complicit.

There is an international chemical weapons convention to which our government has alluded in trying to make its case for bombing Syria.

There is also a convention that prohibits the use of anti-personnel mines, which the U.S. has failed to ratify. How does a government that has authorized widespread “collateral damage” have the moral authority to unilaterally punish other violators of international conventions?

Let us hope and pray that the current administration listens to the millions of American voices calling for a nonviolent alternative to raining terror on children and other innocent civilians in yet another Middle Eastern country.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

What more can be said of war?

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest writer Anthony J. Marsella

WAR

What more can be said of war

That has not already been said,

That has not already been written,

That has not already been sung in song,

Recited in verse, shared in epic tales?

 

What more can be said of war

That has not already been committed to screen

In iconic movies with legendary actors,

Fighting and dying with glory amidst waving flags,

Or in heralded documentaries carefully

Edited with photos, letters, poignant

Words of lament spoken amid haunting tunes?

 

What more can be said of war

That has not already been sculpted in marble,

Painted on canvases,

Photographed in back and white,

And vivid color,

Revealing blood is red, bone is white,

Death is endless.

What more can be said of war

That has not already been inscribed in minds and bodies

Of soldiers who survived,

Civilians who endured,

Prisoners captive to trauma,

Scars visible and invisible?

 

What more can be said of war

That has not already been carved

On ordered granite gravestones

In national cemeteries, honoring sacrifice,

Their death veiled in shade and sunlight?

 

What more can be said of war,

That has not already been said about heroes and villains,

Soldiers and generals,

Warriors and misfits,

Freedom fighters and terrorists,

Victims and collateral damage,

Apologies and reparations?

 

What more can be said of war,

That has not already been said about

Glorious and evil causes,

Lusts for power and control

Access to wealth and resources,

Messianic responsibilities, moral duties,

Domination . . . ascendancy . . . revenge?

 

What more can be said of war,

That has not already been eulogized

On fields of battle,

Where lives were lost, minds seared,

And historians’ crafts polished

With the biased narratives of victors:

Waterloo, Hue, Fallujah?

There is no winner in war!

 

And why, if so much has been

Spoken, written, and engraved,

Why do the lessons of war,

Continue to be ignored, denied, distorted?

And now . . .  Syria.

Comment:  I wrote this poem in the course of two days as I witnessed the tragedy of death and suffering in Syria, bewildered again and again, by the endless uses of so many death technologies. I was dismayed that a score of nations appear to be pursuing selfish interests amidst the ethnic and tribal cleansing and genocides occurring. We are living with endless war.  Nothing more can be said about war. Violence begets violence, war begets war! No cries of noble responsibilities to protect and defend from either side are sufficient or warranted. They are merely part of the tactics, strategies, and policies that sustain war. Who benefits from war?

Anthony J. Marsella, August 28-29, 2013