Big Brother is Watching

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange touched on the subject of social networking in an interview with Russia Today, calling Facebook “the most appalling spy machine that has ever been invented.”

Assange said he believes Facebook is a giant database of names and records about people, maintained voluntarily by its users but developed for U.S. intelligence to use.

“Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies, and building this database for them,” Assange said.

While Assange doesn’t claim that Facebook is actually run by U.S. intelligence agencies, the fact that they have access to its records is — in his view — dangerous enough.

“Now, is the case that Facebook is run by U.S. intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that U.S. intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure to them,” he said.

Assange also weighed in on the subject of secret government cables released by WikiLeaks, claiming the really important ones haven’t been exposed yet.

“We only released secret, classified, confidential material. We didn’t have any top secret cables. The really embarrassing stuff, the really serious stuff wasn’t in our collection to release. But it is still out there,” he said.

At the end of the interview, Assange trashed the media industry, claiming it is heavily distorting reality to the public and doing too little to prevent wars and remove corrupt governments from power. “It really is my opinion that the media, in general, are so bad, we have to question whether the world would be better off without them altogether,” he said.

See the full video of the interview below.

[Russia Today via The Next Web]

Life in a "connected" world

For more than fifteen years I have been just to the right of the “cutting edge” in technology. Coming from a small town, internet service was something only a few families had in 1996, and the term “Social Media” would still be years away from becoming part of my vernacular. Since this time, I seem to be just behind the trends in internet connectivity.

Cut to 2011, where international superstars like Justin Bieber are born from self-recorded YouTube videos, and anyone with a video camera and a certain amount of shamelessness can become a viral video sensation, or better yet, a meme. The connections people make through social media are great for touching base with old friends and sharing the work of unknowns like Bieber. However, as friendships have been a popular social construction for many years, we must wonder if society can adapt and change to the new definition of “friend,” and a completely new way of defining a society.

Websites like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace were created in order to help connect people around the world connect to those with similar interests or backgrounds. This is true in almost any interpersonal relationship, as similar socioeconomic factors are often what bring people together. However, these relationships have often been fostered through direct contact, either through written word, telephone calls or personal visitations. If this model for friendship and social interactions has withstood the past millennia of human interaction, how can it be maintained through impersonal communiqué as posted on public social media sites?

While it would be terribly dramatic to state that MySpace and Facebook have destroyed the age-old idea of an interpersonal and social relationship per se, obviously a certain change has taken place. Rather than connecting face to face, or voice to voice, our connections are mediated. We see the means of communication that sustained our personal relationships deteriorating rapidly. While email was certain to replace the hand written letter for reasons of convenience and cost, the art of written communication has dwindled to a few lines of prose posted for public consumption, coupled with planate smileys.  This not only negates the sincerity of the message, but it also takes away the ability to connect on a one-to-one basis with the recipient.

In order to understand the personal value of a friend, we must look at the institution of friendship as less of a social construct and more of an intangible good which can be valued based on varying factors. While many people use the word “friend” with different intent depending on which regard it is thrown out, we see that sites such as Facebook are built upon the ability to “Friend” someone. The process of “Friending,” as it is called, is nothing more than clicking a link in order to create an electronic connection. People may extend this web friendship to those who are close to the individual, those who are merely acquaintances, and those who are strangers. It is the consideration of the latter two choices which boggle the mind at times. How can we consider someone a friend, a term of social engagement and relationship, when we have not spoken for years or, conversely, never met? Most people certainly do not extend the same benefits and privileges to internet pals as they would their “real-life” friends, but why do we still accept the term as appropriate? Why do we take advice from strangers when we would not from those close to us in the flesh? In a sense, Internet connectivity has created different tiers of friendship, thereby forcing the individual to assign importance to the individuals with whom they share connections.

While my opinion of social media is obviously skewed against the practice, I feel I am clearly in the minority of people in my age range. All of my friends have had Facebook accounts for years. People constantly send me emails asking to connect on Facebook to share. What do they want to share? Well, I’m not sure. However, the trend to flock to these sites has yet to show  decline. We recently saw Hollywood produce a movie called “The Social Network,” which was based on Facebook’s founders. One need only go to any online news source to see the Winklevoss twins, supposed cofounders of Facebook, telling us of their legal battles to get a piece of the Billion-dollar action for themselves.

While these social networks will probably not go anywhere soon, they will eventually be replaced by something newer and more popular. Of course, by this time, I might have just convinced my friends that “Happy Birthday” posted on MySpace isn’t quite as heartwarming as the old fashioned handshake and personally delivered Hallmark card.

“They have healed the brokenness of my people superficially, saying, ‘Peace, peace.’ But there is no peace.” Jeremiah 8:11

When the prophet Jeremiah wrote those words, he could have been describing the public-relations strategy of the current US government. Barack Obama won the presidency and the hearts of billions around the world by pledging to bring peace. His humanitarian rhetoric promised a new era in American foreign policy, away from armed confrontation and towards cooperation. But since taking office he has increased combat forces in Afghanistan, expanded our air strikes in Pakistan, shifted the fighting in Iraq onto hired mercenaries and local soldiers, and pledged his “full support” to the “heroic” CIA. Obama doesn’t want to end the war, he wants to fight it smarter, cutting our losses in some areas while stepping up attacks in others, aiming to salvage a partial victory. The new commander in chief has scaled down the grandiose goals that launched the war, replacing them with a fallback battle plan for maintaining some control over the Iraqi and Afghan governments,
oil supplies, and pipeline routes.

Obama Rama?

So the war continues, now with less press coverage because when mercenaries and local soldiers die, it barely makes the news. The war continues because millions of Iraqis and Afghans refuse to accept US hegemony and are willing to die to defeat it. The war continues with no end in sight because Obama refuses to abandon this drive for hegemony.

He refuses not because he’s evil but because too much is at stake. A defeat in this strategic area would be devastating. Many of the privileged leases that US petroleum companies own on Mideast oil would be canceled. These favorable leases help keep fuel and petro-chemical prices comparatively low in the USA. Without them, prices would soar, eliminating much of our economic advantage. The loss of this competitive edge would mark the decline of American dominance. It would be particularly disastrous for the US military, which is the world’s largest consumer of oil. We would become one player among several, no more powerful than the European Union, Russia, China, or India. Obama knows that any US president who moved in such an egalitarian direction would be out of office very soon.

The corporate elite backed him because he could calm the waters of discontent and create superficial changes that would allow them to maintain their power. His eloquence and charisma revived hope in America. We want so much to believe him that we overlook that he’s still killing thousands of our fellow human beings. Obama is proving to be the ultimate cosmetic change. His performance is another American triumph of image over actuality.

A similar swindle occurred in the 2006 election campaign. The Democrats won control of the Senate and House of Representatives by promising to end the war. Instead, a few months later they voted a huge increase in military spending and supported US troop surges.

These betrayals of democracy show that our government doesn’t really represent us but rather the business interests. If they need cheap oil, the president and congress will make war to get it for them, with time-out every few years for some campaign rhetoric about peace. It’s obvious now that their rhetoric is lies. Obama’s morphing into a war president makes it clear that expecting “change you can believe in” from the Democratic Party is a delusion.

“The Morphing of Obama” is the introduction to the book RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War, which presents the first-person experiences of war resisters, deserters, and peace activists in the USA, Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Recently released by Trine Day, it’s a journey along diverse paths of nonviolence, the true stories of people working for peace in unconventional ways. Other chapters are posted in The Socjournal and on a page of the publisher’s website at http://media.trineday.com/radicalpeace

 

William T. Hathaway is a Special Forces combat veteran turned peace activist. His other books include A WORLD OF HURT (Rinehart Foundation Award), CD-RING, and SUMMER SNOW. He is an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. A selection of his writing is available at www.peacewriter.org.

America is not broke.

Fat Cat

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we’d have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic — and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.

I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here’s what I learned: Money doesn’t grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inventers, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don’t pay their fair share of taxes, the state can’t function. The schools can’t produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs. That too caused a reduction in revenue. And the population ended up suffering because they reduced their taxes, reduced our jobs and took wealth out of the system, removing it from circulation.

The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. It’s part of the Big Lie. It’s one of the three biggest lies of the decade: America/Wisconsin is broke, Iraq has WMD, the Packers can’t win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.

The truth is, there’s lots of money to go around. LOTS. It’s just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know they have committed crimes to make this happen and they know that someday you may want to see some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for them. But just in case that doesn’t work, they’ve got their gated communities, and the luxury jet is always fully fueled, the engines running, waiting for that day they hope never comes. To help prevent that day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:

1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day – this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart — because you — yes, you, too! — might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep your head down, your nose to the grindstone, don’t rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.

2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it’s Goodbye savings accounts. Goodbye pensions. Goodbye United States Treasury. Goodbye jobs and homes and future. It was friggin’ awesome and it scared the shit out of everyone. “Here! Take our money! We don’t care. We’ll even print more for you! Just take it! But, please, leave our lives alone, PLEASE!”

The executives in the board rooms and hedge funds could not contain their laughter, their glee, and within three months they were writing each other huge bonus checks and marveling at how perfectly they had played a nation full of suckers. Millions lost their jobs anyway, and millions lost their homes. But there was no revolt (see #1).

Until now. On Wisconsin! Never has a Michigander been more happy to share a big, great lake with you! You have aroused the sleeping giant know as the working people of the United States of America. Right now the earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge. Your message has inspired people in all 50 states and that message is: WE HAVE HAD IT! We reject anyone tells us America is broke and broken. It’s just the opposite! We are rich with talent and ideas and hard work and, yes, love. Love and compassion toward those who have, through no fault of their own, ended up as the least among us. But they still crave what we all crave: Our country back! Our democracy back! Our good name back! The United States of America. NOT the Corporate States of America. The United States of America!

So how do we get this? Well, we do it with a little bit of Egypt here, a little bit of Madison there. And let us pause for a moment and remember that it was a poor man with a fruit stand in Tunisia who gave his life so that the world might focus its attention on how a government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity.

Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois — whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn’t have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn’t be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. No, they had to have more – something more than all the riches in the world. They had to have our soul. They had to strip us of our dignity. They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or bulletproof vests for everyone on the police force or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job — their $19,000 a year job. That’s how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilots flying people here to Madison. But he’s stopped trying to get better pay. All he asks is that he doesn’t have to sleep in his car between shifts at O’Hare airport. That’s how despicably low we have sunk. The wealthy couldn’t be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year. They wanted to take away his sleep. They wanted to demean and dehumanize him. After all, he’s just another slob.

And that, my friends, is Corporate America’s fatal mistake. But trying to destroy us they have given birth to a movement — a movement that is becoming a massive, nonviolent revolt across the country. We all knew there had to be a breaking point some day, and that point is upon us. Many people in the media don’t understand this. They say they were caught off guard about Egypt, never saw it coming. Now they act surprised and flummoxed about why so many hundreds of thousands have come to Madison over the last three weeks during brutal winter weather. “Why are they all standing out there in the cold? I mean there was that election in November and that was supposed to be that!

“There’s something happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you…?”

America ain’t broke! The only thing that’s broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it’s one person, one vote, and it’s the thing the rich hate most about America — because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!

Madison, do not retreat. We are with you. We will win together.

The Microsoft Touch

Bill Gates should stick to what he does best: selling crappy software. As an education analyst he is a fish out of water. In response to the news that education budgets are being slashed all across the US, Bill Gates put forward an argument (“How Teacher Development Could Revolutionize Our Schools,” Washington Post, 2/28/11) in which he suggests that the US is actually spending more on education. Wow, Bill, I guess that’s the kind of acuity that helped build Microsoft into the world’s greatest knock-off software company.

According to Bill, for decades the US has spent more on education and garnered less from it: fewer graduates, lower test scores, etc. Blame for this sorry state of affairs rests with (drum roll please) under-performing teachers. How’s that for a fresh, new insight? NOT!

Even better, Bill’s silver bullet is to “flip the curve.” In other words, in the finest tradition of boardroom showmanship, Bill contends that we can solve the education crisis by–wait for it–spending less on education and demanding more. Ta-daa! It’s enough to bring tears to a stockholder’s eyes. You go, Billy Boy.

The only problem is that Bill’s curve-flipping argument is utter piffle. The truth is that education budgets have been shrinking for a long time. Yes, you can jiggle the numbers around to create an illusion of prosperity, but the truth is that education has been taking it on the chin for a long time. If you doubt my word, do some research. Educators everywhere will tell you that budgets have been getting tighter rather than fatter. Further, the long-term educational budget squeeze has netted predictable results: teachers are working harder in resource-starved schools and students are treading water.

The good news is that Bill Gates has figured out how to fix all of those problems. Oh, yeah. Bill is going to develop “new metrics” with which to identify high-performing teachers. Next, Bill is going to crowd more students into those good classrooms. (BTW, there’s no need to be concerned about the negative correlation between classroom over-crowding and educational quality is there? Nah.) Naturally, good teachers are going to love this arrangement because Bill is going to increase their salaries by firing all of the bad teachers. And this will all be accomplished at no additional cost to the taxpayer. Wahoo.

Still, I can’t help noticing that there’s just one teensy little problem with Bill Gates’ vision for American education: Bill doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about. Why does a software geek think that he’s qualified to create educational metrics? Given the many quality concerns that have plagued Microsoft over the years, I think it’s fair to say that quality assessment has never been Bill Gates’ strong suit. If education is experiencing a crisis, I would hazard that it is due to the interventions of self-appointed experts like Bill Gates who wield their ignorance like weapons.

If there is one thing that Bill Gates and I can agree on, it’s that the solution to the education crisis is simple. Of late, our highest national budgetary priorities have been investments in failure: bailing out bankrupt corporations, propping up failing banks, distributing bonuses to incompetent bankers, etc. However, I argue that, instead of investing in failure, we should return to the days of investing in success. Certainly, creating an educational system that was the envy of the 20th century world was not cheap, but it is an investment that has paid huge dividends. Perhaps more than anyone, Bill Gates should grasp the fact that the US became the leader of the information society by making a bigger investment in education than anyone else. If we cut our investment in education–as Bill Gates advocates–then the information revolution will certainly surge ahead in the 21st century, but the US will no longer be at the forefront. However, if we want to sustain the kind of opportunities to which Bill Gates owes his success, then we will have to redouble our commitment to education.

Oh, and one last point: expertise matters. Software experts should run software companies. The more we rely on software experts to design educational policy, the greater the chance that we’ll end up with Microsoft Vista-version of schooling.

I was sitting in full lotus, body wrapped in a blanket, mind rapt in deep stillness, breathing lightly, wisps of air curling into the infinite space behind my closed eyes. My mantra had gone beyond sound to become a pulse of light in an emptiness that contained everything.

An electric shock flashed down my spine and through my body. My head snapped back, limbs jerked, a cry burst from my throat. Every muscle in my body contracted — neck rigid, jaws clenched, forehead tight. Bolts of pain shot through me in all directions, then drew together in my chest. Heart attack! I thought. I managed to lie down, then noticed I wasn’t breathing — maybe I was already dead. I groaned and gulped a huge breath, which stirred a whirl of thoughts and images.

Lotus Flower of Consciousness

Vietnam again: Rotor wind from a hovering helicopter flails the water of a rice paddy while farmers run frantically for cover. Points of fire spark out from a bamboo grove to become dopplered whines past my ears. A plane dives on the grove to release a bomb which tumbles end over end and bursts into an orange globe of napalm. A man in my arms shakes in spasms as his chest gushes blood.

I held my head and tried to force the images out, but the montage of scenes flowed on, needing release. I could only lie there under a torrent of grief, regret, terror, and guilt. My chest felt like it was caving in under the pressure. I clung to my mantra like a lifeline to sanity. I was breathing in short, shallow gasps, but gradually my breath slowed and deepened, the feelings became less gripping, and I reoriented back into the here and now: my small room in Spain on a Transcendental Meditation teacher training course.

I lay on my narrow bed stunned by this flashback from four years ago when I’d been a Green Beret in Vietnam. I had thought I’d left all that behind, but here it was again.

I sat up and was able to do some yoga exercises but couldn’t meditate. Instead I took a walk on the beach. For the rest of that day and the next I was confused and irritable and could hardly meditate or sleep. But the following day I felt lightened and relieved, purged of a load of trauma, and my meditations were clear. My anxiety about the war was much less; the violence was in the past, not raging right now in my head.

Gradually I became aware of a delicate joy permeating not just me but also my surroundings. I knew somehow it had always been there, inhering deep in everything, but my stress had been blocking my perception of it. I felt closer to the other people on the course, connected by a shared consciousness. Then I started feeling closer to everything around me; birds and grass, even rocks and water were basically the same as me. Our surface separations were an illusion; essentially we were all one consciousness expressing itself in different forms. Rather than being just an isolated individual, I knew I was united with the universe, joined in a field of felicity. This perception faded after a few days, but it gave me a glimpse of what enlightenment must be like.

The whole experience was a dramatic example of what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi called “unstressing,” the nervous system’s purging itself of blockages caused by our past actions. Since my past actions had been extreme, the healing process was also extreme.

I had begun meditating in 1968, several months after returning from the war. I’d come back laden with fear and anger, but I had denied those emotions, burying them under an “I’m all right, Jack,” attitude. I was tough, I could take it, I was a survivor. Within certain parameters I could function well, but when my superficial control broke down, I would fall into self-destructive depressions. I finally had to admit I was carrying a huge burden of stress, and I knew I had to get rid of that before I could live at peace with myself or anyone else.

My best friend from Special Forces, Keith Parker, had started doing Transcendental Meditation and said it made his mind clear and calm. I tried it and found he was right. When I meditated, I sat with eyes closed and thought a mantra, a sound without meaning that took my mind to quieter, finer levels and eventually beyond all mental activity to deep silence. Subjectively, TM was like diving down through an inner ocean into a realm of serenity. The effects were more real than anything I’d experienced through prayer or psychedelics. My stress and pressure began to be relieved.

I started going on World Peace Assemblies, large courses led by Maharishi or one of his assistants where we meditated as a group. This strengthened the effects, making me feel both tranquil and energized. Then I attended this four-month course to learn to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation. Every day we did hours of “rounding,” repeating cycles of meditation, yoga asanas, and breathing exercises, each taking us deeper towards transcendental consciousness. Afternoons and evenings Maharishi would answer questions and teach us how to be teachers of meditation.

One of his favorite topics was the connection between modern science and Vedic science. After getting a master’s degree in physics, he had studied metaphysics with one of the great swamis of India, so he could integrate both worlds. He taught us how the unified field that physics has discovered is the same as our own consciousness, that the fundamental level of the universe is the fundamental level of ourselves. And most importantly, he taught us how to experience this unity, where the duality of subject and object disappears and separation merges into oneness. This is the source of creation, a realm of bliss where even the concept of enemy doesn’t exist. It’s the level from which energy manifests into matter and form. Enlightened people live there all the time, but all of us can experience it, and once we do, our reality is different.

Ordinarily, our awareness is directed via sense perception outwards to physical objects. When we meditate, we reverse this direction and move our awareness back towards its source, the unified field. The mind goes inward and perceives progressively more refined levels of thinking until all thoughts drop away and we reach the ground state of transcendental consciousness, in which the mind is alert but without thoughts, pure awareness without an object. In place of thoughts, we are filled with a joy that can only be described as divine. Here we are united with all of creation. We are no longer observing the universe; we are the universe.

The path to transcendental consciousness, however, is not always smooth. Our stresses — the inner effects of past actions — can make our mind murky and unsettled, thus blocking us off from a clear experience of the transcendent. But stress can be healed. During Transcendental Meditation the nervous system repairs itself and removes the obstructions so that our awareness isn’t confined to the surface thinking level but can flow into the silent depths, providing deep rest for the mind and body. In this physiological condition, stress is cured and higher states of consciousness experienced.

The process can be unsettling because as stresses are dissolved, some of their qualities may affect our awareness in the form of physical pain, old buried emotions, or hectic streams of thoughts. Sometimes the unconscious has to be made conscious before it can be healed. I’d had a first-hand experience of this sort of unstressing, and it cleared away my war trauma. I haven’t had a flashback in all the years since then, but I’ve had many experiences of the blissful unity that came afterwards.

The deep calm of meditation is more than just a subjective experience. Physiological research has shown that during TM oxygen consumption decreases twice as much as it does during deep sleep. Brain waves become more coherent, changing from the usual scattered, disordered patterns into synchronized waves coordinating across both hemispheres, an indication of more integrated mental functioning. Blood flow to the brain increases. On the skin, electrical conductance decreases, a sign of relaxation. In the blood stream, the stress hormone cortisol decreases; serotonin, a neurotransmitter that relieves depression and promotes well being, increases; arginine vasopressin, a hormone that regulates blood pressure and improves memory and learning ability, increases; blood lactate level decreases, indicating lessened anxiety. And rather than being in a trance, the person is fully alert and aware of the surroundings. This physiological condition defines a fourth state of consciousness distinct from the three usual states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. In this rejuvenating transcendental consciousness, the physiology repairs the damage done by traumatic events and illnesses.

More than anything else I’ve experienced, Transcendental Meditation creates a peaceful inner change. The personality and basic self remain the same, but fear and hostility diminish. We become friendlier to ourselves, and so we can be friendlier to others. As our personal stresses are healed, the mind functions better and we gain access to more of our mental potential. We’re more able to perceive and correct the sources of social stress that surround us.

Recent research has shown that the effects don’t stop with the individual. Large groups of people meditating together produce coherence and stability not just in themselves but also in the society around them. This extended effect has been demonstrated in experiments in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Iowa, Washington DC, New Delhi, Manila, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iran, and Holland where large groups met for long meditations. During every assembly, crime, violence, and accidents in the surrounding region dropped and the composite Quality of Life Index for public health, economics, and social harmony rose. All the changes were statistically highly significant. The groups of meditators improved the whole society: negativity decreased, positivity increased. After the assemblies ended, the figures returned to their previous levels. The results were calculated by comparing data from different time periods to insure that the only variable was the meditation course, thus establishing it as the cause of the change.

I attended two of these assemblies, in Washington DC and Iowa, and the experiences were wonderful. Meditating with thousands of other people strengthens the results. The mental emanations reinforce one another into a palpable effect of group consciousness. I enjoyed deeper levels of inner silence and clearer infusions of transcendental energy. Outside of meditation, we treated one another with a harmony and tenderness that I’d never experienced in a group of people before. It was a taste of what an ideal society could be like.

How can meditators sitting with their eyes closed influence people many miles away? Quantum physics describes how everything in the universe is connected through underlying fields of energy. The electromagnetic field is an example. A transmitter sends waves through this invisible field, and receivers many miles away instantly convert them into sound and pictures. Similarly, our minds send mental energy through the field of consciousness that connects everyone. We are all continually transmitting and receiving these influences. The mental atmosphere we share is loaded with them, and the program they’re broadcasting is frequently one of fear, frustration, anger and aggression. This toxicity pollutes the collective consciousness, resulting in cloudy thinking and harmful actions. All of us are affected — and infected — to some degree by this. Under this sway, persons with a heavy load of personal stress become more prone to turn to crime to solve their problems. As this negative atmosphere intensifies and the pressures mount, groups of people turn to the mass criminality of warfare.

Wars are hurricanes of the collective consciousness. Hurricanes relieve the physical atmosphere of excess heat that has built up. They result afterwards in a more balanced climatic condition, but they do that destructively. Similarly, wars relieve excess stress in the psychic atmosphere and bring a temporary peace, but their destructiveness generates more stress and another war.

In contrast to this stormy approach, a meditator in transcendental consciousness broadcasts the qualities inherent to this plane: peace, orderliness, harmony. And when many meditators reach transcendental consciousness together, their energies reinforce one another into a surge of positivity that overrides the stressful emissions of the surrounding population. The minds of everyone in the area receive this broadcast of coherence. It’s a very subtle effect that is under the limen of most people’s perceptual awareness, but they are influenced through this field where all human minds are joined. This life-nurturing energy purifies the collective consciousness of fear and hostility before those negative forces can build up and erupt into crime and war.

New experiments demonstrated the effects on war. As civil war was raging in Lebanon, a group gathered nearby in Israel to practice long meditations. During their assembly, the intensity of fighting in Lebanon lessened and war deaths plummeted. In Israel, crime, traffic accidents, fires, and other indicators of social disorder decreased. All the changes were statistically highly significant.

A further experiment showed even more dramatic results. According to the ancient Vedic tradition, if a very large number of people meditate together, positive influences will occur globally. Maharishi decided to test this with seven thousand meditators, the square root of one percent of the world population. He gathered them together at the TM university in Fairfield, Iowa, for long meditations. The results thousands of miles away in Lebanon were a seventy-one percent decrease in war deaths, a sixty-eight percent decrease in injuries, a forty-eight percent decrease in combat incidents, and a sixty-six percent increase in cooperative efforts to end the civil war. A time-series analysis of the results confirmed the causation.

Groups of seven thousand meditators also reduce terrorism. During three of these large assemblies, worldwide terrorism dropped by an average of seventy-two percent as compared to all other weeks in a two-year period, based on data compiled by the Rand Corporation. Statistical analysis ruled out the possibility that the reduction was due to cycles, trends, seasonal changes, or drifts in the measures used.

Peer-reviewed studies of these experiments have been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Mind and Behavior, Journal of Crime and Justice, Social Indicators Research, and other academic publications. Twenty-three studies based on fifty experiments document the long-distance effects of large groups of meditators in reducing violence and improving quality of life.

With this overwhelming evidence Maharishi approached the governments of the world and requested that they establish these groups on a permanent basis to secure peace and social harmony.

The governments of the world weren’t interested.

So Maharishi decided to build a long-term group. With the help of a wealthy donor he constructed a residential center in India and filled it with seven thousand meditators practicing several hours a day. The other experiments had been short-term, lasting a few weeks or months, but this one lasted two years — a time that fundamentally changed the world. The Cold War ended, communism collapsed, the people of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union freed themselves of totalitarian rule, the Berlin Wall came down, eighty nations signed an agreement that saved the ozone layer, black and white South Africans dismantled apartheid, hostile borders became open and friendly, former enemies signed arms reduction and nonaggression treaties. It was a period of unprecedented good will, a breakthrough for world peace.

But the donor ran out of money. He had already expended most of his fortune supporting the group and couldn’t continue. Maharishi tried again to convince governments to take over the funding, an amount per year that was a fraction of what they spend on the military per one heartbeat.

Again, no government was interested. Why did they turn down such a scientifically verified program that would cost little, harm nothing, and possibly bring world peace?

In three of the countries that participated in the initial experiments, the governments were thrown out of office after the assemblies. Three dictators — the Shah in Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua, and Marcos in the Philippines — had invited the TM teachers because their populations were rising in rebellion. They hoped the meditating groups would act as a social tranquilizer that would pacify the rebels. The opposite turned out to be the case. The increased coherence generated by the groups enabled the whole society to join together and throw out the dictators with a minimum of violence. Other governments didn’t want to risk losing power through a similar upsurge in the collective consciousness of their people.

Another reason was that although many governments pay lip service to peace, they don’t really want it. What they want is to use the military to control their people and enforce their aggressive foreign policies. They also profit from the arms trade; peace would be bad for business.

A third reason is that the concept of meditators being able to decrease violence half the world away is just too unconventional for most politicians to comprehend. It doesn’t fit the worldview they’ve been educated into. Our society is still living in the shadow of nineteenth-century empiricism, where matter was seen as the basis of reality. Science has moved far beyond this position, but the old view still has a lingering effect on our thinking, causing us to reject what we don’t understand. The insights of unified field physics are only slowly being absorbed by the general population. Most people can’t yet comprehend that energy rather than matter is the basic component of the universe, and that this energy is identical with our own consciousness.

In addition, the intellectual rebellion against dogmatic religion has gone to the opposite extreme where many people now embrace skepticism as the ultimate wisdom. Doubt has become the new orthodoxy, and definitive statements about the world are automatically suspect.

Seeing consciousness as primary and matter as being manifested from it is a whole different way of looking at the universe and will require some getting used to. But every paradigm shift in human thinking has had to confront the prejudices of its time. As Arthur Schopenhauer said, a new worldview is first ridiculed, then attacked, and finally accepted as self-evident.

But unfortunately in the early 1990s when the group of seven thousand meditators had to be dissolved, negative consequences followed swiftly: The USA decided for full-spectrum dominance and developed new nuclear weapons; the first Gulf War broke out; Yugoslavia dissolved into violent chaos; terrorism multiplied. Destructive trends in all areas of life continue to engulf us.

Maharishi didn’t give up, though. He started rebuilding the group on his own. To finance it, he raised the prices for learning TM and for his ayurvedic health programs. Although Maharishi died in 2008, there’s currently a group of four thousand in India and two thousand in Iowa, both of them growing. If the number of meditators continues to increase, we could all be in for a new era.

Scientific evidence indicates this technique can cure the root cause of war — stress in the collective consciousness — and bring world peace. This could be the most important discovery of our time, and we can all participate in it. Several studies have shown that individuals meditating on their own for twenty minutes twice a day also contribute to this effect. More information and citations on the research can be found at www.permanentpeace.org. *

RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War presents the first-person experiences of war resisters, deserters, and peace activists in the USA, Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Just released by Trine Day, it’s a journey along diverse paths of nonviolence, the true stories of people working for peace in unconventional ways.

William T. Hathaway is a former Special Forces officer turned peace writer and activist. His other books include A WORLD OF HURT (Rinehart Foundation Award), CD-RING, and SUMMER SNOW. He is an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. A selection of his work is available at www.peacewriter.org.

A Threat to the Species?

Darwin’s 1859 groundbreaking theory of Natural Selection presented in The Origin of Species is widely accepted by the scientific community. The basics of this theory are that favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations. Over time, this process may result in adaptations specializing organisms for particular ecological niches and may eventually result in the emergence of new species. It seems today that the principles laid by Darwin extend way beyond the development of organisms and are applicable to a wide range of social and technological processes.

Many tend to mistake the favorable traits for survival with the strongest ones. However, observing many different groups of species over many generations’ reveals that the characteristics associated with survival and flourishing were not always those that made the species the strongest, most beautiful, or even of highest intellectual properties. On the contrary, the highest capability of survival relates to those heritable traits that favor an “averaged optimum”, that is, those qualities that on one hand well address a wide range of challenges, but on the other hand do not compromise or threaten members of the group or of similar groups. In this way the ecological or social niche within which they can survive remains broad. Favoring an “averaged optimum” results in gradual and modest changes in the heritable traits of the dominant majority. While the most powerful and exotic breeds often face constant threat of extinction, varieties of the same species that are neither threatening nor exotic increase in numbers. For example, while leopards (free and those in captivity) are nearly extinct, their species-related cats face no general threat. Being powerful and unique may present an inherent inability to survive over time.

These principles seem to be equally relevant and applicable to processes within human society, especially as relates to an individual’s evolution within large organizations. Therefore, the promotion of an individual with a broad range of “good” talents, who does not impose great threat to colleagues, seems to be more natural than the promotion of an exceptionally talented individual who may pose such threat. Similar constraints seem to apply also when in politically-oriented organizations a leader must be chosen. In such organizations, an individual with an “averaged optimum” who can co-exist and not compromise the interests of the broadest number of members is the most favorable candidate to be selected.

In genetics, the evolution of a superior strain that endangers the survival of other weaker strains would most likely have a negative effect on overall survival as it would be more vulnerable to future genetic flaws. Therefore, a variety of strains of similar averaged potential “strength”, covering a wide range of genetic characteristics present a more viable option, even when compared to a single “super” strain.

Similarly, in the world of technology there is great concern that the evolution of a single “super technology” in a given field can stifle overall development. In this scenario, similar technologies with different approaches would find it difficult to compete. For that reason, regulations demand that competition be active in the marketplace.
The level of the “averaged optimum” varies from field to field in order to enable proper functioning of the organization, technology, society.

In nature and in society, the non-threatening median seems to be an inherently instilled target. Is it a mode to protect from radical changes that may be inflicted by unique individuals?

Without current great efforts at its preservation, the leopard, an animal requiring a specific ecology, would be a doomed species while its cousin, the cat, thrives.

Choices, choices, choices

Morality – Has it ever occurred to you how difficult it is to be a good person? In fact it seems that even the best people amongst us, cannot be good all the time – how many times have we not heard of priests, ministers, politicians or soccer moms, whom everyone around them, saw as the best people of their community; giving, loyal, honest, selfless and hardworking – who turned out to be sexual predators, tax evaders or drug abusers? Who were leading their perfect life, with perfect marks, perfect children, degrees, gardens and characters and in secret living a shady life of porn, abuse or addiction? I have realized something for myself: It is not possible to be good all the time. It is not possible to be the model citizen, the perfect mom, a good person. Why? Because ‘good’ is a polarity – the polarity of ‘bad’ and as such the balance will always tip from one end to the other. It might take years or months, we might be living both the good and the bad at the same time, exerting the good to the public, shamefully or spitefully keeping the bad hidden – but it is there.

I Realized that it is not possible to be good, without also being bad – and that no matter how good deeds I would do, how much I would try to redeem and clean myself from the bad, it was not possible – because inevitably the balance would tip and I would find myself doing or saying exactly that I had been fighting and trying to keep away. This explains why these seemingly good people, after years of being law abiding citizens, suddenly go on a killing spree or leave their family: because the good requires an equal bad to balance itself – and we, we are caught in the middle constantly having to keep the bad away, doing our duties, while thinking about the teenage daughter next door or just another glass of red wine. So if bad follows good in an infinite balance that seems to be as accurate as a law of physics, can we actually say that there is such a thing as being a good person?

I discovered for myself that being a good person, that doing the right thing, made me feel good and that this was the primary reason for why I tried to be a good person – because it made me feel good, it made me feel better about myself – When the balanced tipped and I then did what I considered bad, I felt bad, or even reversed, felt constrained by the good and liberated by embracing the bad.

This world as we collectively participate in it and portray it, through our movies, news and public life, confirms for ourselves that the world is good, that we are good – that there is something inherently or at least possibly good underneath it all. To this we give our hope, our faith, our donations to churches and charity organizations, to show and prove to ourselves that we are capable of treating each other with dignity and respect. I discovered for myself that I would do anything to feel good, to feel like a good person – I would follow any leader that told me that what they were promoting was in the name of the good – I dreaded the feeling of being a bad person. But no matter what I did, what I sacrificed or desperately wanted to be true, the bad kept luring in the shadows as a monster that I could not rid myself of. I tried everything, from meditation and anti-materialism, to positive affirmations and vegetarianism. I was deeply committed and truly believed that this time, each time, I would succeed. And in these states of ‘purity’ and cleansing myself of the blood of humanity’s humanity, I felt better than those who did not participate; the meat eaters, the shoppers, the unfaithful – I felt that I was finally raised above these savages, above the savage in myself, and I would feel surged with energy and motivation to do the right thing. Not long would pass and I would get bored, my motivation would drop and soon I would find myself in secret stealing bacon from the kitchen or buying a gossip magazine. For a while, I could block these misbehavings out and pretend like it was not me or say to myself that it was only a moment of weakness and that I would re-commit myself even more firmly to my vows. I remember as a child, praying to God for something to occur, to be saved from a situation and promising that if God would hear my prayer and give me what I wanted, I would stop being bad, I would commit myself to his work. There is no doubt that there are many monks and missionaries out there, who are in this exact position, because they have done the same. But if it is impossible to be good, because good and bad exists in a balance, what are we actually doing? And can this explain why the world exists as it does, of haves and have-nots, of people speaking good, while acting bad, of people who after years of faithful service to gods, wife’s, husband’s or governments, suddenly in a surge of energy, turn bad?

The next question is then what happens is we stop trying to be good? Many would say that the world would run amok, that Suffering would increase, that not having moral standards would legitimize people to do what they wanted; to shoot each other or steal from each other, without remorse. But if we look at the world as it exists in its figures and numbers and digits – is this not already what we are doing? Is this not what we have always done? And if the truth behind why we so desperately want to do the right thing, is that it makes us feel better, how can morality be legit? What if we take both good and bad, right and wrong, out of the equation? Then we are left with the World as it is – no reason, no meaning, no purpose – simply they way we have Accepted Ourselves to Exist and the question of if we are going to keep Accepting Ourselves to Exist like this?

Right and wrong, good and bad are implied through there already being a moral standard, already being a source – whether that is Adam and Eve, God and Satan or The Evolution of Human Consciousness and the ability to make rational and altruistic decisions. But if we look at the World as it exists in its digits and numbers of money spent on war, child deaths and financial inequality, it is evident that it cannot simply be explained through the belief in right and wrong or good and bad. Our laws are not protecting us, our faith and beliefs is not making us compassionate or loving towards our neighbors. Our prisons are not rehabilitating its convicts and the news does not show what is really going on. In our public lives on the streets, supermarkets and at our jobs, we are bullying each other, fighting to get ahead in the line, being consumed by road rage or thinking about having sex with every woman we see. Still we pretend like there is order and civility, while underneath, in our Secret Minds, we only Care about Ourselves. Many people will say that this is not so – That they Care. But if we look at the state of the World, and what we, as citizens, parents, corporations and governments are doing about it, the answer is evident.

Therefore we require of ourselves to bring about new Solutions that does not depend on hope or on a seemingly inherent dormant ability to do the right thing or to be a good person – By holding onto this, in ourselves, towards each other and our children, we are Deceiving ourselves. Therefore we require to Face ourselves, Self-Honestly, Directly, Straight Forward, even though we know that we are not gonna like what we See. And then we require of ourselves to reconsider what we are doing and what the Actual Starting-Point is, for our Participation within and as this World – not the Starting-Point that we’d like to believe we are coming from – and in this, we require to Consider the possible Solutions for Sorting our this Mess that we have Accepted and Allowed Ourselves to be and become. In this, there is no pointing fingers, blaming or pushing the Responsibility away – because each of us, even though that might require some Self-Honest Self-Investigation, are Equally a part of the Creation and Acceptance of this World as it Exists.

Then we can Finally Decide to Live according to Principles of Common Sense, wherein We Realize, that What is Best for All, at a mathematical, physical and practical level, is Best for us to. And finally rational decisions can be made, sustainable Solutions can be developed and Politics and legislation can be used to implement these Solutions. This is what we are doing at Desteni and with the Equal Money System – Because we have Realized that morality is not inherent, that good is an equivalent of bad and that the purpose of doing the right thing and being a good person, is about the energetical surge of feeling good and avoiding Facing Ourselves in taking Self-Responsibility for and as this World. Thus we require to literally Change Ourselves, the nature of ourselves that we have taken for granted and to, both within and without re-educate ourselves and Change the Principles upon which we Govern this World and Ourselves in and as it. It is simplistic to Participate – all it requires is for us to Push Ourselves to be Self-Honest, even when we do not like what we See and to, within that, make the Decision to Live differently, to Live according to What is Best for All.

Lets Sort Out this mess that we have become and Live in a way where Life is Actually Valued and where we do not have to Fear each other or what is inside us, because we have taken Self-Responsibility and re-educated Ourselves to Live according to Principles that can Stand the Test of Time and not energy, beliefs or emotions that waver and fall and in which we are Separated and Distanced from Ourselves and Each other.

Alpha Male or common bully?

Growing up as a small boy in a rinky-dink Canadian town, I was  tortured a lot. Part of the problem, I think, was I always small and undernourished for my age, weak, and an easy target. Not surprisingly, I was targeted a lot, bullied really, by students and teachers. In almost every year of my Catholic education past the grade of five, I have memories of shit and abuse heaped upon me by all those in my life who were stronger than I, which pretty much amounted to just about everybody.

But my small and timid stature was not the real cause of my abuse. Psychologically and sociologically,  the people doing the bullying were probably victims themselves. It is common psychological wisdom–shit and abuse tends to travel downhill and settle on the weakest and since I was one of the weakest it only made sense that the horror that others had experienced, or were currently experiencing, should settle on my weak  shoulders.  Perpetrators, once victims themselves, often follow the path of reduced cost.

But again, that is not the whole story of course. I can certainly envision a society where victims are not left to “take it out” on those who are weakest. I can envision a social order where the weak are protected and nurtured so that they become strong and mighty, and not pummeled just to prove a point. When we added our most recent animal friend Frodo to our family (a rottweiler cross), he was the runt of the litter. But we heaped him with love, cuddling, and attention, fed him good food, and now he’s a friendly giant, much bigger, I imagine, than others in the  litter he emerged from.

So why on this world do we beat the weak ones down?

Well, that’s ideological, archetypal really.

It is what we are taught, with words and by example.

“It is survival of the fittest,” don’t you know.

“The strong rise to the top and  weak are pummeled into submission.”

Give the gold stars, the love, and top rewards to the “winners” and screw the losers into the ground!

It is true, it is true!

Just the other day I was talking to an individual who was telling me that it was cool for two guys to get together and pound each other out because, well, that’s what males do as they sort themselves into some imagined “natural” hierarchy.  Life’s a struggle for survival and it is it in our genetic code don’t ya know. The strong “alphas” dominate the weak, we vie for our position in “the hierarchy,” and that’s just the way it is.

It is natural and inevitable, ordained and condoned!

Isn’t that true?

Aren’t we all familiar with these ideas?

This whole idea that “life is a struggle and only the strong shall thrive” is part of the common intellectual heritage of our planet and we find this ideology everywhere. We find it the social sciences where Herbert Spencer said “survival of the fittest” (Darwin of course never said that). We find it in science which teaches us about alpha males and the domination of the weak by the strong. We even find it in religions, spiritualities, and the esoteric”boys” clubs that dot the power grid of this planet where we learn that life is a struggle between good and evil (good being the stronger of the two).

Don’t ya see?

God dukes it out with Satan and we, poor imperfect little human stick pigs, are stuck in the middle, asked to choose a side, and told to prove ourselves worthy and strong else we should be  subjected to eternal torture in the fires of damnation.

It was kinda like what I experienced as a child. Life as a struggle with winners and losers (winners being defined as “good and losers being thrown out in the trash). It is a fight  sanctioned by Mother (Gaia) and approved of by Father (God).

But is it true?

Is it natural?

Is Papa God really all about the fight?

Does Mama earth really crush the weak ones out of genetic existence?

Do alpha males really dominate the weak?

Well no, it is not like that. We believe the nonsense because of our religious or scientific indoctrination; however, it is not, in fact, true. It is ideological, archetypal, and fallacious. Indeed, science is just beginning to unravel its own bullhit statements in this area.

Check this out, for example. Here is the scientist who coined the term “Alpha Male” admitting he was wrong!

Have a listen.

The concept of the alpha wolf is well ingrained in the popular wolf literature at least partly because of my book “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species,” written in 1968, published in 1970, republished in paperback in 1981, and currently still in print, despite my numerous pleas to the publisher to stop publishing it. Although most of the book’s info is still accurate, much is outdated. We have learned more about wolves in the last 40 years then in all of previous history.

One of the outdated pieces of information is the concept of the alpha wolf. “Alpha” implies competing with others and becoming top dog by winning a contest or battle. However, most wolves who lead packs achieved their position simply by mating and producing pups, which then became their pack. In other words they are merely breeders, or parents, and that’s all we call them today, the “breeding male,” “breeding female,” or “male parent,” “female parent,” or the “adult male” or “adult female.” In the rare packs that include more than one breeding animal, the “dominant breeder” can be called that, and any breeding daughter can be called a “subordinate breeder.”

A Social Prison

Now isn’t that interesting. According to the guy who coined the term, there really is no such thing as an “alpha male.” There’s a successful mom, and a successful dad, and they both hang around looking after “the pack,” but that’s about as far as it goes.  That whole alpha male thing, well that’s an aberration, really, a pathology that only emerges when we (and by “we” I mean male scientists)  take the male wolves away from their families so that we can experiment on them at our convenience. When you “imprison” them in this fashion, then you get this unnatural behaviour. As one commentator notes,  ”Apparently a fair amount of the original support for the alpha concept came from studying groups of captured, unrelated wolves.  Mech allows that in such circumstances wolves will sort themselves into hierarchies, but that those circumstances hardly ever obtain outside captivity. What he doesn’t say, but that suggests itself, is how similar this is to what happens in a human prison.” (Ref)

The bottom line?

Alpha male behaviours are unnatural, at least according to Mech who says that you almost never find the physical conditions in the natural world that cause the aberrant, aggressive, and dominating behaviour of the “alpha male.”

Archetypes

Natural Male Behaviours

So what’s up with this whole idea of alpha male? Well despite’s Mech attempt to attribute the whole alpha male mistake to a methodological foofaraw, I’m not buying it. The problem is the “alpha male” idea, from a sociological perspective, is ideological (for a course based discussion of ideology, see the second part of my introductory course Sociology 288). That is, it is not an innocent idea. It is, in fact, a justification. It is an archetype (or rather part of an archetypal constellation) that justifies the abuse of others, typically for personal gain. If a boy pummels another boy in the school yard, well that’s just what young males do (I can’t count how many times have I heard that as a parent, from other parents, teachers, and even principles in schools).  If a business man crushes some other business out of existence (perhaps throwing an entire family into poverty), he’s just doing what comes naturally. If a country invades another and takes their oil, well that’s just the way the world works. The strong pummel the weak, the alphas beat up on the betas, and the “cream” rises to the top and we should just stand aside and let it all happen because, well, that’s the way the world works. It is the alpha male thing and we’ve been doing it since our ape ancestors descended from the treetops. It is all part of a naturally evolving, divinely sanctioned, predatorial world order.

Ya right. Clearly, and as scientists and others begin to unravel their own  indoctrination, the archetypal house of cards is beginning to crumble. There is nothing genetic, evolutionary, or divine about aggressively dominating another living being. It’s just an excuse the violent bullies use to justify “taking it out” on those who are weaker.

Discussion/Comment Questions

1. What other examples of “ideological dogma passed off as scientific truth” can you come up with. What about the early work of anthropologists and archeologists (before females were allowed to enter universities), compared to the work now.
2. What are implications of this, for gender stereotypes, for the capitalist system (which is all about the domination of the “alpha” male),  and for those who justify bullying, brutish behaviour by reference to animal world?

Merna al-Marjan (not her real name) is a young Iraqi who is currently in Germany studying European history. We talked in her dormitory room, a spartan but functional cubicle in a building that embodies a hopeful change in European history: it was constructed in the nineteenth century as an army barracks but now houses university students. That’s progress.

On Merna’s small table sat a pot of peppermint tea and a plate of baklava. She’s short and plump with smooth skin the color of clover honey and deep anthracite eyes; she was wearing a long skirt of light cotton, a long-sleeved blouse, and a green paisley headscarf. We spoke in German, then later reworked the interview from my English translation.

Hathaway: “Headscarves have become a controversial item of clothing here in Germany.”

Women and the Hijab

Al-Marjan: “Yes, you can’t teach in the schools if you wear one. It’s OK for a teacher to wear a Christian crucifix but not a Muslim headscarf. I didn’t wear a hijab in Iraq, but I’ve started doing it here to show solidarity. It’s ridiculous to ban an article of clothing, a simple piece of cloth. What sort of freedom is that?

“The West has such a distorted view of Arab women. Well, of men too, but since I’m a woman, I notice that more.

“What really makes me mad is when Westerners use the way women live in the Muslim world as a justification for invading it — either with their armies or their ideas. They’re convinced we should be like them. If they were happy, that would be one thing. They could say, ‘Here, follow our example.’ But they’re much unhappier than most of us are. Their marriages and families fall apart, their children commit terrible crimes, commit suicide. Their society is fragmented into these isolated individuals who have to compete against one another. It’s a wreck, but they’re trying to force it onto us.

“Western women are convinced they need a career to be fulfilled, as if that’s some magic thing, much better than being just a mother. But if you look at the things people actually do in their careers, most of them aren’t very fulfilling. The work gets routine, then boring. I may get to be a professor, but I’ve been around enough of them to know that’s no big deal. They just juggle ideas in the air. What people do in their jobs is trivial compared to raising a family.

“The work of being a mother is devalued here, but to be the emotional center of a family, to keep everyone in balance, to know what they need on so many different levels and to give them some of that, well, that requires a much subtler intelligence than business does. It’s a deep knowledge of human beings, far more important than a job. Mothers are the real CEOs of civilization, and we need to give that power back to them, including the power to have a career, if that’s what they want.

“A family needs money, but the getting of it is dominating our lives. People are either unemployed and terribly poor or they have a job and are totally exhausted. But if we took the work that needs to be done and spread it around so everyone could work a few hours a day, then we’d have time for our families and also make some money. Life would be more balanced. Some people might end up less rich, but they’d enjoy life more. They think they need so much now only because their jobs have fixated them on that. Money has become a substitute for life. There’s never enough of it, because the things it can buy aren’t really satisfying. They just distract us from the emptiness of our lives spent chasing money. We’ve become shrunken down to coins.”

“It’s unusual to hear a young person say things like this. Where did you learn this?”

“From my mother, of course, from talking to her and watching her. Women in my country, and probably most non-western women, understand this.

“That doesn’t mean we’re content with our situation. We want to change it, but by strengthening the family. Family should be the power center of the society, rather than business. In the West, home life is subservient to the outer world of work, but that’s destructive. Work should serve the needs of the family, not the other way around.

“We definitely have to change the power between men and women. It has to be more equal. We need to make sure men don’t harm women. But we don’t need help from the all-wise Westerners to do that. Their model doesn’t work even for them, so it sure won’t work for us.”

“How did you come to be studying in Germany?”

“I won a scholarship with an essay I wrote comparing King Faisal I and Marshal Pétain. Both of them came to power by serving imperialist conquerors. Faisal helped the British take over Iraq, and Pétain helped the Germans rule France. Both were hated by their people as traitors. The current puppet president of Iraq — he’s not worth naming — is playing the same role for the Americans. But I didn’t mention this last part in my essay.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wanted to win the scholarship. The Germans don’t mind if you criticize them, but they’re very nervous about offending the Americans. They’re still an occupied country. Plus they’re not about to give a scholarship to someone they think might be a ‘Muslim extremist.’”

“Are you a Muslim extremist?”

“No, but that doesn’t matter. The Germans are running on fear now. They try to pretend they’re independent of the Americans, but they’re helping them in all sorts of ways to kill Iraqis and Afghans. And they know that’s going to lead to revenge attacks in their country, so they’re wary now about letting Muslims into Germany. To them, we’re all potential terrorists.”

“How is Germany helping the USA in the war?”

“One example came out in the news recently, although it happened before the war started. Back then the Germans had spies in the Iraqi Defense Ministry, and they managed to steal a copy of the plans for defending against the US invasion — where our troops were going to be stationed, where anti-aircraft batteries would be placed, where supplies would be stored. The Germans gave those plans to the Americans, so they knew exactly where to bomb. That caused the death of tens of thousands of our soldiers. Now their families need to avenge them.

“The Germans are also helping train this new army and police in suppressing the people. And they’re sending military equipment to fight the insurgency. Iraqis are being killed with weapons made in Germany. German politicians call that peace keeping, but it’s actually war making. We don’t forget things like that.”

“Do you know people in the insurgency?”

“Of course … some of them very well. In the West all resistance fighters are portrayed as fanatics, but many of them aren’t even religious. They just want to throw the invaders out.

“Even fanatics like al-Qaeda aren’t really aggressors. They’re fighting a defensive war. Have you read al-Qaeda’s demands?”

“No.”

“I’m not surprised. The Western media never publish them because the demands are so reasonable. They basically come down to, ‘Go home and leave us alone. Pull your soldiers, your CIA agents, your missionaries, your corporations out of Muslim territory. If you do that, we’ll stop attacking you.’ Nothing about destroying the West or forcing it to become Islamic. Just that the West should stay in the West.

“If people knew this — knew how easy it would be to stop terrorism — they wouldn’t want to fight this crazy war. That’s why the media ignore al-Qaeda’s demands. Western leaders don’t want people to see that the war’s real purpose isn’t to stop terrorism but to control this part of the world — my home. They actually want the terrorism because that gives them the excuse they need — the threat of an evil enemy.”

“But how about Israel? Is that Muslim territory?”

“It’s been Muslim since the time of the Prophet and continues to be, despite invasions by the Crusaders, the colonialists, and now the Zionists and Americans. We drove out the first two, and we’ll drive out the second two. None of them have the right to take what belongs to the Arab people. The barbarians keep descending on us from the north, and we keep throwing them out. It’s an old story.

“Just because the ancestors of the Jews might have lived there two thousand years ago doesn’t give them any claim to that land today. It’s absurd for them to say it belongs to them after all this time. We’re not going to let them get away with it.”

“Would you consider yourself a resistance fighter?”

“To the extent that one can fight with ideas, yes. I don’t believe in setting bombs, though. But my brother does. He didn’t start out that way, though. He used to be pro-American. He got his PhD in physics there. He likes the people and still has friends there. But he’s come to hate the government.”

“What happened to him?”

“Well … it happened to our whole family.”

“Tell me about it.”

Merna glanced away, grimaced, and chewed on her cheek for a moment. “One night very late I woke up to a huge crash. The house was shaking. I thought it was an earthquake, then I thought it was a bomb. I heard shouts downstairs. Someone was in our home. All I could think was, ‘They’ll kill us! I don’t want to die in my pajamas.’

“Then I thought, ‘Better in pajamas than naked.’ I was afraid whoever it was would rape me and then kill me. I wanted to jump out the window, but it was the second floor and I was too afraid. Then I thought, ‘Jumping is my only chance. If I don’t break my leg, maybe I can run away. Where, though? Anywhere, just away.’

“I put on a robe and shoes and went to the window. Men with guns were standing in our yard, soldiers with little American flags sewn on their sleeves. Their truck was parked in front of our house. I couldn’t run away.

“Inside the house men were stamping up our stairs, shouting something I didn’t understand. One of them kicked my door open, and another one shined a flashlight on me. The flashlight was on his rifle, which was pointed at me. I screamed and prayed ‘Allahu Akbar.’

“The door kicker ran at me, grabbed my hand, and dragged me downstairs. I fell onto the stairs, but he just kept dragging. My father, mother and brother were in the living room, all of them in pajamas. My mother was shaking and crying. The door to our house wasn’t there anymore. They’d blown it off. The air was smoky.

“While two soldiers pointed their rifles at us, the others searched us. They made us raise our arms and spread our legs, then they patted all over our bodies. One of them stuck his hand between my legs and smirked. Another squeezed my mother’s breasts.

“My brother shouted and lunged at the man, but the Americans grabbed him. I heard a shot — so close it hurt my ears — and thought they’d killed him, but then pieces of the ceiling fell down — one of them had shot into the air. They pushed my brother to the floor and kicked him in the head and stomach and between his legs. He tried to kick back until one of them put the barrel of his gun to his head. My brother stopped, and they punched him in the face, yanked his arms behind his back, snapped handcuffs on him, and kicked him again, calling him a sand nigger. Then they handcuffed my father to keep him from defending us.

“‘Now they’re going to rape mom and me and make my father and brother watch, then kill us all,’ I thought.

“My father is a gentle man. He’s a professor of Arabic literature, retired now. Seeing him so helpless and humiliated … it broke my heart. And I’d never seen hatred on his face until that moment.

“After they searched us, they demanded to see our identity papers. Imagine — they break into our house and demand to see our identity papers, as if we don’t belong here. When we gave them the papers, they compared our names to a list they had. ‘Where is Ahmad al-Marjan?’ one of them shouted at us. ‘I am Ahmed al-Marjan. I don’t know any Ahmad,’ my father answered. ‘You’ve got the same last name, you must know him. Where is he?’ the American demanded. ‘There are thousands of al-Marjans. I do not know them all. You have the wrong house. You have attacked the wrong family. You have ruined our home for nothing,’ my father said.

“In fact Ahmad was our cousin, and he was in the resistance. We knew where his parents lived, but he’d gone underground, sleeping in different houses, striking at the Americans and their puppet police whenever he could find the opportunity. I was terrified the Americans would torture us into giving information on him. How much did they already know? If they knew he was our cousin, then they would know we were lying to them, and they would torture us more. What would the torture be? Whatever it was, I didn’t think I could take it. But if I told about him, and they arrested him or killed him, how could I live with myself? I’m sure our whole family was having similar thoughts.

“‘Are any of you in the resistance?’ the American demanded. “No,’ my father answered. ‘Who do you know in the resistance?’ ‘No one that I know of. People do not tell such things.’ ‘Do you have any weapons or explosives or information about the resistance?’ ‘No.’ ‘If you have any, and you tell us now, we’ll let you go. But if you say no and we find it, we’ll take you to prison.’ ‘We have nothing.’

“They made us lie on the floor, then searched the house — dumping out drawers, knocking books off shelves. They pulled up the rug, I guess to see if we had a trap door, turned over furniture and cut open the cushions on the divan. All the while one of them was pointing his rifle at us.

“These men stank. Their bodies were dirty, their clothes were dirty. They were disgusting. Muslims are very clean people, and it was an insult just to have these filthy soldiers in our home, let alone that they were destroying it. You could tell they were afraid, but they covered it up by being mean. They threw cigarette butts on our rug and smeared them out with their boots. They spat on the floor.

“Some of them went into my parents’ bedroom and started tearing it apart. They threw clothes out of the closets and ripped off the boards joined to the wall. Threw their mattress onto the floor. I could hear others tearing up the kitchen and my brother’s and my rooms upstairs.

“When they didn’t find anything, they tied bags over my father’s and brother’s heads and took them with them. Outside, the neighbor’s dog, a big German shepherd, came running up, barking. The Americans shouted at the dog to shut up, and when it started snarling at them, one of them shot it. But didn’t kill it. The dog was squealing and writhing on the ground as they drove away.

“My father told me later the soldiers drove for about twenty minutes, then unloaded him and my brother into a group of other men they’d rounded up. He couldn’t tell where they were. The men had to sit on the ground for five hours with the bags on their heads, no water, no food, no toilets. When some of them finally had to go to the toilet in their pants, the Americans called them stinking Arabs. Then they loaded them onto another truck and drove them to a prison, not Abu Ghraib, but somewhere on an American base.

“My father was put in a big cell with twenty other older men and one broken toilet, only the floor to sleep on. Every couple of days they would interrogate him again, asking who he knew in the insurgency, where weapons were stored. Sometimes they would try to scare him into thinking he’d be tortured if he didn’t give names. They tied his hands and blindfolded him and turned on an electric saw next to his ear. The sound was terrifying, he said, but they didn’t actually cut him. He kept insisting he didn’t know anything and the raid on our house was a mistake because of the mix-up of names.

“After two weeks they let him go and offered him a job as an interpreter because his English was so good. He wanted to scream at them, ‘Get out of my life, get out of my country,’ but was afraid to. He just said no.

“The Americans tortured my brother, maybe because he’d fought back at the house. They stripped him naked, tied wires to his toes, and sent electric shocks through him, then asked him for names of people in the resistance. When he didn’t give them, they stepped up the current. He said it was a kind of pain he’d never experienced before. It took over his body like an invading force and sent his legs and arms wild, making him thrash around the floor while the Americans laughed at him. He felt as if his blood was boiling and his skin would explode. Then they threw buckets of ice-cold water on him. That almost gave him a heart attack. When he still wouldn’t talk, they told him would tie the wires to his penis. But they didn’t. They just sent him back to this big crowded cell and brought in the next man.

“My brother was actually expecting to be tortured more, but there were so many prisoners, and the Americans had to concentrate on the ones they most suspected. Those poor guys really got it — attacked with dogs when they were naked, no sleep, almost drowned, hung from hooks on the wall, beaten, drugged. He saw some of them afterwards — shattered, half crazy, the only things holding them together were hatred of the Americans and love of Allah.

“After a month they let my brother go. He came back different, much more quiet and distant. A tenderness he’d had before was gone. In its place was a bitter determination and a hard-earned pride that he hadn’t given in, they hadn’t broken him, he hadn’t told about our cousin. He was harsh, and I didn’t feel as close to him. But I loved and respected him.

“I could tell the humiliation our family had suffered was weighing on him. In our culture such things demand retaliation. That is how their effect is undone. Otherwise they remain a stain on the soul. My brother knew it was his duty to restore the family’s honor as well as his own. My father is old and my mother and I are women. We cannot be expected to make the reprisals ourselves.

“A few days after he was released, he went searching for our cousin, to join him in the resistance. Ahmad had heard he was in prison, and he said as soon as he saw my brother, he knew that he hadn’t betrayed him. Ahmad had seen many men come back from torture. The ones who didn’t break were proud and wanted to become long-term fighters. The ones who had talked were crushed and wanted to become suicide bombers to redeem themselves. The insurgency needs and honors both men. The ones who talked under torture are accepted back without accusation because everyone knows it could be them next time. Their desire for martyrdom is respected.

“My brother had no military training. I don’t think he’d ever fired a gun. Ours isn’t that sort of family. But firing a gun is a simple thing, and he got good at it. Baghdad now has so many gutted buildings, and those give good cover for snipers. But it’s very boring work, he said. You have to wait and watch for hours before you get a target — some days you never get one. The best targets are the convoys, but they’re always changing their routes for protection. Because of their fear, they tear through the streets at top speed, forcing other cars off the road, running over pedestrians, never stopping. He talked about how good it feels to spray the trucks with your Kalashnikov and see the invaders falling over. You have to shoot and run, though, because they sometimes have helicopters with them, and they’ll blow up your building with a rocket.

“When he’s out on the street, he carries a hidden pistol. A couple of times he’s been able to follow an American patrol and shoot into their backs, then disappear into the crowd. The Americans open fire in all directions. He’s sorry about the killed civilians, but this is the only way to drive out the invaders.

“The other reason he carries the pistol is to keep from being taken prisoner. If he’s ever surrounded, he’ll kill as many soldiers as he can and save the last shot for himself. He’s determined not to be captured and tortured again because he knows next time will be worse, and he’s not sure he can take it.

“He doesn’t know how many he’s killed and wounded, but it’s enough so that the family’s honor is again intact. But he wants to continue the battle. He’s now fighting the Americans on a larger scale where he can use his education. He’s in Iran working as a physicist. They are developing smaller, cheaper heat-seeking missiles to shoot down US aircraft.

“He says the main advantage the Americans have is their air force. Their soldiers don’t really believe in what they’re doing and don’t want to take risks in battle. Their main motivation is just to survive and go home, and you can’t win wars that way.

“But the USA controls the air. Their planes and helicopters can destroy a whole area, and they don’t mind killing everybody in it.

“Heat-seeking missiles are now bulky and expensive, but he and the other scientists are researching ways to micro-miniaturize the sensors and mass produce them in guidance systems. He says being able to shoot down their planes will totally change the balance of power. They’ll have to fight us face to face, and they’ll lose that way.

“I haven’t seen my brother in a year and a half. When we said good-bye, he seemed like someone else. His gentleness had been replaced by hatred and the need for vengeance. I love him and feel sorry for what he’s been through and worry he’ll be killed, but I don’t feel very comfortable with him. Violence warps people.

“He calls his project SAMs for Uncle Sam and thinks it’s a great idea. But I call it the ongoing insanity of the arms race and think it’s a terrible idea. It’ll just force the Americans to develop some new kind of horrible weapon that will kill even more people.

“We somehow have to get out of this whole way of thinking. We have to realize that war doesn’t solve problems, just creates new ones. It generates more rage that then breaks out again in violence. With all the atomic weapons, we’ll end up turning this lovely planet into a mass graveyard, not just for humans but for everyone except radiation-resistant insects.”

“Some people say fighting these small wars is a way to prevent a nuclear war. Or attacking another country is necessary to prevent them from attacking us.”

“Those are murderous lies. Every war is sold to us as a preventive war. That’s a favorite claim of tyrants, and I think some of them really believe it, that we’re being threatened by savages and have to strike against them. It’s a projection of their own personality. Hitler said he was protecting Western civilization from the Russian hordes. Saddam demonized the Iranians to scare us into war with them, just as Bush demonized the Iraqis. I’ve been reading about the Vietnam War. The hawks kept saying, ‘If we don’t fight the communists in Vietnam, we’ll have to fight them in California. They’re trying to destroy us any way they can.’ But it wasn’t true. The opposite was true. The communists were trying to build a different economic system, so the capitalists wanted to destroy them any way they could. Warmongers have always portrayed themselves as the only alternative to the brutal beasts out there. They generate fear to stay in power.

“One favorite trick of the USA is to secretly support the reactionary side in a civil war with arms and money. If their side starts to lose, they suddenly get upset about this awful war and all the people who are dying. They say they need to intervene for humanitarian reasons, to bring peace and prevent a holocaust. Then they jump in openly and try to crush the other side.”

“The war that’s going on now, how do you see that ending?”

“Disaster for the Americans. They started this war, and they deserve to lose it. They think they can win with all their money and weapons, but our people are stronger than that. We will continue to fight and resist for as long as it takes to defeat the invaders and their figurehead government.

“These so-called Iraqi Security Forces are only there for the money. They don’t believe in the cause. They won’t fight and die for the Americans, they’ll just take their money and run.

“The more people the Americans kill, they more enemies they create. They can’t kill all the people. The people are stronger. We have them surrounded, and they’re afraid to come out of their bases, just like in Vietnam. We’re going to drive them out of the country, get rid of their Arab pawns, and take back our land — oil and all. We are a patient people, and the Americans are impatient.

“One reason they are impatient is because deep down they know what they’re doing in Iraq is wrong. They can ignore that for a while, but not forever. It eats away at them. They are human too. They know they would react to an invasion they same way we are. They don’t have the heart for this fight, but we do. This is our home. We will win.

“But the tragic thing is that it won’t end there, either for Iraq or America. The violence the USA has unleashed will continue in both countries. That’s the way of barbarity. It doesn’t just stop, it keeps going on in different ways. The war may be over, but people on both sides have been infected with the disease of cruelty, and it spreads. It gets passed on, finding new victims who then turn into attackers and contaminate others with it. Violence really is a plague, and since the American inflicted it on us, they must bear the brunt of it — killings, crime, chaos in their society. They must suffer as much as the suffering they have caused. That is the divine justice.”

“Do you see any cure to this disease?”

“Sure. Give the UN the power to keep the peace. For instance, the American invasion of Iraq is a clear violation of the UN Charter, but the UN can’t do anything about it. They need enough power to outlaw invasions and other acts of war and to enforce that with economic and political sanctions strong enough to work. They could outlaw the manufacture and possession of military weapons — from assault rifles to nuclear bombs. Governments could take some of the money they spend on the military and put it into an international peace fund that would inspect world-wide for weapons and destroy them. No more military training. Send the soldiers home.

“I’m not saying there wouldn’t be problems and conflicts, but they would end up killing far fewer people. We would need to expand the World Court and give it jurisdiction to settle disputes between countries and groups of people. Conflicts would be decided by laws, not force. That’s called civilization, and it works pretty well within countries. Now we need to make it work between countries. That’ll be difficult, but we can do it … we have to.”

“Would you make people give up their personal weapons?”

“With a license they could have a pistol for protection and a simple rifle for hunting. You can’t kill huge numbers of people with those.”

“Your idea sounds definitely worth trying.”

“Think of the lives and money that would save. But the politicians and corporate executives don’t want it. They want to use the military to build their empire and hold on to power. That’s more important to them than peace. Their children don’t die in the wars.

“Governments and corporations have become enemies of the people. We need to take their power away. We can’t let them keep killing. All of us are their potential victims now. Having gone from being ruled by Saddam Hussein to George W. Bush, I can tell you we need a whole other approach to politics. There’s no real difference between those two men. They’re both murderers.

“That’s why the USA helped Hussein into power in the first place. They knew he would control Iraq with an iron fist and would never nationalize the oil. They kept him in power with massive military aid. Hussein was just a marionette of the USA who had the audacity to cut his strings and act on his own, so naturally the USA had to string him up.

“This kind of interference is the main reason America and Britain are so hated in the world. That’s why there’s terrorism. People are sick and tired of being abused, of having their politics manipulated and their economies controlled from the outside. Arabs have had it up to here with this new colonialism that the West is using to control our oil. We refuse to be dominated anymore, and we’re resisting with the only weapons we have — guerrilla warfare.”

“What about the Arab leaders who are on the US side?”

“These so-called leaders represent only the comprador elite in their countries. They serve Western interests and are hated by the people. They stay in office only with their Western arms.

“But it can’t last. The USA and the rich Arabs are doomed. Bush blew the whole show by creating too many enemies. Billions of people now oppose the USA. The USA can’t kill them all. Before Bush, the American goal of a world empire was camouflaged with diplomacy, harder to see. But his stupidity turned out to be a boon to humanity. He made the plans obvious to everyone, so mass resistance coalesced. Obama’s job is to restore the camouflage, but it’s too late.

“I’m proud to be an Arab because we’re at the forefront of this opposition. We’re standing up to the most powerful military machine the world has ever seen … and defeating it. Forty years ago the Vietnamese did it, and now we’re doing it.

“Maybe finally the Americans will learn not to try to rule over other countries. That would be a big step towards peace.”

RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War presents the first-person experiences of war resisters, deserters, and peace activists in the USA, Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Just released by Trine Day, it’s a journey along diverse paths of nonviolence, the true stories of people working for peace in unconventional ways.

William T. Hathaway is a former Special Forces officer turned peace writer and activist. His other books include A WORLD OF HURT (Rinehart Foundation Award), CD-RING, and SUMMER SNOW. He is an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. A selection of his work is available at www.peacewriter.org.