Ethics and values

I have long believed that prospects for a hopeful human future depend on radical and visionary feelings, thought, and action. Such an outlook reflects my view that the major challenges of our time cannot be met by thinking within the box, or implementing the realist agenda of doing what it is feasible while disregarding what is necessary and desirable. For instance, with respect to climate change such a conventional approach avoids asking what needs to be done to give future generations positive life prospects, but seeks, at best, to do what seems politically feasible at the moment, that is, far too little. This means not putting a cap on energy or water use, not limiting carbon emissions or prohibiting fracking, continuing to encourage economic growth, and refusing to question consumerism. In effect, this conventional approach does not meet challenges, but at most seeks to defer and mitigate harmful effects to...

There is a new mood of moral desperation associated with the ongoing strife in Syria that has resulted in at least 135,000 deaths, 9.3 millions Syrians displaced, countless atrocities, Palestinian refugee communities attacked, blockaded, and dispersed, and urban sieges designed to starve civilians perceived to be hostile. As the second round of negotiations in Geneva-2 ended as fruitlessly as the earlier round, there is a sense that diplomacy is a performance ritual without any serious intent to engage in conflict-resolving negotiations. Expectations couldn’t be lower for the as yet unscheduled, but still planned, third round of this Geneva-2 process. The Damascus regime wants an end to armed opposition, while the insurgency insists upon setting up a transition process that is independently administered and committed to the election of a new political leadership. The gap between the parties is too big, and getting bigger, especially as the Damascus government correctly perceives...

Open Letter to College and University Presidents Re: Global Security 101 You are in a unique position of leadership to influence today’s youth to achieve a better tomorrow for America and the world. I am writing to enlist your help in educating young people to understand the survival challenges that face humanity in the 21st century. Education is driven by values. Young people must learn to live with reverence for life, as did Albert Schweitzer, and to support equitable and nonviolent solutions to social problems, as did Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Young people must be imbued with compassion, commitment and courage. They must learn to use their imaginations to find creative and cooperative solutions to the great issues of our time. And they must find joy in the process and take time to celebrate the miracle of living on the only planet we know of in the universe...

During martial law in the early 1980’s in Poland, graffiti in favour of the illegal trade union Solidarity was quickly painted over by the authorities. This left “blobs” on the walls, so that everyone knew that this was covered graffiti. Activists who identified with a new group called Orange Alternative started to work on these “blobs” by giving them arms and legs so that they became little elves. According to Kenney, who has written about the Orange Alternative and its place in the fall of the communist regimes in central Europe, elves made passers-by “consider the point of the struggle over wall space, and wonder why little elves were threatening to the communists”.(1) Several years later, the elves came to life at an Orange Alternative happening on Children’s day, 1 June 1987, one of the happenings which became what Kenney calls a “catalyst” for the Orange Alternative. An invitation to...

By Biljana Vankovska Biljana Vankovska has decided to resign from the post of public advocate due to the obstacles she has faced as described below. Strangely enough, it appears that the Republic of Macedonia, once the southernmost and poorest republic of the former Yugoslavia, has always lagged behind the rest, in weal or woe. If one considers the achievements of the states in the region, when success is measured by the degree of their integration into the EU, one gets the impression that, while the rest of them, including Kosovo, are making steps forward, Macedonia is retrogressing. The violent conflict in 2001 was the last episode in the succession of wars and internal armed conflicts on the territory of the former common state. It was an unusual conflict by Yugoslav standards: in terms of duration, number of casualties and degree of destruction, as well as of the rapidity of the...

What a Christmas gift to all of us from that amazing Pope Francis, his first Message for the World Day of Peace, Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace. A tightly reasoned statement in ten sections; here is an effort to summarize some key points: 1. An irrepressible wish for fraternity enables us to see others not as enemies or rivals, but as brothers and sisters. However, reference to a common Father is needed; otherwise it becomes “a mere do ut des /I give so that you give/ which is both pragmatic and selfish”. 2. The story of Cain and Abel /the first brothers, sons of the first couple, Adam and Eve/ “teaches that we have an inherent calling to fraternity, but also the tragic capacity to betray that calling”: Cain killed Abel out of jealousy because God preferred Abel. 3. Human fraternity is regenerated in and by Jesus Christ...

The more contact one has with the modern state, even in those societies that have long constitutional traditions entrenching civil liberties, the more grounds there are for deep and growing concern. I suppose that the most dramatic exhibition of the dangers being posed as 2014 approaches, and we are reminded that this will be 30 years after 1984, are associated with Edward Snowden’s extraordinary disclosures of the global network of surveillance being operated by the National Security Agency in the United States (NSA). Such a network presupposes that we are all, that is, every inhabitant on the planet to be regarded as worth investigating as potential terrorist threats, and along the way establishing a huge data bank of information that can be used for nefarious purposes at any point to disempower and subvert protest movements or even blackmail anyone seen to be obstructing projects dear to the government or any...

My friend and former collaborator, Howard Friel, has written an intriguing book contrasting the worldviews and polemical styles of two Jewish American intellectuals with world class reputations, Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz (Friel, Chomsky and Dershowitz: On Endless War and the End of Civil Liberties, Olive Branch Press, 2014). The book is much more than a comparison of two influential voices, one critical the other apologetic, with respect to the Israel/Palestine struggle and the subordination of private liberties to the purveyors of state-led security at home and abroad. Friel convincingly favors Chomsky’s approach both with respect to the substance of their fundamental disagreements and in relation to sharply contrasting styles of argument. Chomsky is depicted, accurately I believe, as someone consistently dedicated to evidenced based reasoning reinforced by an abiding respect for the relevance and authority of international law and morality. Chomsky has also been a tireless opponent of American...

60 years of peace theory and peace practice can be summarized in EQUITY x HARMONY PEACE = ________________________ TRAUMA x CONFLICT Four theory foci, four policy tasks, and four education topics. Any true education should prepare for practice, guided by general theory. Moving from denominator right to numerator left, this means: * mediating acceptable and sustainable conflict solutions; * conciliating parties locked in traumas from the past; * empathizing with all parties divided by social/world faultlines; * building cooperation for mutual and equal benefit. Mediation is verbal, based on dialogues with the parties, but the four tasks are very concrete, practical. For doers not only talkers; for practical people like officers. Hence the Big Question: is peace theory-practice-education compatible with the military mind – however defined, and there are many military cultures in the world–or not?

Recently I read On Western Terrorism: from Hiroshima to Drone Warfare, published in 2013 by Pluto Press here in London, and consisting of a series of conversations between Chomsky and the Czech filmmaker, journalist, and author, Andre Vltchek, who is now a naturalized American citizen. Vltchek in an illuminating Preface describes his long and close friendship with Chomsky, and explains that these fascinating conversations took place over the course of two days, and was filmed with the intention of producing a documentary. The book is engaging throughout, with my only big complaint being about the misdirection of the title—there is virtually nothing said about either Hiroshima or drone warfare, but almost everything else politically imaginable! Vltchek, previously unknown to me, consistently and calmly held his own during the conversations, speaking with comparable authority and knowledge about an extraordinary assortment of topics that embraced the entire global scene, something few of...

The Catholic–meaning universal–Church matters to all of us as a major part of Western civilization. And the Pope lives up to both his Jesuit heritage and that of his great namesake St Francis–see this column six months ago, 18 Mar 2013, when he was elected. We shall permit ourselves to extrapolate a little from what he told in an interview to the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica (IHT, 20 Sep 13). The Roman Catholic Church had become “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception. The church should become a home for all and not a small chapel. “We have to find a new balance”, the Pope says, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the gospel”. Turn the page of that issue of the International Herald Tribune and on p. 2 Muslim Salma Yacoob,...

The drift toward autocracy: It is not just one thing that should worry us about the authoritarian tendencies of the Obama presidency, but one thing after another. The cumulative effect of it all. The latest sign of the times was the August 19th detention of David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner, at Heathrow Airport under the British anti-terrorist law for nine hours. His laptop, cell phone, and other electronic devices were also confiscated, and presumably examined. We need to wonder what is so frightening about ‘the Snowden documents’ that it induces these flagrant intrusions on the privacy and confidentiality of journalists, and now even their associates who are not known to be accomplices. President Obama keeps reassuring Americans, and indeed the world, that he shares a concern for protecting elemental rights, and yet he seems to spare no means to move against disclosures of information that seems awkward for the United...