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Review by Judith L. Hand – AFWW, June 2008
In The Human Potential for Peace (2006), anthropologist Douglas Fry began debunking the belief that war is inescapable. In Beyond War he continues his exploration in an accessible, finely-researched, occasionally humorous manner. Beyond War is a highly rewarding read and an outstanding contribution to the literature on human behavior and war. For the full book review see www.afww.org.
Review by Judith L. Hand, April 2008
A lot of people on this planet say they long for a more just, less violent, and more ecologically sustainable future. If that’s the goal, women are humanity’s greatest untapped resource. To that end, we need many more books like the one Dee Dee Myers, former press secretary to U.S. President Bill Clinton, has crafted.
Why Women Should Rule the World is a delightful and occasionally uncomfortable exploration of male/female differences, especially as they relate to women in leadership roles. As the author points out, men and women are not unequal, with one sex superior to the other, but neither are they the same. Myers makes a strong case for the urgent need to get women, with their proclivities for communication, conciliation, and consensus building, into more leadership positions. Read the full Book Review online at www.afww.org.
Judith L. Hand is a published novelist under her name and the nom de plume Judith Leon and the creator of a website on the subject of war (www.AFutureWithoutWar.org). She completed her Ph.D. degree in Animal Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1979, her subfields being ornithology and primatology. After completing a Smithsonian post-doctoral Fellowship in Washington, D.C., she taught briefly at UCLA and published on communication and conflict resolution. Currently, in addition to writing fiction, she writes, speaks, and networks to promote understanding of why and how we can abolish war.
“Dishing Democracy” is a documentary on the women of the Dubai-based Arab satellite network MBC show called “Kalam Nawaem” (Sweet Talk). The documentary aired on PBS in the U.S. on 31 July 2007. Using four women (Palestinian, Egyptian, Saudi, and Lebanese) who take up every imaginable subject, including such social taboos as homosexuality and masturbation and who display their varied views on those subjects, the show is a great favorite in the Middle East. The show also is an expression of the power of satellite television in the Muslim World. For more information about the documentary and about Sweet Talk itself, go to: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/cairo/filmmaker.html.
Links from that page can introduce you to the wide variety and the increasing influence of satellite television shows to the spread of democracy in a world mostly unfamiliar to Western countries. Democracy is something that cannot be imposed from without but must grow from within and it is much more than just a vote: it’s the desire for the recognition of individual worth in the governing of our lives. There is a hunger for it in the Muslim world. But according to this film maker, the emphasis there for women is more on the importance of community in their lives than on the importance of the individual. (EW, FC, SD) Los Angeles Times, 31 July 2007, Paul Brownfield, “Arab world has it’s own type of ‘View.’”
A draft charter is being prepared by Southeast Asian countries that would ban unconstitutional changes of government and Thailand, in spite of it’s own recent military coup, is backing this provision. The bloodless coup that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra last Sept. 19 was a temporary “glitch” and Thailand will return to democracy, Foreign Minister Nitya Pibulsonggram said. “We agree. We would like to go back to being fully democratic,” Nitya said of the provision. (SD) International Herald Tribune, 1 August 2007
Although Amnesty International reports increasing political repression for Zimbabwan women, the NGO, Women in Politics Support Unit (WIPSU), is leading a campaign to achieve gender parity in choosing candidates for office. The campaign is called Fifty:Fifty and the current effort is “to audit the constitutions and manifestos of all political parties,” said Rutendo Hadebe, the WIPSU director. “We want to see if they have any policies on equality in decision-making; if they have any clear policies on how they ensure that women politicians also participate equally in terms of decision-making, including within the political parties themselves.” Currently, 22.2 percent of political offices are held by women in Zimbabwe, including five female ministers in a cabinet of 53; 24 of the country’s 150 parliamentarians are women; two of its 10 provincial governors are women, and of a total of 305 councillors in urban areas, 43 are female. (EW, SD) IRIN-Humanitarin News and Analysis, 27 July 2007.
Lebanon’s most senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, issued a religious edit (fatwa) banning the custom of killing a women for supposedly bringing shame to her family. He called this “a repulsive act.” These killings are illegal but still common in much of the Middle East, and condemnation of it by powerful clerics is rare. (EW, PNCR) Los Angeles Times, 3 Aug 2007, “Shiite cleric bans ‘honor’ killings.
Violence only begets violence. To end war we will have to use nonviolent means. Akbar Ganji is arguably Iran’s most famous dissident intellectual. Recently released from five years in an Iranian prison, he is on a speaking tour in the U.S. talking about Iran and world politics. His book, “Dungeon of Ghosts,” implicated senior Iranian officials in a series of assassinations of Iranian writers and intellectuals. Like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and other wise users of nonviolence, Ganji advocates civil disobedience by his own people as the means to build a Republican government in Iran. He stresses the need for a strong middle class, a market economy and political and social cultures based on pluralism and tolerance. He also says that a just resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict would be the best contribution the United States could make to the Middle East. (Northwestern Univ. News Center, 3 August 2007).
His compatriot, human rights lawyer and Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi also argues that change from within Iran by Iranians rather than interference from external forces is the way forward for any positive outcome. Her book, “Iran Awakening,” is a beautifully written, powerful memoir chronicling forces that have swept through Iran since the CIA collaborated in the assassination of the elected nationalist leader, Mohamad Mosedegh. (PNCR, SD)
On October 19th and 20th, The Student Peace Alliance will hold its first Student Peace Alliance National Conference, hosted by Brandeis University. Their theme is: Our Generation Calls for Peace.
Featured speakers are Betty Williams Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1977 for organizing work through Community for Peace People, to promote peaceful solutions to the violent conflict in Northern Ireland. Arun Gandhi – Grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence. Trish Jones – A leader in the field of peace and conflict resolution education and President of the Conflict Resolution Association (CRA). Will Spencer – Coordinated the National Peace Academy Campaign that lead to the establishment of the United States Institute of Peace.
There will be experts in diverse fields from the Arts and Peace, School and Gang Violence, and the Economics of Peace. The hippies of the 1960’s wanted world peace but thought that all you needed was love. This generation knows that hard work will be required and they are rolling up their sleeves to do it. (EW, EYM, FC, PNCR, SOE). The Peace Alliance Newsletter, 2 August 2007.
Had the Palestinians had the good fortune to have a Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Mandela in their midst, they could have long since had a homeland and peace. Instead they were led by men who espoused armed conflict. In a potentially profound shift, the new Palestinian leadership in the West Bank is rejecting “resistence” (mukawamah) and stressing “steadfastness” (a tactic of peaceful, civic resistance to any taking of their land or livelihoods). The idea is to use resources to give the Palestinian people a better life so that they will reject bombing and killing as a way forward. This, indeed, is good news and to be celebrated. But to achieve their goal of a reasonably just end to this tragedy, even more will likely be required of the Palestinian people in the form of Gandhian satyagraha—willingness to use nonviolent, civil protest that at least initially may result in even more suffering by the Palestinians. That’s the way of nonviolent change of unjust situations. As Martin Luther King put it to explain civil rights workers’ willingness to be jailed or beaten: “We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our ability to endure suffering.” (PNCR) Los Angeles Times, 1 August 2007, Richard Boudreaux, “Shopkeepers enlisted in West Bank Struggle.”
Fox TV’s hit show “24” will cast a woman, Cherry Jones, as the U.S. President in the upcoming season. This is good news because, as the astronomer Carl Sagan once said, people have to experience chance in the stories they tell before actual change can happen. The TV show “Commander in Chief,” starring Geena Davis, was considered unusual. Having a woman President on 24 will still be seen as unusual. But the more frequently we see a woman in this role, the sooner it can happen in reality. (EW) The White House Project newsletter, 24 July 2007
Last week, India chose its first female president, 72 year old Pratibha Patil, a lawyer, congresswoman and former governor. Although the position is largely ceremonial, her post, which brings visibility, is a win for the country, where gender discrimination has long been a problem. (EW) The White House Project newsletter, 24 July 2007
A New York Times article reports that there is a big push for providing subsides for companies working on coal-to-liquid fuels technology. The article stresses that this reflects a tension between slowing global warming and reducing dependence on foreign oil. But from the AFWW point of view, this is also a way to shift our economy to provide work for people and profits for employers that is not built on the war industry. (SOE) New York Times, 29 May 2007, Edmund L. Andrews, “Big Subsidies for Coal Process.”
The enlightened ex-president of Botswana made certain that the diamond resources of that country would fund improvements in the life of his people, which they have done. The newly elected president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, also wants to do the same for desperately poor Liberia, and she persisted and has convinced the U.N. Security Council to lift a 6-year-old ban on Liberian diamond exports. The ban, aimed at stopping blood or conflict diamonds from reaching the market, was lifted because of Liberia’s significant progress in setting up control on its diamonds. (IER, SD, SOE). Los Angeles Times, 28 April 2007, New in Brief: “Liberia allowed to export diamonds.”
Keeping up with the movers and shakers in the peace movement! The World Peace Conference uplifted and encouraged five hundred of us from all parts of the planet (except, sadly, the Middle East) in the kind of coming together that’s essential for workers in any campaign. We refreshed our vision, absorbed energy and new ideas, and experienced critical opportunities for networking. Sponsored by the New Mexico Department of Tourism and organized by conference producer Majorie Mann and conference designer and activist Louise Diamond, this WPC offered high profile speakers and a fresh approach to group management. The rousing concert by the Indigo Girls at the beautiful outdoor Santa Fe Opera house, accompanied by lightning and rain climaxed in a perfect ending to a new beginning of the ever-growing groundswell of change.
A crucial ingredient became apparent in the view of AFWW, and should take on new focus as we create the momentum of paradigm shift. We peace-seekers do not yet share an agreed-upon, united front with specific, measurable goals toward which all of us are working. We need a plan, one that embraces all of the elements described on the AFWW website, and leaders to keep us all on track.
Ending war, in the view of AFWW, is a task equivalent in complexity and difficulty to putting a working, permanent human base on Mars: a vast challenge, but doable. It will require that we create the international equivalent of a NASA if we are to succeed. There are around this globe, many thousands of government, grassroots, and international organizations working on various aspects of this great campaign, but we do not yet have an overarching focus: we are thousands of organizations pulling separately. We need to be thousands pulling together.
When that finally happens to a critical mass of the world’s peace-seekers, nothing will be able to stop us from achieving the goal of ending war and much, much more.
The outstanding keynote speakers offered dynamic insight and challenge. Nobel Laureate Jodie Williams was awarded the prize having brought together 1400 NGOs to focus on a campaign to ban land mines. Another Nobel Laureate, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, showed that a single powerless young girl can bring powerful forces into action, such as in her crusade for indigenous people’s rights and subsequent candidacy for the President of Guatamala. Via video, the Dali Lama (spiritual leader for a nonviolent campaign to free Tibet, offered practical perspective and spiritual focus, and nonviolence exemplar and activist, Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, gave us a role-playing task that quickly revealed the culturally transmitted attitude of aggressive thought that colors even simple transactions—unless we learn to truly think non-violently in our own corners of the world. All were inspiring in their own unique way.
For those interested in group dynamics, the program structure itself was new to us, a technique called “Open Space Technology.” Under the guidance of trained facilitators, this technique allowed the hundred of participants to self-select topics of interest to them in five general areas: Our Youth, Our Promise; Demilitarization and a Peace Economy; Knowing the Other as Ourselves; The Living Spirit of Peace; and The Politics of Peace. AFWW representatives attended the sections on Demilitarization and a Peace Economy and The Politics of Peace where they met other conference attendees with similar concerns.
At the associated Peace Fair, several dozen groups presented their wares or their cause, from Amnesty International USA, to Mediators Without Borders, to Americans for a Department of Peace and Nonviolence, to Vajra Dakini Nunnery. AFWW also had a table, featuring Judith’s books, the AFWW website, and … a novel.
A novel? Yes. AFWW gave away forty promotional copies of a novel that needs a publisher. Carl Sagan once said, and AFWW also believes, that before people embrace a huge change in their lives—in this case, the paradigm shift to peace that all the conference attendees seek—they must first experience the vision of that reality in their stories. So Judith and her colleague, Peggy Lang, have written a political suspense novel, ASSASSIN’S ROSE. It features a heroine, Claire Alden, whose philosophical commitment is to nonviolent means of conflict resolution and using aggressive nonviolence as demonstrated by Gandhi and Martin Luther King as the means to achieve social justice and a better world.
Claire is challenged to run for the U.S. Presidency, and should she be elected, she commits herself to immediately appoint a Secretary of Peace and Nonviolence, greatly expand the scope and budget of America’s Peace Institute, and appoint a parity government cabinet with equal numbers of men and women. A charismatic leader who profoundly threatens the status quo stirs us assassins. Reviewers give the story high marks as a fast-paced tale of suspense with an intriguing love story. The hope is that by sharing the book with other activists who are interested in ending war, word of mouth may help ASSASSIN’S ROSE find that necessary publisher.
The world’s peace-seekers may not yet be united by a shared vision and plan, but networking conferences like the one in Santa Fe are critical to moving us closer to the day when we do put a shared plan into action.
