826821_br.pdf
Author: Aldridge
Date: 2020-02-06T17:38:52+00:00

PEER-REVIEW FEEDBACK ON

THE GOODNESS FIELD:

A Guidebook for Proactive Nonviolence

Bob Aldridge's powerful book, The Goodness Field: A Guidebook for Proactive Nonviolence points out the need and opportunity for a Global Satyagraha Movement – nonviolent, active, creative, and compassionate – to challenge the US addiction to power and greed which feeds our nation's endless wars and empire. Aldridge gives some very helpful suggestions for how to build that movement. This is not a pipe dream. We, the world's people can make it happen!

– David Hartsough

Author, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist Co-Founder, Nonviolent Peaceforce and World beyond War

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I am in wholehearted agreement with Bob Aldridge's call for a " Global Satyagraha Movement
inspired by a

Global Constructive Pro-
gram.” I'm glad to say, also, that these very ideas are catching on. If humanity is to rescue itself from the materialism, the low human image based on outdated science, and the devastation that they are causing to our personal and social lives -- indeed for our continued existence -- I can see no other way of doing that than the discovery of what he calls the "goodness field" that science is beginning to discover and traditional wisdom has long spoken of, by whatever name.

– Michael N. Nagler

President, Metta Center for Nonviolence Author, The Third Harmony: Nonviolence and the New Story of Human Nature

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Every so often an elder, whose life has embodied the way of faith, peace and justice, writes a “testament” (as Jim Douglass rightly calls this book), one that peers well past what the rest of us see. Jim Corbett’s A Sanctuary for All Life was such a visionary volume; so, too, is this one. I have been greatly blessed to know and work with both Jim and Bob. I confess I don’t entirely grasp everything offered in their testaments. But I trust their wisdom, because I so deeply respect the work and witness of these holy men in the world.

We don’t know how good the world is because we don’t know how bad it has become; and we don’t know how bad the world has become because we don’t know how good it truly is. Few people grasp both goodness and brokenness in more depth than Aldridge. This book utters a powerful “Yes! and No! to the whole damn thing,” as the venerable Daniel Berrigan once put it. But it also charts a way into personal and political liberation, using Gandhi’s Gita as a roadmap to becoming a “nonviolent warrior.”

Bob Aldridge is an unmasker of lies and a seer of mysteries, testifying to both without obfuscation in the straightforward style of an engineer, grandfather and sage. His “cosmovision” of nonviolent transformation invites us well beyond the horizon of conventional thinking about what has transpired in our history, what is possible for our future, and what is necessary for our survival. I commend this trustworthy testament, forged over a nine decade journey of conscience.

– Ched Myers

Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (chedmyers.org)

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This guidebook addresses the importance of nonviolence and reconnection with the Earth in a powerful way, within a wide spectrum of events around the world which reflect various challenges of our society. It demonstrates why humans must let go of this idea, and unreal perception, that they are in some way owners of the rest of Nature; and have the right to exploit, abuse and violate the Earth for their own benefit. We must realize that the concept of the rights of Nature/Mother Earth, rather than a legal construct, are a call to change our relationship with the rest of nature; to stop treating the Earth system as an object and recognize that we are all part of the Earth. The rights of Nature (Mother Earth) tell us that everything on our planet is interconnected; that life is only possible thanks to a multiplicity of factors such as the bees, the rain, the proper flow of temperature in the atmosphere, and other elements of the Earth system. We must understand that we share the right to exist, thrive and evolve together with plants, animals, rivers, glaciers, forests and all members of the Earth, and implement this understanding in
practice. I believe this guidebook will be a useful tool in this important transformational shift of our societies, and for changing the direction humanity is taking the planet.

– Hana Begovic (Ecuador)

Organizer, Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature

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Our human family and the planet are caught in the torrential waves of growing disaster caused by human violence. At this critical turning point, Bob Aldridge offers us a focused way through it all. He lays out a breathtaking vision and plan of action in A Guidebook for Proactive Nonviolence. In a splintered world, where increasing numbers of movements are working for peace based in justice, he offers a Global Constructive Program that can bring them together in that higher unity and turn the tide. Bob’s vision has inspired me. I intend to help move this unified vision along as the master plan for nonviolent movements all over the world to create the “Beloved Community”.

– C. Peter Dougherty

Meta Peace Team Co-founder; Nonviolence Trainer; Unarmed Civilian Protection Team Organizer and Member

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Bob Aldridge’s The Goodness Field is a ground-breaking masterpiece that offers agents of change two powerful gifts. First, it sweeps away the stereotypes of nonviolence that see it as weak and limited.

Nonviolence, on the contrary, is a force for goodness that pervades the entire universe. This goodness force – in the scientific sense of the four fundamental forces of nature – “is guiding evolution to make the Universe good for living,” a conclusion Aldridge works out using scientific data and logical deduction. His analysis reveals the universality of nonviolence and how its power is available to all of us.

This paradigm-shifting finding opens new and breath-taking vistas for those of us seeking a way forward. But Aldridge doesn’t stop there.

His second gift is his call for us to take the goodness field seriously and join in building a “Global Constructive Program” and a “Global Satyagraha Movement” (borrowing Gandhi’s term, meaning “truth-
force” or “soul-force”) to respond to a worldwide culture of violence, including the contemporary U.S. imperial order dominating the world through interlocking military, surveillance, economic and political systems, which he documents in painstaking detail. Nonviolence is the only way to overcome evil, an assertion that Aldridge illuminates through the book’s vivid case-studies of nonviolent resistance.

The fruit of a lifetime of nonviolent action and reflection—Aldridge himself dramatically turned toward the “goodness force” and changed his life forever after years as an engineer working on weapons systems— The Goodness Field invites us to re-imagine and activate nonviolence and its proactive power to resist and work to dismantle the systems that are accelerating the abysmal, existential crises facing our species and our planet.

– Ken Butigan

Senior Lecturer in Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies; DePaul Univ.

Strategist with Pace e Bene’s Campaign Nonviolence

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Anyone who doubts that non-native allies truly exist for indigenous struggles can take heart in the Aldridge family's lifelong example. Bob Aldridge's philosophy, actions and writing are not mere solidarity in the cause of peace and environmental justice. Rather, they are a case of personal sacrifice and leadership at the momentous scale required to tackle the global climate crisis, which impacts humanity first and most on native front-line communities. Readers can find new hope in the writings of this well-versed and devout elder. He thoroughly documents historic contemporary native struggles as never before, seeking input from indigenous stakeholders.

His practicality in
envisioning a way-forward should be welcomed as a cornerstone in the discussion of the all-important effort to forge intercultural unity. If you consider yourself to be part of the change, read this for the inspiration you seek, critique it, and share in your circles.

– Talli Nauman

Health & Environment Contributing Editor, Native Sun News Today (Rapid City, SD), www.nsweekly.com

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Bob Aldridge's book demonstrates a rare degree of scholarship and impressive integration of disparate fields of knowledge. Bob has clearly done his homework to produce a book that plugs some serious holes within the theory and practice of nonviolence. His analysis of the mechanisms of current empires is thorough, deep, and revelatory, and his insistence on moving beyond protest to visionary constructive program is a breath of fresh air. More than anything, the call for global unity is timely and necessary. I believe Bob leaves us with important questions to consider, not the least of which is what it would take for large numbers of people to recognize the level of crisis we are facing and to make the choice to embrace the nonviolent path individually and as part of larger movements oriented towards care for all life. Bob's book provides some essential steps on that road, combining analysis, vision, and practical advice all in one book.

– Miki Kashtan

Author, Reweaving Our Human Fabric: Working Together to Create a Nonviolent Future

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In the true spirit of service & goodness, Bob Aldridge has supplied humanity with a guidebook to help us evolve from a world that appears unable to escape the path to dystopia, towards a much more promising vision of the future that is grounded in Gandhian Constructive Program and Indigenous wisdom. There is something for everyone in this guidebook and it reminds me of the early days of Nonviolent Peaceforce when we were trying to understand how best to promote nonviolence globally. Cheers to the author for taking on such challenging work!

– Gilda Bettencourt

Nonviolent Peaceforce, Outreach & Donor Relations Officer (nonviolentpeaceforce.org)

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Bob Aldridge’s The Goodness Field: A guidebook for Proactive Nonviolence – what a tremendous timely gift for our times. As more citizens, young & old, feel the urgency to engage/activate/participate
in maturing the direction of the human experiment (with old models of activism producing less significant results) – grounded in history, science, Indigenous wisdom, & spirituality, this book makes a logical, compelling, powerful & irresistible case/call/invitation.

This
guidebook is filled with powerful stories, tools & reminders – rooted in loves irresistible power (beyond our imaginations) to transform our outdated inherited story & co-create a world future generations will be proud of, & so grateful we did the inner work & let our Voices Flow for a world that serves Life.

– Mark Dubois

Co-International Coordinator for Earth Day 1990 and 2000. Co-founded International Rivers Network, Friends of the River, and Environmental Traveling Companions.

Supported grassroots
campaigns for World Bank & IMF policy reform, and coordinated grassroots lobbying of Bank Exec Directors

The Goodness Field:

A Guidebook for Proactive Nonviolence

This Guidebook is not something to be read once and then set down. Nor is it a volume that can be understood with one reading. It is written to be a guide and reference for all nonviolent activists on Earth. I do use the United States of America to exemplify problems because the USA is the world’s biggest perpetrator of violence and oppression. The USA must be changed before the rest of the world can change.

Nevertheless, the body of this Guidebook is relevant globally; with the goal of a Global Satyagraha Movement operating under the stimulus of a Global Constructive Program. BA

The Goodness Field:

A Guidebook for Proactive

Nonviolence

By Bob Aldridge

Foreword by Jim Douglass

This Guidebook is dedicated to the Indigenous People of the World
who follow The Indigenous Way
as a unified, global movement
demanding Love and Respect
for Mother Earth and all that is sacred.

Cover Art by Nicole Archambault

The thumb and forefinger of the clenched fist are extended to form the letter ‘G’, for ‘Goodness’,
in the alphabet for the deaf.

Three fingers remain clenched in determination.

Copyright © 2020 by Robert C. Aldridge.

Permission is granted to reproduce parts of this guidebook, with proper crediting of the source, for non-commercial, non-profit, Goodness purposes.

ii

Acknowledgments

The Proactive Nonviolence Cooperative is an e-mail brainstorming forum for Truth Force in the 21st century. Strategies developed on this forum are available to all organizations working for nonviolent social change. I have participated in this forum since its inception in early 2015. That participation has inspired me to write this Guidebook. The Global Constructive Program for the 21st Century and the Nonviolent Warrior Ethos, which I use in this Guidebook, were developed by the Proactive Nonviolence Cooperative. Thank you to my colleagues on that forum for their inspiration and insight.

To Jim Douglass, John Dear, George Kent, Bernie Meyer, my daughters Kathy and Mary, my son Mark, and my granddaughter Meg; thank you for your careful and helpful critique of draft chapters, and for your encouragement to compile this Guidebook. Your suggestions and criticisms kept me on the right track. (Did I get the commas right Meg?)

To David Hartsough, Michael Nagler, Ched Myers, Hana Begovic, Peter Dougherty, Ken Butigan, Talli Nauman, Miki Kashtan, and Gilda Bettencourt; I am indebted to you for performing a peer review of the manuscript and affirming that a Global Satyagraha Movement under a Global Constructive Program is not only possible but is sorely needed if we are to resolve the critical issues we face today; and that a paradigm shift to a Culture of Goodness can be accomplished.

To my son Mark and daughters Teri and Mary, thank you for sharing your experience in North Dakota at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

I am grateful that you allowed me to use composites and excerpts from your reports on your involvement as water protectors.

To my talented granddaughter Nicole, I greatly appreciate your help and interest in designing the Guidebook cover.

iii

To my 11-year-old Great Grandson Raymond Riley Genoar Burns, I extend heartfelt thanks for allowing me to use his song lyrics to conclude Chapter 15, and end of this Guidebook. He is a true 7th Generation Gen-Z warrior-in-training.

To Lilo Klug, my long-time friend, I am grateful for your sharing of experiences while growing up in Nazi Germany, and for your permission to quote from your inspiring book, Surviving the Fire.

To Kathy McGinnis, also my long-time friend, I am grateful for your permission to quote from Parenting for Peace and Justice, the excellent book on child raising that you and Jim wrote .

To Mark Dellamano, my heartfelt thanks for your generous assistance in getting this Guidebook printed. Your expert guidance has been indispensable in arriving at where we are today on this project.

To my wife, Janet, my life partner for over seventy-two years, thank you for always being there for me and encouraging me through the rough stretches.

To the Indigenous People of the World, thank you for your inspiration and example in following the Indigenous Way – a working model for a Global Constructive Program.

This Guidebook could not have been completed without the help and encouragement of so many people. It is truly a community effort. It feels good to be part of the team that made this work possible.

I like the statement by Ryan Vizzions in his excellent photo tribute to the Standing Rock water protectors – No Spiritual Surrender – which reads: “The contents within this book are not perfect because neither are we.” That is also very true in this case. My hope is that, imperfect as this Guidebook may be, it will stimulate further proactive thinking and action leading to a Global Satyagraha Movement sowing novel insights to Goodness across the face of this planet.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

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CONTENTS

Foreword – vii

Preface – xiii

Introduction – xvii

PART I – UNDERSTANDING OUR OPPOENT: EGOTHINK

1 – The Invisible Government – 3

2 – The Culture of Entertainment and Pax Americana – 23

3 – Rise of the Neocons – 47

4 – Deconstructing Democracy – 69

5 – Divide and Deceive – 97

PART II – UNITY UNDER A GLOBAL CONSTRUCTIVE

PROGRAM

6 – The Nuances of Nonviolent Action – 117

7 – Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious – 133

8 – People Power: A Constructive Program Study – 147

9 – The Crying Need for a Constructive Program – 169

10 – Global Satyagraha – 203

PART III – REMOVING BARRIERS FROM THE GOODNESS

FIELD

11 – The Indigenous Way: Love and Respect for All that is Sacred – 225

12 – Sarvodaya via Wopida – 255

13 – The Nonviolent Warrior – 277

14 – Create a Culture of Goodness – 297

15 – Proactive Nonviolence: Cosmic Experiments with Truth – 321

APPENDICES

Appendix-A – The Goodness Field – 343

Appendix-B – White Supremacist and Other Hate Organizations in the US – 363

Appendix-C – Backwater Sunday – 367

Appendix-D – 51 Developed Countries: Population and HDI – 371

Appendix-E – Sanctuary Jurisdictions – 375
v

When a man's willing and eager the god's join in.

– Aeschylus
vi

Foreword

Bob Aldridge has the knack of paying attention to an urge to do the right thing whenever he feels it. Then he does it -- to the discomfort of those who know how the force of his example can change lives. In the almost half-century I’ve known Bob, the trails this nuclear weapons engineer turned peacemaker has blazed, following the whispers of his still small voice, have kept on redirecting my life. Be wary of reading The Goodness Field, if you are not open to meeting a man who could inspire you to climb mountains.

Feeling such an urge when he began the tenth decade of his life, Bob Aldridge researched thoroughly and wrote what he first described as “A Guidebook for Proactive Nonviolence.” What he saw brilliantly through that process, he identified in his final title as “The Goodness Field.”

In August 1972, my wife Shelley and I met Bob and Janet Aldridge when they came from their home in Santa Clara, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, to support our catholic Action of Hawaii community in a trial. Three of us were liable to ten years each in prison for doing an act of moral and legal necessity by obeying a greater law. We had poured our blood on top-secret electronic warfare files at Hickam Air Base, Pacific Air Force Headquarters -- exposing Hickam, as Bob writes in this book’s last chapter, “as the intelligence and targeting center for the Vietnam air war.”

In a scene Shelley and I have recalled often from that intense week, we watched Bob sitting at a microphone on a stage in a theater at the University of Hawaii. He was flanked by two Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal attorneys, who were assisting us in the trial. They had vii
explained to the audience why our disruption of the electronic warfare office was a legal resistance, if not obligation, to a crime against peace.

When it came time for Bob to speak, as peace representative of the catholic National Association of Laity, he pushed the mic away and remained silent. He was responding to an urge. Shelley and I were unaware of Bob’s occupation as a nuclear missile designer, which he had begun to question. The Nuremberg lawyers’ presentations intensified the questioning. It provoked in Bob a pregnant silence.

Taken up by the trial, we simply thought Bob a very shy man.

Two years later, following my resignation from the University of Hawaii faculty, Bob visited us at our house in the little town of Hedley, British Columbia, Canada. He told us of his resignation from his Lockheed job designing a nuclear first-strike weapon, the Trident missile system. Spreading out a map on our kitchen table, he pointed out the chosen site for the first Trident submarine base, on a peninsula across from Seattle, not so far from Hedley.

Bob’s visit became our invitation to co-found Pacific Life Community, which initiated a Gandhian campaign in resistance to Trident, prompting our move into the last house beside the railroad tracks going into the base. Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, whose site bordered another part of the Trident base fence a mile away, was founded in 1977. The Trident campaign led in 1981 to the tracks campaign to stop Trident weapons shipments to its bases on both the Pacific and the Atlantic. That resulted in our further move in 1989 to another tracks house, along the trains’ southeastern route, in Birmingham, Alabama.

If ever a satyagrahi, a Gandhian practitioner of truth-force, has redirected Shelley’s and my lives, it has been Bob Aldridge through the quiet talk he walks, along with Janet, their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, who are a nonviolent wave all their own. We have learned with many others how to walk from the example of Bob, Janet, and their family – all the way from their decision that Bob resign at age 47 from Lockheed (now merged with Martin-Marietta as the #1
viii
military industrial contractor), sparking the Trident campaign; through Bob’s groundbreaking books on our near extinction from the Pentagon’s nuclear first strike strategy spearheaded by Trident; to this pioneering work on our nonviolent transformation, The Goodness Field. I’ve had the gift, with others he asked to critique his manuscript, of seeing his nonviolence guidebook evolve into its present form. Bob has been mining everyone and everything he could for this work, re-climbing the mountain of his life, seeking a way to enlighten the night.

He succeeds. Bob Aldridge’s relentless persistence has broken through finally, at the peak of his life and work, into the fundamental forcefield in the universe, the source of our necessary enlightenment through proactive nonviolence -- goodness.

The goodness field, as Bob explains in an intriguing introduction and astounding appendix, is the pervasive force field of not only Earth but the entire universe. Goodness is the singular force needed to modulate the four fundamental forces of nature to support life. As our own creations of nuclear war and climate change remain on track to end our species after destroying countless others, goodness is coming right back at us, through billions of years in the evolution of the universe. The power of goodness is arising from the subconscious of humanity, as Bob suggests from C. G. Jung. We have been propagandized into fatal sleepwalking by our entertainment culture and the invisible government of egothink, a term Bob coined via Sigmund Freud and George Orwell.

Yet we can still awaken to a volcanic energy in our collective unconscious, formed from the beginning of time. We can discern at the current crux of history a power erupting from the depths of our origin, if we only remove its obstacles through proactive nonviolence.

Goodness is the transformative force of human existence.

Goodness can be our cosmic companion, as we walk the Earth and talk the truth. Goodness is in the stardust empowering our every action concentrated nonviolently on the dark matter of this world, down to the jail cell of my own ego. Goodness is here, as we awaken, walk the Earth, and speak the truth of a universal force that has brought us this far so far. Goodness is the truth in proactive nonviolence that will set ix
us free. Seed a Gandhian constructive program in the goodness field of this Earth, and it will grow.

Our crucial task in letting goodness work, Bob suggests with Gandhi, is taking on experiments with truth as near as our fingertips, pushing away obstacles to goodness. Washing our dishes to wash the dishes, in Nhat Hanh’s image of mindful practice, will free us to be where we need to be, catching a wave of proactive nonviolence just in time.

Converging drops of goodness and courage, becoming an ocean of waves of nonviolent movements, will prevail. Ours is the goodness story told all the way from its origin in the creative urge behind the Big Bang of the universe.

Maybe it does take a rocket engineer turned satyagrahi to see humanity’s redemptive truth of goodness. Is that Gandhi grinning through his microscope?

“Truth,” as Mohandas Gandhi said from his experiments with truth, “is God.” Or as Bob Aldridge has put it in a further step through his experiments, “Truth is goodness.” The ultimate truth of goodness, it turns out, is confirmed by the story of the universe. Our humanity’s radical goodness is seen, step by step, through our experience, in the discoveries of proactive nonviolence. We learn to walk truly in the dust of a million galaxies of goodness. Test and see.

An empire began to give way when a little man, with 78 committed friends from his ashram, marched to the sea to pick up a grain of salt.

Our way into nonviolent transformation may be no more than our willingness to say yes to an urge of goodness at inconvenient moments in our lives, leading us to ashram disciplines and nonviolence training in the fire of goodness that can nurture a new way of life. Turn, turn, turn. Faith in goodness, acting through newly forged lives in a nonviolent community, is hope for our world.

Bob Aldridge is a nonviolent warrior for our time. The Goodness Field: A Guidebook for Proactive Nonviolence is the testament of his life. Its practical, nonviolent truths are carved out, hammer to chisel, with the help of Gandhi, King, and their disciplined disciples; the x

Standing Rock Sioux and the new paradigm of Sarvodaya via Wopida; a host of young people standing on their own feet, encircling the globe in resistance to gun violence and climate change; Bob and Janet Aldridge with their children, grandchildren, and great-grands walking the way of proactive nonviolence before us.

We know we dwell in a time of deepening darkness. We are at two minutes to midnight -- the nearest the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock has ever been. The question before us, as Dr. King put it, is: Nonviolence or nonexistence? Transformation or annihilation? Stated starkly, how can we transform a cultural dogma of inevitable evil, implanted by the invisible government of one’s ego, into the prophetic truth of proactive nonviolence? How can we turn our lives around in time toward the hope of the universe?

However, if we pay attention to the lessons from proactive nonviolent movements more powerful than war, we know we can live out the truth that we are on a planet in a universe grounded in goodness. Cosmic experiments with truth, turning our own lives around first, are one step away from us. They are no big deal. Yet through them we can know, as real as the Earth on which we stand, the power of goodness at our fingertips at two minutes to midnight. Goodness has our back from way back. Goodness is our given. We can allow its power from the collective unconscious to emerge in a globally transforming proactive nonviolence.

It can be done here and now by living out our first truth of goodness, older than the hills, written with the ink of love in the words on these pages.

Read them, rejoice, and be good.

Jim Douglass

Author, The Nonviolent Cross, JFK and the Unspeakable, Gandhi and the Unspeakable

xi

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

– William Ernest Henley; Invictus
xii

Preface

This Guidebook represents almost four years of composing, over 45
years of research, and 90-some years of living. The living part is important. Experiencing events has a distinct advantage over studying history books or searching the internet. When I write about 20th-century activity, the reader can be confident that I am describing an era I lived through; not just research knowledge, although that is included also.

I have lived during the administrations of 16 US Presidents – over a third of all that have held office. My formative years were during the Great Depression of the 1930s. My most memorable home was ‘the packing house’ – a living quarters partitioned off in one end of a fruit-packing shed. It was heated by a wood-burning stove and my mother cooked on a two-burner kerosene range. My chores were to keep the wood box filled and the kerosene tank full.

Hunting rabbits in the evening was great sport, but it was more than that; it was putting meat on the table. Mustard greens and wild radish provided salads. My family was fortunate in not having to spend long afternoons in bread lines, but many of our friends and neighbors did.

I recall the violence in nearby lettuce fields and packing sheds where workers were struggling to unionize for collective bargaining.

That
was where I first saw a machine gun. The AFL and CIO, now merged as one union, were violently competitive in those days Not all of my depression-years memories were of misery. People cared for each other and tried to help one another. Government also helped.

Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ created work projects and other social-economic opportunities. My incessant questions must have been a nuisance to workmen digging ditches or performing other labor-intensive work, but they did their best to satisfy my curiosity.

The Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933 provided money for state-run relief programs. Workers gained a retirement plan for the first time under the Social Security Act of 1935. That Act also provided xiii
unemployment insurance as well as aid for the aged, handicapped, and dependent children. Laws were passed to curtail the cutthroat practices of industry and guarantee workers the right to organize and bargain collectively. There was much good that came out of the’30s.

The Great Depression ended with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

America entered World War II and mounted the most massive military buildup in the history of humankind. Men went to war and women staffed the factories or joined auxiliary military units. Production switched from commodities to armaments. Price controls and rationing ensued. We had air raid drills and blackouts. Japanese citizens of America – many my classmates – were sent to concentration camps.

Soldiers took up stations atop tall buildings. ‘Dim-out’ requirements for coastal driving meant parking lights only so ships at sea wouldn’t be silhouetted for torpedo attack. The 24/7 volunteer Aircraft Warning System reported every aircraft seen or heard, ships visible at sea, and all pyrotechnics observed.

I fought in the Philippines as an artilleryman. It was nasty. I then saw the extreme post-war poverty in a war-torn country. When I returned home, I participated in the rising consumerism as corporations quickly converted back to manufacturing commodities.

I lived through the emergence of the military-industrial complex; the rise in US hegemony in Europe through the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO; and the oil-rush to Saudi Arabia where Chevron, Texaco, Exxon, and Mobil were paying big bucks in a booming petro industry. I witnessed the rise of Neoconservatism and the decay of social consciousness.

I spent 16 years as a nuclear missile design engineer; followed by decades of private research to expose Pentagon ambitions.

I have
written and lectured extensively, in the US and abroad, explaining weapons and military policy. A large body of that research is reflected in this Guidebook.

xiv

I joined the nonviolence movement, helped to plan actions, participated in demonstrations, defended myself in court, and spent time in county jails. All of these experiences influenced the pages that follow.

This Guidebook proposes no new organization. The Nonviolence Movement now in place provides excellent infrastructure for massive proactivity. Existing organizations should continue doing what they are doing now, but with a new focus and higher unity; and with a global vision of goodness being the overarching, non-negotiable goal for all.

Gene Sharp would call it a Grand Strategy. Gandhi would call it a Global Constructive Program.

In this Guidebook I have the audacity to introduce a new cosmic force.

I call it the goodness force, which operates in a goodness field encompassing the entire Universe. Appendix-A validates a primordial Goodness Field Theory according to ‘The Scientific Method’.

I don’t delve into the nitty-gritty mechanics of planning nonviolent tactics or strategies. People with far more know-how have already excelled in that area. This Guidebook discusses my philosophy of proactive nonviolence. It highlights that for nonviolence to be effective it must remove violence from people’s thought processes. That is what makes nonviolence proactive. I show how sharing personal convictions of the heart is the most powerful tool for helping others think more compassionately.

Compiling this Guidebook has been a significant learning curve for me.

My understanding of proactive nonviolence has developed into a whole new sphere of knowledge since I started writing almost four years ago.

I now share what I have discovered, hoping it will lead to a Global Satyagraha Movement guided by a Global Constructive Program for the 21st Century.

Bob Aldridge

Santa Clara, California

10 January 2020
xv

When we walk towards the sun of Truth, all shadows are cast behind us.

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
xvi

Introduction

The mind that is prisoner to conventional ideas, and the will that is captive to its own desire cannot accept the seeds of an unfamiliar truth and a supernatural desire.

– Thomas Merton – New Seeds of Contemplation 1

This Guidebook is about goodness. Goodness heals people and makes people happy. Goodness is present in all aspects of nature with all her cycles and balances – nature is beautiful and awesome, and good.

People are good too, especially those who make things better and the many who dedicate their lives to doing that. That is real goodness.

Nonviolence is goodness, and that is why nonviolence is the only way to overcome evil. Goodness is all around us, all the time. There is also sorrow and agony and malice but they are mental activities and, if we are very aware, we can always detect goodness in the background.

This pervasive goodness can be described by the ‘field’ theory of science. A scientific ‘field’ emanates from a force and every object in that field is acted upon by that force. Earth is a region where every person is being acted upon by goodness. Earth exists in a goodness field.

Science postulates four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force (called fusion, which binds the nuclei of atoms), and the weak nuclear force (called fission, or radioactive decay).

1 Merton, Thomas; New Seeds of Contemplation (New York, NY; New Direction; 1961, 1972) p. 16.

xvii

To fully define those forces, the smallest elemental particle (quantum particle) of that force must be discovered and identified. For instance, the quantum particle for the electromagnetic force is the photon.

Gravity also has a quantum particle called the graviton, but nobody can find it. Nevertheless, we know the gravitational field exists because we experience it constantly. We may hang on to something to keep from falling but gravity is still pulling. Likewise the goodness field is being experienced and we know a goodness force exists, although people may have fixations that prevent it from working properly.

At one time, according to mainstream science, the Universe was a chaotic sea of energy. There were no material particles and, consequently, the four fundamental forces of nature didn’t function because they can only work on physical matter. So science proposed a primordial ‘Higgs force’ which has a field that occupies the entire Universe and doesn’t depend on particulate matter. The quantum particle for this force is the ‘Higgs boson’.2

Scientists and
mathematicians theorize the existence, identifiers, and behavior of the Higgs boson but information defining its origin is not addressed.

As chaotic energy passes through the Higgs field, it is slowed down and becomes matter. Now the four fundamental forces have material to work on. The strong and weak nuclear forces form atomic nuclei. The electromagnetic force pulls in the electrons to create atoms. Gravity clumps these atoms together to form stars and planets and solar systems and galaxies. Evolution is underway.

Chaos becomes cosmos. Every step of evolution has enhanced the Universe to support life. Every step! That is good. How does this fine-tuning happen when the fundamental forces are mechanical and act according to rigid physical laws? Mainstream science says by chance and accident, which is neither scientific nor logical.

There must be another primordial force that is modulating behavior of the fundamental forces.

I call it the goodness force because it is 2 Boson is a generic name for the quantum particle of a force.

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guiding evolution to make the Universe good for living. It fills the entire Universe. In Appendix-A, I have developed this Goodness Field Theory according to ‘The Scientific Method’ using existing scientific data and logical deduction. I show how it has guided construction of the atom and formation of cosmic structures. More can be told about how goodness has steered the evolution of life, but those two aspects will suffice.

In the following chapters I will discuss the goodness force in a more personal sense. We all have an inner goodness which is our real Self, but we don’t own it any more than we own gravity. It is the same goodness that pervades the Universe and is shared by all things and beings.

Everyone has a belief of some sort regarding the Universe and its mysteries. Those beliefs are scattered throughout the copious theories of science and the splintered factions of religions. Nevertheless, this plethora of beliefs can be distilled down to six basic philosophies: 1. Theist: one who believes a primordial entity formed the Universe and maintains it with love and care.

2. Atheist: one who believes that no primordial entity formed the Universe and that it fell together by chance.

3. Pantheist: one who believes nature is god, or that god is nature.

4. Deist: one who believes a primordial entity created the Universe and then left it to evolve on its own.

5. Gnostic: one who believes the universe was created by a bad god and that salvation will come through gnosis (knowledge) of a good god that will save us.

6. Agnostic: one who is not committed to believing or disbelieving in a god, or who is unwilling to make such a commitment.

These six philosophies cover all the nuances of science and religion.

Every person on Earth with a serious commitment to any scientific discipline or religious tradition holds one of these basic ways of thinking. All six recognize goodness and interpret goodness according xix
to their belief. Therefore, the concept of an inner goodness and the theory of a goodness field can be explored without violating anyone’s sensibilities.

The nonviolence manifested by goodness “is not defined by the words we use,” write Straughton and Alice Lynd, “but by our common experience. It is not merely a technique and ought not to be limited by expressions ... Nonviolence is breaking through the deepest level of human communication by creative means. It is a way of being, as well as of doing.”3

For a nonviolent campaign focused on benevolent social change to be proactive and have lasting success, a nonviolent philosophy of life – all life – is mandatory. Mohandas Gandhi coined the word ‘Satyagraha’

(pronounced saht YAH graha) to describe nonviolent activity emanating from a nonviolent lifestyle. Satyagraha is interpreted as Truth Force, or Soul Force. That makes it a goodness force.

Gandhi taught attentiveness to that “small inner voice” which points the way of truth. Satyagrahis (those who practice Satyagraha) meticulously heed those barely-detectable urgings from their inner goodness. Although Gandhi equated Truth to God, one does not have to profess a religion to practice Truth Force with a nonviolent lifestyle.

A strong, humanitarian compulsion to cause no harm and to alleviate suffering is enough.

Joan Bondurant wrote: “Despite the tremendous faith Gandhi had in divine power, the technique of Satyagraha is based upon the admission of relative truths and the rejection of [absolute truths] which are not knowable to mortal man. God was, in Gandhi’s definition, even the atheism of the atheist. … For despite the ever-present overtones of 3 Lynd, Straughton & Lynd, Alice, Editors; Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History (NY, Orbis, 1995) p. xlv.

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religion in Gandhi’s thought, concern for human needs lies at the core of Gandhi’s teaching.”4

We cannot know all the truths of the Universe (absolute truth) but we can seek some understanding of them (relative truth) and plan our activity according to that understanding; all the time seeking deeper understanding. That is the aim of this Guidebook. I have divided the presentation into three parts: 1) properly identifying and knowing our opponent, 2) achieving a worldwide solidarity under a Global Constructive Program, and 3) allowing a global flow of goodness by proactively removing obstructions.

Part I (Chapters 1-5): It is critical that we accurately identify and fully understanding our opponent. Conventional wisdom targets some physical entity – the wrongness of a leader, the destructiveness of nuclear weapons, the end-time threat of global warming, or many other issues. We have been doing that for decades and I see no improvement in global well-being. It has steadily deteriorated.

What we have been doing is appealing to the other’s conscious awareness, which consists of thoughts that have actualized and are immutable. Appealing to them is like appealing to a boulder. We have to dig deeper to where those thoughts come from.

Bad thoughts actualize to conscious awareness when the ego5 – the false self – controls the mind. Therefore, getting down to the quantum cause, it is the ego that is our opponent. It is the false self that we must be able to identify and fully understand in any situation.

In this guidebook I’ll use a generic term for ego-generated thoughts brought to mind. Using Orwellian style, that term is egothink. This Part I will present a thumbnail sketch of how egothink has shaped the 4 Bondurant, Joan V.; Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Berkeley, Univ. of Calif. Press; 1958, 1965) pp. 192-193.

5 In this guidebook I use the term ‘ego’ as referring to the part of our personality that seeks self-satisfaction.

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present condition of our planet. That is required knowledge for determining the proactive activity that will let goodness flow.

Chapter 1 delves into the invisible government. In a democracy, the people know who their leaders are and what they are doing. The invisible government poses as a democracy but it is motivated by wrongful thoughts of greed, wealth, and power.

To maximize their well-being, neoconservatives (neocons) came to be the invisible government using deceptive propaganda to manipulate the public mind, thus keeping people supportive. Deception is a formidable hang-up in the goodness field.

Today’s invisible government began when World War II patriotism gave way to self-indulgence. Sacrifice, austerity, and grieving were replaced by coziness, convenience, and amusement.

Chapter 2 describes how post-war production of goods and commodities enticed mass consumption that led to a culture of entertainment. To support this massive public consumption, and profiteering by the culture industries, the peace accords must be on America’s terms. Pax Americana was instituted globally through the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO -- all orchestrated by the egothink of the invisible government.

Throughout successive administrations, these neocons became more organized and sharper focused. They militarized civilian law enforcement and unraveled social programs. They established the new world order of globalization that maximized corporate profits. They finished the century by publishing an elaborate blueprint for world domination. Chapter 3 traces the rise of the neocons.

At the turn of the 21st century, the neocons stole the White House and set up a new order-of-business in the Executive Branch. A ‘new Pearl Harbor’ happened to rally the people behind a new War on Terrorism, which filled the gap left by the Cold War.

Constitutional rights deteriorated and government was consolidated to better comply with egothink. ‘National security’ was given new xxii
meaning to justify domestic spying and data mining. Chapter 4
describes the manifestation of egothink during the George W. Bush administration

A decade and a half into the 21st century, the White House became a reality show to distract attention from more devious activity. Before people could gasp, a flurry of executive orders rolled back decades of progress in environmental and social issues. Locker-room remarks shocked decency. Bigoted talk and racist policies tacitly encouraged gang and militia violence. Fake news and lies became the norm.

Reaction was as expected. Telephone trees, petitions, blogs, complaints, and wailings flooded the social media. Protest marches followed one after another. Yet, indefatigably, the reality show in the White House continued unabashed. People felt powerless. Apathy set in. This decline in social responsibility, leading to division and deception, is the topic of Chapter 5.

For us old folks who lived through the 1930s, this activity has a familiar ring. A White Rose leaflet in Nazi Germany, three-quarters of a century ago, sounded a warning still pertinent today: Nothing is more unworthy of a cultured people than to allow itself, without resistance, to be governed by an irresponsible ruling clique motivated by the darkest of instincts. The state is never an end in itself. It is important only as a means by which humanity can achieve its goal, which is nothing other than the advancement of man’s constructive capabilities.6

Part II (Chapters 6-10): During the Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King Jr. lamented the lack of ‘higher unity’ among his pastors and organizational leaders. They were good and dedicated people doing well in leading their congregations and organizations. But they had a hard time going beyond that activity. King longed for the ‘higher unity’ that would unify all his leaders under the overarching civil rights 6 Cited in Dumbach, Annette and Newborn, Jud; Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, (London; Oneworld Publications; 1986, 2006) p. 59.

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movement.

This Part II addresses ways to unify a Global Satyagraha Movement in a higher unity under a Global Constructive Program.

A Global Constructive Program need only be a short vision statement describing the happiness possible when we all recognize our inner goodness. It should proclaim a globally-accepted purpose that can be fleshed out with specifics to address regional and local issues.

Embracing that vision will be the binding force for ‘higher unity’ – a collective global identity. The goodness force, exemplified in a Global Constructive Program, can bind nonviolence organizations together in that ‘higher unity’.

Although nonviolence is expressed in actions and not words, we do have to communicate using words and phrases. For that to be effective, we need a common understanding of those words and phrases, and then use them precisely. What comes to mind when someone mentions

‘civil disobedience’? What does ‘direct action’ mean? What is a

‘necessity defense’? Precise meanings of the nonviolent-action vocabulary, as used in this Guidebook, are presented in Chapter 6.

Definitions are dynamic and adjust to newer understanding. When first used in South Africa, Satyagraha meant confronting unjust laws with civil disobedience. Upon returning to India, Gandhi found that confrontational nonviolence alone was not enough to mobilize masses of people to action. He needed a constructive program which became the stronger part of Satyagraha and made confrontational nonviolence proactive. Chapter 6 also explains this.

Implementing nonviolent action proactively requires imagination and ingenuity. Training and controlling the mind is essential. It starts with mindfulness – complete awareness of every aspect of our behavior; keeping our attention on the task at hand.

Critical thinking gets to the roots of an issue and finds ways to shift those roots toward goodness. It helps to identify seemingly-insignificant details that could have a stimulating effect on the inner xxiv
goodness of many people. Chapter 7 addresses mindfulness and critical thinking.

Understanding preconscious thought processing and chain-of-thought progression is essential because: 1) it helps identify the best choices in our own thinking and 2) it helps tailor proactive activity to enhance the inner goodness of others. This central aspect of proactive nonviolence is also addressed in Chapter 7.

The 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines is a case study of proactivism. It evolved over years and the ingredients of People Power were in place when a triggering event sparked one of the most dramatic nonviolent regime changes in history. Although it did not have a long-term plan to fill the void, the evil caused by Ferdinand Marcos disappeared temporarily. How that came about is a lesson worth telling, which I do in Chapter 8.

Two freedom campaigns in the 1980s – Burma and Tiananmen Square in China – failed miserably for lack of long-term preparation. The 2016-17 resistance to Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) by indigenous people at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation was another matter. It was energized by what Lakota Sioux call The Indigenous Way. It started to protect the reservation’s water supply and developed into a unified global campaign to abandon fossil fuels and respect Mother Earth.

Chapter 9 describes the higher unity of indigenous people who follow The Indigenous Way. .

Donald Trump’s reality show in the White House distracted attention from the more devious manifestations of egothink. Serial protests took place during his first 100 days in office. They successfully unified diverse people in global mass actions, but were not quite proactive.

Chapter 10 explains why a plan to fill the void must be in place, and why people must be indisputably committed, before mass actions have long-term effect.

Part III (Chapters 11-15): This part delves into removing barriers from the goodness field. There is a difference between the goodness of the real world and how it is perceived by humans through the five senses.

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The Hindu tradition uses the term ‘phenomenal world’ to describe human perception of reality. It is an illusion because our false self –
our ego – strives hard to control how the mind interprets what is sensed.

Evil is caused when people try to change the real world to please their phenomenal world. Some even try to manipulate others to support their activity. They seek control of government and use malicious propaganda to perpetuate their delusions. That is how egothink works.

It is important to understand that our opponents in a nonviolent struggle are the false selves (small ‘s’) that cause wrongful thoughts. Our opponent is a false identity – egothink – not an actual person whose true Self (capital ‘S’) is inner goodness.

The spirit of Standing Rock spread globally to confront the faulty egothink that they ‘own’ Mother Earth and can exploit her resources for selfish purposes. The craze of ‘ownership’ and ‘exploitation’ violates the ‘rights’ of Mother Earth. It disrupts her delicate balances and cycles, and now threatens all life.

Indigenous people understand the vulnerability of Mother Earth and her pressing need for immediate, restorative action. Their opposition to the

‘own and exploit’ mindset is epitomized by the creative means – such as ‘Tiny Houses’ and ‘Solar XL’ – being used to stop bitumen oil pipelines from the Alberta Tar Sands in Canada. Chapter 11 describes this dedicated movement that is following The Indigenous Way.

Chapter 12 is titled “Savodaya via Wopida.” Savodaya is Sanskrit for

‘uplifting all beings’. Wopida is a Lakota Sioux term for ‘sharing the energy among all people’. Thus, the chapter is about “Uplifting all Beings by Sharing the Energy among All People.”

Gandhi focused on the numerous small villages in India for uplifting people. Towns and cities, the smallest incorporated communities today, are the logical place to start the uplifting. Three such programs presently exist: ‘Compassionate Communities’, ‘Nonviolent Cities’, and ‘Sanctuary Cities’. With nothing more than a change in xxvi
perception, these programs could become regional or local applications of a Global Constructive Program.

Chapter 13 addresses self-purification of the Nonviolent Warrior.

Swaraj is a Sanskrit word meaning self-rule or self-discipline. Gandhi frequently used Swaraj when referring to self-rule for India, but he also used it pertaining to individuals having the self-discipline to purify themselves of violence. Ashrams were the training camps.

The ‘Satyagraha Ashram 78 ’ – core leaders of Gandhi’s 1930 Salt March Satyagraha – underwent rigorous training in spiritual/moral discipline and self-purification. Self-purification was Gandhi’s first requisite and highest priority for becoming a Satyagrahi. In this Guidebook I equate ‘Satyagrahi’ with ‘Nonviolent Warrior’. Swaraj, then, is the discipline of the Nonviolent Warrior.

The Bhagavad Gita is a spiritual book for Hindus, but it also teaches how to be a better human being. It introduces three basic qualities of human nature that regulate our phenomenal worlds.

The Gita calls
them gunas. One is inertia and ignorance, another is incessant energy and undirected action, and the third is enlightenment and virtue. These qualities interact in sundry ways to manipulate how the phenomenal world is perceived.

Left to the ego, they foster self-gratification, but the mind is receptive to reason. Reasoning to achieve self-purification is a process necessary for a Nonviolent Warri or. This is also described in Chapter 13.

Chapter 14 pulls everything together for a nuts and bolts approach to crafting a Culture of Goodness. Even during the Holocaust, when everything else was denied, the inner goodness provided freedom of thought and purpose if that person allowed it. People today are prisoners of always-more self-indulgence. Freeing their inner goodness would bring real comfort and true freedom.

Reaching peoples ‘unconscious’ and affecting their preconscious thought process circumvents obstacles in the conscious mind. Chapter xxvii

14 illustrates ways to do that through preconscious priming, ideomotor action, and cognitive dissonance, all to be discussed in detail.

Chapter 15 is about taking charge of our actions – standing on our own feet. I present hypothetical examples of how to communicate during confrontational nonviolence and the process by which a planning meeting can develop a proactive nonviolence action. The final example involves the students in Parkland, Florida, who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Depending only on each other they stood on their own feet and demanded change.

To be proactive, an action must outflank the conscious thought of those enslaved in the culture of entertainment, so as to introduce goodness into their preconscious thought processing. The logic of proactive nonviolence is: Proactive nonviolence for social change focuses on influencing preconscious thought processing in such a manner that good thoughts will be actuated. Goodness is universal. Proactive nonviolence is a cosmic experiment with truth.

- - - - - - -

Some notes on viewpoint: When I use the term ‘America’ or

‘American’ I am referring to the United States or a US citizen. If I include Canada and Mexico, I will use ‘North American’.

This Guidebook uses the United States for examples because it is a superpower whose activities dominate nations and have global repercussions. For the world to change, the United States must change.

Nevertheless, the substance of this Guidebook is applicable to all nations. Modern transportation and communication have put the entire planet within our immediate grasp. Urgency calls for a Global Satyagraha Movement to quickly achieve a higher unity under the vision of a Global Constructive Program; thus allowing the goodness field to bring all humanity to cosmic unity.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω
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PART I

UNDERSTANDING OUR OPPONENT:

EGOTHINK

Prelude to Part I

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness.

Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.

-- Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu (c. 544-496 BCE) was a legendary Chinese general and military strategist who served King Helü (a.k.a. Ho-lu) of Wu during the late Chou dynasty. He is credited with authoring The Art of War –
a classic which has found utility down through the years until at least World War II. But Sun Tzu was also a philosopher and his strategies did not put force at the center. He considered warfare as basically a battle of persuasion. His writings had a Taoist flavor; much of which can be applied to the nonviolent struggle.

Sun Tzu emphasized knowing and understanding the opponent. He thought gaining psychological dominance causes conflict and confusion in the opponent’s plan. Then it is possible to exploit the opponent’s weaknesses. Resources and energy should be conserved and certainly not wasted in reactionary operations like storming a walled city.

Knowing the opponent means correctly recognizing who or what the opponent is. It is critical to differentiate between the other’s true Self and false self. The true Self – inner goodness – cannot be our opponent. Therefore, the opponent is the other’s false self – the ego.

Gaining psychological dominance is to understand the other’s thought process, and knowing how to help good thoughts actuate to consciousness. Knowing that, we can cause conflict and confusion –
that is, cognitive dissonance – in the ego’s plan.

Exploiting the other’s [false self] weaknesses is overriding the ego’s influence on the mind by priming the flow of goodness. Turning the other’s plan to our advantage means helping good thoughts actuate to the conscious mind.

All of this will be developed fully in the chapters that follow. This Part will illustrate false-self activity as orchestrated by ego-dominated minds ( egothink); and how false selves change the real world to accommodate the illusory phenomenal world perceived by the five physical senses.

The ego is a formidable opponent. It is mean and selfish and greedy. It will not surrender easily. But the true Self is cosmic and indomitable if it has a medium to work through. We can be that medium.

We need to know the techniques for assisting goodness to flow. They are novel and they are proactive. This Guidebook will help in understanding them. It will guide us in becoming a medium to unblock the flow of goodness. But first we must understand how egothink has conditioned our planet.

This Part I will expound how current conditions evolved since World War II. Much of the history presented here won’t be found in high school text books. Nor will the invisible government propagate it. But it is information vital to understand our opponent, which in turn is a must for mounting a global proactive nonviolence campaign.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

1 – The Invisible Government The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.

Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of the country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of … .

… Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons …

who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.

It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

B Edward L. Bernays , Propaganda (1928, pp. 9-10) My cherished friend, Lilo, was born in Germany in 1933 – the year Hitler came to power. Nazi propaganda influenced her formative years.

In a letter to her children she wrote: “You have asked me: ‘How is it that you were silent for so long? It’s necessary that you, just you, say what you think.’ As if it were so simple. I want to tell you how it was.

How everything came to pass as it did.” (Klug, p. 137) Lilo then explained that, at the time, she could not have described her feelings: “The sublime words of propaganda speakers buried themselves deep in my soul. Full of devotion I drew in the exciting words, was ready to dedicate and, if necessary, sacrifice my young life totally to the service of the Fatherland. I wore my blonde braid proudly and I was convinced of the greatness and the mission of the German People.”

(Klug, p. 138)

Wearing her “blonde braid proudly” was Lilo’s personification of white-supremacy propaganda which was heavy on all sides during World War II. I was also brainwashed with the same type of patriotism.



I accepted what was told in the US as truthful and despised the lies of Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Little did I know that German propaganda was ‘Made in the USA.’

Goebbels joined the Nazi Party in 1924 and became Berlin’s Gauleiter (district leader) in 1926. At that time, he took an interest in propaganda and was strongly influenced by Edward Bernays’ 1923 book, Crystalizing Public Opinion. Goebbels became an avid admirer of Bernays’ ideas and used his publications as text books.

Goebbels’ diary, recovered after the war, described some of Bernays’

ideas: 1) use specific images and appeal to emotions; 2) keep it simple and say it often, use slogans; 3) say only what benefits your purpose; 4) make your opponent look bad; and 5) create a specific ‘enemy’ to despise. Goebbels understood Bernays well; and to understand Bernays is to understand propaganda. So, just who is Bernays?

Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995) is known as ‘The Father of Spin.’ He masterminded the technique of putting a spin on facts in such a manner that the public would think in a desired way. From the early 1920s until his death at age 104, he strongly influenced the propaganda industry.

“The key to Bernays’ ideas on propaganda is the notion that the masses must never know that they are being manipulated. Instead, they must believe that they themselves … have come to the very conclusions to which they were actually led by the leaders” to believe. (Clabough) From his 1990 interview with Bernays (then 99 years of age), Stuart Ewen reports: A… throughout our conversation, Bernays conveyed his hallucination of democracy: a highly educated class of opinion-molding tacticians [who] are continuously at work, analyzing the social terrain and adjusting the mental scenery from which the public mind, with its limited intellect, derives its opinions.@ (Ewen, p.10) 2



Propaganda is Tricky.

Anything propagated is propaganda. There is good propaganda and there is deceptive propaganda. In this chapter I will address deceptive propaganda as used by the invisible government.

Propagandists work with the public mind – the mass mind. They define goals and then create the climate for those goals to be accepted.

Most people think propaganda is fake news aimed at swaying public opinion or selling a product. They believe truth is not propaganda.

The more educated they are, the more they believe themselves capable of recognizing the truth. But propaganda often uses partial truths, truth out of context, or embellishes truth.

“… education, or what usually goes by that word in the modern world, is the absolute prerequisite for propaganda. In fact, education is largely identical with what Ellul calls >pre-propaganda= ...” (Keller, in Ellul, p.

vi)

French philosopher/sociologist Jacques Ellul believes intellectuals are more susceptible because: 1) they read the most second-hand, unverifiable information; 2) they are compelled to have an opinion for everything and propaganda helps them fill that need; and 3) they feel capable of judging things for themselves. Bernays had similar thoughts:

… universal literacy has given [people] rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. … It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion.

(Bernays, p. 20)

An example of mass imprinting is gun control. Gun enthusiasts are one of America’s strongest lobbies. Much weaponry available to civilians was designed to kill other human beings more effectively in warfare.

Those weapons have been used in way too many mass killings.

3



After a shooting, public outrage demands comprehensive gun control and gun lobbyists grouse about Constitutional rights. Rubber-stamp patriotism tacitly accepts the Constitutional-rights platitude and a serious situation remains uncorrected. I’ll return to this discussion in Chapter-7.

Popularizing Aggression.

“Events and activities must be created in order to put ideas into circulation … Every object which presents pictures or words that the public can see, everything that presents intelligible sounds, can be utilized in one way or another.” (Bernays, p. 103) The 1954 coup against Guatemala’s democratically-elected government was instigated by Bernays. During the 1940s, Chiquita (then United Fruit) was Guatemala’s largest landowner and controlled its railroad, electric, and telegraph industries. A sympathetic dictator guaranteed that banana worker’s wages would not exceed 50 cents per day.

Then, socialist Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was elected president in 1950 by a 65% majority vote. His land reforms threatened Chiquita’s profits.

Bernays went to work convincing main media reporters, and through them the public and government officials, that Guzman was a communist tool of Moscow. President Eisenhower was taken in by the propaganda and ordered the 1954 CIA coup that sent Guzman fleeing to Mexico. A dictatorship sympathetic to US policy and Chiquita’s profits was set up.

This highlights another prime Bernays rules: ‘Don’t say it yourself. Get someone else to say it for you.’ Bernays influenced the media to say it for him and thus put the red scare into government officials and the public.

4



Now I will turn to Desert Storm – the first Gulf war. When Asia Minor was partitioned after World War I, Kuwait was not part of the mandate that later became Iraq. Although Kuwait had previously been part of Iraq’s Basra province, the British kept it as a separate protectorate because of its geopolitical advantages.

Ever since Iraq’s independence in 1932, and especially since oil was discovered in Kuwait in 1938, Iraq has claimed Kuwait as its territory.

Six days after Kuwait was granted independence in 1961, Iraq’s President Abdul Karim Qassim stepped up claims to annex Kuwait.

By 1990, Kuwait was a major oil producer and exporter, and Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq. During the preceding decade, the 8-year Iran-Iraq war raged with Iraq supported by the US. Being a US ally, Saddam thought it would be an opportune time to make a move on Kuwait. In a July 1990 meeting with US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, Saddam understood her to say the US was not interested in his issues with Kuwait. On August 2nd Iraq invaded Kuwait.

US president George H.W. Bush was furious – oil was at stake!

Saddam had to be stopped. The problem was that Saddam’s ‘ally image’ was favorable among Americans.

Conversely, Kuwait was
unpopular since its ruler took personal charge of the nation’s oil.

Shrewd propaganda was called for.

A 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah was brought to testify before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. (A congressional caucus has no official standing and shouldn’t be confused with official congressional committees.) Her testimony was not given under oath.

She gave her name only as Nayirah, ostensibly to protect family members still in Kuwait. She said she was a volunteer at a Kuwaiti hospital when invading Iraqi troops removed critically ill patients from machines so the machines could be sent to Baghdad. She said they also took babies out of incubators and confiscated the machines, leaving 5


premature infants on the floor to die.

Kuwaiti health officials reportedly confirmed such atrocities. This story immediately hit the airwaves, was circulated in Congress, repeated at least ten times by President George H.W. Bush, and was introduced to the United Nations. The UN Security Council passed a resolution giving Saddam until mid-January 1991 to withdraw troops. He didn’t, and on January 17th Desert Storm hit with all its fury.

When the desert was calm again and atrocities were investigated, it was discovered that the incubator story was a hoax to sway US public opinion. Nayirah turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. The Kuwaiti government (in collaboration with the US and through front organizations) had paid the US public relations firm Hill and Knowlton (then the world’s largest) over $10-million to create US public support for Desert Storm.

There have been other deceptions to create support for war: World War I propaganda depicted German soldiers bashing children during the ‘Rape of Belgium.’ (See Di Giovanni); Pearl Harbor mustered support for the US to enter World War II 1 ; Tonkin Gulf kicked off US military involvement in Vietnam; 9/11 introduced the war on terror and justified the invasion of Afghanistan; and lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction brought ‘shock-and-awe’ to Baghdad.

Granfalloon Patriotism.

“My God,” she said, “are you a Hoosier?”2

I admitted I was.

“I’m a Hoosier, too,” she crowed. Nobody has to be ashamed of being 1 For a thoroughly-researched essay on how the attack on Pearl Harbor was allowed and even provoked to engineer public support to enter World War II, see http://www.plrc.org/docs/150115.pdf

2 Hoosier is a nick name for people from the US state of Indiana.

6


a Hoosier.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I never knew anybody who was.”

Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of ... a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done,... a granfalloon.

If you want to study a granfalloon,

Just remove the skin of a toy balloon.

– Vonnegut, (pp. 90-92)

All of us have been in situations where a group of people divide into teams. We count off by whatever number corresponds to the quantity of teams desired. Those who counted the same number are all on one team. Whether they are friends or strangers, they soon develop some type of camaraderie with other team members. In developing this team spirit they pit themselves against those belonging to other teams. Their team is the ‘in’ group and other teams are ‘out’ groups.

American novelist Kurt Vonnegut coined the word ‘granfalloon’ for such proud and meaningless groupings of people. Machinations of this type are an “emotionally powerful persuasive technique,” in which

“complete strangers are formed into groups using the most trivial, inconsequential criteria imaginable.” (Pratkanis and Aronson, p. 216) Granfalloons are both cognitive and motivational. The cognitive part is awareness of being part of a group; awareness of ‘belonging’ by which group members are inculcated to view the world in a prescribed manner.

Co-members are called by names or titles. They are shown respect and referred to with deference.

The ‘out’ group is depicted in pejorative terms. They are given labels, and stereotyped as a common ilk with no personality differences.

It is the cognitive nature of a granfalloon that motivates its members.

Their self-esteem is linked to the group. Leaders can then manipulate group behavior by, in essence, saying: AYou are on my side (never mind that I created the teams), now act like it and do what I say.@ (Pratkanis 7


and Aronson, p. 217) They don=t say it that bluntly but the message is conveyed. That is the motivational aspect of a granfalloon which can be expanded to the larger society, and then to the nation.

Ellul points out that “modern propaganda profits from the structure of the mass, but exploits the individual=s need for self-affirmation; and the two actions must be conducted jointly, simultaneously.” (Ellul, p. 8) Today=s mass media has this ability to reach the entire crowd and the individual simultaneously. It has been called the ‘lonely crowd.’

Social media intensifies the loneliness in a crowd.

It is when the individual listener is alone in the mass audience that he or she is most vulnerable to propaganda. It is this loneliness in the crowd that motivates an individual to ‘belong’ – to become a member of the ‘in’

group.

I refer to granfalloons on the national level as ‘granfalloon patriotism’ –
not to be confused with true patriotism. True patriotism is an ideology.

Granfalloon patriotism is a myth. To understand how the latter is an abrogation of the first, one must understand the difference between ideology and myth.

In America, ‘true patriotism’ is an allegiance to democracy based on the rights, freedoms, and obligations spelled out in the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Democracy is an ideology – a set of ideas which are cherished, relevant to the present, and are believed rather than proven. The concept of all people being created equal is part of our American ideology. It is an idea which is cherished and very much relevant, although it has not been demonstrated in practice.

Nevertheless, it is an idea which is central to our democratic ideology and is gradually affecting it.

Granfalloon patriotism, on the other hand, is a myth. The difference between a myth and an ideology is threefold: 8



1.

Myths are more basic and more emotional than ideologies.

They
simplify complex situations in the public mind to present a worldview that is readily accepted and deeply felt.

2.

Myths stimulate the emotional feelings which motivate desired action more readily than the more passive ideology.

3.

Myths are more intellectually fragmented than ideologies and appeal to sentiment rather than reason. They are easily accepted as a sacred belief: AEventually the myth takes possession of a man=s mind so completely that his life is consecrated to it.@ (Ellul, p. 31) This definition of a myth precisely defines granfalloon patriotism B an emotional yet unrealistic concept of America and Americans. To form this mythical patriotism, the leader must create it as a granfalloon. The basic ideology of Constitutional democracy is already a widespread belief in America, and the leader=s propaganda can build on that.

In the War on Terror, the myth begins when the people feel their freedom, lifestyle, and national interests being threatened. Never mind how exploitive that lifestyle is, or how far the national interests reach B
those interests are emotionally perceived as part of America=s destiny.

Any threat to that destiny stokes the fury of granfallooners.

Virtually all Americans have heard of the atrocities committed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also know, intellectually, that the war against Iraq was perpetrated through lies and deception. But their emotional feelings are somewhere else. Deep inside, they nourish the myth that America stands for democracy for all people and that human rights is the cornerstone of US foreign policy. They feel the community of nations should respect America and thank Americans for their contribution to a just world order. In the conflict between knowledge and emotions, emotions always dominate.

Symbols, Songs, and Slogans.

“A leader or an interest that can make itself master of current symbols is the master of the current situation.” (Lippman) Walter Lippmann 9


played a dramatic role on the American scene during the 20th century as an influential author, journalist, and political commentator. Early in the 20th century he supported Theodore Roosevelt=s Progressive party and co-founded the New Republic Magazine.

He then went from socialist to democrat and became an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson, was a member of the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and helped draft the covenant of the League of Nations. During those years he had a rosy view of democracy, believing that if Americans were given the facts they would participate fully in politics and world affairs, and become an educated electorate.

After World War I, Lippmann’s viewpoint changed. Seeing how the masses were manipulated through effective propaganda, he now believed that the populace was more like a herd of beasts which had to be guided by the intellectual elite. He insisted that it cannot be left to the press to form public opinion. Leadership requires experts to formulate what the press will present – what he called ‘manufacturing consent.’

Lippmann thought humanity saw reality through pictures in their heads.

And visualization through pictures or ideologies was the best way to reach the inner, preconscious thoughts of a person. Words or slogans that call up pictures or ideologies are next best.

During World War II there were many examples of ‘manufacturing consent.’ Songs sprang up to stimulate patriotic emotions: Remember Pearl Harbor; We did it Before and We will do it Again; Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition. Others glorified heroes: There= s a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere; Johnny Got a Zero; Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer; The Ballad of Roger Young.

Movies also glamorized war and rallied granfalloon passions: From Here to Eternity; Midway; The Battle of the Bulge; G.I Joe; and more.

From the Korean War came The Bridges of Toko Ri; Battle Circus; 10



Bamboo Prison; Men of the Fighting Lady; and others . Songs and movies were punctuated by posters, slogans, mottos, and sensational media reporting – all to popularize war.

A Vietnam movie was The Anderson Platoon. Songs of the period were The Battle of the Green Berets; Yellow River; and The Fighting Side of Me. The latter inspired the slogan ‘America: Love It or Leave It’: Yeah, walkin' on the fightin' side of me.

Runnin' down the way of life

Our fightin' men have fought and died to keep.

If you don't love it, leave it:

Let this song I'm singin' be a warnin'.

If you're runnin' down my country, man,

You're walkin' on the fightin' side of me.

– Merle Haggard

Macho lyrics empower granfalloon patriotism. They stir up emotions that justify brute solutions. They manufacture consent.

Ellul says the Amanipulation of symbols is necessary for three reasons.

First, it persuades the individual to enter the framework of an organization. Second, it furnishes him with reasons, justifications, and motivations for action. Third, it obtains his total allegiance.@ (Ellul, p.

23) He continues:

Furthermore, such propaganda becomes increasingly effective when those subjected to it accept its doctrines on what is good or bad (for example, the American Way of Life). There, a whole society actually expresses itself through this propaganda by advertising its kind of life.

(Ellul, p. 65, emphasis his)

Another means of manufacturing consent is through loaded words such as Freedom and Patriot. The word Freedom can turn atrocities into granfalloon patriotism. The warfighting in Afghanistan and Iraq were dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Most wars are automatically categorized as a Fight for Freedom.

11



When Vice President Dick Cheney spoke to the World Economic Forum in January 2004, he warned that Athe world continues to face the unremitting threat from a sophisticated global network of terrorists opposed to the values of freedom and openness ...@ The title of that speech was ASpread of Freedom Needed to Combat Terrorism, Cheney Says.@ ( Washington File, 24 January 2004) President George W. Bush Asaid much of his foreign policy is based on his belief that America has a mission to promote freedom around the world.@ He added: AA lot of my foreign policy is driven by the fact that I truly believe that freedom is a gift from the Almighty to every person, and that America has a responsibility to take a lead in the world, to help people be free.@ ( Washington File, 23 February 2004) Invoking

Divine backing energizes granfalloon patriotism.

The word Patriot has also wiggled its way to the forefront. The USA PATRIOT Act 3 was passed in the emotional aftermath of 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Never mind that it abolished numerous Constitutional rights. Forget that it actually restricts our freedom. Don’t worry about due process. We can’t allow some terrorist to slip through the cracks.

The USA PATRIOT Act was readily accepted B at least by those not detained.

September 11th was named Patriot Day. On Patriot Day 2003 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said:

A patriot is one who loves his land, prizes its principles and cherishes its creed. A patriot so reveres the ideals of his home country that he is willing to lay down his life that those ideals endure.

Throughout our history, from the earliest days of our nation up to the present time, America has been blessed with patriots, men and women 3 USA PATRIOT Act stands for the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.

That title was obviously composed for the propaganda effect of its acronym.

12


willing to give of themselves that this nation, and the freedom upon which it was founded, might live. ( Defense Link, 11 September 2003) That was granfalloon patriotism in its most profound sense.

Spinning the Leader’s Credibility.

Granfalloon patriots are very much oriented toward a leader. Leader credibility is very fragile to events and those events must be closely controlled or approval ratings will fall. The administration of George W. Bush was an extreme case. I will use his first term as an example.

Bush won Florida by a mere 537 votes, amid accusations of voter disenfranchisement and other election fraud, A recount was ordered but on December 9th, with Al Gore gaining, the US Supreme Court stopped the recount and appointed George W. Bush the 43rd President of the United States – the first ‘appointed’ president in US history.

Most Americans recognized the sham. Consequently, Bush started his leadership with a sub-par approval rating of 46%, according to FOX

News Poll. Something was drastically needed to enhance this new leader’s credibility.

That something happened on September 11, 2001. After the twin towers had fallen and the planes had crashed, Bush’s approval ratings skyrocketed to 90%. Approval ratings were still high when US forces blasted into Afghanistan but international and domestic support waned as the violence escalated. By the time Operation Anaconda ended in Afghanistan, and the casualties were counted, the Gallup poll had dropped to 79%.

March 2002 to March 2003 was spent preparing the public for the war against Iraq. During that year Bush=s ratings dropped to 58%, so White House PR crews devised the leader’s ‘Top Gun’ act. Instead of announcing from the oval office that major military operations in Iraq 13


had been completed, the president would make that announcement from an aircraft carrier at sea. The USS Abraham Lincoln, returning home from combat, was chosen.

With a crew aboard anxious to see their families after a tour of duty in Iraq, the Abraham Lincoln was delayed for a full day just off the southern California coast so Bush could make his PR splash. On May 1st a Navy Viking S-3B made a tailhook landing on the carrier deck while TV cameras ground away.

Bush emerged in flight togs and helmet, giving a dramatic thumbs-up.

In the well-publicized speech that followed, Bush announced to a cheering crew that major military operations in Iraq were completed.

Behind him hung a banner proclaiming ‘Mission Accomplished.’

The carrier landing and Top Gun speech did temporarily boost the leader=s credibility slightly -- Gallup Polls inched up to 69%. But then the ratings started sliding again. By mid-October they were down to 56%. Rising casualties coupled with failure to find either weapons of mass destruction or a linkage between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida were taking their toll.

By October, with American deaths rising, Bush=s approval had slipped to 51%. White House spin doctors decided the commander-in-chief should visit the battlefield.

After announcing that he would spend Thanksgiving at his Texas ranch, Bush secretly boarded Air Force One on Thanksgiving eve, 2003. He landed at Baghdad under cover of darkness. Only a few top White House aides, his family, and selected reporters knew of the plan.

Bush did not leave the Baghdad Airport during his two-hour stay in Iraq.

He did his granfallooning in a hangar where some 600 specially-selected troops assembled for Thanksgiving dinner – before daylight. Wearing an Army workout jacket with the unit’s insignia, he gave a “speech rich in flag-waving rhetoric and practical vagaries. Speaking in short, broad 14


generalities ... for purposes of ostensibly expressing gratitude ... Bush=s words served instead both to perpetuate illusions and to inculcate fear.

The President=s repetitive mantra of >terror,= >danger,= >freedom,= and the like ...@ (Livingstone)

Former White House administration official Mary Matalin extolled Bush=s war-zone visit as Aeffective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers …@ (Allen)

But Elaine Johnson, whose son had been killed earlier that month, pondered why the president hadn’t sent a message to her family: AEvidently my son wasn’t important enough to him dead ... As long as my son was alive he was important … to fight a war.@ (Littwin) The Baghdad scheme flopped. The polls only went up four percentage points.

By February 2004 Bush=s confidence polls were hovering around 50%.

That was no way to start an election year.

Two months later the Abu Ghurayb scandal broke with photos showing torture and mistreatment of war prisoners by US guards. International Red Cross officials had been warning for months of widespread torture by US troops.

Major General Antonio Taguba, head of the Abu Ghurayb investigation, told Senate investigators that Aabuse of prisoners by the American military and intelligence agencies was systemic.@ ( New York Times Editorial; 12 May 2004)

The London Observer, stated: AThe United States government … is running an >invisible= network of prisons and detention centres in which thousands of suspects have disappeared ... Few escape the ghost network of detention facilities, which range from massive prison camps such as that at Guantanamo Bay to naval vessels in the Indian Ocean, so 15


accounts of life within the new gulag are rare.@ (Burke) By the end of May Bush=s approval rating was 42-47%. Then things got worse. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, commander of military police at Abu Ghurayb, told BBC News she was Abeing made a >convenient scapegoat= for abuse ordered by others.@ (BBC News, 15 June 2004) She said Lieutenant General Sanchez, top US commander in Iraq, should be asked what he knows about the torture. 4

She added that military
intelligence took over part of Abu Ghurayb to make it more like Guantanamo.

This was a public relations catastrophe. Attorney General Ashcroft on May 26th tried to rally patriots by announcing an imminent terrorist attack on the US. But police and firefighter union leaders accused Ashcroft of timing his announcement to divert attention from Bush=s plummeting approval ratings. Ouch!

Memorial Day is a golden opportunity to drum up patriotism. During dedication of the World War II Memorial, Bush likened World War II to his war on terrorism: AWhen it mattered most, an entire generation of Americans showed the finest qualities of our nation and of humanity.@

Referring to curtailment of civil liberties by the USA PATRIOT Act, he said: AMen who considered themselves learned and civilized came to believe that free institutions must give way to the severe doctrines and stern discipline of a regimented society.@ (“Remarks of President George W. Bush”)

He continued: AAmericans had to work and save and ration and sacrifice as never before. ... this was a people=s war and everyone was in it.@

Then he added: AWith all our flaws, Americans at that time had never 4 Major General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghurayb scandal, was a two-star general so he could not investigate Lieutenant General Sanchez, who has three stars. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski (a one-star subordinate) was the only general officer he could investigate, so she got the blame.

16


been more united. And together, we began and completed the largest single task in our history.@ (“Remarks of President George W. Bush”) The polls still showed low public support.

Then a fortuitous event occurred for Bush=s propaganda campaign. On 5 June 2004 former President Ronald Reagan succumbed to pneumonia.

He was memorialized with a full presidential state funeral and many opportunities to pump some substance into Bush’s floundering presidency. Flags flew at half-mast for a week. Foreign policy approval ratings jumped from 45% to 57% according to a PEW poll.

But that was only temporary.

In mid-June the 9/11 Commission moved public attention back to Iraq.

Bush=s hand-picked commission released a preliminary staff report on Iraq stating: AWe have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States.@ (Scheer. Also see Landay)

To attack the nation of Iraq Bush had to certify to Congress that Saddam had Aplanned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,@ in those exact words, in order to justify using the war powers Congress had authorized. That is exactly what he did. Now the leader cannot say without destroying his credibility that his administration never claimed there was a relationship between Iraq and 9/11.

On the other hand, admitting his deception would ruin his career. The White House propaganda team strained to rescue the leader.

But more old skeletons found their way out of the proverbial closet: testimony directly connecting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with approving torture in Iraq; news regarding tens of billions of Iraqi reconstruction dollars not being used to rebuild infrastructure; the 9/11

Commission=s final report due out in weeks; and all the ruckus about Michael Moore’s film with the uncanny name of Fahrenheit 9/11. A...

17


not since Harry Truman in 1948 has an incumbent president been so low in the polls at this stage and still won a second term.@ (Cornwell) But Bush did win through blatant election fraud. I have written six papers on how elections are manipulated. They can be found at http://www.plrc.org/manipulating_elections_papers.html.

America’s Ministry of Truth

The task of government propaganda is to prevent the public from seeing too much of what the government is doing. The methods for accomplishing this have been developed and refined over the past century. Legislation introduced in 2016 put Orwellian fiction into law.

Section 1287 is an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (S.2943) authorizing a Global Engagement Center which will “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts. ,,,” (emphasis added) Non-state propaganda, of course, comes from any organization or person not officially connected with a government.

The function of this Center includes: “Analyze relevant information, data, analysis, and analytics from United States Government agencies, United States allies and partner nations, think tanks, academic institutions, civil society groups, and other non-governmental organizations. ” (emphasis added) That includes any group in the nonviolence movement.

Another function is: “As needed, support the development and dissemination of fact-based narratives and analysis to counter propaganda and disinformation directed at the United States …”

Fact-based does not mean factual – it’s just another term for spinning the truth. The vague wording of this amendment opens the door for wholesale propaganda on the public.

18



On Friday, 23 December 2016, while the nation was embroiled in last-minute Christmas preparations; President Obama quietly signed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 into law. The United States now has a de facto Orwellian Ministry of Truth to crank out fake news. 5 It will decide what we shall hear and not hear; what we shall believe and not believe.

- - - - - - - - - -

There is much more to say about malicious propaganda but this will have to suffice for this Guidebook. My research papers on propaganda are available at http://www.plrc.org/propaganda_papers.html for those wanting more information.

A Concluding Thought.

Prior to World War I, public relations experts Ivy Lee and Walter Lippman thought appealing to the intellect with facts and logic would motivate people to act. World War I squelched that notion. Factual information starts an intellectual activity in the brain; but it takes an emotional feeling in the gut to actuate thoughts that lead to action.

Stimulating emotions is the maxim for propaganda today.

‘Communist’ is a charged label. When Bernays got the media to propagate that Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was a communist stooge, it triggered red flags all over the place. Guzman was driven out and it wasn’t difficult to set up a capitalist stooge in his place.

5 The US State Department website says the Global Engagement Center is “an interagency entity, housed at the State Department” and was “established pursuant to Executive Order 13721 …” (See www.state.gov/r/gec / ) EO

13721 was signed on 14 March 2016 – nine months before S.2943 became law.

It appears that Congressional action took place after-the-fact to codify EO

13721. That being the case, it was the Obama administration that gave the USA its first Ministry of Truth.

19



Stimulate emotions! Leaving babies to die on the hospital floor stimulated all kinds of emotions. Granfallooning is intrinsically emotional. Patriotism is, itself, an emotion raised by patriotic songs and movies. Key words like ‘freedom’ and ‘patriot’ are great emotion grabbers.

Malicious propaganda must focus on emotion because truth has been badly twisted or completely abandoned. Being a communist stooge and leaving babies on the floor were absolute lies. The Top Gun Act and visiting the Iraqi battlefield for a two-hour, pre-dawn Thanksgiving dinner were events manufactured to deceive. There is no way to have accomplished the same results with rational explanation.

Propaganda created Lilo’s phenomenal world of Nazi Germany. But that changed.

Lilo wrote: “Only when we recognize … that every individual counts, that this is no longer the anonymous crowd, … only when we recognize this, will we succeed in acting responsibly, like mature citizens.” (Klug, p. 145)

Only when we become aware that we are not alone in the crowd, and that we do count as thinking human beings, can we evade the egothink popularized by the invisible government. How to do that will be addressed further in Chapter 7.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

References and Further Reading for Chapter-1.

Allen, Mike; AThe Bird Was Perfect But Not For Dinner,@ Washington Post, 4

December 2003..

B-326944: Environmental Protection Agency--Application of Publicity or Propaganda and Anti-Lobbying Provisions, letter from General Counsel Susan A. Poling, Government Accountability Office, to Chairman James M.

Inhale, US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works; 14

December 2015.

20



BBC News, AIraq Abuse >Ordered From the Top=,@ 15 June 2004.

Bernays , Edward L.; Propaganda (1928) Burke, Jason; ASecret World of US Jails,@ The Observer (London), 13 June 2004.

Clabough, Raven; “Bernays’ Ideas on Propaganda Continue to Haunt Americans,” ( The New American, 21 January 2011)..

Cornwell, Rupert; ABush Feels the Heat: US Voters Turn On Him Over Iraq,: the London Independent, 23 June 2004.

Defense Link, APatriot Day Observance,@ US Department of Defense news release, 11 September 2003.

Ellul, Jacques; Propaganda: The Formation of Men= s Attitudes, (New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1965). Originally published in France as Propagandes (1962). Introduction to English edition by Konrad Keller.

Ewen, Stuart; PR! A Social History of Spin, (NY, Basic Books of Harper Collins, 1996).

Klug, Lilo, editor; Surviving the Fire: Mother Courage and World War II, (Seattle, WA; Open Hand Publishing; 1989).

Landay, Jonathan S,: APanel Disputes Bush=s Reasons For Launching Attack On Iraq,@ San Jose (CA) Mercury News, 17 June 2004.

Lippman, Walter; Public Opinion (NY; Harcourt, Brace and Co.; 1922) Livingstone, David B.; AA Chickenhawk Thanksgiving In Baghdad,@

AlterNet.org, 28 November 2003.

Littwin, Mike; AGag Order Leaves Troops, Reporters Speechless,@ Rocky Mountain News (Colorado Springs), 25 November 2003.

New York Times Editorial; AThe Abu Ghraib Spin,@ 12 May 2004.

Pratkanis, Anthony R. and Aronson, Elliot; Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Misuse of Persuasion, (NY, W.H. Freeman, 2000).

“Remarks of President George W. Bush.” National WWII Memorial Dedication, 29 May 2004.

S.2943: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017. 12 December 2016.

Scheer, Robert; “Truth About Iraq Finally Has Its Pants On,” Los Angeles 21



Times, 22 June 2004.

Vonnegut, Kurt; Cat= s Cradle, (New York; Delta Book of Dell Publishing, 1963).

Washington File, ABush Says US Has Responsibility to Lead Fight for Freedom,@ US State Department website, 23 February 2004.

Washington File, ASpread of Freedom Needed to Combat Terrorism, Cheney Says,@ US State Department website, 24 January 2004.

22

2 – The Culture of Entertainment and Pax Americana

What if we try re-conceptualizing some sorts of addiction as one part of a larger issue, the issue of feeling controlled by desires so strong that we cannot resist them? Then the question becomes, "why are we so likely to become convinced that we are helpless to control our desires?" Part of the answer is that our society has an extraordinarily effective means of creating and strengthening certain social values. We call this system entertainment.

-- Stromberg, “Entertainment Culture and Addiction”

I returned from the Pacific in August 1946 – one of over 16 million GIs who had taken part in the carnage. Now that it was over it seemed like a whole new future had opened up for us. Civilian conveniences were coming off the production lines again and we wanted to enjoy them.

What we didn’t realize was that an invisible government was steering us into a new culture and a new foreign arrangement.

In this chapter I will explain post-war transitions as I saw them develop. America flexed its muscles and discovered it has a new global strength. America’s transformation was both domestic and foreign.

The domestic change was a new cultural paradigm – a culture of entertainment. Perhaps this was inevitable after years of rationing and doing without. When commodities were again available, we wanted to enjoy them. Entertainment became our ‘national interest’.

There was another domestic change. Corporations wanted more, and control of government was the best way to get it. A devious invisible government started developing.

The foreign change was in foreign relations. Pax Americana (Peace on America’s terms) was taking shape. The Axis Powers were defeated.

America’s allies were economically devastated. America emerged with



unprecedented military strength and productive capability – plus the nuclear bomb.

America used this newly-acquired supremacy to shape the global post-war environment. Reconstruction aid and mutual-defense treaties were crafted to protect America’s ‘vital interests’ (i.e. unhindered access to the world’s resources and a healthy foreign market for US businesses) from competition. I will start with the domestic change.

The Anatomy of Culture

While the war raged we were proud to do without, or with less.

Slogans and war songs churned the war fever. Patriotism, austere and violent, was dominant.

English poet T.S. Eliot called patriotism a “parasite belief” which

“pertains to natural religion and is therefore licit and even encouraged by the Church.” Consequently, “there is an aspect in which we can see a religion [with patriotism] as the whole way of life of a people … and that way of life is their culture;” resulting in “both an inferior culture and an inferior religion.” (Eliot, pp. 31-32; emphasis his) Eliot accurately described the patriotic zeal during World War II. A

‘natural religion’ is one fashioned by humankind. It reflects the prevailing zeitgeist and not the teachings of any faith. It can, however, influence those religions and that is what it did in America during WWII.

People sacrificed and prayed for their country; believing they were doing God’s work. Patriotism developed into a ‘natural’ religion. It crossed denominational lines. Churches supported it and blessed it.

Patriotism achieved its spiritual legitimacy through this parasitic process. Religiously patriotic was the way of life in America – the culture. But patriotism was neither a true religion nor a healthy culture.

Both were tailored to fit the passions of the time. They were inferior.

24



For instance, God Bless America was composed by Irving Berlin in 1918. He revised it in 1938, as Europe was sliding into war. He added a patriotic prelude:

While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free, Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

Then the song starts out as a prayer: “God Bless America, etc.” The Prelude is no longer sung. God Bless America is a beautiful song but adding that prelude during the run-up to war gave patriotism a divine blessing. That was the new zeitgeist. I remember it well.

I have drawn on several commentators who have studied culture since World War II.1 All of them agree that culture is a way of life.

Eliot defines culture as “not merely the sum of several activities, but a way of life. ” (Eliot, p. 41; emphasis his) Culture is the whole package –
not the expertise of the artist; or the composer; or the architect. It is more than the composite of all individual activities in society. It is the way of life of society in its entirety – it is what motivates people to pursue those activities. It is the spirit of the time.

Peruvian politician and essayist Mario Vargas Llosa agrees that culture is a way of life, but “a way of life where forms are as important as content.” (Llosa, p. 4) Llosa cautions against confusing culture with knowledge. Knowledge is in the head. Technology gives form to knowledge. But culture develops knowledge.

1 These Commentators and their works are English Poet T.S. Eliot (a Christian) Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (1948); French theorist/writer/filmmaker Guy Debord

(a Marxist analyst) Society of the

Spectacle (1967); French-born American literary critic-philosopher-educator George Steiner (a Jew) In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Toward the Re-Definition of Culture (1971); and Peruvian Essayist-Politician-Educator Mario Vargas Llosa (2010 Nobel Prize in Journalism) Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society (2012).

25



For example, the cultures of indigenous peoples were subsistence and survival. Various tribes gained knowledge applicable to their environment. They recognized the need to hunt, fish, and/or gather.

They learned to value food, to preserve it, to cooperate for their common survival, to respect Mother Earth who was the source of their livelihood, the need to express appreciation, and much more. That was the content of knowledge derived under their subsistence culture.

They then put that knowledge into forms by developing the tools and techniques for hunting, fishing and/or gathering. They cooperated by taking only what they needed, wasting nothing, and sharing. They respected Mother Earth by caring for nature and recognizing that all of creation is connected. They developed ways of expressing appreciation for Creation through chanting, prayers, and offerings.

Eliot identifies three ways in which culture can be recognized: (1) in the individual, (2) in groups to which the individuals belong, and (3) in the culture of the society to which the groups belong. “Therefore it is the culture of the society that is fundamental.” (Eliot, p. 21) Using Llosa’s concept of content and form, and Eliot’s concept of society holding the fundamental culture, a group in the culture can be analogized to assembling the content of a specific bundle of knowledge (such as art). The technical expertise of an individual in that group (an artist) gives form to that specialized aspect of knowledge.

It works both ways. Although no individual is an autonomous culture, no culture is possible without the individual.

Expertise of the
individual contributes to the knowledge of the group; and the group knowledge contributes to culture as a whole.

That is the interactive energy of culture and, contrary to the insistence of reductionists, makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. “It is only by an overlapping and sharing of interests, by participation and 26



mutual appreciation that the cohesion necessary for culture can obtain.”

(Eliot, p. 24)

No other country has had such a worldwide cultural impact since World War II as the USA. French-born American philosopher-educator George Steiner wrote: “… America is, today, the main generator and storehouse of cultural means …” (Steiner, p. 63)

Entertainment and the Culture Industries. Some think culture produces only good things that will last. Eliot wrote: “Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.” (Eliot, p. 27) Llosa says the effects of culture “transcend mere present time, to endure, to stay alive for future generations,” while entertainment is

“made to be consumed instantly and disappear, like cake or popcorn.”

(Llosa, p. 20)

This culture-is-good concept has prompted some observers to say culture today is dead and that we live in a post-culture era. I do not agree, nor do I subscribe to the notion that culture is always good. I prefer to define culture as a way of life – good or bad.

Strange as it may seem, advertising propaganda actually increased during the war years although there was virtually nothing to sell.

Nevertheless, manufacturers were staying in the public eye in anticipation of the expected post-war spending boom that I so eagerly embraced in 1946.

People accumulated money but there was little to spend it on. Then the war was over and industry very quickly converted back to producing cars, appliances, furniture, and much more – galore.

Consumerism
skyrocketed as advertising propagated a more entertaining way of life.

27



Advertising agencies increased from 1,628 in 1939 to almost 6,000 in 1948. The immediate means of post-war advertising was through radio and print media. But television sets entered the market in 1946.

We bought our first television set in 1955 – black & white at that time.

We were mesmerized by it. Even the commercials were a novelty –
living up to their slogans made us feel like being in the ‘in’ group. TV
probably boosted propaganda, and the culture of entertainment, more than any technology before or since.

Consumption is the key to entertainment. We have a society of consumers and most consumption is motivated by appealing to pleasure and entertainment. According to the dictionary, entertainment is something amusing, diverting, or engaging. That pretty well defines the western way of life – from TV, sports, and travel to wardrobe, cars, and houses; from computers, tablets, and smart phones to apps, devices, and what-nots.

All of that requires resources, land, and cheap labor. Protecting access to those ‘vital interests’ requires a military capable of fighting multiple wars simultaneously. That consumes the largest share of annual budgets. Military contracting is a very lucrative business with scant accountability.

The culture of entertainment pleases the invisible government. If the people are entertained they are supportive. And keeping them entertained is also a very lucrative business. The military-industrial complex is in full play.

To perpetuate this mutuality between entertainment and profits, the invisible government controls what we hear and see in the media.

According to Business Insider, 50 corporations controlled 90% of the 28



American media in 1983. By 2012 only 6 corporations controlled that same 90%.2 (Lutz)

As control of the media increased, so did its power to control public thinking and behavior. The ‘entertainment’ propagated and advertised stimulates the lonely-in-the-crowd emotion that readily supports foreign wars to assure a continuing flow of such entertainment.

Television.

TV, at work since 1946, has contributed most toward developing a culture of entertainment.

It surpasses the cinema and
radio in forming public opinion.

It has largely replaced books for
imparting information. That is a shame because books are what provide in-depth knowledge. Sound bites derived from other media are mostly superficial, abbreviated, and have a skewed viewpoint.

TV has transformed the world by bringing real-life events right into our living room. French writer/filmmaker Guy Debord wrote: “In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.” (Debord, Proposition 1) The “spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people mediated by images.” (Debord, Proposition 4) TV has been in the forefront in creating the spectacular worldview. Jim and Kathy McGinnis, in their excellent book, Parenting for Peace and Justice, use an interesting exercise to place us in the position of an outside observer:

TV QUIZ FOR MARTIANS

Watch television for a continuous two-hour stretch.

2 Those six corporations are General Electric, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. (Lutz)

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Pretend you are from Mars: Imagine what you are seeing on the screen is the only information you have about Americans.



Spend the first hour watching two half-hour portions of shows.



Spend the second hour switching the channel selector every five minutes to sample programming at random.

1.

Discuss what you have seen. As Martians, what would be your ideas about Americans, judging from the shows and ads you have seen?

x

What are women like?

x

What are men like?

x

What do people do most of the time?

x

What is the goal of most Americans?

x

What do Americans value highly?

x

What do they believe in?

x

What are blacks like? Hispanics? Asian

Americans? Native Americans? Americans of European descent?

x

What do people do for pleasure?

2.

Now switch your identity back from Martian observers to the Americans who are being observed. Discuss the experience of being observed and the descriptions of you that these ‘outsiders’ gave. How does it feel to be seen and described in that way? (McGinnis, p. 20) What the Martian will readily recognize is that the spectacle is one-way communication to masses of people for the purpose of controlling how those people interact socially among themselves; and to induce them to respond favorably to the communicator.

The one-way communication uses sensational images3 to impress people in a manner that influences their thinking and actions. People 3 The word ‘image' as I am using it should be interpreted in its broadest sense.

It may be an actual image such as on a TV screen, or it may be a mental image conjured up by words of implication. And it may even be a concept induced by the excitement of a football game or the thinking induced by mob hysteria.

30



make decisions thinking they are using their own free will without realizing how deeply the spectacular has influenced their objectiveness.

How vulnerable are people to the spectacle? French philosopher/sociologist Jacques Ellul uses the example of a man in the western world living in a very populated area. He feels alone in the crowd. “[L]oneliness inside the crowd is perhaps the most terrible ordeal of modern man … Propaganda is the true remedy for loneliness” (Ellul, p. 148; emphasis his) Television provides that remedy.

Television employs entertainment abundantly; whether as a ‘news’

broadcast, a movie, or reality TV.4 The invisible government has even turned the White House into a reality TV show. “It’s part of rousing the crowd, part of the theater.” (Klein, p. 53) The White House spectacle awes, confuses, and distracts people. But it’s deadly. “People have already died in this show … and many more will meet the same fate before it goes off the air.” (Klein, p. 57) Television dramatizes every incident

Social Media. S ocial media has greatly expanded the ability of the invisible government and culture industries to control thoughts and form images. It provides more vile entertainment than allowed on TV, such as pornography and explicit violence. This has had a devastating effect on social mores and the molding of young minds.

That is particularly true in the younger generation. Many, if not most, of those born since the 1980s seldom watch TV. Mobile devices are the screens of choice. They provide all the sit-coms, game shows, 4A reality show is a television show in which members of the public or celebrities are filmed living their everyday lives or undertaking specific challenges. (Collins English Dictionary 2012 Digital Edition) 31



documentaries, etc. worth watching; and even steer the viewer to which ones to watch.

As data miners, the social media is invaluable to the invisible government to spy on everyone. It feeds our preferences and desires to the culture industries so they can personalize their advertising.

Whereas TV has brought world events to our living room, the internet and mobile devices continuously feed spectacular entertainment to us wherever we are. The device is always in one’s hand, or in a quick-draw pocket. It alerts us when new theater develops. It’s always there.

It’s been said that TV has reduced our attention span to 30 minute segments. Fast-talk commercials punctuated with “call now”

imperatives, condition us to consume impulsively. And in a half-hour program, about ten minutes is devoted to advertising.

In social media, attention span is measured in seconds – especially interactive social media. Time means dollars to the media giants which don’t want to give too much of it away. Here are a few examples: x

Twitter messages (tweets) were first capped at 140 characters. In September 2018 that was upped to 280.

x

The now-defunct Vine video was limited to 6 seconds.

x

SnapChat allows sending a text message, picture, or video with 10
seconds maximum to view before deleting.

x

Stories is a feature for mobile devices similar to SnapChat, that is used on Facebook and Instagram. It allows you to share a video or series of pictures. Facebook allows 20 seconds and Instagram 15.

x

Dating Apps provide a lineup of potential like-minded dates to choose from with a swipe of the finger.

x

YouTube does have long documentaries but the short, few-minute clips are popular.

This small sampling of interactive apps illustrates how public interaction is limited. The theme is to keep it short & snappy, get to the point, move right along and, above all, make it entertaining.

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Although the terms ‘neoconservative’ and ‘neocon’ had not yet been formulated, it was the neocon mentality – egothink – working as the invisible government, that crafted the culture of entertainment. That culture is a strong pillar of support for egothink. Transforming the culture of entertainment is the first step toward eliminating egothink so goodness can flow in all people.

The culture of entertainment is the domestic transition of American society since World War II. Pax Americana is the international transition; also crafted by egothink..

Pax Americana – Structuring for World Hegemony.

World War II ended with an atomic bang. Social structures changed dramatically. Renowned physicist Albert Einstein warned in May 1946: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” (Einstein Quote) No one listened.

President Dwight David Eisenhower also recognized a dangerous trend:

… we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. … This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. … In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. (Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, January 1961) Again, no one listened. The complex happened. Neocolonialism emerged.

Both neocolonialism and the military-industrial complex factor into Pax Americana. Less than 2 years after World War II, 33



President Harry Truman launched Pax Americana with the Truman Doctrine. 5

The Truman Doctrine.

When the UK, due to economic stress,
discontinued helping Greece and Turkey struggle against communist insurgents, Truman on 12 March 1947 requested $400-million to aid those countries. He also deployed US civilians, troops, and military equipment to show support. He argued: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." (12 March 1947 address to Congress) Truman emphasized that if communists won the Greek civil war it would undermine political stability in the Middle East.

Why the concern about political stability in the Middle East? Because, in 1933, Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) was granted a 60-year concession for oil exploration and production in Saudi Arabia.

Texaco joined the enterprise three years later. Oil was discovered n March 1938.

In January 1944 the consortium’s name changed to Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO). It was given exclusive control of the Saudi oil industry. Standard Oil of New Jersey (later Exxon) and Socony-Vacuum Oil Company (later Mobil) later joined the consortium.

So, when World War II ended, Chevron, Texaco, Exxon, and Mobil6
controlled the Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. Post-war exhilaration about 5Military occupation of colonies is obsolete. Neocolonialism sets up a friendly dictator, supports him with military aid, and lets the dictator govern the colony to suit the colonizers interests.

6 The 1999 ExxonMobil merger became the world’s largest oil company.

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big-money jobs in Saudi Arabia rivaled the California gold rush.

That’s why Truman was concerned about political stability in the Middle East.

When Truman was voicing concerns about Middle East stability, ARAMCO was building a major refinery near the Saudi east-coast town Ras Tanura, and was constructing the 1,000-mile Trans-Arabian Pipeline across Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria to Lebanon’s Mediterranean port of Sidon.

Besides initiating Pax Americana, the Truman Doctrine kicked off the Cold War. Now a strong and agile military presence was needed to put teeth into that Doctrine. That was done by getting an economic grip on Europe (the Marshall Plan) accompanied by military dominance (NATO).

The Marshall Plan. The European Recovery Act (Marshall Plan) distributed $13 billion in economic aid among 17 European nations between April 1948 and December 1951.7 It has been praised as an altruistic effort to help Europe’s post-war recovery. It did do that, but there is more to the story.

General George C. Marshall was confirmed Secretary of State in January 1947. Republicans controlled Congress and wanted tax cuts and lower government expenses. That didn’t fit Marshall’s agenda.

His first ‘Secretary’ speech called on Americans to recognize their global leadership role.

While preparing aid and support under the Truman Doctrine, Marshall said: “It would not be alarmist to say that we are faced with the first 7 The 17 countries are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden Switzerland, Turkey, UK, and West Germany.

35



crisis of a series which might extend Soviet domination to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.” (Bland)

Meanwhile, Marshall was formulating his plan to help Europe and contain communism. Aid would be advertised as material rather than ideological. Europe would have to request it and implement it so as to mask US political interests. Aid would be offered to all of European, not just the western bloc.

Marshall announced his plan on 5 June 1947. The Soviets were at first supportive but later recognized the anti-Soviet tactic. Moscow coerced Eastern European countries not to support it. Stalin branded it as US
interference in the affairs of other countries.

The Marshall Plan gave the US its desired economic foothold in Europe. It provided a market for US goods and a favorable climate for US businesses. Now a military presence was needed to protect this economic activity.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). While the US and its allies were downsizing their military, a huge array of Soviet troops remained in Central and Eastern Europe where pro-Soviet governments were being set up. Strong communist parties had also arisen in France and Italy.

Recognizing the threat, five western European countries (UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) signed the Brussels Treaty of 1948. However, it was nowhere near strong enough to prevent Soviet encroachment.

In February 1948; Canada, the US, and the UK began secret talks on a mutual defense treaty. After the Berlin blockade the following June, other countries joined the talks.

36



The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on 4 April 1949. The 12 original signatories were the Brussels Treaty five plus Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, and the US.8 This brought the US
into the picture with its nuclear monopoly. Article 5 of the Treaty states that “an armed attack against one or more of them … shall be considered an attack against them all …”

Article 9 provides for a North Atlantic Council which is the decision-making body. It is chaired by a Secretary General who is always a European. That Council in turn established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as its military command to implement Article 5.

NATO is always commanded by a US four-star general. America now has its military toehold in Europe.

In the early years of NATO, the defense of Western Europe depended on the threat of massive retaliation with US long-range nuclear weapons. As the years went by, the Soviet Union (later Russia), China, UK, and France developed nuclear weapons. Those four nuclear powers plus the US are permanent members of the UN Security Council. Only the Security Council can pass resolutions which are binding as international law. And any of the permanent members can veto any resolution.

NATO in 1967 introduced the ‘flexible response strategy’ which theorized that massive nuclear retaliation was not necessary to counter a communist advance. A limited nuclear response could be initiated 8 Between 1952 and 1990 Greece, Turkey, West Germany (a united Germany after 1990), and Spain joined the North Atlantic Treaty. After the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia; the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, and Croatia joined the alliance. The latest to join was Montenegro in June 2017, bringing the total member states to 29.

37



with escalation as necessary. This allowed the US to base shorter-range nuclear weapons in Europe under the dual-key system (either the US or the host country could veto a launch command). America’s military toehold is now a nuclear foothold.

Détente was the catchword during the 1970s but the Cold War heated up again in 1979 when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. In July 1989

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ceased propping up communist governments in Europe and allowed democratic elections. In 1992, the Soviet Union broke up and the cold war ended.

The unambiguously stated purpose of NATO was to protect Western Europe from an invasion by the Communist Bloc. With the Soviet threat gone, there was no justification for NATO. But disbanding NATO would end US hegemony in Europe – something not on the invisible government’s agenda.

The US wanted NATO redirected for cooperative security. That entailed: (1) extending NATO’s influence without expanding the Article 5 mutual defense agreement and (2) changing NATO’s rules of engagement to allow out-of-area operations.

Both were strongly
opposed by Russia.

Extending NATO’s influence was accomplished by offering Partnership for Peace (PfP) affiliations rather than membership. It encompassed Central and Southeast Europe and was mainly aimed at attracting states that were previously part of the Soviet Union.

That allowed the US and its allies to set up so-called free trade, in which the US excels. PfP members can participate in joint military exercises with NATO. That would help deter a strategic nuclear threat from Russia and create a healthier climate for US business interests.

38



NATO eventually changed its rules of engagement to accommodate out-of-area operations. In 1995 I witnessed initial deployment of NATO’s 60,000-strong Implementation Force (IFOR) in Sarajevo following the Dayton Peace Accords; later reduced to a smaller Stabilization Force (SFOR).

In 1999, NATO launched air strikes against Serbia and Kosovo; and then sent a military Kosovo Force (KFOR) to Kosovo for peacekeeping, and an Albanian Force (AFOR) to Albania to help distribute aid to refugees.

Hegemony in Other Parts of the World. US interests in the Middle East and Southeast Asia are oil flow and arms sales. Any threat to those interests, or the developing of NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) weapons of mass destruction, will be met with decisive military force.

During World War II the US had many bases in the East Asia-Pacific Region. The most strategically located of those were maintained.

Treaty alliances with Japan, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)9, and the larger ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)10 evolved.

9 ASEAN (established 8 August 1967) consists of ten members: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – plus Papua New Guinea as an observer.

10 ARF consists of 27 members – the ten ASEAN countries plus Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, European Union, India, Japan, Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, Republic of Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, Timor Leste, and the United States.

39



The Korean War put US boots on the ground in continental East Asia.

Those boots stayed firmly implanted in South Korea after the armistice was signed and Korea was partitioned at the 38th parallel.

The
continued US presence is justified because a peace agreement was never signed. The Korean War has not ended – only a cease fire.

Africa has potential for developing free-market economies which suit US interests. The US conducted late 20th century military exercises with African nations. The ‘African Crisis Response Initiative’ is a US
training program to maintain jointly-operated and rapidly-deployed peacekeeping forces. Weapons sales and military advisers followed.

Through a ‘Front Line States Initiative’, the US furnished non-lethal weapons so certain African states could resist Sudan-sponsored insurgencies and terrorism. Military relationships were enhanced through the ‘US-South African Binational Commission’s’ defense committee.

The US African Command (AFRICOM) was established in 2007. It covers all of Africa except Egypt (which remains under the Central Command) and has military relations with 53 African nations.

The overarching US objective in The Americas is to maintain military and economic stability. Ostensibly to stem narcotics trafficking and criminal activity, the US has engaged in profitable arms sales.

To
support neocolonialism, Latin American military are trained at the

‘School of the Americas’11 at Ft. Benning, Georgia – more accurately dubbed ‘School of Assassins’. The US also offers training in 11 The School of the Americas name has been changed to Western Hemisphere School for Security Council.

40



‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (i.e. torture) at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona.

Reorganizing the US Military.

The National Security Act of 1947
completely restructured US military and intelligence organizations. It created a Cabinet level Department of Defense (DOD) headed by a Secretary of Defense.

Under the DOD are three sub-departments: Army (formerly the War Department), the existing Navy Department (including the Marine Corps), and a new Department of the Air Force (formerly the Army Air Corps). Naval aviation remained with the Navy.

This new military establishment was to become the neocon’s cavalry on the new American frontier; which will be discussed in the next two chapters. Such a cavalry needs scouts to gather information. That was also provided for in The National Security Act of 1947.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA morphed from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was the wartime foreign intelligence agency for the US military. The CIA’s covert-action wing was created in 1948 and Radio Free Europe in 1949. After the Cold War, the CIA started economic espionage to steal information from foreign firms for cooperating US businesses.

The CIA reports only to the President with no checks and balances. Its budget is so black that Congress doesn’t know what it is funding, and there is no accountability on how the money is spent. It also takes money from drug lords, and sells military equipment for high prices to 41



obtain additional funds to conduct election fraud, regime changes, and assassinations in countries inhospitable to US businesses or policy.

The CIA practices ‘enhanced interrogation’ (torture). It has airline fronts to carry kidnapped ‘suspects’ on ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights to secret torture locations. Although restricted to foreign operations, evidence indicates the CIA has orchestrated assassinations within the US. Evidence also convinces me that the 2001 anthrax letters originated with the CIA

The CIA also conducted Operation Mockingbird (late 1940s) to recruit US media and journalists to disseminate propaganda; Operation Chaos (1959) to illegally spy on US citizens; and Watergate (1972).

“The ‘Association for Responsible Dissent’ estimates that by 1987, six million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations.” (Kangas) That was the first 40 years. During the last 30, with advanced weapons, drones, and Hellfire missiles, the fatalities must have soared horrendously. But the CIA isn’t the only super-secret government organization that emerged from World War II. There is also the NSA.

The National Security Agency (NSA).

Besides safeguarding US
communications, by encryption, the NSA intercepts, deciphers, translates, and analyzes all communications from hostile nations.

The NSA was formed by merging the Signal Intelligence Service of the Army Signal Corps with OP-20-G12 of the Navy. These two agencies, 12 OP-20-G refers to G Section (Communications Security), of the 20th Division (Office of Naval Communications), of OPNAV (Office of Naval Operations). This was the Communications Intelligence Section of US Naval Communications during World War II.

42



working together before World War II, broke the Japanese code and followed Tokyo’s Pearl Harbor plans right up to the attack. At that time signal communications were radio, telephone, or telegraph. Today it includes electronic/digital transmissions.

To accommodate the newly-established Air Force, Defense Secretary James Forrestal in 1949 merged the Army and Navy cryptologic services into the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). In November 1952, Truman ordered that AFSA should also conduct civilian intelligence. The word ‘National’ was substituted for ‘Armed Forces’

and the National Security Agency (NSA) was born.

I’ll write more
about the NSA in Chapter 4.

A Concluding Thought.

In 1972 Janet Reback, under the pseudonym of Taylor Caldwell, published Captains and the Kings: The Story of an American Dynasty.

Throughout the novel she introduced the fictional ‘Committee for Foreign Studies’ and the ‘Scardo Society’; composed of ‘cold and deadly men who meet secretly in cities around the world to plan the global economy, political candidates, and who is marked for assassination.’ In the Foreword, Reback explains that “the historical background and the political background of this novel are authentic.

The ‘Committee for Foreign Studies’ does indeed exist … and so does the ‘Scardo Society,’ but not by those names.” (Caldwell, p. 7) These ‘cold and deadly men’ are the ultra-conservatives who formed into ultra-right-wing thinkers now called neoconservatives – neocons for short. The evolutionary process of their development is the topic of the next chapter.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

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References and Further Reading for Chapter-2.

Bland, Larry I; “Marshall and the ‘Plan’;” (George C. Marshall Foundation).

Caldwell, Taylor; Captains and the Kings: The Story of an American Dynasty, (New York; Fawcett Crest; 1972).

Debord, Guy; Society of the Spectacle (Detroit; Black & Red. 1967, 1983) Einstein Quote: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/248919-the-unleashed-power-of-the-atom-has-changed-everything-except Eisenhower’s Farewell Address; broadcast via radio on 17 January 1961.

Eliot, T.S.; Notes towards the Definition of Culture (London; Faber & Faber; 1948, 1962)

Ellul, Jacques; Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (NY; Knopf; 1962, 1965)

Howe, George; “The Early History of NSA”; https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-spectrum/assets/files/early_history_nsa.pdf Kangas, Steve; “A Timeline of CIA Atrocities.” Avaialable at:http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html Klein, Naomi; No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need (Chicago; Haymarket Books; 2017) Llosa, Mario Vargas; Translated by John King; Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society, (NY; Farrar, Straus and Girouux; Spanish original 2012, English Translation 2015).

Lutz, Ashley; “These 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America,”

Business Insider, 14 June 2012.

McGinnis; James and Kathleen; Parenting for Peace and Justice, (NY; Orbis; 1981).

“National Security Act of 1947, The” (Public Law 253, 80th Congress, Chapter 343, 1st Session, S.756), 26 July 1947.

Steiner, George; In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes toward the Redefinition of Culture (New Haven; Yale University Press; 1972) 44



Stromberg, Peter G., Ph.D.; “Entertainment Culture and Addiction,”

( Psychology Today, 19 July 2009).

“Truman Doctrine, 1947, The”; ( Milestones 1945-1952; Office of the Historian, US State Dept.)

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Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Speech, 1961

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3 – Rise of the Neocons When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities to evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission.

– Erich Fromm, 19411

Corporations took a beating during the Great Depression but regained some prestige during World War II. Nevertheless, post-war legislation aimed at paying for the carnage placed a heavy excess profits tax on entrepreneurs and businesses. Corporations have been struggling ever since to regain unlimited profitability. They have become more and more aggressive in obtaining that goal. Over the years they evolved into the neoconservatives (neocons). They are the ones now calling the shots in the invisible government.

This chapter will follow the political history of neoconservatism from the 1960s to the end of the century, but I first want to mention neoliberalism. The modern meaning includes “economic liberalization policies such as privatization, austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.” ( Wikipedia,

“Neoliberalism”)

The ‘neoliberal’ label has mostly been attached to democrats. Bill Clinton ratified NAFTA2, brought the decades-long GATT3 talks 1 Fromm, Erich; Escape from Freedom (New York, Owl Book of Henry Holt and Company, 1941 & 1969), page 6.



together under the WTO4, expanded trade with sub-Sahara Africa and the Caribbean, and signed the PNTR5 Act with China.

Clinton also streamlined medical research and testing, initiated

‘Reinventing Government’ to work better on less, increased private competition in telecommunications, curtailed welfare benefits, and initiated innovation and competition in banking. Barack Obama negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership which will affect over 25% of the global commerce.

The neoconservatives want all of that too, but they are more aggressive in foreign affairs – insisting on a strong military to impose US interests and prevent competition. They have mostly been thought of as republicans.

The ‘neoliberal’ label is a red herring. It implies that the liberal faction is responsible for society’s problems. It detracts from, masks, and dilutes the activities of neocons. Politicizing the two labels, by party association, trivializes the activities of both.

Neoliberal or neoconservative, they are all neocons. The neocons have now infiltrated both parties. Having said that, I will drop the distracting ‘neoliberal’ label and focus on the real issue –
neoconservatism.

Irving Kristol called himself the ‘godfather of all neocons’. He wrote that “the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would 2 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico, and the US.

3 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

4 World Trade Organization (WTO).

5 Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR).

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seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.”

(Kristol) The ‘Democratic Party’ and ‘liberalism in general’ can now be added to Kristol’s ‘to-be-converted’ list.

Kristol believes patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment, that world government is a bad idea, that politicians must be able to distinguish friends from foes, and that ‘national interests’ go beyond geographical definition to include ideological and material concerns.

He also champions overall military superiority and says that with

“power comes responsibilities, whether sought or not. … either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you.”6

The goal of neoconservatives is to create corporate-friendly governments with low taxes and minimum oversight; that is, George H.W. Bush’s ‘New World Order’ – now known as ‘Globalization’.

Neoconservatives emerged in the 1960s as mostly democrats disenchanted with the emphasis on social programs and the neglect of military strength during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. A strong military with more funding was needed to suit their ambition for world domination.

Then Richard Nixon was elected to the White House.

6 This quotation is from Neoconservative.net, “Neoconservatism Defined,”

which is no longer available on the Internet.

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The Nixon Presidency.

Richard M. Nixon ended the war in Vietnam because he saw it as a lost cause with nothing to gain. Then he ended the military draft and an all-volunteer army made its debut. Both of these events were hailed as victories by the Nonviolent Movement.7 The way it played out, however, was that the rich and famous would never volunteer, so future wars would be fought by minorities and the unemployed.

When it became difficult to meet recruitment goals, many of the tasks formerly performed by soldiers were privatized. During Desert Storm, for the first time in modern history, National Guard units were federalized and deployed.

Privatization is welcomed by corporations and contractors because it means business and business means profits. It costs the taxpayers more but tasks like cooking, kitchen police (KP), warehouse and supply, sentry duty, security, and more are now contracted out.

Nixon did do some good things during his tenure. He used ping-pong diplomacy to normalize relations with China and restored diplomatic relations with Egypt. He signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and achieved détente with the USSR.

Domestically, he desegregated Southern schools, implemented the federal affirmative action program, established the Environmental Protections Agency (EPA), and took steps to reduce oil dependency.

This did not please the neocons.

7 In this Guidebook I will use the term “Nonviolent Movement” to refer to all organizations, networks, movements, etcetera currently working nonviolently to make this Earth better for all beings.

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Nixon met his Waterloo at Watergate. He pioneered government spying, wiretapping, and eavesdropping but got caught when he ordered the bugging of the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

When it was discovered that all conversations in the Oval office were taped, those tapes were subpoenaed. Nixon invoked ‘executive privilege’ and provided incomplete transcripts. His use of ‘executive privilege’ introduced the concept of the Imperial Presidency which became popular for covering up much mischief in later administrations.

Retributive justice was closing in on the administration, and Vice President Spiro Agnew was the first to go. Nixon hand-picked Congressman Gerald Ford as the new VP. When impeachment was certain, Nixon resigned and his chosen successor pardoned him for all crimes committed in office.

Ford finished the remainder of Nixon’s term but was defeated for reelection, thus giving him the dubious honor of being the only US

President that was never elected. Both Ford and Carter carried on Nixon’s programs which displeased the neocons.

The Reagan Years.

Investigative historian Robert Parry recognized “a growing realization that the starting point for many of the catastrophes confronting the United States today can be traced to the Reagan presidency,” and that

“Reagan’s presidency represented a dangerous escape from accountability and reality.” (Parry)

Earlier administrations had been making some progress in addressing fossil fuel dependency, the arms race, nuclear proliferation, and 51



environmental destruction. Reagan’s attitude was not to worry about these things – just have fun, which contributed greatly to the culture of entertainment. With a charismatic movie star in the White House, the public was charmed. Vested interests loved Reagan for his ability to pacify the public and divert their attention from corporate ambitions.

The War On Drugs had been floundering because state and local officials had no incentive to strain their limited resources to enforce a federal law. Reagan provided that incentive. In 1981 he persuaded Congress to pass the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act to provide civilian law enforcement agencies with military weapons and equipment, along with military intelligence and research data; for use in drug interdiction.

That was followed by a presidential National Security Decision Directive which declared the drug issue a national security threat.

Thus he could order military cooperation with civilian law enforcement. From that point on the militarization of civilian law enforcement advanced exponentially. Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Teams had been mainly used for hostage situations. Now, with access to military weapons and equipment, SWAT teams are the storm troopers for drug raids.

Urged by Reagan, Congress in 1988 passed the Edward Byrnes Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program (Byrnes Program).8 It provided millions of dollars in grants to state and local law enforcement to be used in the drug war.

8 Named for a New York City police officer killed in a drug case.

52



Later, the George W. Bush administration trimmed the Byrnes Program down to $170 million per year. But in a 2009 stimulus package the Byrnes Program – renamed the Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program by the Obama administration – received an additional $2
billion – a 12-fold increase.

Reagan provided an even greater enticement to participate in the War on Drugs. The winner-take-all incentive gives state and local law enforcement the authority to keep, for any use, most of the cash and assets confiscated in drug busts. “Law enforcement gained a pecuniary interest not only in the forfeited property but in the profitability of the drug market itself.” (Alexander, p. 78)

Federal aid for the drug war, and its incentives, is not well publicized.

Most people believe the increase in drug arrests indicate an increase in drug trafficking. That is not the case. Prior to 1980 there were about 300,000 people in prisons and jails nationwide. Thirty years later that had increased to 2 million. The reason is selective enforcement – what Civil Rights lawyer Michelle Alexander calls the new Jim Crow: Today, due to recent declines, US crime rates dipped below the international norm. Nevertheless, the United States now boasts an incarceration rate that is six to ten times that of other industrialized nations. … no other country in the world incarcerates such an astonishing percentage of its racial and ethnic minorities. (Alexander, pp. 7-8)

Keeping people mollified with his ‘good old boy’ demeanor, Reagan was able to reverse many corporate-unfriendly programs started by his predecessors. His main approach was his mantra of getting government off our backs. He said at his first inaugural address that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” (Quoted in Parry)

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Labor Relations took a real hit under Reagan. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) was negotiating with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for a shorter work week with more pay and better retirement benefits. On 3 August 1981, after months of unsuccessful negotiations, some 1300 PATCO members went on strike. This technically violated a 1955 law that bans government employees from striking but it had never been enforced.

Reagan declared the strike illegal and a menace to national safety. He gave the strikers 24 hours to return to work or lose their jobs. Twenty four hours and some 7,000 canceled flights later, Reagan fired them all and banned them from ever being re-hired. (Clinton later lifted the ban)

PATCO was decertified in October 1981. A new National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) was certified as the sole bargaining unit in 1987.

The PATCO precedent had repercussions on all unions. Prior to the PATCO strike it was not socially acceptable to fire striking workers.

Now there are no inhibitions and the average of 300 strikes per year has dwindled to less than 30.

Georgetown University historian Joseph McCartin noted; “Any kind of worker, it seemed, was vulnerable to replacement if they went out on strike, and the psychological impact of that, I think, was huge. The loss of the strike as a weapon for American workers has some rather profound, long-range consequences.” (Quoted in Schalch) Reagan also championed deregulation of other industries and banking, and cutting taxes for the wealthy. He helped the fossil fuel industry by taking the pressure off Detroit to build smaller, fuel-efficient cars.

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Social Programs were another Reagan target for shrinking government involvement. This can be epitomized by the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC, a.k.a. Welfare). AFDC was established by the Social Security Act of 1935. “Some 1.5 million households live on less than $2 a day. Welfare would help but it’s gone …” (Edin and Shaeffer)

Reagan often referred to ‘welfare queens’ – a pejorative term insinuating that a woman on welfare is collecting undeserved, unearned money. It became a political catchphrase and a stigmatizing term directed mainly against black women.

During his first term, Reagan cut many domestic programs – shown below as reduced percentages of the federal budget – between 1981 and the 1986 estimate:

x

Transportation, community & regional development, revenue sharing: 6.0%
to

3.6%
x

Natural resources and environment, energy, agriculture: 4.5%
to

1.5%
x

Education, training, employment, social services: 4.8%
to

1.9%

(OMB-FY83)

When it came to National Defense the picture was different. The percentage of federal budget that went to the Pentagon jumped from 29.5% in 1981 to an estimated 40.1% in 1986. (OMB-FY83) This is exactly the spending shift the disgruntled neocons wanted.

They loved Reagan and shifted their allegiance to the Republican Party, where they thrived. They pioneered the concept of perception management, which twists information to assure that Americans will be terrified of threats from abroad.

55



Reporters who bucked the lies and distortions coming from government sources soon found their careers fading; intelligence analysts who sought to reveal the truth were soon looking for another job; and skeptics were branded un-American which made them lightning rods for hostility.

An infrastructure took shape with think tanks amply financed by client corporations to generate op-ed articles, properly slanted research papers, and other tidbits of information which the media was ready to propagate. Neocons and the invisible government gained strength.

George H.W. Bush and the New World Order.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the US remained the lone superpower. But Japan had risen to rival the US in economic clout. Giant banks and industry had sprung up in Japan and Europe that matched US global trading power.

Transnational corporations continued to conglomerate to fewer, stronger, and more influential enterprises. Technical and economic collusion across borders became more pronounced.

It was time for President George H.W. Bush to announce a New World Order – now known as ‘globalization’ – in which US allies would assume a greater share in policing Third World governments. Unlike exclusive control of colonies in classical colonialism, and the reliance on sympathetic dictators in neo-colonialism, globalization consists of coalitions of military powers working, when necessary, under the moral authority of the United Nations.

Liberation movements faced new obstacles under globalization. The Soviets no longer had their backs. Also, the military dictatorships 56



being opposed were backed by blocs of imperialist powers working together to protect their mutual interests.

Globalization invokes opportunities available worldwide. Financing comes from developed countries and their banks. Land, labor, and resources come from poorer countries where they are cheap. And marketing of products takes place where the money is.

Globalization stagnates development in poor countries. Production is monopolized by foreign investors who grow only cash crops for the greatest profit. Poor countries no longer have land to grow the variety of necessities for survival, so they depend heavily on imports.

Because cash crop profits go mostly to foreign investors, imports for the local people outweigh what they can export and they cannot balance their national budget. They are continually and increasingly in debt.

Consequently, debt and lack of development are controlled by outside interests and manipulated to the advantage of those interests.

Highly-competitive foreign corporations drive local establishments out of business because foreign corporations can provide imported commodities much cheaper than what can be produced and grown locally. The resulting unemployment provides a cheap labor pool.

In early 1992, then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney proposed a new Defense Planning Guidance, drawn up by high-ranking neocons. A classified February 18th draft, leaked to the media, was starkly revealing of neocon ambitions:

x

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival [to replace the former Soviet Union]. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region 57



whose resources would [allow it to wield global power].

x

The US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order … convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.

x

In non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order.

x

In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve the US and Western access to the region’s oil. ( Defense Planning Guidance) When the public read this, it caused such a political backlash that Cheney was forced to rewrite it. The climate was not yet favorable for such a bold step.

Bill Clinton and the Budding Neocons.

President Bill Clinton also did some good things. He balanced the national budget, increased employment, encouraged the Family & Medical Leave Act of 1993, and increased the national minimum wage.

On the flip side of the coin, he encouraged the neocons and helped to establish their role in the invisible government.

Militarization of police increased under Clinton. Section 1033 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997 (called the 1033 program) allowed law enforcement agencies to purchase military equipment for any legitimate purpose, although the War on Drugs and counterterrorism has priority.

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According to the National Journal, “between January 1997 and October 1999, the Agency handled 3.4 million orders of Pentagon equipment from over eleven thousand domestic police agencies in all fifty states. … ‘250 aircraft (including six- and seven-passenger airplanes, UH-60 Blackhawk and UH-1 Huey helicopters), 7,856 M-16
rifles, 181 grenade launchers, 8,131 bulletproof helmets, and 1,161
pairs of night-vision goggles’.” (Alexander, p. 74) Obama and Trump both modified this.

Following the 2014 rioting in Ferguson, Missouri – over the shooting death of Michael Brown, the incident which sparked the Black Lives Matter Movement – then President Barak Obama issued an executive order that severely restricted the type of military equipment that was suitable for civilian use. Items such as tracked armored vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, and large caliber weapons were forbidden.

But in August 2017 Trump’s Executive Order 13809 revoked Obama’s executive order in its entirety and again opened the door for purchasing anything.

Clinton also contributed to mass incarceration. The $30-billion crime legislation signed in August 1994 provided $16 billion for state prisons and for enlarging state and local police forces. Prison construction jumped 171% while public housing construction decreased 61%.

Cynics accused Clinton of using prisons to solve the housing crisis.

Conventional wisdom holds that more prisons are needed because there are more prisoners (which is true) due to a higher crime rate (which is false). “Few would guess that our prison population has grown from approximately 350,000 to 2.3 million in such a short period of time due to changes in laws and policies, not changes in crime rates.”

(Alexander, p. 93) “… with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase.” (Alexander, p. 6) 59



In 1995, black people were about 15% of all drug users while whites constituted the vast majority. That ratio remained approximately the same in 2012. Yet, “African Americans constitute 80-90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison.” (Alexander, p. 98) Alexander calls mass incarceration and the prison label, particularly in the War on Drugs, “a new caste system at work.” (Alexander, p. 16) Clinton sidelined the poor and underprivileged in 1996 when he signed the “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families” (TANF) Act which replaced the 1935 “Aid to Families with Dependent Children.” TANF
limited federal payments to a lifetime maximum of five years – not long enough for people in deep destitution or who have been blackballed because of a drug conviction.

The “Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998” and the

“Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1998” mandated that any drug offender, no matter how minor, be barred from public housing or evicted if already accepted. This applied to anyone charged, even if never convicted..

Combined with laws prohibiting other types of social relief and hiring prejudices against ex-convicts and suspected drug offenders, along with discriminatory US Supreme Court rulings,9 a person just being released from prison has no way to start a new life. They would be relegated to 9 For discriminatory US Supreme Court rulings see Alexander, pp. 112-114, 139 (discriminatory sentencing); pp. 108-119, 128-131, 137-139, 194 (bias in drug law enforcement); pp. 61-69, 108-109 (Fourth Amendment denial); pp.

90-93 (mandatory sentencing); pp. 61-69, 108-109 (searches and seizures); pp.

63-64, 108-109 (selective traffic stops); pp. 85-86 (legal representation); pp.

114-123 (prosecutor discretion in drug law enforcement); p. 147 (public housing); pp. 137-139 (racial profiling); pp. 90-92, 109-114, 139, 279 notes 52

&56 (discriminatory sentencing); and pp. 109-119 (Fourteenth Amendment denial).

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the streets and, if unable to find work, possibly be forced back to crime for subsistence.

It is said that crime breeds in the slums and ghettos and this explains why. Although black people are affected most, it persecutes people of all color. The poor and underprivileged are sidelined because they are of no use in a capitalist society except for cheap labor, and the system assures there will be an ample supply of that.

In the spring of 1997, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was founded by neoconservatives with the goal of promoting America as the global leader.10 PNAC’s Statement of Principles asks: Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests? [What is needed is] a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges, a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad, and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities. [It warns that] the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. ( Rebuilding America’s Defenses) Shortly before delivering his 1998 State-of-the-Union address, Clinton received a letter signed by 18 neoconservatives of the PNAC think tank.11 Dated 26 January 1998, it asserted that containment was not working, that sanctions were losing credibility, and that we could no 10 The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) are closely related to neoconservatism.

See https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Neo-conservative 11 The signatories were Elliot Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J.

Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Pearle, Peter W.

Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, and Robert B. Zoellick.

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longer depend on other members in the Gulf War Coalition. It claimed Iraq’s lack of cooperation with weapons inspectors “has substantially reduced” our ability to assure Saddam is not building weapons of mass destruction, and that it is “difficult if not impossible” to monitor chemical and biological weapons production.

Then the letter blatantly stated: “The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.

In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.” (PNAC Letter)

It put the onus on Clinton to remedy the situation: “In your upcoming State-of-the-Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the US and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.” (PNAC Letter)

When Saddam Hussein evicted the UN weapons inspectors in December 1998, Clinton did unleash a four-day barrage on Iraq, code-named Desert Fox. But that is suspected to be more a ploy to distract from his impeachment vote than a response to the letter.

The next step for the neocons was to characterize their agenda for the 21st century. Distressed by the flat-line military spending of the 1990s, PNAC began a study of defense plans and resource requirements in the spring of 1998.

This study built on the 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance and culminated in a September 2000 report entitled Rebuilding America’s 62



Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century. The 76-page document addresses everything from strategy and policy to deployment and procurement; and is a dream list for unlimited resources that would bankrupt America.

Probably the first public awareness of Rebuilding America’s Defenses came from the 15 September 2002 edition of Scotland’s Sunday Herald. Investigative reporter Neil Mackay outlined how George W.

Bush and his cabinet had planned regime change in Iraq even before he was elected president. He revealed a neocon plan for US global domination. (See Mackay) That will be discussed more in the next chapter.

Rebuilding America’s Defenses calls for “maintaining global US preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.” ( Rebuilding America’s Defenses) It says the need for a US military presence in the Middle East is more than just ousting Saddam – unresolved issues with Iraq still provide immediate justification for the buildup of forces. Beyond the Middle East, the plan calls for the US to be able to “fight and win as rapidly and decisively as possible, multiple, nearly simultaneous major theater wars.” ( Rebuilding America’s Defenses) Such blatancy is astounding. Rebuilding America’s Defenses refers to US forces abroad as the cavalry on the new American frontier. Other issues addressed in the report are to:

x

Rely on key allies like the UK to achieving global leadership.

x

Put peacekeeping missions under the US rather than the United Nations.

x

Be warned of rivalry by the European Union.

x

Keep all US bases in the Middle East indefinitely regardless of 63



indigenous opposition.

x

Be warned that Iran may become a threat to US interests.

x

Increase US military presence in Southeast Asia.

x

Assure that the US must totally dominate space and cyberspace.

x

Suggest that US development of biological weapons ‘target’

specific genotypes to make biological warfare politically useful.

x

Designate North Korea, Libya, Syria, and Iran as dangerous regimes.

This agenda has been carried out to the letter during the 21st century.

A Concluding Thought.

The Christian Science Monitor described neoconservatives in forthright language: “Neocons envision a world in which the United States is the unchallenged superpower, immune to threats. They believe that the US
has a responsibility to act as a ‘benevolent global hegemon.’ In this capacity, the US would maintain an empire of sorts by helping to create democratic, economically liberal governments in place of ‘failed states’

or oppressive regimes they deem threatening to the US or its interests.”12

The article describes the neocon dream as spreading democracy over the entire Middle East to eliminate a breeding ground for terrorists. It states that neocons believe only strong US leadership backed by a strong military will bring world peace, and they have little respect for what they consider weak treaties. This is Pax Americana in its most profound sense.

12 “Neocon 101;” The Christian Science Monitor website at http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/neocon101.html (Retrieved in 2007. Link is no longer valid)

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The Christian Science Monitor article also explained that neoconservatives will meet hostile regimes with force – not through appeasement or containment. They will reconfigure America’s global military force to be mean, lean and agile to quickly contain hot spots in the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and other regions. They will increase military spending, particularly on high-tech weaponry adaptable to preemptive strikes. Ostensibly working with the United Nations and other countries, they will always be ready to act unilaterally to satisfy America’s interests.

This attitude will naturally infuriate a sensible person. There will be a strong temptation to repeat the prevailing error of seeing the neocons, themselves, as the opponents. We must not repeat that fallacy. Be aware that it is egothink that is infuriating.

That attitude reflects the neocons’ false selves. It is the obstacle to goodness that nonviolent proactivism must address. That may sound discouraging. It may seem impossible. But that is what we must face up to if we want global goodness. This Guidebook will present ways to do that facing up. Also, never forget, we live in a goodness field, and the goodness force has our backs.

It is true that the neocons may be the last to allow goodness to flow.

Egothink is firmly set. We will have to start with less prejudiced people. Nevertheless, our ultimate goal for goodness to flow freely in everyone must remain paramount. Every neocon has an inner goodness.

During the waning years of the 20th century the neoconservatives had successfully put the political structure in place for its invisible government. The 21st century offered them the opportunity to implement their plans. That is the topic of the next chapter.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

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References and Further Reading for Chapter-3.

Alexander, Michelle; The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York; The New Press; 2010, 2012).

Defense Planning Guidance, 18 February 1992 draft. The leaked copy is no longer available on Yale University website. A sanitized copy is still available from George Washington University at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb245/doc03_extract_nytedit.pdf Edin, Kathryn J., and Shaeffer, H. Luke: Ronald Reagan’s “‘Welfare Queen’

Myth: How the Gipper Kickstarted the War on the Working Poor,” ( Salon, 27 September 2015).

EO-13809 (Executive Order 13809); Restoring State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement’s Access to Life-Saving Equipment and Resources, signed 28

August 2017 by Donald Trump.

Four Arrows (a.k.a. Jacobs, Don Trent) and Fetzer, James H.; American Assassination: The Mysterious Death of Senator Paul Wellstone (Brooklyn, NY; Vox Pop, 2004).

Kristol, Irving; “The Neoconservative Persuasion: What It Was and What It Is,” ( The Weekly Standard, 25 August 2003).

Mackay, Neil; “Why the CIA Thinks Bush is Wrong,” Sunday Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), 13 October 2002.

OMB-FY83; Office of Management & Budget; The United States Budget in Brief, Fiscal Year 1983 (Washington D.C.; Government Printing Office, 1982), pp. 3-34.

PANC Letter; Project for the New American Century letter to President Bill Clinton, 26 January, 1998.

Parry, Robert; “Ronald Reagan: Worst President Ever?”

( Consortiumnews.com, 20 February 2012).

Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, a report of The Project for the New American Century, September 2000.

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Schalch, Kathleen; “1981 Strike Leaves Legacy for American Workers,”

(NPR transcript, 3 August 2006).

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… the defense program described above would preserve current force structure while improving its readiness …

Only such a force posture, service structure and level of defense spending will provide America and its leaders with a variety of forces to meet the strategic demands of the world’s sole superpower. Keeping the American peace requires the U.S. military to undertake a broad array of missions today and rise to very different challenges tomorrow, but there can be no retreat from these missions …

it is a choice whether or not to maintain American military preeminence, to secure American geopolitical leadership, and to preserve the American peace.

-- Rebuilding America’s Defenses, pp. 75-76

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4 – Deconstructing Democracy The accumulation of all powers; legislative, executive, and judiciary; in the same hands; whether of one, a few, or many; and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective; may justly be pronounced the definition of tyranny.

-- James Madison

It’s 27 February 1933 – 9:00 PM. The German Parliament building is afire – the notorious Reichstag Fire. The next day a decree allowed preventative detention of any citizen. Martial law was declared. On March 23rd a new parliament passed the Enabling Act which firmly fixed the Nazi Party in power, and set Hitler up as dictator.

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. The neocons are guiding America down that same path. Rebuilding America’s Defenses is the neocons’ manifesto to establish four core military missions to achieve that goal:

1.

defend the American Homeland;

2.

fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous, major theater wars; 3.

perform the ‘constabulary’ duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;

4.

transform US forces to exploit the ‘revolution in military affairs’.

( Rebuilding America’s Defenses, p. iv) After 49 pages of explaining how to accomplish those four missions, the manifesto notes:

… the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event

– like a new Pearl Harbor. ( Rebuilding America;s Defenses, pp. 50-51; emphasis mine)

That ‘catastrophic and catalyzing event’ came quickly. On 11

September 2001, America’s continuity of life was harshly disrupted.



This ‘new Pearl Harbor’ mustered the people behind their leader, and the War on Terror filled the vacuum left by the Cold War.1 Terrorists replaced communists as the new ‘enemy’. Neocons took over America and created new structures in government to consolidate oversight.

Rebuilding America’s Defenses has unfolded like clockwork. This chapter will continue the saga of egothink into the 21st century. I will focus on three major consolidations in the Executive Branch – DHS, ODNI, and NORTHCOM. Then I will illustrate the potential for martial law in the US.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

The National Homeland Security Act of 2002 provides for a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which opened on 24

January 2003. DHS was cobbled together from twenty-two existing agencies; including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), US Secret Service, US Coast Guard, Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Border Patrol, and the FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center.

Homeland security seems to mean keeping the country secure for big business. This entails keeping illegal refugees out and keeping track of everyone inside US borders. That, in turn, entails a lot of data mining and places to store it, legally or surreptitiously.

Guarding the Borders – ICE, CBP & TSA. A new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) was formed from the investigative 1 Well-researched material convinces me that 9/11 was a false flag attack.

That material has been documented in a series of books written by David Ray Griffin; particularly 9/11: Ten Years Later. Also see 911Truth.org.

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and intelligence resources of the Customs Service and the criminal investigative, detention and deportation resources of the INS.

The remainder of Customs Service and INS were joined with Border Patrol to form a new Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created to take over airport security, which was previously contracted to private security firms; .

Spotting Intruders – OBIM/ATS/Secure Flight. The Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM) requires all foreigners to register with DHS. Biometric information includes DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, palm patterns, facial pattern scans, and voice prints.

The ‘Automated Targeting System’ (ATS) requires airlines and cruise ship lines to give DHS advanced information on passengers and crew that will be entering the US

‘Secure Flight’ is similar to ATS but for domestic commercial air travel. DHS checks this information against a comprehensive watch list.

TSA’s ‘Pre-Check’, ostensibly to speed registered passengers through airport security, reveals DHS’s “underlying plan to collect face images and iris scans on a nationwide scale” and it will “serve as a gateway to the collection of biometric data to identify and track every traveler at every airport and border crossing in the country.” (Lynch)

Storing Biometric Data – IDENT/HART. All collected biometric data feeds into the ‘Automated Biometric Identification System’ (IDENT) –
a huge, computerized data base with a capacity for 200-million identities. Besides storing and processing biometric data, IDENT

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crosschecks it with other databases and watch lists. However, IDENT
is overstuffed with more than 250-million identities.

Northrup Grumman developed a 500-million identity data bank called

‘Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology’ (HART). Amazon is providing the cloud storage.

Real ID. The Real ID Act of 2005 requires all Adults in the US to have

‘enhanced’ identification for ‘official purposes.’ Minors must be accompanied by adult with Real ID.

‘Official purposes’ includes
boarding commercial airliners and entering federal buildings.

‘Enhanced’ means it contains a microchip holding a significant amount of personal information that interacts with the IDENT/HART database.

The TSA website lists 15 valid Real ID documents. Twelve are controlled by the US government and will be enhanced. Two others are foreign documents which the US must recognize. The last is state driver’s licenses. By October 2020 all state driver’s licenses and ID
cards must be ‘enhanced’ to qualify as Real ID. Real ID is needed to fly or enter federal facilities – potentially even the Post Office.

Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN). HSIN facilitates sharing, crosschecking, and coordinating information about all suspicious, criminal, or terrorist activity among the nation’s law enforcement agencies. It is DHS’s primary communication, situation-awareness, and information-sharing system. It includes all 50 states, Washington D.C., 5 US Territories, 53 major cities, and a few international partners (UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).

ICE’s License Plate Tracking. In January 2018, ICE awarded a contract to a private company (Company X) to supply vehicle license 72



plate data. Company X has a nationwide database with billions of license plate recognition records plus the capability of real-time tracking of any given license plate. “The source of the data is not named in the contract, but an ICE representative said the data came from Vigilant Solutions, the leading network for license plate recognition data.” (Brandom)

Company X receives some 100 million photos per month from various agencies, police car dash cameras, and stationary cameras at strategic locations. Each sighting is identified with date, time, and GPS
coordinates.

A known plate number can be tracked by connecting the sightings to give a history of that car’s travels. ICE also has a ‘hot list’ of plate numbers and Company X will alert ICE each time a new sighting occurs – whenever it passes a camera.

If ICE owned the contractor’s database it would be unconstitutional.

But private contractors have no public accountability. That is a big advantage of privatization. Of course this type of tracking will eventually expand, or already has.

ADVISE Privatized. DHS once initiated a data-mining program called

‘Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement’ (ADVISE) – a massive computer network which collected data, ranging from blog sites and e-mails to government records and intelligence reports. It was terminated because it violated the Privacy Act of 1974.

Terminated federal programs often end up in the private sector. Phone companies, social media, on-line purchases, and other internet activities took over. The feds still get the information:

[B]etween 2016 and 2017, local, state and the federal government authorities seeking information related to national security, counter-73



terrorism or criminal concerns issued more than 260,000 subpoenas, court orders, warrants, and other legal requests to Verizon, more than 250,000 such requests to AT&T, and nearly 24,000 … to Google.

When national security agencies need to identify and track people and groups, they know where to turn ... (Nesbit) An article in Nature Magazine (December 2017) admitted that tech companies are data mining the social media. “Mindstrong, for instance, an app developer in Palo Alto, California, is developing and testing machine-learning algorithms to correlate the language people use and their behavior – such as scrolling speed on smartphones – with symptoms of depression and other mental disorders.” (Reardon) Facebook admitted it has its own suicide-detection app while Apple and Google are pursuing similar programs. Altruistic goals are justifying a technology with far more applications.

Summary.

OBIM and ATS collect data on international flights.

Secure Flight collects data on domestic flights. Real ID collects data on people. IDENT/HART stores and processes this data. HSIN allows crosschecking and sharing of this data. All people – citizen and foreigner alike – will be identified and tracked by Homeland Security.

ODNI adds more.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The ODNI, with a cabinet-level Director of National Intelligence (DNI), was established by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004. It has six centers and 12 offices to oversee and direct all foreign and domestic intelligence operations of the 17 US

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intelligence agencies.2 In this Guidebook I will focus on the National Counterterrorism Center.

National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) created a firewall between foreign and domestic surveillance. It set up special FISA courts to streamline acquisition of warrants for foreign surveillance only. FISA court proceedings and records are closed to the public and only lawyers licensed to practice before them are allowed In July 2005, during confirmation hearings of Vice Admiral John Scott Redd as first director of the National Counterterrorism Center, he testified that “bridging what has traditionally been referred to as foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence will be one of my top priorities.”

He dismissed privacy concerns as impossible because Congress established “a Civil Liberties Board to oversee all US intelligence activities.” 3

What is this Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board?

It was
established in 2004 as recommended by the 9/11 Commission. Its first meeting wasn’t held until two years later (March 2006) because Bush stalled on nominating members and requesting funds.

2 The 17 agencies that make up the US Intelligence Community are ODNI, CIA, NSA, FBI National Security Branch, Defense Intelligence Agency, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Drug Enforcement Agency Office of National Security Intelligence, Department of Treasury Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Department of Energy Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, Air Force Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Marine Corps Intelligence, and Coast Guard Intelligence.

3 National Counterterrorism Center home page. Redd’s confirmation link is no longer available.

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Bush then manipulated the Board’s reports, causing one member to quit and the Board became inactive. Seven years later (November 2013) the Board reconstituted as an independent agency and held its first public hearing. Its first report was released ten years after being established (January 2014).

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board wasn’t even functional in 2005, as Redd implied. Only after Edward Snowden’s 2013 whistleblowing did it have information that the National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on US citizens.

In 2005, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) did point out “civil liberties implications of co-locating … foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence entities ...” It emphasized that legislation specifically excluded “intelligence pertaining exclusively and purely to domestic terrorists and domestic counterterrorism” from NCTC’s analytical responsibility. (CRS Report, emphasis added.) Said simpler, NCTC can collect and share information on peaceful protest groups but can’t analyze it. Amazing! The collecting and sharing is done by NSA’s Domestic Surveillance Directorate.

NSA’s Domestic Surveillance Directorate.

In December 2005 The

New York Times revealed that Bush had ordered NSA to spy on all communications regardless of where they originate. He claimed PATRIOT Act authorization. A US District Judge ruled it unconstitutional and in violation of the FISA Act.

Congress in 2008 passed Section 702 to amend the FISA Act, saying that US persons cannot be “targeted” and that “inadvertently acquired communication of or concerning a US person must be promptly destroyed if it is neither relevant to the authorized purpose nor evidence of a crime. ” (Section 702, emphasis added) So, if NSA inadvertently collected evidence pertaining to a crime, it can be shared.

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When Russell D. Tice, an 18-year NSA veteran, questioned NSA’s spying program, he was fired. He then told the media NSA could monitor every domestic and international phone call. He later told congress people there was another, much broader, program he couldn’t even discuss with NSA’s inspector general because it was too secret.

That was NSA’s Domestic Surveillance Directorate.

The Domestic Surveillance Directorate’s mission is to: “Collect, process, and store US citizen data for the good of the nation.” Note that it doesn’t say analyze. It does say: “We provide … collaboration both within our agency and through its interactions with various partners. ” (NSA’s Domestic Surveillance Directorate, emphasis added) The FBI’s National Security Branch seems to be the partner to do the analysis.

The FBI’s National Security Branch.

Also in 2005, Bush
consolidated intelligence-gathering activities of the FBI by merging its Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Terrorist Screening entities into a new National Security Branch.

That split the FBI into two branches: law enforcement (still under the FBI director) and National Security Branch (which reports to the DNI).

This National Security Branch analyzes information on US citizens collected by the National Counterterrorism Center and NSA’s Domestic Surveillance Directorate. So, the “potential civil liberties”

loss warned of by the Congressional Research Service does, indeed, exist.

The FBI’s National Security Branch also set up the Digital Collection System Network (DCSNet) that can instantly plug into virtually every type of communication available through a so-called ‘back door.’

Whether by land-line, cell phone, text message, e-mail, social media, or 77



internet; your communication is not private. DCSNet has at least four components:

x DCS-1000 (formerly Carnivore) is packet-sniffing (eavesdropping) software located inside the Internet Provider’s network which collects data passing through the network.

x DCS-3000 (a.k.a. Red Hook) performs pen registers and trace-and-trap surveillance. Pen registers record outgoing phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc. of who is being called. Trace-and Trap do the same for incoming messages. Neither of them collects the content of messages.

x DCS-5000 uses wiretaps and eavesdropping devices claimed to only listens-in on suspected spies and terrorists.

x DCS-6000 stores messages obtained by DCS-5000 for analysis.

The FBI also maintains a database called CODIS.

The FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).

The ‘Rapid

DNA Act of 2017’ allows taking DNA samples before arrestees are convicted. It takes about 90 minutes. “Rapid DNA analysis is a term used to describe the fully-automated (hands free) process of developing a DNA profile from a [cheek] swab without human intervention. … A Rapid DNA system is a collection of components [about the size of a desktop printer] that together performs DNA analysis …” (FBI) The DNA profile is then submitted to CODIS for comparison and possible matching. CODIS is a national DNA database where all law-enforcement agencies can exchange and match samples electronically.

DNA profiles also come from crime scenes, prisoners; and I strongly suspect from military personnel and veterans. Now the FBI gets DNA profiles from ‘consumer genomics’.

‘Consumer genomics’ uses a cheek swab DNA sample to discover that person’s geographic and ethnic roots, ancestral relations, relatives still 78



living, and more. FamilyTreeDNA is a consumer genomics business that claims to have “the world’s most comprehensive DNA matching database.” Furthermore: “We protect your DNA. We store your DNA in our lab safely and securely for 25 years, assuring the highest level of protection, and at no charge.” (FamilyTreeDNA) That statement doesn’t guarantee privacy. The FBI was allowed access to FamilyTreeDNA’s database in early 2019, without permission from those who had donated.

A 2018 study of ‘consumer genomics’ involving 1.28 million people of European descent concluded that “the technique could implicate nearly any US individual of European descent in the near future.” (Erlich, Shor, Péer, and Carmi)

That has been interpreted to mean that ”only 2% of the population needs to have done a DNA test for virtually everyone’s genetic information to be represented in that data.” (Durden) Critics may be correct when accusing the FBI of creating a DNA database on everyone.

The CIA’s Hacking Division. The CIA’s hacking division comes under the purview of its Center for Cyber Intelligence; and has developed over a thousand hacking systems.

On 7 March 2017, Wikileaks released the Year Zero series of its Vault 7 concerning CIA operations. Year Zero reveals:

… the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malicious software (malware) arsenal and dozens of ‘zero day’4
weaponized exploits against a wide range of US and European company products, include[ing] Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, 4 ‘Zero day’ is malware that is still undiscovered by the victim and, thus, no protection has been designed.

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Microsoft’s Windows, and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones. (Vault 7)5

Weeping Angel is malware that covertly infests Samsung TVs through the internet, and installs a ‘fake off’. When the TV is normally turned

‘off,’ Weeping Angel remains ‘on’ to record conversations in the vicinity, and send them to the CIA through the internet.

Apple products (iPhone, iPad, etc.) are prime targets. The phones GPS
position can be exfiltrated (filtered out), as well as all text and voice messages. Some malware also covertly operates the phone’s microphone and camera.

Google’s Android products haven’t been
ignored. In 2016 the CIA had 24 Android ‘zero days.’ (Vault 7) Hammermill, Brutal Kangaroo, and similar ‘zero day’ malware infests Microsoft’s Windows via CDs, DVDs, and USB drives. Malware has also been developed to infest Apple’s Mac OSX, Sun Microsystems’

Solaris, and the open source Linux operating systems. Someone working in a high-security area may simply insert a USB, perhaps to play a
demonstration video, and covertly exfiltrate classified information.6

Social Media as a Source of Intelligence. Canadian economics professor Michel Chossudovsky has confirmed the privatization of spying. He published a screenshot of a CBS News article saying that

“the CIA and the world’s largest ad agency network, WPP (WPPGY), have been in bed together on a social media data-mining venture since at least January 2009. WPP currently claims to own the world’s largest 5 Wikileaks also reported that in late 2014 the CIA was investigating ways to infect modern automobile control systems. “The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.” (Vault 7) The current status of that activity is not clear.

6 For more details on CIA hacking see https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/.

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database of unique individual profiles – including demographic, financial, purpose and geographic histories.” (Chossudovsky) Editor and journalist Noah Shachtman wrote: “US spy agencies, through In-Q-Tel7, have invested in a number of firms to help them find that information. Visible Technologies [Bellevue, WA] crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations … Attensity [Redwood City, CA] applies the rules of grammar to … ‘unstructured text’ of the web to make it more easily digested by government databases.” (Shachtman) Recorded Future (Somerville, MA) is another firm that the CIA and Google hire to mine data.

The Intercept (April 2016) describes four more firms financed by In-Q-Tel to help spy on social media postings: Dataminr (New York, NY) determines trends indicated by postings; Geofeedia (Chicago, IL) notes the GPS locations of posting devises; PATHAR (Colorado Springs, CO) mines the social network for signs of radicalization, who they are, their associates, and their areas of influence; and TransVoyant (Alexandria, VA) monitors for social-dissident decision makers. (see Fang) The Intercept lists 38 previously undisclosed companies with financial ties to In-Q-Tel. (see Fang)

Now I will turn to Pentagon activity that made North America a combat zone in the war on terrorism.

The Northern Command (NORTHCOM).

A month after 9/11, the Pentagon reshuffled its regional commands to improve homeland defense (‘homeland security’ refers to civilian 7

In-Q-Tel is a CIA-owned venture-capital firm that finances private corporations to co-develop technologies that can be used by the US
intelligence community.

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activity and ‘homeland defense’ to military).

The North American

Aerospace Command (NORAD),8 Space Command, and Joint Forces Command were combined into a new Northern Command (NORTHCOM), a Geographic Combatant Command that went operational in October 2002,9 to defend North American airspace, land mass, and ocean area.

Events that NORTHCOM responds against include terrorist threats, domestic insurrections and civil violence including conspiracies, epidemics and natural disasters. The very nature of NORTHCOM
facilitates greater military intervention and support in civilian affairs.

Legalizing Domestic Military Activity. The legislation that allows the President to call up state national guard under federal command is the Insurrection Act of 1807 (10 U.S.C.331-335). It also allows the army and navy to be called up for a domestic crisis. The military cannot be used by the President in peacetime to enforce domestic laws without the request or consent of the state; except for specific instances specified in Sections 332 and 333 of the Act..

Section 332 allows the President to call up the National Guard or use the US military to enforce federal laws that cannot be enforced through the normal judicial process. Section 333 allows the President to call up the National Guard or use the US military “as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful 8 NORAD still retains its identity because it is a joint command with Canada, but under NORTHCOM.

9 Other US geographic combat commands are Central Command (Middle East, Central Asia, and Egypt), European Command (Europe), Indo-Pacific Command (Pacific and Indian Oceans and East/Southeast Asia), Southern Command (Central and South America), and Africa Command (all of Africa except Egypt). Functional commands are Cyber Command, Transportation Command, Strategic Command, and Special Forces Command, 82



combination, or conspiracy” if state authorities can’t or won’t do so.

(10 U.S.C. 333)

Section 1076 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 expanded the Insurrection Act to allow employment of active duty or federalized National Guard troops during “natural disaster, epidemic or serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any state possession of the United States, the president determines that domestic violence has occurred …”

(emphasis added)

All of that was repealed by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, but Bush signed it into law with a signing statement saying provisions of this Act “could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations …. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional power of the President.” The imperial president can, arguably, continue to recognize the Section 1076 expansion.

An attempt to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 triggered the US

Civil War. After that war, General Sherman stormed through the South suppressing social activity. That prompted Congress to enact the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

Posse Comitatus means “the power of the country.” It is the power that protects the country and controls domestic disturbances, including enforcing laws. The Wild West sheriffs often assembled a posse comitatus (shortened to ‘posse’) to chase down lawbreakers.

The
wording of the act today is:

18 U.S.C. 1385 – Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus.

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined 83



under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

When the National Guard is under the control of state governors, it is excluded from the Posse Comitatus Act. The Insurrection Act, being an act of Congress, is also exempt; as is legislation prohibiting transactions involving nuclear materials which allows the Attorney General to request military assistance. Likewise for legislation enacted during the Reagan administration to ‘enhance’ the War on Drugs.

Now all of North American is a combatant command. Legislation has advanced the neocon plan for world domination. Martial law could be triggered at the slightest provocation.

Is Martial Law Possible?

Martial law means military law replaces civil law – partially or fully.

In a worst-case scenario the Constitution would be suspended, as would Congress. Military justice would replace the Judicial Branch. The President would serve indefinitely with powers tantamount to a dictator. Movement of people would be restricted with checkpoints and curfews. House-to-house searches would round up dissidents. Lady Liberty would be bound and gagged.

The Constitution doesn’t specify how to declare martial law. It does limit the conditions under which Congress can suspend habeas corpus (the right to a court hearing explaining why you are arrested).

Consequently, there are two schools of thought.

The first is that, since Article 1 specifically describes the functions of Congress, it is implied that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus; and by inference, martial law.

In addition, except for a Constitutional
exception, only Congress can authorize use of the military for posse comitatus.

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The second is that the Insurrection Act already gives the President authority to declare martial law under specific conditions. Section IV
of the PATRIOT Act also gives the President wide latitude in the war on terrorism. This would better fit the neoconservative agenda.

Hawaii 1941. Perhaps the most extreme case of martial law on US
territory during the past century was Hawaii after the attack on Pearl Harbor. While the smoke still rose, Lt. Gen. Walter Short convinced territorial governor J.B. Poindexter to declare a state-of-emergency and place Hawaii under military control. General Short then became the military governor of Hawaii.

Poindexter wired the President that he had declared martial law and suspended habeas corpus. Roosevelt replied that Poindexter had acted correctly according to Title 48, Section 532 of the United States Code, and had presidential
approval. (48 USC

532 pertained to

Hawaii when it was
a territory and is no
longer applicable.)

Martial law lasted
until late 1944.

Places where people
gathered were
closed. No one was

Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, During Martial Law (National Archives, US Navy)

allowed on the
streets between 9PM and 6AM. No light or flame or even a lit cigarette was allowed after dark.

Newspapers could print only in English; and only censored news and martial law orders. Everyone over six years old had to register, be 85



fingerprinted, and carry military ID. Civilian firearms were forbidden and photographic film was restricted.

Wages were frozen, no one could change jobs, no one could carry more than $200, and bank withdrawals were limited to $50 per week. Some 300,000 acres of private land was confiscated by the military.

The martial law proclamation was drafted by the army months before the attack and “was in the hands of the publisher for printing … some substantial period of time before the governor’s proclamation was signed and received for publication.” (Site Staff – emphasis added) Another more recent insurrection resulted in military intervention and urban warfare.

Joint Task Force Los Angeles (JTF-LA). The 1992 Los Angeles riot was triggered by exoneration of four white policemen who brutally beat African-American Rodney King. It raged for six days; leaving 63 dead, 2,383 injured, 12,111 arrested, 3,600 fires, 1,100 buildings destroyed, widespread looting, and close to $1 billion in property damage.

It
covered a 32-mile-long area from the Hollywood Hills to Long Beach; and was, arguably, the worst civil disturbance in US history.

Parts of Los Angeles are normally very dangerous. The previous year saw 771 gang-related homicides among 100,000 gang members. Drug deals are conducted openly and gunshots are routine for a normal night.

The verdict came in at 3:15 PM. Within half-an-hour over 300 enraged people descended on the county courthouse and the first window was smashed. At 5:00 PM, Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American, told the press “the jury told the world that what we all saw with our own eyes [on the video of the beating] was not a crime. My friends, I am here to tell the jury … what we saw was a crime. No, we will not tolerate the savage beating of our citizens by a few renegade cops.”

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( Wikipedia, “1992 Los Angeles Riots”) Interpreted as encouragement, violence escalated.

Looting began. One gun store lost 1,150 guns. At 6:30, LA Police Headquarters and Civic Center was stormed. A city-wide tactical alert was issued At 6:43, all police divisions in LA were put on tactical alert. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was enacted.

The first fire call came at 7:45 and soon increased to one a minute.

Police couldn’t adequately protect firefighters. At 9:00 PM Governor Pete Wilson mobilized 2,000 National Guard troops. Early the next Morning (April 30th) he mobilized the state police and more troops. At 1:00 AM of the third day (May 1st) Wilson requested federal help.

President George H. W. Bush issued Executive Order 12804, invoking the Insurrection Act to federalize the California Army National Guard and authorize deployment of US military. Some 8,000 National Guard troops joined 2,500 soldiers from the Army 7th Infantry Division (Light) and 1,500 marines from the 1st Marine Division to form JTF/LA under the command of Major General Marvin L. Covaul, commander of the 7th Infantry.

On the sixth day (May 4th) Mayor Bradley declared the rioting over and lifted the curfew. US troops stayed until May 9th and National Guard soldiers remained until May 27th.

A major military operational strategy – Garden Plot – was employed in JTF-LA.

Garden Plot.

The United States Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2

(Operation Garden Plot) was crafted in response to the race riots in Watts (1965), Newark (1967), and Detroit (1967). It was further developed during Readiness Exercise 1984 (REX-84) designed to put 87



down subversive activities by detaining huge numbers of US citizens and relocating others.

“Annex A, Section B of Operation Garden Plot defines tax protesters, militia groups, religious cults, and general anti-government protesters as Disruptive Groups. This calls for the deadly force to be used against any extremist or dissident perpetrating any and all forms of civil disorder.” (Heute)

Operation Garden Plot was activated as ‘Noble Eagle’ after the 9/11
attack. Under NORTHCOM, it was superseded by Concept Plan 2502

(CONPLAN 2502). Nevertheless, Garden Plot is still the basis for military intervention in civil disturbances.

When the government detains and relocates huge numbers of American citizens as ‘Disruptive Groups’, they need a place to put them. Army Regulation 210-35 (AR 210-35) was revised in 2005 to provide for concentration camps on army installations.

More recently, Executive Order 13767, issued by Donald Trump in 2017, instructed Homeland Security to construct detention facilities “at or near the land border with Mexico.” (EO-13767, Section 5) In April 2018, then Attorney General Jeff Session instructed US
attorneys to prosecute all ‘illegal’ border crossings with ‘zero tolerance’. A few days earlier Sessions had cracked down on illegal immigrants already in the US.

Arrests were running at 50,000 per
month.

Trump’s ‘zero-tolerance’ policy initially resulted in 2,654 minor children being separated from their parents. Public outrage forced Trump to detain parents and children together, which further strained detention facilities. In addition, the children still separated and others 88



detained under the Unaccompanied Alien Children program10 need housing.

Over 21,000 unaccompanied minors entered the US during the first half of 2018. In the 8 months ending in June 2019, DHS transferred 58,000 minors to private detention facilities. Observers reported severe overcrowding; deprivation of toothbrushes, soap, towels, blankets; and lack of beds and sleeping space.

In the 10 months running up to August 2019, DHS reported apprehending or turning back 475,000 refugees fleeing from violence and poverty resulting from US training and policies. On 21 August 2019 the Trump administration announced a policy to hold refugees and families indefinitely while waiting immigration court action.

It is scary that minorities and refugees are being hauled off to concentration camps. “While military personnel at all levels have a responsibility to refuse to participate in facilitating these camps, commanders in particular are at a particularly high risk in complying with these orders due to the precedent of the Nuremberg prosecution of those who aided and abetted Nazi leadership.” (Courage to Resist)

Urban Warfare.

Two rival black gangs in Los Angeles – the Bloods and the Crips –
have been killing each other for years. But during the Los Angeles riots they laid aside their enmity to work together on killing Los Angeles cops. The seriousness of this dubious alliance was pointed out by analyst William W. Mendel:

10 Refugee South American children seeking safety, often sent north by their parents, usually come prepared with birth certificates, etc. to prove their age and country of origin. Border Patrol calls DHH to take care of them.

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… ethnic street gangs were the most serious challenges faced by law enforcement and the military during the riots. These were heavily armed groups of criminals who sniped at police and military personnel throughout the initial five days of the LA Riot.

Many misunderstood the LA Riot as predominately a race riot. As witnessed by the California National Guard Field Commander, the riots were seen as a case study in urban warfare. (Mendel) The 1960s race riots certainly raised consciousness of urban fighting but it was the large area involved in the LA riot that really brought home that urban warfare could take place in America. Chicago is a choice spot to train for it and the occasional exercises always come as a shocking surprise to residents.

On 23-24 June 2013, a joint state-federal exercise was conducted in the now-closed Tinley Park Mental Health Center. Residents experienced fright and anger from the loud blasts and low-flying helicopters.

Earlier that year, similar drills were held in Houston, Miami, and Galveston. The scenario was repeated a month later – July 22-25.

On 18-20 August 2014, residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul were startled by a similar exercise. Major Allen Hill of the army regiment involved said these exercises are conducted 10-15 times a year in various cities.

Jade Helm 15 (15 July-15 Sept. 2015) was a completely different story.

Rather than using a small complex of buildings, this one encompassed seven states (see map).

Jade Helm 15 was a joint operation of the US Special Operations Command, the Army Special Operations Command (including Green Berets), the Joint Special Operations Command (including Delta Force, Navy Seals, Army Rangers, and Air Force Special Tactics), and other military units. These units were divided into occupying and resisting forces.

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US Army Special Operations Command Map

Jade Helm 15 Exercise

( Wikipedia, “Jade Helm 15 Conspiracy Theories”) Jade Helm 15 aroused so much concern that the Texas National Guard was ordered by the governor to monitor the exercise to ensure civil rights were not violated. Journalists were not ‘embedded’ during this exercise so there was no inside reporting. Of some fifteen conspiracy theories regarding this exercise, only two seem credible: 1.

It was a psychological operation accustoming people to seeing troops in the streets.

2.

It was an exercise to impose martial law and round-up political dissidents.

Note that the states involved are those “at or near the land border with Mexico.” – exactly where Trump’s EO-13767 later instructed that detention facilities be built. The congruence of the states involved in a 91



military exercise during a democratic administration with the area described for new detention facilities by a republican administration is not a coincidence. The neocons operate well in either political party.

A Concluding Thought.

When martial law comes, it will not be announced with fanfare from the oval office. Nor will it be breaking news on mainstream media, nor a 4-inch header across page one of the morning paper. When martial law comes it will sneak in the back door. That door is already being jimmied.

In 2018, Senator Bob Corker introduced S.J.Res.59 – Authorization for the Use of Military Force of 2018 (AUMF2018). It died with the 115th Congress but is worth analyzing. It could come back to be the enabling act for America today,

AUMF2001 was passed immediately after 9/11 to authorize force against countries and entities involved in 9/11.11

AUMF2018
broadened the scope beyond terrorist countries and organizations.

Section 3(a) authorizes the President to “(1) use all necessary and appropriate force against the Taliban, al Qaida, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and (2) associated forces designated pursuant to section 5.” (emphasis mine).

Section 5(a)(3) allows the President to designate any “organization, person, or force” as an associated force, simply by submitting a report to the “appropriate congressional committees and leadership.” Deadly force can then be used against that entity unless Congress overrides the president within 60 days.

11 There was also an AUMF2002 that authorized the war against Iraq, but it was repealed by S.J.Res.59. Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 was revised by S.J.Res.59 to invoke AUMF2018 instead of AUMF2001.

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This is a fail-deadly arrangement that puts the onus on Congress to veto a law proclaimed by the President. Even if a resolution is passed in time, it can be vetoed by the very person whose decision it is countermanding. Then a ⅔ vote in both houses is needed to override the veto – not easy to do when S.J.Res.59 limits debate, and all associated procedures to 10 hours, equally divided.

Before anyone realizes it, we will be bound tight in martial law with a dictator in the White House. A people divided and deceived will be no obstacle. That is the subject of the next chapter.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

References and Further Reading for Chapter-4.

10 U.S.C. 331-335; Insurrection Act of 1807

18 U.S.C. 1385; Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (Revised 6 January 2003).

AR 210-35 – Army Regulation 219-35; Civilian Inmate Labor Program, 14

January 2005.

Brandom, Russell; “Exclusive: ICE is About to Start Tracking License Plates Across the US,” ( The Verge; 26 January 2018).

Chossudovsky, Michel; “Social Media is a Tool of the CIA: ‘Facebook, Google and Other Social Media Used to Spy on People,” ( Global Research, 28 August 2017).

Courage to Resist; “US Military Ordered to Host Massive Immigrant Concentration Camps, (Courage to Resist Website, 23 July 2018) CRS Report; “The National Counterterrorism Center: Implementation Challenges and Issues for Congress,” 24 March 2005.

Durden, Tyler; “One of the Biggest At-Home Testing Companies Is Secretly Sharing Data With the FBI,” ( Zero Hedge, 2 February 2019).

EO-13767; “Executive Order: Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements.” 25 January 2017.

Erlich, Yaniv; Shor, Tal; Péer, Itsik; and Carmi, Shai; “Identity Inference of 93



Genetic Data Using Long-Range Familial Searches,” ( Science, Vol. 362, Issue 6415, 9 November 2018, p. 690-Abstract).

FamilyTreeDNA; “Do You Know What You’re Made Of?” at https://www.familytreedna.com/products/family-finder?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ax-brand&utm_term=family%20tree%20dna&msclkid=4302b91362811220fe 97e408cadff4fc.

Fang, Lee; “The CIA is Investing in Firms That Mine Your Tweets and Instagram Photos,” ( The Intercept, 14 April 2016).

FBI; “Rapid DNA: General Information.” At https://www.fbi.gov/services/laboratory/biometric-analysis/codis/rapid-dna.

Heute, Nachrichten; “Operation Garden Plot: The United States Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2.” At OracleSyndicate.twoday.net/stories/4208249/

Lynch, Jennifer; “TSA Plans to Use Face Recognition to Track Americans Through Airports,” (Electronic Frontier Foundation, DeepLinks Blog, 9

November 2017).

Mendel, William W.; “Combat in the Cities: The LA Riots and Operation Rio,” (Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, July 1996)

Nesbit, Jeff; “Google’s True Origin Partly Lies in CIA and NSA Research Grants for Mass Surveillance,” ( Quartz, 8 December 2017).

NSA’s Domestic Surveillance Directorate home page at https://nsa.gov1.info/

Reardon, Sara; “AI Algorithms to Prevent Suicide Gain Traction,” ( Nature, 12

December 2017).

Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, a report of The Project for the New American Century, September 2000.

Section 702: Title VII, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), “Procedures for Targeting Certain Persons Outside the United States Other Than United States Persons” (50 U.S.C. 1881a).

Shachtman, Noah; “Exclusive: Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring,” ( Wired, 28 July 2010).

Site Staff; “Hawaii Under Martial Law was ‘Military Dictatorship’,” ( Police State USA; 7 December 2014).

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Vault 7, “Year Zero,” ( Wikileaks; Released 7 March 2017).

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The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable, and durable. … Yet no moment in international politics can be frozen in time; even a global Pax Americana will not preserve itself. … America’s strategic goal used to be containment of the Soviet Union; today the task is to preserve the international security environment conducive to American interests and ideals.

-- Rebuilding America’s Defenses, pp.1&2

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5 – Divide and Deceive Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

During the Johnson administration and his escalation of the Vietnam war I learned how wars help the rich and exploit the poor. Testimony of the Winter Soldiers, Operation Phoenix, the My Lai Massacre, and other atrocities enlightened me. With each president since, and their wars, I watched the gap widen between rich and poor; and the steady decay of human rights.

This chapter is about dividing people and deceiving them. To illustrate division, I will use the rise of extreme violent factions on both right and left during Trump’s first year. To depict deception, I will analyze parts of Trump’s first State-of-the-Union speech.

Provoking Division.

World War II was a war against fascism. Peace achieved by violence didn’t last. Fascism manifested itself again. Francis Parker Yockey founded the European Liberation Front during the 1950s. George Lincoln Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party in 1959. Otto Skorzeny and Léon Degrelle started groups in Spain; Mark Fredricksen in France; Salvador Borrego in Mexico; plus still more in Italy, Germany, and Austria. The Skinheads cropped up in London during the late 1970s.



The Alternate Right (alt-right). The Skinhead movement is a macho-aggressive, neo-Nazi subculture that foreshadowed 21st-century white supremacists. It reached the United States during the 1980s and was popularized by White Aryan Resistance (WAR), started by former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) Grand Dragon Tom Metzger. Sometime during 2016 these groups, and others like them, have been lumped together as the Alternate Right (alt-right).

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) defines alt-right as “a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that

‘white identity’ is under attack by multicultural forces using ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice’ to undermine white people and ‘their’

civilization.” (SPLC web page)

White supremacist and other hate organizations in the US are listed in Appendix-B. Add to that four outlaw motorcycle gangs identified by the US Attorney General (Hells Angels, Pagans, Outlaws, and Bandidos) and two others identified by the California Attorney General (Mongols and Vagos).

There are also private militias, security contractors, and military training companies; including Academi (formerly Blackwater), Aegis Defense Services, AirScan Inc., CACI, Custer Battles, DynCorp International, G4S Risk Management, Jorge Scientific Corp., L-3

MPRI, MVM Inc., Northbridge Services Group, TigerSwan, and Triple Canopy. They are all available for hire.

Hate groups are generally classified as neo-Nazi, KKK, neo-Confederate, racist skinheads, white nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish, and a few other classifications. This extremist sub-culture is not a unified network but their commonality is hatred and a penchant for weapons.

These groups formed before Trump was elected, but violence has escalated since. White supremacists had dwindled to a fringe 98



movement but that changed on Election Day 2016. Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director, Jonathan Greenblatt, said white supremacists thought Trump’s election “was a moment of opportunity to move from the margins to the mainstream,” and that “Trump harnessed this movement and injected energy into it” by “sort of winking and nodding toward them with tweets and racist statements.” (Keneally) In early 2017 there were demonstrations in Berkeley, Portland, New Orleans, and Gettysburg. On 15 May 2017, white supremacists marched in Charlottesville for the first time that year. Then they returned on August 12th, and that appearance played out more violently.

Charlottesville 2017. Alt-right has been described as “the latest incarnation of organized racism in America.” (Mathias and Campbell) Shortly after its May appearance in Charlottesville, alt-right organizer Jason Kessler announced a ‘Unite the Right’ rally on August 12th; to protest potential removal of General Robert E. Lee’s statue from Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park.

Alt-right came marching into central Charlottesville in a manner that indicated they intended more than to protest a statue removal. One observer noted:

The right-wing protesters were relatively homogeneous … and largely ready for violence. …There was no ambiguity about their cause – they demand the nation become whiter … [They] arrived armed like a paramilitary force – carrying shields, protective gear, rods, and yes, lots of guns … They used militarized defense maneuvers , shouting commands … to gain ground or shepherd someone through projectiles.

… Virginia’s governor said that the right’s weaponry was better than that of the state police. (Montgomery)

The counter-protesters were not so well organized and were from varied groups – Black Lives Matter, religious leaders, outraged locals, and various liberals from all over the nation.

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There was also a contingent from the anti-fascists (antifa) movement wearing black pants and hoodies. One antifa group called Redneck Revolt carried weapons. The most used weapons on both sides, however, were pepper spray, rocks, full water bottles, and balloons filled with obnoxious and messy substances.

By 10:30 AM the brawling between the violent extremes was in full swing. Fights were quickly broken up by police using mace. The noon rally was cancelled by officials who forcibly cleared Emancipation Park. Alt-right fought back.

What has been described
as roving street fights
ensued until 1:45 when a
twenty-year-old white
supremacist smashed his
automobile into an antifa
group, killing one woman
and injuring 19.

Trump’s comment that

Saturday afternoon did not
specifically condemn the
white supremacists that
planned the event and were
the heaviest weaponized.

He said: “We condemn in
the strongest possible
terms this egregious
display of hatred, bigotry,

Neo-Nazi Posting on College Campuses.

This website was shut down after posting hate and violence on many articles mocking the woman killed when an sides – on many sides.”

automobile rammed into protesters at

(Mathias and Campbell)

Charlottesville in August 2017

Trump refused to answer a

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question about alt-right and neo-Nazis supporting him. When asked if he condemned those groups Trump just walked out of the room.

Trump’s refusal to specifically condemn blatant racism prompted nationwide outrage. Such a failure by the President of the United States encourages hate.

“Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Julia Hahn, and Sebastian Gorka – all of whom have actively promoted and endorsed racist ideologies and policies – work in the West Wing. This is not a fringe movement. … It represents the governing philosophy of the governing body.” (Zeitz) The ADL called on Trump to fire all his staff that has any ties to white supremacists. And, as predicted by the SPLC, the rising of the extreme right has provoked the rising of the extreme left.

The Anti-Fascists (antifa).

Antifa is a loosely knit coalition of
extreme left groups who consider it necessary to use whatever it takes to bring down the fascist movement. “Antifa’s autonomous anti-racist groups monitor and track the
activities of local neo-Nazis.

They expose them to their
neighbors and employers, they
conduct public education
campaigns, they support
migrants and refugees and they
pressure venues to cancel white
power events.” (Bray)

Although most of its activities are nonviolent, antifa does not rule out violence when they consider it necessary. They use fists, clubs, projectiles, or mace. Many wear black pants, black hoodies, and a bandana mask when encountering alt-right. “Behind those masks …

are nurses, teachers, neighbors, and relatives of all races and genders 101



who do not hesitate to put themselves on the line to shut down fascism

…” (Bray) There are no obvious leaders and membership is secret.

Modern anti-fascism has its roots in the violent opposition to rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain during the 1920s-30s. It faded after World War II but arose again during the 1970s-80s when the skinhead and neo-Nazi movements took shape.

During Pacific Life Community’s (PLC’s) nonviolent campaign against Trident missiles, we encountered an anti-fascist group called ‘Whatever it Takes’. They alluded to being nonviolent and tried very persistently to persuade PLC to collaborate with them. We always refused because advocating ‘whatever it takes’ leaves the door open for violence.

‘Whatever it Takes’ once performed an action at Lockheed and several were arrested. They asked me to testify at their trial as an expert witness on Trident missiles. That particular action met the criteria for nonviolence so I agreed. That was a mistake because from then on the group used my name to support their credibility.

Antifa is not an ally to a nonviolent strategy. They should not be welcomed into nonviolent activities. It is wise to avoid any affiliation with them because they will use that affiliation to promote their agenda.

At the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, antifa created violent outbreaks during peaceful marches of the

“Occupy Movement.” At Trump’s inauguration, antifa accosted Richard B. Spencer. From then on, “the result has been explosive growth [of antifa]. According to New York City antifa, the group’s Twitter following nearly quadrupled in the first three weeks of January

[2017] alone.” (Beinart)

Antifa sabotaged a nonviolent demonstration at the UC-Berkeley campus on 1 February 2017 where some 1200 demonstrators had assembled outside Sproul Hall to protest the university’s sponsorship of a speech by alt-right Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos. About 150

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black-clad intruders threw rocks and Molotov cocktails, brandished clubs, and smashed windows. Mainline news media salivated at the sensation. The speech was cancelled, the media were ecstatic. and antifa basked in glory, while another nonviolent message was lost.

Antifa reacted to several nationwide “March 4 Trump” events on 4

March 2017. Black-clad anarchists took over a rally in Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park; some 700 antifa engaged about 200 Trump supporters at Lake Oswego, Oregon; approximately 300 pro-Trump demonstrators were interrupted by 50 antifa activists in Olympia, Washington.

On 2 April 2017, Antifa invaded the “Rally for Trump and Freedom” at Esther Short Park in Vancouver, Washington. Berkeley was described as a battlefield when Antifa interrupted a free speech rally on 15 April 2017. Wherever white supremacists gather, antifa is likely to invade.

“A politicized fight culture is emerging …” (Beinart)

Patriot Prayer. “Joey Gibson is the organizer to watch these days when it comes to rallies that cause lots of political drama.” (Dione) Gibson claims to be a pro-Trump conservative libertarian motivated by freedom and God. Patriot Prayer was organized by Gibson in early spring of 2017.

He describes the organization as moderately conservative, calling for freedom of speech.

Somewhere along the line Gibson developed an admiration for Donald Trump. He scrounged up enough money for a bus ticket to the July 2016 Republican Convention. He made his debut in politics demonstrating outside the Convention hall.

Upon returning to Vancouver Gibson campaigned for Trump and organized his first pro-Trump rally in Vancouver’s Esther Short Park on 2 October 2016. He started a Patriot Prayer page on Facebook and YouTube to promote it.

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State Senator Don Benton, Trump’s campaign director for Washington State, attended the rally. I have seen no reports that Benton talked with Gibson but after Trump’s inauguration Patriot Prayer sponsored a flurry of pro-Trump rallies supporting free speech. They were held where antifa was strongest. They were divisive; they invited violence; and they implicated the political left as the cause of that violence.

Randy Blazak, University of Oregon criminology instructor and head of the Oregon Coalition against Hate Crime, has studied right-wing extremists for some 20 years. He sees nothing unusual about Gibson’s peaceful rhetoric:

There is a language game played on all political fronts. The language game puts your side on the moral high ground … It’s not your old version of racism. It’s a new type of nationalism that shies away from tropes.

A lot of the rallying around the theme of free speech … is strategic. It frames these groups as underdogs. They go places where the right and other conservatives might be outnumbered … they invite hostility and appear as the victim, which garners media attention and helps their cause. (Matarrese and Dake)

Joey Gibson’s Patriot Prayer appearances concentrated on Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, Olympia, San Francisco, and Berkeley – all liberal cities with a strong antifa presence. His 2017 appearances have mostly been at politically unstable times. He made 14
rallies/appearances between April and September 2017.

Gibson says his ambition is to “liberate the conservatives on the West Coast” so they can speak freely without fear of retaliatory violence.

(May) Although Gibson has never been called an extremist, he “has made a name for himself by organizing confrontational rallies in liberal enclaves of the West Coast that have frequently descended into violence.” (Sunshine)

Gibson is a good organizer but where is the funding for all these demonstrations coming from?

He certainly couldn’t have financed

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them himself – he probably couldn’t even pay his own travel expenses.

It appears to me that Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer were set up to operate outside the political arena to promote divisiveness in liberal geographic areas. White House interest in Gibson’s activities was illustrated when UC-Berkeley was about to cancel ‘Free Speech Week.’

Trump tweeted: “If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view –

NO FEDERAL FUNDS.” (Mathias)

The neocons were watching
closely.

Connecting the Dots. Antifa and alt-right epitomize the division that has taken place in the US since Donald Trump was elected. Wherever extremes emerge, division proliferates. Whenever egos are stoked, hatred and conflict follow.

Patriot Prayer illustrates how extremist activity can be manipulated to aggravate political and social division. Some points stand out. One is that non-gang-related street violence over political-ideological viewpoints has taken a sharp upturn since Trump took office. Mob violence was actually tapering off prior to the 2016 presidential election. The trend then was toward ‘lone wolves’ as perpetrators of mass shootings and bombings.

Another element is fear. The more fear of different races, cultures, and religions – anything different – can be promoted; the more divided society becomes. Fear fractures community. Graffiti on a bathroom wall can close down a school for a day or two. Stereotyping fear spreads it like the plague.

Another point is that the upsurge in street violence seems to be condoned, even encouraged, by the White House. Trump’s failure to outright condemn those responsible for the violence in Charlottesville tacitly encouraged more of the same. Threatening to cut off federal 105



funding to UC-Berkeley if Free Speech Week is canceled was outright support for alt-right.

A fourth point to recognize is the connection between (1) assault weapons being available to extremists groups and (2) what the neocons can depend on to further their agenda. There’s a lot of violence out there waiting for a cause. El Paso’s United Constitutional Patriots have already assumed patrol of the border until the ‘wall’ is built. Alt-right would be happy to enforce martial law.

Reactionary left-wing antifa has been energized to counter white supremacists. It may seem like a potential ally, but NO! An organization sanctioning any degree of violence is no partner for the Nonviolence Movement.

I will now use Trump’s first State of the Union (SOTU) message to illustrate how propaganda can be used to deceive the American people.

It is a classic study in engineering public opinion.

Deception from High Places.

On 20 January 2018, President Donald Trump gave his first State of the Union (SOYU) speech. For one hour and twenty minutes he praised his ‘accomplishments’. The New York Times analyzed 18 of Trump’s major statements. (See Times Staff) Five were true and two were
outright false. The remaining eleven were deemed a little out of context, exaggerated, misleading, or unclear – all typical methods of spinning the truth.

One false statement was: “After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.” Wages are still rising but at a slower rate than the past several years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLM): “From January 2017 to January 2018, real average hourly 106



earnings increased 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted.” (BLM News Release) That comes to $1.60 per week. (See Rizzo) The other false statement was regarding the four pillars of his immigration reform package. Trump said: “The third pillar ends the visa lottery, a program that randomly hands out green cards without any regard for skill, merit, or the safety of our people.” The Visa Lottery Program actually requires specific combinations of education and/or work experience, no criminal record, and a background check that can take months to complete.

A misleading statement was: “We have ended the war on American energy – and we have ended the war on clean coal. … We are now an exporter of energy to the world.” Ending the war on coal and energy was achieved by removing environmental protection regulations. That allows the US to produce an excess of coal and gas, and is thus a net exporter of those commodities. But it still imports huge amounts of oil and, overall, is a net importer of energy.

There was much more deception in Trump’s speech. I will discuss the most prominent.

Trump claimed: “Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone.” Trump said

“since the election,” not since his inauguration. “For all of 2016, the U.S. added over 2 million new jobs.” (Gillespie) Many were created after the election and before Trump took office, yet he is taking credit for them.

What “Trump failed to mention is that his first year in office marked the lowest of job creation since 2010. … according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 254,000 fewer jobs were created in Trump’s first 11
months in office than were created in the 11 months before he entered office.” (Sanders) Two common propaganda techniques used here are spinning the truth out of context and telling only what he wants told.

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Trump said: “Since we passed tax cuts, roughly 3 million workers have already gotten tax cut bonuses -- many of them thousands of dollars per worker.” “What he forgot to mention is that only 2% of Americans report receiving a raise or a bonus … some of the corporations that have given out bonuses, such as Walmart, General Electric, and Pfizer, are also laying off tens of thousands of their employees.

“Kimberly-Clark, maker of Kleenex and Huggies, said they were using money from the tax cut to restructure – laying off more than 5,000
workers and closing 10 plants.” (Sanders) This is another example of spinning the truth and telling only what you want heard.

Since March 2017 “The three richest people in America saw their wealth increase by more than $68 billion.” That averages $22.33
billion each. Meanwhile, “many thousands of employees are forced into Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing because of the obscenely low wages they are paid.” (Sanders) Trump proclaimed: “Tonight, I am calling on Congress to produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion dollars for the new infrastructure investment we need. Every federal dollar should be leveraged by partnering with state and local governments and, where appropriate, tapping into private sector investment – to permanently fix the infrastructure deficit.” (emphasis added) What that means is that Trump plans to privatize roads, bridges, schools, and more. The private sector (a.k.a. Wall Street and big business) will be the ones matching federal dollars. And they will expect huge profits in return. That will mean heavy tolls on roads, bridges, etc. Propaganda lesson: tell only what you want heard.

Trump didn’t say anything about his failed campaign promise to provide health insurance for everyone, with lower deductibles. The word ‘health’ was only mentioned twice. He mentioned it when he touted repealing the part of Obamacare that forced low-income people 108



“to pay tremendous penalties simply because they couldn't afford government-ordered health plans.”

Repealing that part resulted in three million fewer people with health insurance, and counting. He actually supported, unsuccessfully, legislation that would have caused 32 million uninsured. He also supported proposals to cut Medicaid by $1 trillion, Medicare by $500
billion, and Social Security Disability Insurance by $64 billion. None of that was mentioned.

.Trump also “avoided some of the most important issues facing our country and the world” in his speech:

x

He avoided global warming.

x

He avoided the “disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision which allows billionaires … to undermine American democracy” by spending unlimited amounts to elect candidates of their choice.

x

He avoided talking about “Republican governors’ efforts all across this country to undermine democracy, suppress the vote, and make it harder for poor people and people of color to vote.”

x

He did not address the fact that “hundreds of thousands of bright young people are unable to afford to go to college, while millions of others have come out of school deeply in debt.”

x

He avoided “the retirement crisis … and the fact that over half of older workers have no retirement savings. We need to strengthen pensions … not take them away from millions of workers.” (Quotes from Sanders)

Another propaganda technique favored by Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels is to let someone else say it for you. That technique was used extensively in the SOTU talk. To promote specific issues, people who had experienced sensational events were introduced during Trump’s speech.

Trump started his speech with a little drama by introducing Coast Guard Petty Officer Ashlee Leppert who “was aboard one of the first helicopters on the scene in Houston during Hurricane Harvey. Through 18 hours of wind and rain, Ashlee braved live power lines and deep 109



water to help save more than 40 lives. Thank you Ashlee.” The simple act of introducing Leppert and telling her story makes the administration look efficient in handling natural disasters.

Trump then introduced firefighter David Dahlberg who “faced down walls of flame to rescue almost 60 children trapped at a California summer camp threatened by wildfires.” The Trump administration had nothing to do with that but, coming on the heels of the rescue story, it sounded good for Trump.

Trump hyped his “tax reform” by introducing Corey Adams, “an all-American worker. [Corey] supported himself through high school, lost his job during the 2008 recession, and was later hired by Staub, where he trained to become a welder. Like many hardworking Americans, Corey plans to invest his tax-cut raise into his new home and his two daughters’ education.”

This drama does more than misrepresent the tax cut. It implies that good Americans are hardworking and don’t need welfare. That was emphasized when Trump added that “no matter where you’ve been, or where you come from, this is your time. If you work hard, if you believe in yourself, if you believe in America, then you can dream anything, you can be anything …”

Trump extolled other ‘hard workers’. He said: “To lower tax rates for hardworking Americans, we nearly doubled the standard deduction for everyone.” He called on Congress “to empower every cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers.” He also said: “We want every American to know the dignity of a hard day's work; … We can lift our citizens from welfare to work, from dependence to independence, and from poverty to prosperity.”

A hard-working and self-sufficient labor force is essential to fulfilling the neocons’ plan for world domination and unrestrained business practices. Trump said “let's invest in workforce development and job-110



training. Let's open great vocational schools so our future workers can learn a craft and realize their full potential.”

The neocons want vocational schools, not colleges, because vocational schools train workers. Workers are the key – not the mentally-disabled; not the victims of mass incarceration; not refugees; not anyone marginalized in any way.

Trump took a shot at North Korea when he introduced Otto Warmbier’s parents and siblings. Warmbier, “a hardworking student at the University of Virginia,” had joined a tour of North Korea and was arrested for theft. He fell into a coma while in prison and never recovered. He died just days after being returned to the US in June 2017. The only purpose that horrible story served was to tarnish North Korea’s image.

Trump then introduced Sung-ho who was a starving North Korean in 1996. While trying to steal coal from a railroad car, to sell for food, he passed out on the tracks. After a train severed his leg he used improvised crutches. Later he met Christians in China and was then tortured by North Koreans. He resolved to escape.

Sung-ho now has a prosthetic leg and broadcasts “THE TRUTH” from Seoul. Having Sung-ho in attendance again demonized North Korea and justified Trump’s reluctance to sign a peace treaty ending the Korean war.

Trump introduced 12-year-old Preston Sharp from Redding, California, who “noticed that Veterans’ graves were not marked with flags on Veterans’ Day.” He “started a movement that has now placed 40,000
flags on the graves of our great heroes. … Young patriots like Preston teach all of us about our civic duty as Americans.”

Veterans and flags are great patriotism enhancers. Trump then jabbed at those who take a knee during the national anthem: “Preston’s reverence … reminds us why we salute our flag, why we put our hands 111



over our hearts for the pledge of allegiance, and why we proudly stand for the national anthem.”

To justify his immigration policy, Trump introduced two couples whose teenage daughters – Kayla and Nisa – were murdered by MS-13
gang members. Trump used this to stereotype Latinos as criminals:

“Many of those gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors …

Tonight I am calling on Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13 and other criminals to break into our country.”

That “loophole” is the DACA program that allows Latin American children, fleeing violence, to be eligible for asylum and possibly eventual legal residence1

Over the last few years, 4,000 such migrant children were sent to the town where Kayla and Nisa lived.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions
proclaimed that MS-13 smuggles gang members into the US by this program. Local town authorities disagree, saying the vulnerable new arrivals are recruited in the US. They are susceptible because they are young, alone, and have a language barrier.

MS-13 ( Mara Salvatrucha, roughly meaning “Salvadoran Street Posse”) started in Los Angeles during the 1980s by Salvadoran refugees who grouped together to protect against Mexican street gangs.

It currently operates and recruits in at least 40 US states. MS-13 is a deadly gang but its targets are traditionally other migrants. Kayla and Nisa’s murders were an exception. Yet Trump is using this one tragic 1 These are refugee Latin American children sent north by their parents or traveling on their own to seek safety. In 2012, Obama started the Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to give some 800,000 minor refugees, called DREAMers, a chance to get work permits or go to school in preparation for potential citizenship.

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case, and the parents’ grief, to close the border to thousands of minor children seeking refuge.

There is much more in Trump’s SOTU speech, but this sampling will suffice to illustrate the depth of deception this neocon-controlled government will stoop to in order to propagate its agenda.

A Concluding Thought.

Perhaps nothing is more deceptive than how our tax dollars are spent.

Holding the federal government responsible for how the money is used has been a problem from at least the 1970s. The lack of fiscal transparency was so evident throughout government that Congress enacted the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 requiring every agency of the US Government to prepare verifiable financial statements that can be readily audited.

Every federal department complied except the Department of Defense (DOD) which continued to stall. Congress tried several times to prompt the DOD to comply: in 2001 the DOD was told to exercise responsible accountability; In 2005 Congress froze auditing funds for the DOD budget until the Secretary of Defense submitted an acceptable plan for improving financial management; in 2009 Congress set a non-mandatory goal for a comprehensive audit by September 2017, only to be told that may be unrealistic and may require more money.

A 2015 article in The Fiscal Times reported that $8.5 Trillion of the Pentagon budget since 1996 could not be accounted for. It is difficult to visualize a trillion dollars. It’s a million times a million. That’s a lot of deception, but it gets worse.

On 27 June 2017, Congresswoman Barbara Lee introduced H.R.3079
prescribing budgetary penalties if the DOD financial statement for the previous year “does not receive … [an] opinion by an external independent auditor …” (H.R.3079)

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In December, DOD Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer, David Norquist, announced the first Full Scope Audit of the Pentagon. The outcome probably astounded everyone. Global Research reported: “…

$21 Trillion in Taxpayer Funding is Unaccounted For.” (DeGraw) Wow! And that figure is expected to grow as auditing proceeds.

Current Pentagon stonewalling says digging too deep during an audit might produce information that will – yes, you guessed it – threaten national security. The Federation of American Scientists in August 2018 revealed that the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board has set up a new policy whereby “federal agencies will be permitted to publish financial statements that are altered so as to protect information on classified spending from disclosure.” (Aftergood) We will continue to be deceived.

This chapter concludes Part I of this Guidebook on understanding our opponent. At first glance we might jump to the conclusion that our opponents are the neocons who pull the strings of our invisible government. But analysis must go deeper. The neocons also have an inner goodness. And they also have a false self. It is egothink that blocks their inner goodness. Our real opponent is that blockage.

It may not be possible to immediately influence the hard-core neocons.

But they are not the only ones who have egothink. Those caught up in the culture of entertainment also suffer from that malady. Nevertheless they may be the first that will respond to proactive nonviolence. The mind is reasonable and if goodness flows it will reduce dependence on entertainment.

Then, without that culture, without the consumers to buy their commodities, without the ready labor force, and without a compliant and supporting citizenry, the neocons will not be able to function.

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Part III will get into that process much deeper. But first we need a plan

– a Global Constructive Program. The nuances of that is the topic of Part II.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

References and Further Reading for Chapter-5.

Aftergood, Steven; “Financial Accounts May Be ‘Modified’ to Shield Classified Programs,” ( Secrecy News, Federation of American Scientists website, 15 August 2018)

Beinart, Peter; “The Rise of the Violent Left.” ( The Atlantic, September 2017) BLM News Release; “Real Earnings – January 2018,” (USDL-18-0239, 14

February 2018.

Bray, Mark; “Who are the Antifa?” ( The Washington Post, 16 August 2017).

DeGraw, David (Global Research); “‘Full Scope Audit’ of the Pentagon Reveals $21 Trillion Tax Dollars Disappeared.” ( The Daily Coin, 5 July 2018)

Dione, Michelle; “Warriors for Freedom – Police and CIA are Involved in Pro-Trump Rallies,” ( Medium, 4 June 2017).

Gillespie, Patrick; “A Record of 75 Straight Months of Job Growth Under Obama,” ( CNNMoney, 6 January 2016).

H.R.3079; Audit the Pentagon Act of 2017, 27 June 2017.

Keneally, Meghan; “The State of the White Supremacy and Neo-Nazi Groups in the US,” (ABC News, 15 August 2017).

Matarrese, Andy and Dake, Lauren; “Joey Gibson Aims to ‘Liberate Conservatives’ Via His Patriot Prayer Group” ( The Columbian, 2 July 2017).

Mathias, Christopher; “Free Speech Week at Berkeley is a Mess,” ( HuffPost, 23 September 2017)

Mathias, Christopher and Campbell, Andy; “How What Happened Here in Charlottesville Was Inevitable,” ( HuffPost, 15 August 2017).

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May,Patrick; “Who’s Behind this Weekend’s Right-Wing Rally at Crissy Field?” ( Mercury News, 23 August 2017, updated 25 August 2017) Montgomery, Blake’ “Here’s What Really Happened in Charlottesville,”

( BuzzFeed News, 14 August 2017).

Rizzo, Salvador; “Fact Checking the Democratic Response to the State of the Union Speech,” ( Washington Post, 1 February 2018).

Sanders, Bernie, US Senator; “State of the Union Response 2018,” 31 January 2018. At https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/state-of-the-union-response-2018

SPLC; (Southern Poverty Law Center list of extremist groups). At https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/groups?f[0]=field_ideology%3A170

Sunshine, Spencer; “Challenging the Right, Advancing Social Justice”

(Political Research Associates, 6 September 2016).

Times Staff; “2018 State of the Union Fact-Check,” ( The New York Times, 30

January 2018)

Zeitz, Joshua; “What Happened in Charlottesville is all too American,”

( Politico Magazine, 13 August 2017) 116

PART II

UNITY UNDER A GLOBAL CONSTRUCTIVE

PROGRAM

Prelude to Part II

So, when you undertake Constructive Program … you are acting out a deeply held belief among visionary nonviolent actors, like Mahatma Gandhi, that the positive reality –
good – that you’re cooperating with is not only also there, along with the evil that you’re struggling against, but is even

… ontologically prior – it is the thing that really exists. And all the various forms of evil that we see around us are really negative transformations of that positive consciousness –
that positive energy.

In addition, if you show that you can do both – that you can cooperate with good and not cooperate with evil – it shows that you have a long term goal in view, and you have not been caught up in animosity against the oppressor.

1

-- Michael Nagler

Having identified the activities of the invisible government to perpetuate egothink – the obstacle to goodness, which is our true 1 Nagler, Michael; “The Principles of Constructive Program” (The Metta Center, 2012).

opponent – we can now address methods to remove those blockages in order that goodness may flourish.

What is needed is a succinct vision statement of what our world would be like in an unhampered goodness field. We need that statement not only to entice people out of the culture of entertainment, but to also define for the Global Satyagraha Movement what our common goals are.

I say global because in the 21st Century we must think and act in a global, solidary manner in order to remove those well-entrenched obstacles to goodness. That succinct vision statement is our Global Constructive Program.

During the Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King Jr. lamented the lack of ‘higher unity’ among his pastors and organizational leaders.

They were good and dedicated people doing well in leading their congregations and organizations. But they had a hard time going beyond that activity. King longed for the ‘higher unity’ that would unify all his leaders under the overarching civil rights movement. This Part II addresses ways to unify a Global Satyagraha Movement in a higher unity under an ovearching Global Constructive Program.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

6 – The Nuances of Nonviolent Action

… belief that violence violates a moral or religious principle does not constitute nonviolent action. Nor does the simple absence of physical violence mean that nonviolent action is occurring. It is the type of activity that identifies the technique of nonviolent action, not the belief in that activity.

-- Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle, p. 20

A lexicon for nonviolent practitioners has evolved. During that evolution, social conditions have changed and nonviolent tactics have been refined. The meanings of terms have become blurred. In this Guidebook I will analyze nonviolent activities in specific ways using precise terms. In this chapter I will revisit the origin of those terms, analyze their application today, and define how I will use them herein.

I will start with Confrontational Nonviolent Actions, then discuss proactive nonviolence briefly, and finally explore the evolution of Satyagraha and discuss its congruence with proactive nonviolence.

Confrontational Nonviolence Actions.

The various terms describing confrontational nonviolent actions are often, erroneously, used interchangeably. I will clarify the most common terms as they will be used in this Guidebook.

Civil Disobedience vis-à-vis Acts of Necessity: If the nonviolent action involves breaking a law it is either “civil disobedience” or an “act of necessity.”

When Gandhi directly opposed unjust colonial laws he called it “civil disobedience.” It was the unjust law that he disobeyed in order to



demonstrate its illegitimacy. Because that law was codified legislation, he was disobedient in a civil manner – hence the term ‘civil disobedience’. The lunch counter sit-ins during the civil rights movement were also acts of civil disobedience because the actors disobeyed unjust segregation laws.

Civil disobedience directly disobeys an unjust law. Unjust laws have penalties. Civil disobedience actors must be prepared to suffer that penalty because that magnifies the unjustness of the law.

Most nonviolent actions today that involve breaking a law are performed as an ‘act of necessity’. That means it was necessary to violate a minor law to obey a greater law; or it was necessary to cause a minor harm to forestall a greater harm. That is perfectly legal. It should not be called civil disobedience.

Trident nuclear missiles, for instance, can annihilate millions of people and make Earth uninhabitable. The International Court of Justice (which the US chooses to not recognize) ruled that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is unlawful. (“Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons”)

It is a Crime against Peace, an international law to which the US is party. It is the threat to use nuclear weapons that supposedly deters the other from attacking.

So, the US deterrence policy violates
international law which, according to Article 6 of the US Constitution, is part of the supreme law of the land.

The illegality, lethality, and immorality of Trident missiles have compelled concerned people to violate minor laws like “trespass” to warn of the greater crime/harm – a classic act of necessity.

Yet in trials where defendants argue a necessity defense, I have heard them proudly and naively call it “civil disobedience.” That is sending the wrong message. Admitting deliberate disobedience of a perfectly legitimate law alienates both jury and judge. David Hartsough wrote: 118



Complicity in crimes against humanity, through silence or passive approval by inaction, was itself defined as a crime at the Nuremberg tribunal. So we decided to call our witness at the Concord Naval Weapons Station “Nuremberg Actions.” We did not see ourselves as breaking the law, but rather as participating in “civil obedience,” or

“holy obedience,” attempting to uphold both international law and God’s law. We did not view our actions as “disturbing the peace,” as others would charge, but “disturbing the war.” (Hartsough, p. 132) It is crucial that the necessity of the trespass be clearly visible, highly emphasized, and thoroughly understood if it is to influence anyone’s thinking. Unlike civil disobedience, the one legally breaking the minor law should struggle diligently not to suffer the consequences. That struggle should instruct the public on the Principle of Necessity and why it was legally necessary to trespass.

Direct Action vis-à-vis Symbolic Action: Direct action is aimed
directly against an actual harm. Civil disobedience and acts of necessity can be forms of direct action but direct action does not necessarily imply breaking a law. It can be a demonstration at a missile silo or a vigil at a Trident base to call attention to the lurking danger.

Or it can be a longer-term presence like the Standing Rock Sioux resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline (to be discussed in Chapter 9).

Symbolic action is weaker and is used to illustrate a message about something that cannot be directly confronted. On the anniversary of the atom bombing of Nagasaki, Pacific Life Community in the San Francisco Bay Area spread symbolic ‘Ashes of Nagasaki’ to protest nuclear war.

Because one cannot directly confront an atomic bombing, ashes were used to symbolize the destructive power unleashed on that city. We broke misdemeanor laws of littering and trespass because it was necessary to emphasize potential nuclear annihilation. It was a 119



symbolic act of necessity but it was neither civil disobedience nor a direct action. Symbolic actions do not necessarily have to risk arrest.

Symbols (such as signs, pictures, and anniversary dates) used while directly confronting a here-and-present physical target, are part of the direct action. They depict the harmfulness of the action’s target.

Proactive Nonviolence.

Proactive nonviolence outflanks egothink by working through the preconscious thought processing that takes place before every thought becomes actual. This helps to actualize thoughts that provoke the mind to analyze bad habits. Egothink generates much habitual behavior without mental awareness. When goodness thoughts force the mind to evaluate egothink, the resulting cognitive dissonance often leads to a change in behavior

Influencing people to think good thoughts that challenge egothink is the most proactive act available to us today. It challenges violence at its deepest roots. Sometimes this influencing must be done quickly when facing a dangerous opponent. Training and self-purification prepare us for these events. Dave Dellinger described Negro marchers on the streets of Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 being blocked by police dogs, clubs, and fire hoses.

One of the March leaders said: “We’re not turning back. We haven’t done anything wrong. All we want is our freedom. How do you feel about these things?” (Lynd & Lynd, pp. 401-402) As the Negros again moved toward the barricade, Bull Connor ordered the fire hoses turned on. But the firemen didn’t obey. Those simple words challenged the firemen to think and they didn’t like what they thought.

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The experience of Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) volunteers Derek Oakley and Andres Garcia also challenged their opponents to evaluate their thinking. Derek and Andres were stationed at the United Nations Protection of Civilians Area in Bor, South Sudan, to protect women and children.

On April 17, 2014 the
compound was
attacked. Four
women and nine
children took shelter
in a mud hut with

Derek and Andres.

The gunmen
approached Derek and Andres three times and told them to leave. The NP volunteers refused, but each time they explained more fully the reason for their presence and why they couldn’t leave.

Finally the gunmen left and the women and children were safe. The peacekeepers were prepared to pay the ultimate price, but their determination was successful in prompting the others to evaluate their position. Derek recounts:

Alongside four women and nine children (whom we had sheltered with for the duration of the assault), Andres and I survived unharmed through a combination of nonviolent training focused on strategy in dealing with violent conflict and ethnic tensions. We were threatened on multiple occasions with guns, axes and sticks. We were even ordered by gunmen to leave the women and children behind. We refused to do so, calmly insisting that we were humanitarian workers and that these were innocent women and children who had nothing to do with the war; we would not leave without them. (Bettencourt) Not all actions to stimulate goodness thinking are that risky but proactive planning and training pays off. Nevertheless, sacrifice is something a proactivist must sometimes anticipate. Sacrifice is an action of love for others, including the opponent.

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Thinking will be discussed in greater detail as this Guidebook unfolds.

I will close this section with Thomas Merton’s insight: Nonviolence is perhaps the most exacting of all forms of struggle, not only because it demands first of all that one be ready to suffer evil and even face the threat of death without violent retaliation, but because it excludes mere transient self-interest, even political, from its consideration. In a very real sense, those who practice nonviolent resistance must commit themselves not to the defense of their own interests or even those of a particular group; … but for the healing and reconciliation of humanity with itself, humanity the person, and humanity the human family. (Merton, pp. 14 & 15, emphasis mine)1

The Evolution of Satyagraha and Its Congruence with Proactive Nonviolence.

During Gandhi’s stint in South Africa, he transitioned from a British-educated lawyer to an advocate for the oppressed. It was there that he coined the word Satyagraha (pronounced saht YAH graha) to define his nonviolent campaign. It is traditionally interpreted as “Truth Force”

or “Soul Force.”

At that time Satyagraha was essentially confrontational against British colonialism. Consequently, Satyagraha was first associated with confrontation, including civil disobedience. Even today, in the 21st century, many nonviolent practitioners use the term Satyagraha with this South African meaning.

Gandhi has repeatedly told us his life is an experiment in Truth; when he discovered new understanding he changed his life accordingly. “Do I contradict myself,” he asked. “Consistency is a hobgoblin. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statement on a given question, but to be consistent with the truth as it may present itself to me at a 1 Some nouns and pronouns in this quotation have been changed to be all inclusive.

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given moment. The result is that I have grown from truth to truth.”

(Fischer, p. 56)

Gandhi cautioned readers to not assume that something written in his early years represents his present thinking. Satyagraha also changed along with Gandhi’s life and understanding of truth. It was during the 1920s that Gandhi discovered a new concept of Satyagraha.

The Non-Cooperation Movement – 1919-1922. When Gandhi returned to India in 1915 he still considered Satyagraha to be only nonviolent confrontation. The Non-Cooperation Movement was his first attempt at mass mobilization.

On 18 March 1919 the Rowlett Act was passed which suppressed Indian civil liberties – particularly freedom to assemble and freedom of the press. On April 13th British soldiers fired upon a Sikh religious gathering of unarmed families at Jallianwal Bagh (Garden) in Amritsar, killing 379 and wounding over 1,100. Gandhi fasted for three days and then accelerated his Non-Cooperation Movement But, in 1922 Gandhi halted this movement after the Chauri Chaura incident in which three demonstrators and 23 policemen were killed.

The Non-Cooperation Movement was a campaign conducted by the Indian elite according to the South African concept of Satyagraha.

Goals of the Movement did not help large sectors of the population, particularly the agricultural sector. They saw no prospects of a better life even if the Movement succeeded. There was no unifying plan and many were easily swayed to violence.

The Non-Cooperation Movement failed to gain concessions from the colonial government. Gandhi knew something was lacking and would not again participate in major political activity until he identified what 123



it was. For eight years he pondered the problem, waiting for that small inner voice to show the way.

During his period of deep contemplation Gandhi was influenced by Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894); and Tolstoy’s concept of numerous self-reliant communities dissociated from the state. Finally the Constructive Program concept emerged and the British tax on salt was the ideal target.

Constructive Program addresses the needs of all people. It empowers people and moves them toward self-reliance; which proactively chips away the advantages of colonialism. Constructive Program does not replace confrontation; it gives Confrontational Nonviolence the power of persuasion. In July 1927 Ghandi wrote: All Civil Disobedience is a part or branch of Satyagraha, but all Satyagraha is not Civil Disobedience. And seeing that the Nagpur friends have suspended what they were pleased to call Satyagraha or Civil Disobedience, let me suggest for their information and that of others how Satyagraha can be legitimately offered ... let me commence by saying that they may offer Satyagraha by developing the power of the people through khadi [spinning and weaving of cloth], and through khadi achieving boycott of foreign cloth. They can offer Satyagraha by becoming precursors of Hindu-Muslim unity … by performing silent acts of service to those of the opposite faith to theirs.” (Gandhi, pp. 69-70)

Gandhi saw clearly that constructive activity is as much Truth Force as confrontation. As his understanding of Truth progressed, so also did his concept of Satyagraha. Of the two – Confrontational Nonviolence and Constructive Program – Gandhi considered the Constructive Program most important.

Confrontational Nonviolence alone is reactive – it is meeting deeply-entrenched injustice head on. What made Satyagraha proactive is the Constructive Program that undermined the foundation of colonialism 124



by insinuating a better way to work and live together. It made people think about what could be. Satyagraha and proactive nonviolence coincide:

Satyagraha = Confrontational Nonviolence + Constructive Program = Proactive Nonviolence

The Civil Disobedience Movement – 1930-1932. This was Gandhi’s second attempt at mass mobilization. Prior to 1930 the people of India were spinning yarn, weaving
khadi, and boycotting British
goods but they were doing it as
individuals. They did not have a

Constructive Program that united
them in the solidarity of an all-

India movement.

That changed with the Salt March
in March-April of 1930 which
openly confronted the British
taxation and manufacturing
monopoly.

Britain’s Salt Acts prohibited the
manufacture of salt by Indians.

Thus British industries had a
monopoly on salt and it was
heavily taxed. In a hot country

The End of Gandhi’s Salt March
like India, salt means survival.

Statue at Surat, Gujarat, India

Gandhi organized a 240-mile
march from Ahmedabad to Dandi, Gujarat, on the Arabian Sea coast.

Core marchers were the Satyagraha Ashram “78” who had undergone years of rigorous training. But tens of thousands joined at various spots 125



along the route and thousands were arrested, including Gandhi. At Dandi he disobeyed British law by harvesting salt.

Gandhian scholar Bernie Meyer points out that the British did not immediately take the Salt March seriously. It was only after the Constructive Program kicked in that they perked up.

As a result of the Civil Disobedience people all over were producing salt, burning British cloth, appealing to alcohol imbibers and sellers to stop. Tens of thousands were arrested. Included in the arrests were the Congress [Party] members due to their participation. Because Gandhi was in jail with other leaders, Sarajini Naidu had to lead the Dhamasana Salt Action in which thousands were beaten with lathis without raising a hand in defense, and some were killed. (Meyer) This was Gandhi’s one successful mass mobilization. It was proactive because he had Confrontational Nonviolence and a Constructive Program working together. Even the Muslim Khudai Khidmargar (Servant of God) movement of the Northwest Province was involved, creating an interfaith movement that worried the British.

Gandhi ended the Civil Disobedience Movement when the Viceroy granted salt concessions to Indians, recognized the Indian National Congress as an official party in national politics, released political prisoners, and later enabled the Government of India Act which allowed Indians a greater voting franchise for provincial legislators (but not governors).

A Trigger Event Helped. It is interesting that Gandhi’s one successful mass mobilization was helped by onset of the Great Depression. Shock from the Great Depression enhanced the Civil Disobedience Movement by distracting Britain’s attention from India and Gandhi’s Constructive Program. The Great Depression was a ‘triggering event’.

Bill Moyer’s “Movement Action Plan” discusses Trigger Events in detail. (See Moyer) They can be used by the power holder to justify 126



new policy. The 9-11 events triggered George W. Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ which facilitated the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and drone attacks on other countries.

When Congress was stalling on passing the Patriot Act, the anthrax letters to Senators Leahy and Daschle, and others, were a ‘re-trigger event’ that terrorized Congress into quickly passing the Act virtually unchanged from what the administration had submitted.

Trigger events can also prompt social action. The arrest of Rosa Parks triggered the Montgomery bus boycott. The meltdown of Three Mile Island triggered the strong anti-nuclear-power Clamshell and Abalone Alliances. Trigger events can be deliberately planned (the arrest of Rosa Parks) or not (Three Mile Island).

Trigger events can be a powerful tool for mass mobilization. “The trigger event is a shocking incident that dramatically reveals a critical social problem to the general public in a new and vivid way … The trigger event instills a profound sense of moral outrage in the general populace. … The trigger event is also a trumpet’s call to action …”

(Moyer, p. 22) Re-trigger events re-establish an issue in the public mind. The advantage of trigger events is that they make people think about issues and they can create cognitive dissonance.

Gandhi’s Constructive Programme that Benefited All Indians.

The Salt March alone was confrontational (reactive) to the British Salt Acts but the Constructive Program made the pair proactive. It consisted of millions of Indian people harvesting and distributing their own salt. Boycott of British textiles was made possible by cottage industries (spinning yarn and weaving cloth) which were also part of the Constructive Program; as was squeezing cooking oil from certain seeds and grinding wheat to make bread flour.

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Poetry, music drama and other cultural activities boosted the Indian morale. Gandhi’s Constructive Program was designed to reform the national character of India. It consisted “of several apparently unconnected independent activities. But they are connected within the context of creating evolution of a new social order.” (Rath) That new social order that unified the people was spelled out in the Constructive Program. Its contents continued to evolve over time and Gandhi listed them all together during the 1940s:

x

Communal Unity – a loving unity, not necessarily political unity.

x

Removal of Untouchability.

x

Prohibition of alcohol.

x

Khadi – promote homespun and hand-woven cloth and boycott British products.

x

Other Village Industries such as making salt and flour and cultural compositions.

x

Village sanitation.

x

New or Basic Education for children in context of Indian culture.

x

Adult Education to promote literacy.

x

Uplifting women.

x

Education in health and hygiene.

x

Provincial Languages – every step of the Constructive Program must be explained to the people in the language they understand.

x

National Language – promote a national language for nationwide communication.

x

Economic Equality between capital and labor, and lessening the gap between rich and poor.

x

Kisans (the peasants) – uplifting farmers to help them realize their political clout.

x

Labour – develop nonviolent labor unions.

x

Adavasis (hill tribes and aboriginals) -- systematic improvement of villages and their people.

x

Lepers – better treatment of patients and better understanding of the disease.

x

Students – guard them from exploitive career choices and make nonviolence more appealing.

Each of these 18 activities was a special issue to someone in India.

They became the national agenda for social change in all of India.

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They crossed all ethnic, religious, and economic lines; and provided the mass-movement-unity for Indians to act together.

Each person,
contributing a little, contributed to all.

India’s cottage industries and boycotts had an earlier precedent from when the US was also a British colony. The British Parliament passed the Townshend Act in 1767 which levied taxes on the colonies to pay for the French and Indian War (1754-1763) and to maintain troops in the colonies. This put a hardship on the colonial people.

Over 650 colonists (including Paul Revere and John Wheatley, owner of the slave-poet Phillis Wheatley) gathered in Boston’s Faneuil Hall on October 28, 1767 to plan a response. They drew up a non-importation agreement with a long list of items to boycott. The agreement was accepted unanimously and signed by all present.

It was published in the Boston Gazette on November 2nd and reached the London Chronicle on December 11th of that year. The boycott was voluntary. It did not stop British imports but it culminated in the Boston Tea Party on 16 December 1773. (See Haughton Library Blog) Concluding Thoughts.

With a different social attitude we could unite the entire world with a Global Constructive Program spelling out the basic dreams and aspirations of humanity – a simple but comprehensive expression of goodness that would unite all beings. It can be analogized to what Gene Sharp calls the Grand Strategy, only on a global scale. Under the Grand Strategy, and in harmony with it, can be developed specific strategies for certain regions of the world. Areas in those regions would then develop local tactics to carry out the strategies.

A Global Constructive Program will be developed further in Chapter 10.

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Confrontational Nonviolence may not have alleviated any target issues to date, but it has served an extremely important function. It has built a solid foundation of knowledge, experience, training, and experimentation. The infrastructure is in place for Global Satyagraha unified under a Global Constructive Program.

All of this will be fleshed out in later chapters. Now I want to share my ideas on ‘thinking’ and ‘thoughts,’ which I will do in the next chapter.

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References and Further Reading for Chapter-6.

Bettencourt, Gilda (Nonviolent Peaceforce Outreach Officer); Personal e-mail message to Bob Aldridge; 9 July 2014.

Fischer, Louis; Gandhi: His Life and Message to the World (NY; Mentor Book; 1954, 1960)

Gandhi, M.K.; Non-Violent Resistance (NY; Schocken Books; 1951, 1961, 1968).

Hartsough. David; Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist (Oakland, CA; PM Press; 2014)

Haughton Library Blog; “A Revolutionary Discovery in the Stacks;” June 11, 2013. At http://blogs.harvard.edu/houghton/2013/07/11/a-revolutionary-discovery-in-the-stacks/

“Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons,” International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion, 8 July 1996.

Lynd, Straughton & Lynd, Alice, Editors; Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History (NY, Orbis, 1995) Merton, Thomas; Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice (Indiana; University of Notre Dame Press; 1968) Meyer, Bernie; Private e-mail to Bob Aldridge dated 19 March 2018.

Moyer, Bill; “The Movement Action Plan: A Strategic Framework Describing the Eight Stages of Successful Social Movements” ( History is a Weapon, Spring 1987). Available at:

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http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/moyermap.html Nagler, Michael N.; The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action (San Francisco; Barrett-Koehlar Publishers; 2014) NP On The Ground, “Andres Gutierrez and Derek Oakley On Their Experience of the Violence in South Sudan.” Available at http://www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/what-we-do/stories-from-the-field/29-south-sudan-news/60-andres-gutierrez-and-derek-oakley-on-their-experience-of-the-violence-in-south-sudan Rath, Prabodh Kumar; “Gandhian Constructive Programmes : The Mantra of Socio-Economic Development” ( Odisha Review; October 2012).

Sharp, Gene; Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (Boston, Extended Horizons, 2005) Tolstoy, Leo; The Kingdom of God is Within You (Lincoln; University of Nebraska Press)

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There are a thousand hacking
at the branches of evil
to one who is striking
at the root.

-- Henry David Thoreau

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7 –Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious

While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance, that might seem a little silly; why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that’s precisely the point. The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality. I’m being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions. There is no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness, pp. 3-4

I was having a discussion with my daughter, Mary, on whether mindfulness and critical thinking are natural traits or acquired skills.

The discussion drifted to the possibility of curiosity entering the equation. Curiosity can make us very attentive of something (mindful), and stimulate analysis of how much we know about what we know (critical thinking).

Babies are born with a rudimentary curiosity about what they are capable of knowing. That curiosity can be enabled or stifled as the child grows. Too often, parental and societal conditioning stifles:

‘don’t touch that’ … ‘stay away from there’ … ‘leave those things alone’. Of course there must be restrictions for health and safety but, nonetheless, curiosity is stifled.

Curiosity is a natural drive to understand better the knowledge we possess. It motivates us to know more and it influences our decisions.

The purpose of this chapter is to arouse curiosity about mindfulness,

Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious critical thinking, and preconscious thought processing. I will present some daring concepts that I hope will spark strong curiosity about our mode of thinking.

Mindfulness.

Mindfulness is being acutely attentive to the present moment – both within and without. The mind is wild. It resists control. Left to its own the mind will wander aimlessly from one thought to the next in an erratic ‘chain of thoughts’. It takes effort to stay focused, but doing that is being mindful..

There are occasions when mindfulness comes automatically. Creative artists go into altered states of consciousness when creating paintings, poetry, prose, and more. They are completely focused.

Sometimes we try to shut out negative emotions. That is denial. Being mindful of uncomfortable emotions helps to engage them and deal with them. It is not possible to block bad thoughts anyway. Repressing them often leads to frustration and depression.

Some thoughts become so habitual that we act upon them with no conscious awareness. For me, being late for an appointment triggers an immediate apology, which is appropriate. But in almost the same breath I am tempted to explain why: “I’m sorry for being late; the traffic was terrible.”

I feel compelled to exonerate myself so people will know it wasn’t my fault. It is my egothink that seeks an alibi – a subconscious habit which becomes familiar, comfortable, and automatic. We can overcome egothink by being intentionally mindful of what we do and say.

I find an ideal practice period for mindfulness is while driving. When encountering a disrespectful driver, I am tempted to make a derogatory remark or, even worse, lay on the horn button. Egothink reactions 134

Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious reinforce my violent tendencies and forfeit any proactive influence I could have achieved.

If I am mindful enough to analyze my irritation I can keep my blood pressure down by stirring up good thoughts. Every thought counts, and good thoughts are direly needed.

Pema Chödrön wrote: “Ego or fixed identity doesn’t just mean we have a fixed idea about ourselves. It also means we have a fixed idea about everything we perceive.” (Chödrön, p. 13, emphasis mine) That is our ego-dominated phenomenal world. Understanding this habitual thinking helps us to be more honest and humble. Chödrön continues: If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that’s endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn’t inherent in the place, but in your state-of-mind.

The warrior longs to communicate that all of us have access to our basic goodness and that genuine freedom comes from going beyond labels and projections, beyond bias and prejudice, and taking care of each other. (Chödrön, p. 78) 1

The more mindfulness is practiced, the easier it is to think of benefiting others rather than ‘me-first’. That is difficult amid all the advertising and propaganda today.

But mindfulness can offset propaganda and control our destiny:

Our quest, our Earthwalk,
is to look within,
to know who we are,
to see that we are connected
to all things,
that there is no separation,
only in mind.

-- Lakota Seer

1 Chödrön uses the term “warrior” in connection with what she calls the

“warrior vow” to take care of others.

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Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious As we become more adept at being mindful, we will become more curious and critical in our thinking.

Mindfulness accommodates
curiosity which leads to critical thinking.

Critical Thinking.

In 1921 Albert Einstein said “The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned in textbooks.”2 That should also be the bottom line in professional, vocational, and technical colleges.

During my college years, our department head worked a summer job at Lockheed to better understand business practices so as to prepare students for the corporate world. His intentions were good but his thinking was not about teaching things not found in textbooks.

So, how do we learn critical thinking? Chödrön noted: “If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that’s endlessly interesting and alive.”

(Chödrön, p. 78) An expansive mind is curious. It seeks deeper understanding of reality. It questions. It investigates.

An unfettered mind has vision. It is neither limited to certain thought patterns nor apathetic toward new knowledge. The invisible government seeks to fetter our mind. Unfettering reveals new concepts of existing knowledge.

Katman Dave’s satiric lyrics from “Color Outside the Lines” illustrate the subtle pressure on children to comply with restrictions: Looks like your picture’s wrong.

You didn’t stay in the lines.

If someone comes along

2 This quote is included in Philipp Frank's book Einstein: His Life and Times.

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Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious then they may criticize.

They say you can’t do that.

Someone must pay the price.

Please stay inside of the lines.

Please stay inside the lines.

Vanagas, born in a refugee camp in southern Germany after World War II, has a differing worldview. He wrote “Coloring Outside the Lines,”

which questions the need to be fettered:

Is our destined course too often set
for what we’re to do and when?

Restricting the way, to not let us forget the boundaries we are to stay within.

Expansive and unfettered minds are aware of confining lines. They emulate the impish little girl Tom Hunter sings about: She sat down to color in her coloring book.

She was carefully staying inside the lines.

When all of a sudden she grinned and she said:

“I’m gonna color outside the lines this time.”

Color outside the lines.

I’m gonna color outside the lines this time.

Color outside the lines.

I’m gonna color outside the lines this time.

That impish little girl was very brave. Outside-the-Lines thinking requires mindfulness to recognize those lines and critical thinking to understand why they are there. That leads to critical analysis.

Critical Analysis of Issues.

Critical analysis is satisfying curiosity. It is systematic study of an issue. I touched on gun control in Chapter 1. I’ll return to that issue now and share my critical analysis.

It starts with the Second

Amendment to the US Constitution:

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

(US Constitution, Amendment 2)

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Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious There are two opposing interpretations of the Second Amendment.

1.

The Right-to-bear- arms Interpretation grants an individual right to bear any type of armament which legislation cannot take away.

2. The Collective Rights Theory holds that the framer’s intention was the right to bear arms collectively as a militia, not as individual citizens.3

I’ll start with the 1930s. Jack Miller and Frank Layton traveled from Oklahoma to Arkansas with a sawed-off shotgun. They were indicted under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (the Act) for carrying an illegal weapon across state borders. The Act specifies that any weapon with a barrel less than 18 inches long must be registered.

The US Supreme Court couldn’t see how “a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.” ( United States v. Miller) The Miller case upheld the Collective Rights Theory.

In 1976, Washington D.C. passed a law that all firearms must be registered, but banned the registration of handguns, which de facto outlawed them. In 2002, Dick Anthony Heller, a D.C. police officer who carried a sidearm for work, was refused a permit to have one for home protection. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled:

1. The Second Amendment … protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for …

self-defense within the home.

2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment … right is not unlimited.

It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatsoever purpose: … Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those ‘in common use at the time’ finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying 3 The National Guard, while under state control, is considered a state militia.

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Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious of dangerous and unusual weapons.

( District of Columbia et al. v.

Heller)

The Heller case justified the right to bear arms “in common use at the time” to an individual unconnected to a militia. ( Right-to-bear-arms Interpretation). It re-interpreted the Miller case as outlawing sawed-off shotguns because they were not “in common use at the time” (rather than having no useful purpose in a militia).

The Heller court justified this judicial flip-flop by saying that at the time everyone was subject to serving in a militia so everyone had that right to bear arms. So, everyone has the right to bear arms. Militias have changed from the general populace to state national guard and private mercenary units. Arms “in common use at the time” have changed from flintlocks and muzzle-loaders to full-automatic weapons with quick-change, jumbo magazines.

It is noteworthy that the Court conveniently avoided the Ninth Amendment which protects the rights of the people: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. (US

Constitution, Amendment 9),

Students, parents, and teachers at Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas schools, to name only a few, have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness envisioned in the US

Declaration of Independence.

Mass shootings today are so commonplace they are reported in the media only if the killings are sensational enough to entertain. Reported and verified mass shooting tallies for the US are: x

268 in 2014
x

335 in 2015
x

382 in 2016
x

346 in 2017
x

340 in 2018
x

417 in 2019

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Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious AR-15s are the popular pick. They are specifically designed to kill more people faster. They are overkill for home protection and illegal for hunting. The only logical, lawful civilian use is target practice. For that self-gratifying thrill we sacrifice lives by the hundreds and maim thousands.

My critical analysis concludes that appointment of federal court judges and justices by political officials leads to politicizing the courts. It follows that a politically-motivated Supreme Court can and does skew Constitutional language to satisfy political agendas and large business markets, with no regard for people.

The process I illustrated may seem elementary but it outshines sound bites from TV. If it only pieces credible facts from the internet together, this process gets people to think.

What is thinking? Where do thoughts come from? Is it just a synapse in our brain; or is there more to it? Let’s look at that.

Preconscious Activity

German ethnologist4 Adolph Bastian (1826-1905); in studying human cultures, rituals, and myths; recognized a common theme woven through all of them, which he called ‘primordial thoughts’.

Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) theorized that the brain holds a ‘personal unconscious’ consisting of forgotten or repressed thoughts once conscious for that person.

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) added to Freud’s ‘personal unconscious’ and expanded Bastian’s ‘primordial thoughts’ to a

‘collective unconscious’ which is common to all humanity. “There exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. … It consists of 4 One who conducts systematic studies of peoples and cultures.

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Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious pre-existent forms … which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.” (Jung) During the 1920s, physical scientists developed quantum mechanics.

Problems soon arose. They discovered an unexplainable phenomenon

– quantum particles are not always a particle. At arbitrary and unpredictable times they switch to a weightless energy wave. And then, equally unpredictably, they switch back to a particle.

This phenomenon is called wave-particle duality. Each switch is an atomic event. Dubbed quantum jitters, it takes place all the time, in all matter, all over the Universe. Each jitter takes a very miniscule but finite period of time. It remains a mystery.

Science philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) saw the implication of wave-particle duality during the 1920s, and deduced that time is in all matter. (the energy waves that occur in all matter have a frequency, which is a function of time.) This challenged the mechanical, material thinking of science. Whitehead called his theory ‘organism’, as opposed to ‘materialism’.

Philosopher Michael Epperson noted that quantum mechanics entertains two competing and incompatible fundamental descriptions of nature (particle and wave). That leaves scientists with only three viewpoints:

1.

nature is fundamentally composed of particles with waves being an abstraction,

2.

nature is fundamentally wave-like and particles are an abstraction, or 3.

nature is incapable of characterization at all. (See Epperson, p. ix) These descriptions of nature reflect the belief that what results from a scientific experiment represents nature, or reality. It can be expressed by the equation:

Actuality = Reality

(where actuality is what actualizes from an experiment) .

During the 1960s, physicists noted that actuality=reality is true only if the experiment is conducted in an entirely closed system, one that 141

Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious cannot be influenced from outside. They also noted that the only truly closed system is the Universe itself.

Therefore, scientific experiments, no matter how carefully they are insulated, are always influenced by outside phenomena: a stray cosmic wave, reliability of the instrumentation, flaws in the mechanism, prejudice of the experimenter – the list goes on.

In 1963, Dutch physicist Jan M. Burgers, applied Whitehead’s theory of ‘organism’ to modern physics. He theorized that all relevant data from the antecedent Universe will potentially affect the outcome of an experiment. This ‘Fourth Viewpoint’, as I call it, is represented by the equation:

Actuality + Potentiality = Reality

Potentiality entails a process:

1.

Collect from the beginning of time, all the atomic events that ever happened in the Universe..

2.

From these events, sort out all that are relevant to the current experiment (positive selection) and discard the rest.

Also discard
duplicates.

3.

Assemble the positively selected events into every possible combination of all those events, to make up a matrix of potentialities.

That means every possible grouping from the entire Universe, through every possible combination or multiplicity of the events, down to absolutely nothing.

4.

From this vast matrix of potentialities there will emerge one and only one actuality.

Quantum mechanics cannot predict which potentiality will actualize; and the physicist will see only what does actualize – Actuality. The matrix of potentialities is beyond observation and unavailable to study.

Whitehead published in the 1920s what developed into the Fourth Viewpoint during the 1960s. But Whitehead’s organism theory had two sources feeding into the matrix of potentialities. I will use his theory to depict human thought with the matrix of possibilities equated to Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’.

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Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious There is a physical pole through which, as with the Fourth Viewpoint, all relevant and non-duplicated data from the antecedent Universe feeds into the matrix of potentialities. But once it was all arranged in every possible combination and permutation, Whitehead theorized a second input from a mental pole. Input from that pole comes from a primordial source. I like to think it is the goodness force.

The goodness force suggests the best potentiality that can be actualized.

In low-grade organisms such as rocks, water, and stars; the mental pole merely processes what is received from the physical pole. In higher-grade organisms such as humans, the mental pole takes on complex, life-giving activities like thoughts, ideas, dreams, etc.

People, with a higher order of understanding, use the physical senses but also acknowledge nonphysical reality. They pay attention to emotions, gut feelings, coincidences, serendipity, déjà vu, and other phenomena that jolt our consciousness. I call them ‘urges’.

I believe the mental pole influences our choice through these urges.

Gandhi said he always listened to that small inner voice. These urge s are our inner goodness trying to show us which potentiality would be best to actualize. When I feel an urge, I know it is time to pay attention.

The mental pole influences, but does not coerce, actualization of the best potentiality.

When one of those potentialities actualizes to a conscious thought, it corresponds to an atomic event. In humans, I prefer to call a ‘thought event’.

Each actualized thought feeds back, through the physical pole, into the matrix of potentialities of the next thought event – and so on as the chain of thoughts progress. Most of our thought process seems to take place in the preconscious state.

That is why it is important to pay
attention to “urges.”

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Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious Concluding Thoughts.

Every thought counts, whether anyone else knows of it or not. It counts because it will flow into the future matrices of potentialities to continually reinforcing a desire and prime a habit. Likewise, continually choosing good thoughts will prime good habits.

Therefore, our every thought must be nonviolent. I have used the reminder that “every thought counts” to help me be mindful of what my mind is generating. It helps me put down violent emotions and replace them with compassion.

Most of our thought processing takes place before we are aware of it.

Understanding preconscious thought processing helps us analyze every thought to determine if we have subconsciously chosen wisely. That is critical analysis.

Having written this chapter on the technical aspects of thinking, I want to close by emphasizing that love and kindness and caring can do more to influence others than all the technical descriptions it is possible to write. The talents of mindfulness and critical thinking do make one more aware of Love and Truth and goodness; and in the final analysis that may be the greatest value of having those talents.

I want to move on to Constructive Programs. In the next chapter I will present a case study of a proactive nonviolent campaign which successfully unseated a dictator. That is the 1986 People Power revolution in the Philippines.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

References and Further Reading for Chapter-7.

Chödrön, Pema; Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change (Boston & London; Shambhala Publications; 2013).

District of Columbia et al. v. Heller; 554 U.S. 570 (2008); Syllabus.

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Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious Epperson, Michael; Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, (New York, Fordham University Press, 2004) Jung, Carl; “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious.” Available at http://bahaistudies.net/asma/The-Concept-of-the-Collective-Unconscious.pdf

United States v. Miller; 307 U.S. 174 (1939).

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Mindfulness, Critical Thinking, and the Preconscious The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

-- Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays 146

8 – People Power: A Constructive Program Study

My friends do not forget that your readiness to suffer will light the torch of freedom which can never be put out. Do not forget that we who are now in the middle of our years must inspire the youth when they are almost in the brink of despair. Do not forget that the purpose of life is precisely reexamining our being, not merely a floating flotsam in the time, in the floods of time. Do not forget, as Longfellow said, that we should never be like driven cattle, but be a hero in the strife.

-- Ninoy Aquino; February 15, 1981

The 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines has been hailed as a striking example of how nonviolence can work. Authors describe millions in the streets and bringing tanks to a halt. It was a spectacular scene worthy of praise, but commentators typically say it began in 1983
with the assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino.

That was the trigger event but the revolution started in 1972 with the declaration of martial law. In this chapter I will use my personal involvement to analyze the bigger picture. First let me introduce the main actors in drama.

The Cast.

Ferdinand Marcos became president of the Philippines in 1965. He declared martial law in September 1972, claiming subversion from Maoist New People’s Army and Muslim separatist insurgency. His reign was thus extended beyond the two-term limit, Parliament was suspended, and media opposition silenced.

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Marcos immediately jailed political opponents. He made the Philippines a haven for multinational corporations and welcomed US
military bases.

Due to intense pressure, martial law was lifted in January 1981 in most areas.

Senator Benigno Simeon ‘Ninoy’ Aquino, Jr. was Marcos’ most formidable political opponent. In 1967, at age 34, Ninoy became the country’s youngest elected senator. Within a year he had become the staunchest critic of Marcos. Under martial law he was one of the first arrested.

In 1980, after 8 years in prison, Ninoy suffered two heart attacks.

Filipino doctors refused to operate, fearing repercussions. Lest he should die a martyr, Marcos allowed Aquino to have surgery in the US.

He returned three years later and was assassinated.

Maria Corazon ‘Cory’ Sumulong Cojuangco-Aquino was Ninoy’s wife. After her husband’s assassination, she returned to the Philippines to become the most prominent opposition leader. When Marcos called for a snap election in 1986 she ran against him. Marcos won by fraud.

Cory called for massive civil disobedience, military defections, and led the People Power Revolution. She then took her rightful place as president in February 1986 – the first woman president in all Asia.

Juan Ponce Enrile, dubbed the ‘Talleyrand of the Philippines’, was defense minister under Marcos. He helped implement martial law in 1972 by faking an assassination attempt on his motorcade.

Marcos cut him out of the loop in 1980 and worked directly through the army chief of staff. Enrile then switched loyalties, as will be explained below. For his part in the People Power revolt Cory Aquino appointed Enrile as defense minister, although she didn’t trust him. When, in November 1986, he was suspected of involvement in a failed coup plot, Cory accepted his resignation.

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Cardinal Jaime Lachica Sin was appointed Archbishop of Manila in January 1974. He was initially reluctant to take on the duties of leading nearly 40 million Catholics in the Philippines. Within six months he was openly criticizing the dictatorial atrocities of Marcos. .

Sin became Cardinal in May 1976. His title of ‘Cardinal Sin’ was the source of much humor and he always greeted visitors to Villa San Miguel, his home, with: “Welcome to the House of Sin.”

Rev. Ciriaco Ma. ‘Jun’ Lagunzad, Jr. was a Filipino Anglican priest at St. Andrew’s Theological Seminary (Manila); and former General Secretary of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines.

A month after Marcos declared martial law, ‘Jun’ (pronounced ‘Joon’) and others wrote a public letter to Marcos saying they are praying that he will be blessed “with vision, courage, and discerning wisdom to govern our country in these critical times with honor, justice, and fairness.” (Rigos)

I first met Jun in Japan in 1975. He told me about the First Asian Ecumenical Congress he was organizing for later that year, and would send me an invitation. I had fought in the Philippines during World War II and Jun thought I would have something to offer.

Jean & Hildegard Goss-Mayr worked with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and were part of its ‘Peace Lobby’ at Vatican Council II. Their main focus was nonviolence training, mostly in Latin America, the Philippines, and Africa, but also in many other countries.

Dr. Richard L. Deats was a United Methodist Church minister who taught at the Union Theological Seminary of the Philippines from 1959
to 1972. Since then he has worked with the Fellowship of Reconciliation USA (FOR-USA) as executive secretary and other capacities.

He has lectured and conducted nonviolence workshops 149

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internationally; and has authored numerous books on that subject. He helped the Goss-Mayrs conduct nonviolence training in the Philippines.

Father Cornelius “Kees” Breed was a Dutch priest who had been a missionary to the Philippines since the 1950s. He was editor of Impact: Asian Magazine for Human Development. Kees wrote editorials on Asian and Philippine problems, and published articles about human rights in the Philippines.

Dr. Antonio ‘Tony’ L. Ledesma: Tony was director of the Centre for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Asia (CENDHRRA), headquartered in Manila. It was mandated by the first Development for Human Resources in Rural Asia Workshop held in Thailand in 1974.

Social development networks were set up in twelve Southeast Asia nations with CENDHRRA as the coordinating center.

Tony was also associate editor for Impact magazine; and my roommate at the First Asian Ecumenical Congress in 1975.

Father Edward M. Gerlock was a Maryknoll missionary who worked with peasant farmers on Mindanao. He was put on three-year probation, confined to Manila, and warned “to avoid activities that might be interpreted as interference in political affairs of the Philippines and ‘to be more careful in his associations, especially with persons whom he may suspect of being wanted by the military authorities for questioning’ …” ( New York Times, January 14, 1975) Those are the main actors in this saga. It would be impossible to list the thousands who contributed to this drama, or the millions who were on stage for the grand finale.

The Political Setting.

The Philippines consists of 7,107 islands with some 90 ethnic groups speaking about 175 dialects. It has over 19 religious denominations.

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Christianity, introduced in the early 16th century is the largest – about 92% of the population with 81% Catholic. Islam, introduced during the 14th century, is the oldest monotheistic religion comprising around 5.6% of the population.

Muslims are called Moros. Most of them live in the south on Mindanao, Palawan, and the Sulu Archipelago.

In March 1942, shortly after the Japanese invasion, Maoist organizer Luis Taruc formed the Hukbalahaps (Huks, or People’s Army). He recruited peasant farmers in central Luzon to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. The Huks started off with only 500 men and fewer weapons. To speed recruitment they competed with US efforts in forming a guerilla army. By 1945 the Huks were a well-trained, well-armed force of 15,000.

After the war the Huks were refused recognition and benefits because they were considered disloyal for competing with US-sponsored guerilla recruitment.

The Philippines received its independence on July 4, 1946. Manual Roxas was elected president. He was a Japanese collaborator but the US backed him anyway because he and his cronies would be a strong force against Chinese Maoists and Huks.

The Huks were infuriated but managed to get Taruc and a few others elected to Congress. They were promptly refused seats and the Hukbalahap Insurrection began.

Ramon Magsaysay became president in 1953. His land reform bills granted farmlands on the islands of Palawan and Mindanao to landless farmers. The Huk force diminished as the peasants took advantage of land grants. The Hukbalahap Insurrection ended in 1954.

Magsaysay’s land-grant act backfired. It solved the Luzon Problem but ignited another on Mindanao. Muslims rebelled, claiming their 151

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ancestral lands were being given away. The Moro National Liberation Front formed in 1973 to better organize the rebellion under martial law.

In 1969 a faction of the defeated Huks regrouped into the New People’s Army (NPA) under the leadership of “Dante” Buscayno. The NPA initiated a people’s war against the Philippine government which, along with the Moro uprising, was used by Marcos to justify martial law.

The Agricultural Setting.

The Philippines has perhaps the lushest potential for growing food in Southeast Asia. During the 1970s, agricultural growth averaged 5%
per year. But the 1980 World Bank Report on the Philippines stated:

“One could argue that the benefits of the high level economic growth

… may not have reached substantial numbers of the poor.” (Bello) During the 1970s the choice cash crop shifted from pineapples to bananas. Mindanao’s soil is ideal for bananas. But the multinationals had to get the land away from settlers and tribal groups who used it for growing their own food.

Some multinationals persuaded small landowners to grow bananas for them at a fixed price; but the landowners paid all expenses, took the farming risks, and hired the labor. Most became indebted to the multinationals and ended up selling their land.

Acquiring land was sometimes accomplished by harsher methods such as cutting off rights-of-way access and bulldozing crops, trees, and homes. Workers faced severe financial difficulties with 1970s wages being $1.40 - $1.67 per day. Poverty rose from 41% of the population when Marcos was elected to 59% twenty-one years later.

Declaring martial law helped big business. Their land was exempt from land reform; and Marcos drove the Moro uprising underground.

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Pampering multinationals was a condition for receiving the 1973 World Bank loan of billions for development aid.

Marcos helped the land grabs. His National Development Corporation’s (NDC’s) contract with Castle and Cook (Dole) specified:

“NDC shall, from time to time, when and as requested by Dole, bring, acquire, and obtain title to such additional parcels of land as may be needed by Dole in its operations …” (Bello) Philippine troops helped enforce eviction orders.

It is against this backdrop that opposition began.

Interfaith Dialogue.

The 1973 Moro uprising was a backlash to martial law and land grabbing by multinationals.

It also prompted interfaith dialogue to
cross religious lines for unity in helping oppressed people. The first Muslim-Christian dialogue took place in Zamboanga City, Mindanao, in September 1974. This led to more meetings and, eventually, to The First Asian Ecumenical Congress (FAEC) in 1975.

True to his word, Jun sent me an invitation. I was about to decline because I couldn’t afford the plane ticket when a friend, Jack Ahern, donated the needed funds.

The FAEC was held December 15-18 at the Development Academy of the Philippines in Tagaytay City, a little south of Manila. It was sponsored by the National Social Action Council which was committed to social and economic development.

The general objective was to “work out a tangible manifestation of the desire of Christians for unity, including [people] of other faiths for human, economic, social and spiritual development as a way of affirming the role of the Church as servant to minister to people’s needs.” (FAEC Primer Brochure)

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Jun was chairman and Cardinal Sin was a member of the Coordinating Council. Attendees were mostly Christians; but Buddhist, Muslim, Taoist, and Baha’i’ faiths were also represented, along with civic and government officials. Besides the 65 local delegates and 14 observers; 20 foreign delegates came from all over Southeast Asia, the Western Pacific, Africa, Sri Lanka, India, Korea, Hungary, Chile, Iran, and me from the US.

I arrived in Manila the day before the Congress. Jun met me with a sampaguita lei, the Philippine national flower. I spent that night at St.

Andrew’s Seminary. The next morning, all foreign delegates were transported by a Philippine Army bus to Tagaytay City. The opening ceremony was held that evening and the nitty gritty of the Congress started the next day.

We spent three grueling days exchanging ideas and hammering out a statement agreeable to all faiths that Marcos would feel politically obligated to approve. That was a gigantic task but presidential approval would save a lot of harassment when the statement was put into action. The wording had to be such that (1) it would not seem too threatening to Marcos but (2) would not water down the task that lay ahead. It was a brilliant but challenging strategy.

The discussions during the Congress were profoundly anti-Marcos.

One outspoken young Filipina woman hid the microphone behind her back so she could speak without being recorded. In my conversations with Mindanao Muslims (Moros), they expressed the necessity of getting at least a quasi-endorsement by Marcos in order to continue their ecumenical work unhindered; or at least less hindered.

The Statement of the Congress was completed by 3:00 PM on December 18th; at which time we boarded our army bus for Malacañang Palace – the White House of the Philippines. We had an audience with Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in the Hall of Unity and Brotherhood.

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About 100 of us stood along both sides of the hall. Behind us we heard footsteps pacing up and down the colonnade, watching for security threats.

The Statement of the Congress requested the president to authorize an

“Asian Ecumenical Interfaith Movement” under the direction of an

“Asian Interfaith Council,” which he did. Marcos said in his speech: First of all, in accordance with your request, I hereby order that the Asian [Interfaith] Council be authorized – the proclamation to be finally formalized after this meeting through the declaration of an Asian Ecumenical Interfaith Week from 15 to 22 October 1976 – to conduct a nationwide fundraising campaign through cultural presentations and similar activities. (“The Future of Man,” speech by Ferdinand Marcos, July, 18, 1975)

The Asian Ecumenical Interfaith Movement (AEIM) which Marcos had been maneuvered into endorsing described itself as “a gathering of all people of all faiths and even those without faith. In a spirit of oneness and unity the Asian Ecumenical Interfaith Movement seeks to find out how all people can work together and help solve the problem affecting Asia in general and the Philippines in particular.” (AEIM Primer-Brochure)

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The Asian Interfaith Council (AIC) was the governing body for the Movement. Jun Lagunzad was again chairman. The first AIC
symposium on April 12, 1976 was hosted by Cardinal Jaime Sin at Villa San Miguel, his residence. Again, all the religions in the Philippines were represented. The main agenda item was to plan the Asian Ecumenical Interfaith Week which was held in October 1976. I did not attend this symposium but Jun sent me a full transcript of the proceedings.

The Philippines soon earned the distinction of being the leader in interfaith dialogue for Southeast Asia. A World Public Forum paper in 2012 noted: “The Philippines continues to play a key role in the region as ‘a thought and action leader on interreligious and intercultural dialoguge’.” (De los Santos)

This Movement crossed ethnic and religious lines and was a success at interfaith unity. But there was more going on at the grass-roots level.

The Grass-Roots Insurgency.

When I first went to my room after arriving at the FAEC in Tagaytay City, I met Tony Ledesma, my roommate. He was repacking his bag.

Something had come up at work and he had to leave. I can’t recall our exact conversation but he said what was going on at the Congress wasn’t the whole picture. He invited me to look him up if I had time and he’d show me more.

After the audience at Malacañang Palace, the army bus took Jun and me back to St. Andrew’s seminary, where I spent another night. My flight was late the next evening so I told Jun I’d like to visit Tony. I took a taxi to Tony’s home and met his wife and family.

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Tony told me about his work with the Centre for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Asia (CENDHRRA), which spawned from a 1974 workshop in Thailand. CENDHRRA’s mandate was to: (1)

promote dialogue and interaction among people and groups concerned with human development and

(2)

work with members and others to stimulate self-reliance and participatory decision-making in rural Asia.

CENDHRRA’s main programs are to:

(1) research on how the rural poor can achieve self-help to enable peaceful and culturally rich communities, (2) document case studies to assist field workers in future planning, and (3) train villagers in skills that promote indigenous self-awareness and problem solving.

By addressing Philippine problems as something common to all Asia, Marcos was less threatened and martial law less oppressive.

After enjoying a San Miguel beer and light lunch, Tony said he’d like me to meet Cornelius “Kees” Breed, editor of Impact magazine. Tony phoned Kees and he came over. We talked about the mission of Impact to promote human transformation in Asia.

Articles published in Impact were analytical of specific problems in precise locations, including the Philippines. This meeting resulted in a long friendship with both Tony and Kees, and in the years since I’ve had the honor of contributing many articles to Impact.

Tony and Kees said there was one more person I should meet if they could find him. That was Father Ed Gerlock. Ed stayed in the Tondo District – the slums of Manila. Most of Manila had been rebuilt since World War II but the Tondo District was just as poverty-stricken as I remembered it from 1946.

Kees drove me there in his ‘65 VW bug. I was being given a tour of the insurgent underground in Manila during the Marcos dictatorship.

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But I had a plane to catch that evening so my meeting with Ed was only an hour or so.

Ed was an American Maryknoll priest who went to Mindanao (southern and second-largest island in the Philippines) as a missionary in the early ‘60s. He later became full-time chaplain for the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) – the closest they had to a labor union. FFF
handled land grievances of settlers and tribal communities against the banana corporations. Ed described his work as integrating Christian and Islamic beliefs with the struggle of the peasant farmers.

When martial law was declared on 23 September 1972, Ed was detained and interrogated for hours; and then put under house arrest for seven weeks. He was arrested again on 31 October 1973 and transported to Camp Crame in Manila, where he was charged with criticizing martial law, possessing subversive documents, aiding insurgents, encouraging defiance, and disrupting plantation operations.

Ed was under house arrest in Manila for 13 months awaiting trial. In January 1975 he was sentenced to three years’ probation and confined to Manila. He could not return to Mindanao or be active on farms. He was eventually deported on 18 November 1976. The first two years of martial law saw 53 priests and nuns deported or imprisoned.

Ed told me about conditions of rural farmers, and about the work he’d done. He described the Makati area where multinationals have high-rise offices and executives live in gated communities. That area sits on the location of the military post where I was stationed in 1946. The contrast between Makati and Tondo is sickening.

Subversion in the Military.

Young officers in the military also began to ask questions and discuss military activity under Marcos. Three Lieutenant Colonels from the 158

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Philippine Military Class of ’71 started Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM). Two other groups were: Soldiers of the Filipino People (SFP) and Young Officers Union (YOU). These groups played an important part during the People Power revolution.

The Trigger Event.

While still imprisoned in 1978, Ninoy Aquino formed the Lakas ng Bayan (LABAN) party. The name means ‘People’s Power’. However, a rigged election caused all LABAN candidates to lose that year.

In 1983 the political climate seemed better so Ninoy returned to the Philippines. Marcos’ government tried to prevent it and Ninoy’s friends warned against it. Ninoy responded: “I have weighed all the virtues and faults of the Filipinos, and I have come to the conclusion that the Filipino is worth dying for.”

Ninoy’s plane landed in Manila shortly after 1:00 PM on 21 August 1983. Soldiers boarded the plane, arrested Aquino, and escorted him off the plane. Instead of going down the jet way to the terminal lounge, they took a maintenance stairway to the apron below. As Aquino was about to enter the waiting car, shots sounded, and Ninoy was dead. The alleged assassin was also conveniently killed. Ninoy’s widow, Cory Aquino, returned to the Philippines the next day.

The nation was shocked. Resistance had been spotty, but now it solidified. Ninoy’s brother, Agapito “Butz” Aquino, founded the

‘August 21st Movement’ (ATOM ) in memory of his brother’s assassination.

Butz was a key nonviolent leader during the People Power revolt.

Religious leaders recognized the potential for a violent revolution. The New People’s Army had offered weapons to ATOM if they’d join the 159

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armed rebellion. There was urgent need for nonviolent leaders with the knowledge and training to de-fuse violent situations.

The little sisters of Jesus who worked in Metro Manila knew Jean and Hildegard Goss-Mayr and of their work during Vatican Council II and other countries. The sisters asked Jean and Hildegard to visit and assess the situation, which they did in February 1984. They traveled to many provinces and met with a wide variety of people, including Corey, Butz, and others of the Aquino family.

Jean and Hildegard had to return to Europe but, at the urging of ATOM, Cardinal Sin again invited them to come back and give nonviolence training seminars. Richard Deats, who had taught social ethics in the Philippines for 13 years, was also invited.

Hildegard, Jean, and Richard met with Cory to identify the pillars of Marcos’ power in order to proactively crumble them. They then spent nine weeks training small groups of prospective leaders.1 The training workshops were tailored to Filipino culture and focused on strategies and tactics with well-defined goals. But that wasn’t all. Personal transformation was essential. Hildegard said: In each of these seminars we would first analyze the situation of violence together, and how we were a part in it. The seed of the violence was in structures, of course, and in the dictator. But wasn’t it also in ourselves? It’s very easy to say that Marcos is evil. But unless we each tear the dictator out of our own heart, nothing will change.

Another group will come into power and will act similarly to those whom they replaced. So we discovered the Marcos within ourselves.

(Goss-Mayr)

Hildegard emphasized: “Those seminars were more than just training people in methodology. The goal was for each of us to undergo a deep change, a conversion.” (Goss-Mayr) Even so, Jean and Hildegard were 1 For a detailed and inspirational account of the nonviolence training seminars see Deats, Chapter-8. Also see pp. 112-119 of Deats, which is a reprint of Hildegard’s article in the March 1987 issue of Fellowship magazine.

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concerned that they were too late to create a political atmosphere for long-term renewal.

From these seminars emerged a nonviolence movement called AKKAPKA (meaning “I embrace you” in Tagalog). AKKAPKA is also a Tagalog acronym for “Movement for Peace and Justice.” During its first year leading up to Marcos’ snap election (to be discussed below), AKKAPKA sponsored 40 nonviolence seminars in 30
provinces. After the snap election was announced, AKKAPKA helped prepare for dealing with that.

AKKAPKA formulated a Credo which was published in a pamphlet for all the people to read. (See Deats, p. 71) It defined and clarified the People’s goals in everyone’s mind. Gandhi might have called it the Filipino Constructive Program. It read:

We are a people of God

We believe in justice, democracy, and peace; but most of all in the absolute value of the human being.

We are opposed to:

x

All forms of injustice and oppression now prevalent in our society.

x

Any authoritarian form of government.

x

The discrimination against the poor.

x

The gross violation of human rights.

x

The foreign domination over our economic, political, and cultural system.

We espouse a society that fosters equality; protects the rights and holds sacred the dignity of every person.

We commit ourselves to the construction and preservation of a just Filipino society. But in all deeds we vow: x

Never to kill,
x

Never to hurt,
x

To convert our oppressors to the truth, and x

To remain united in our struggle.

And that this Credo may become a way of life we humbly call on God to favor us with his help. We ask each sister and brother to tell us when we fail to be true to this Credo.

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Meanwhile, anti-Marcos legislators gained 56 of the 183 seats. They introduced articles of impeachment charging Marcos with culpable violation of the Constitution and diverting government funds to a personal foreign bank account. Parliament voted the motion down but it did raise questions in the public mind. The United States was now pressuring Marcos to justify his presidency. Feeling stressed, at the end of November 1985 Marcos announced there would be a snap election the following February.

The Re-Trigger Event.

The people called for Cory Aquino to run for president. She was reluctant, saying she was just a housewife, but after being presented with a petition inscribed with over a million signatures she agreed.

However, Senator Salvador Laurel also wanted to run on his United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO) ticket. After some urging by Cardinal Sin, the senator agreed to drop out. Corey invited him to run as her vice president under his UNIDO machinery. The UNIDO-LABAN coalition became popular and powerful.

Corruption was blatant during the snap election. Thirty vote counters walked off the job because of the vote rigging they observed. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines condemned the election fraud. Nevertheless, on February 15th parliament declared Marcos the winner.

That re-triggered nation-wide outrage. Cory, claimed she had won and called for a People’s Victory Rally in Rizal Park. She also called for a one-day general strike and boycott of corporations Marcos favored.

The huge crowd sent a strong message that tolerance of government corruption had worn thin. Richard Deats wrote: “Fearful of martial law, Aquino called together hundreds of her best workers for a day of strategizing. Jean and Hildegard were invited to take part … At that 162

ǣ

moment no one foresaw what would unfold in the coming days.”

(Deats, p. 72)

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile recognized that public sentiment was increasingly anti-Marcos. He moved his support to army dissidents. After the snap election fraud, Enrile encouraged the dissidents to overthrow Marcos. But Marcos found out and jailed the leaders. The coup never happened.

Enrile then teamed with vice chief of staff Lt-Gen Fidel Ramos, who was also chief of the Philippine constabulary (state police).

At a

February 22nd press conference the two men announced their resignation from government and asserted that Cory had won the snap election.

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Enrile holed up in Camp Aguinaldo (Philippine armed forces headquarters) and Ramos retired to Camp Crame (Philippine constabulary HQs) with some 300 rebel troops. The two camps are directly across Epifanio de los Santos (Epiphany of the Saints) Avenue from each other. Most of the military were away, protecting Marcos and Imelda.

There were reports that Marcos would send tanks to overrun the two camps. Cardinal Sin went on archdiocese radio Veritas to call for masses of people to assemble on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue to support defectors and block entrances.

The masses kept growing and that set off the People Power Revolution.

At the peak there were over a million unarmed civilians on the avenue

– some say 2 million.

February 24th was the momentous day. Enrile had moved across the Avenue to Camp Crame where all rebel troops were consolidated.

Then, with the help of riot police and tear gas to clear an opening, some 3,000 Philippine marines entered the now empty Camp Aguinaldo with mortars, artillery, and a wide assortment of smaller weapons. But that’s as far as it went.

When Marcos ordered them to fire, Marine commander Colonel Braulio Balbas stalled for hours and finally replied: “… There are thousands of civilians between the two camps and inside Crame. There will be lots of casualties on both sides …” (Sharp, p. 242) Balbas then sent his marines back to their base. Marine Commandant Brigadier General Tadiar later announced that “the marines will no longer participate in subsequent military operations that will unnecessarily result in the injury or death of innocent unarmed civilians.” (Sharp, p.

242)

About mid-day a helicopter squadron of the Philippine Air Force 15th Strike Wing defected and landed in Camp Crame. A Bell 214

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helicopter from the 205th Helicopter Wing and a Sikorsky S-76

Gunship from the 20th Air Commando Squadron also defected to Crame. Enrile announced that about 90% of the Philippine military had defected.

Gene Sharp reports that rebel helicopter gunships destroyed loyalist aircraft on the ground, and warning rockets were fired into the ground around Malacañang Palace. Also, a Philippine Navy frigate joined the rebels and trained its guns on Malacañang Palace. (Sharp, p, 243) Marcos ordered an all-out attack on the rebels, but a US Embassy official convinced him not to. The embassy official probably repeated the advice US Senator Paul Laxalt had given Marcos by telephone the previous afternoon – to “cut and cut clean.” ( Wikipedia, “People Power Revolution”)

On the morning of February 25th Cory Aquino was sworn in as President of the Philippines and Salvador Laurel as vice president.

Later that afternoon Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and their staff were evacuated to exile in Hawaii by a US Air Force aircraft.

Conclusion.

People Power was not a
spontaneous mobilization as some
commentators suggest. There were years of developing a Constructive Program consisting of interfaith cooperation; organizations like CENDHRRA and FFF empowering workers; public education through alternative media like Impact and radio Veritas; grass roots movements facilitated by Ed Gerlock and others; and dissident soldier organizations.

Ninoy’s assassination triggered the training of nonviolent leaders, developing a strategy with Corey as the new political leader, and AKKAPKA formalized the Constructive Program in its Credo. Then a 165

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corrupt election retriggered the entire infrastructure into action. The rest is history summed up beautifully by Kees in his March 1986
editorial in Impact magazine, which read in part: Cory Aquino's appeal to the Filipino people during and after her election campaign can be summed up in two words: people power.

The government-controlled print and electronic media systematically ignored all her appearances in public and her speeches; the only ones appearing on TV, radio, and the newspapers were government people, often ugly and arrogant, who were sure to win.

The biggest rallies ever held in Manila and many cities and provinces throughout the country were in response to the call: “show your people power.” The people showed up in the hundreds of thousands and during the last decisive days even in the millions. The whole of the city of Metro Manila had come to a tense yet festive gathering around the sensitive areas to be defended at all costs with no more and no less than people power.

In spite of seemingly insurmountable odds, having lost the elections through fraud Cory persisted to call on people power to boycott crony media and establishments without violence: “Simply do not buy their products.” Cory again reiterated in the last few days when tension reached a peak: “if you use violence, you will have to look for other leaders. I urge absolute non-violence.” People responded with even more people power.

Tanks were brought to a halt, armored cars and platoons could not penetrate the sea of humanity. People knelt and prayed in front of this infernal fire power. Who would dare ride over such as these with so many people all around? The soldiers facing these huge crowds were offered candies and cigarettes and when they accepted, were applauded.

Others implored them not to kill, but to withdraw. This unnerved the tense battle stance of the soldiers; they were thwarted in their attempts to obey orders by literally millions of ordinary people without arms or stones, with only rosaries or pictures of the Virgin Mary, who milled around the perimeters, kilometers thick, of the sensitive areas of opposition and communication. Loud applause greeted the 'retiring'

tanks.

… The Philippines shows an altogether new type of revolution, bloodless, nonviolent and above all so moving and festive and loving.

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It was led by a woman; her only weapon sincerity; she urged absolute nonviolence; all she asked for was people power. When all the odds were against her, she persisted to call for people power, and people power turned the tide. Let us try to remember forever this welcome replacement of all bloody revolutions.

People here believe it is the power of God that blinds the arrogant and enlightens the simple of heart. [God] promised: “I have overcome the world - whatever you ask in my name will be granted to you.” …

So Why Didn’t They Live Happily Ever After?

When Jean & Hildegard were first contacted, they expressed concern about getting into the picture too late. They feared that not enough groundwork in nonviolence had been cultivated across the entire nation to support a long-term solution.

A Constructive Program, had formed during the Marcos regime. It focused on human rights and freedom. It had much promise but it got started too late to provide an alternative to fill the vacuum on a long-term basis when Marcos was ousted.

Mindfulness and critical thinking may be what the Goss Mayr’s were most concerned about. During the time leading up to the People Power Revolution the common goal was very clear: “Get rid of Marcos.” It crossed all ethnic, religious, and issues lines. Everything was in order for a successful mass mobilization. And that’s what they had.

Then Marcos was out and Cory was in. The common but shallow goal had been achieved.. The various factions of Filipino society went back to their individual problems and grievances. Again there was competition for attention and funding. I’m sure the agitation and bribes of profit-seeking corporations also distracted from national unity.

Whatever the causes, the Philippines today are again in turmoil.

In the People Power Revolution we saw that people can be motivated to work nonviolently together for everyone’s benefit. Gandhi would call 167

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it an important experiment. But Gandhi would also study the after-effects and look for improvement.

Could the Constructive Program have been wider known? Should the churches have done more in fostering love and cooperation among all people? There are many questions to be asked. Hildegard ended her March 1987 Fellowship article with these words: “Perhaps the peace movement, where we have experienced a little bit of what the strength of God in the poor can mean, can also receive this gift, if we really believe in it and if we act accordingly.” (Goss-Mayr) Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

References and Further Reading for Chapter-8.

Bello, Walden; “Clearing Farmers from the Land” ( New Internationalist, February 1982)

Deats, Richard L.; Marked for Life: The Story of Hildegard Goss-Mayr (NY, New York City Press, 2009)

De los Santos, Jaime; “Building Interfaith Bridges through Dialogue” (10th Rhodes Forum; World Public Forum; October 23, 2012) Goss-Mayr, Hildegard; “When Prayer and Revolution Became People Power,”

( Fellowship, March 1987, pp. 8-11). Reprinted in Deats, pp.112-119.

Sharp, Gene; Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (Boston, Extended Horizons, 2005) 168

9 – The Crying Need for a Constructive Program

Constructive Programme is a part of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha. Gandhi realized that social evils not only plagued Indian society but also impeded India’s march toward unity and Swaraj. For that, he did not depend on the state and the political agencies, but rather mobilized the social energies of the people. The constructive programme was an aspect of his philosophy of nationalism and national unity. He conceived it as a means of strengthening the social aspect of our collective existence at the grass roots level.

-- Devina Das, 23 December 2016

This chapter will start with two cases where students and other youth saw an opportunity for change after years of oppression – Burma in 1988 and China in 1989. But, with no Constructive Program, significant violence took place, unwise decisions were made, and there was nothing to fill the political void.

Then I will describe the indigenous people’s resistance to fossil fuel pipelines. I will illustrate how it solidified at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to unify the indigenous movement globally. First, Burma.

Burma 1988.

The Burma (now Myanmar) uprising in 1988 also had a charismatic woman leader – Aung San Suu Kyi (pronounced Sue Key), daughter of Bogyoke Aung San (revered father of modern Burma).

Suu Kyi married an English professor and had two sons while living in England. After earning a M.A. in politics while in England, she worked three years for the United Nations in New York before rejoining her family in England.



Amid political violence, Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to take care of her dying mother.

Her family understood that, being the
daughter of a national hero, she would return to Burma if needed. It was during this visit that the Burmese dictator resigned. Students sought this opportunity to demand a democratic government. They started the 8888 Uprising on 8 August 1988 (8/8/88), On August 15th Suu Kyi wrote an open letter calling for discipline and restraint on both sides, and proposing an independent elections commission. On the 26th she addressed a mass rally, outlining a political program based on human rights, democracy, and nonviolence.

The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) seized power on September 18th. Martial law was imposed prohibiting mass meetings and imprisoning people without trial. The National League for Democracy (NLD) was immediately founded with Suu Kyi as general secretary, and later president.

Violence erupted, which prompted a violent crackdown. Over 1,000
were killed, 700,000 fled the country, some 2 million were displaced, and an estimated 3,000 political prisoners were detained. Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest in July 1989, where she spent 15 of the next 21 years.

Gene Sharp wrote: “The absence of strategy made it easier … to take unwise actions that contributed to its own weakening ...” (Sharp, p.

350) With no Constructive Program, “there remained no single, clear agenda of demands …” (Kyi, p. 332)

China 1989.

The second opportunity lost was in 1989 at Tiananmen Square.

Chairman Mao Zedong died in 1976 and Deng Xiaoping emerged as 170



China’s leader. His progressive agenda triggered a power struggle between reformists and Maoist hardliners. Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang was a strong voice for reform but a crackdown in 1986 put the hardliners in control.

Hu Yaobang’s death in April 1989 provided Beijing students with a symbolic occasion to call for Hu’s reforms. Thousands occupied Tiananmen Square daily and the protest spread to over 400 cities. Gene Sharp called them the boldest since the 1960s Cultural Revolution.

(Sharp, p. 255)

The movement defied all the rules of negotiation. Non-negotiable goals were not clearly defined and new goals were arbitrarily added.

Being widespread and unorganized, the goals were not consistent.

On May 4th, symbolizing the 70th anniversary of modern China’s first major student uprising, tens of thousands from 50 plus universities rallied for democracy, freedom, and human rights; in the Square.

On May 13th over 3,000 fasters sat down in the Square, calling for recognition of the student’s democracy movement. Hundreds of thousands packed the Square in solidarity. Actions spread to over 100
cities.

“More than a million people demonstrated in Beijing alone on May 17th and 18th, in the largest ‘unauthorized’ demonstrations in China’s history.” (Sharp, p. 260) Communist leaders felt threatened. Martial law was imposed on May 20th.

Then the movement deteriorated. Troops moved into the Square. At 9:00 PM on June 3rd they were ordered to clear the Square by dawn, using all means necessary. When demonstrators refused to leave the soldiers opened fire.

China’s official figures show as many as 300 civilians and soldiers killed. Amnesty International put the number closer to a thousand.

Michael Nagler wrote:

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Perhaps the most tragic example of a symbol gone wrong is the June 4, 1989, massacre in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. …

Because they
lacked a long-term strategy, however, the square itself and their refusal to leave it became a symbol of their disobedience and a distraction from the eminently legitimate goal of democratic reforms.

… if the resisters had left the square and gone back to their universities and villages to educate the people and to take concrete, achievable steps for change, the democracy movement in China … might still be alive. (Nagler, p. 50)

Serbian nonviolent organizer Srdja Popovic, agreed that it is: dangerous to wait too long before declaring victory. … That’s what happened to the brave young Chinese activists who occupied Tiananmen Square … [who] managed to force the Communist government of China to offer tangible concessions and reforms …

Because the Tiananmen Square activists refused to accept the minor yet meaningful victories … the government panicked … and crushed the uprising. As a result, social movements in China were set back nearly two decades. (Popovic, pp. 217-218)

Summary.

The failures in Burma and China illustrate the crying need for a Constructive Program, because:

1.

The Constructive Program projects the vision of the movement and the goodness to be achieved.

2.

The Constructive Program sets forth, clearly and visibly which goals can and cannot be negotiated.

3.

The Constructive Program maintains unity of purpose and unity of goals as the movement expands

4.

The Constructive Program develops the structure to fill the political void once the goals are achieved.

The 2016-17 indigenous people’s campaign at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota is a different story. Their campaign against the Dakota Access Pipeline, backed by The Indigenous Way, has laid the groundwork for global Satyagraha.

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Standing Rock USA – Indigenous Rising.

The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) threatens Standing Rock reservation’s water supply, sacred lands, burial sites, and historical artifacts; and displays once again the white people’s disrespect for indigenous treaties.

The Problem. The $3.75-billion DAPL will snake 1,172 miles in a southeasterly direction from the Bakken and Three Forks oil fields in North Dakota,
through South

Dakota and Iowa, to

Patoka Illinois
where it will
connect with the an
existing pipeline
going to Nederland,

Texas. Standing

Rock Reservation

(shaded are on map)

was not shown on
maps furnished by

Energy Transfer

Partners (ETP –

Dakota Access Pipeline Route
then owner of

Source: NittyG - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,

DAPL)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=527

The 30” diameter

76844
underground pipeline will create 8,000-12,000 jobs during construction, but permanent operation and maintenance jobs would be as low as 40. (Griffin)

The initially-scheduled completion date
contracted for 1 January 2017 was not met due to opposition and 173



funding had to be renegotiated. Pressure on banks by the ‘De-fund DAPL’ movement convinced some to drop out.1

The Funding.

Funding for the $3.75 billion DAPL was originally planned through bank loans from 26 financial institutions. (see Form-8K) However, the January 2017 completion date was not met and funding had to be renegotiated. ETP/Sunoco had to sell 49% of its share to MarEn Bakken to make up for the banks lost because of ‘De-fund DAPL’.

Indigenous Objections. DAPL was first planned to cross beneath the Missouri River north of Bismarck (North Dakota’s capitol city and 90% white) but was rerouted
due to complaints that a crude
oil spill would jeopardize the
city’s water supply.

The crossing was moved to
government land (Tribal

Treaty Land)

downstream
from Bismarck but a scant
half-mile upstream from the

Standing Rock Sioux

Sioux Territory as defined by the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty

Reservation (with a poverty

Source: Tribal History Overview
level almost triple the national
average).

1 Defund DAPL, a global program supporting Standing Rock, successful persuaded many people to divest from banks that finance DAPL. Over $3
billion was divested from Wells Fargo alone. New York City and State Pension funds ($194 billion) froze investment in fossil fuel industries and started divesting. Some banks withdrew their participation from the project.

174



Standing Rock’s 3,572 square mile area straddles the border between North and South Dakota and is the 6th largest Reservation in the United States; yet it was not even shown on pipeline route maps.

A pipeline leak would pollute the reservation’s water supply and that of millions of people downstream. The Sioux claim the route violates Treaty Land, sacred sites, burial grounds, and culturally-significant artifacts.

Informational meetings with the Standing Rock Sioux began in September 2014. Tribal Chairman David Archambault II presented a map of Sioux territory as defined by the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty – a treaty still valid and which the US had previously recognized as Indian Treaty Land in other disputes.

Archambault made it clear that the Sioux do not merely object to a pipeline crossing under the Missouri River; they object to any pipeline on any Treaty Lands. This early objection falsifies later claims that the Sioux did not participate in the scoping process.

Pipeline Safety. The track record for pipeline safety is atrocious. The US Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration reports 11,462 pipeline spills during 1997-2016. That averages 573 spills per year in the US, but during the last three years of that period the average jumped to 686 per year.

The US Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) issues permits for pipeline construction on Treaty Lands. It originally conducted a fast-track review of the river crossing, not a full Environmental Impact Assessment, and found no significant risks. The Sioux disagreed.

The Sioux hired pipeline safety expert Richard Kuprewicz to make an independent assessment. He said the “no significant risks” assessment was seriously deficient.

It should have included susceptibility to 175



landslides in the crossing area, and the only fix is to reroute. Also, the 10-minute shut-off time for leaks was hyped. It’s more like three hours. Mohammad Najafi, another pipeline safety expert with the University of Texas, agreed with Kuprewicz.

.

Initial Indigenous Activity: On 1 April 2016, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Standing Rock’s Historic Preservation Officer, set up Sacred Stone Camp on her property. As the number of ‘water protectors’

(‘protectors’, not ‘protesters’) grew, it became necessary to set up another camp called Oceti Sakowin (Och-et-ee Shak-oh-win, meaning

‘Seven Council Fires’ of the Great Sioux Nation).2 It was outside the reservation but still on Treaty Land.

In July 2016, a group of young Sioux started ReZpect Our Water. They ran 2,000 miles from Montana to Washington D.C. with 140,000
petition signatures to deliver to the Corps and President Obama. Their message was “Mni Wiconi” (‘Water is Life’). Obama did not receive them.

When the Corps approved water-crossing permits in July 2016, the Sioux immediately litigated under the National Historic Preservation Act and other laws to address environmental risks and protect historic and sacred sites. They also sought a stop-work injunction pending a full Environmental Impact Assessment. On August 4th the Sioux 2The correct name for the Sioux is Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires) The Seven Council Fires are Mdewakanton (Dwellers of the Sacred Lake), Wahpekute (Shooters Among the Leaves), Sisitonwan (People of the Marsh), Wahpetonwan (Dwellers Among the Leaves), Ihanktown/Lower Yanktonal (People of the End), Ihanktownana/Upper Yanktoni (People of the Little End), and Tetonwan (People of the Plains). These tribes make up the three divisions of the Great Sioux Nation: Santee-Dakota (eastern), Yankton-Nakota (central) and Teton-Lakota (western).

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renewed their injunction request to stop construction until their case was settled.3

On September 4th, while the injunction was still pending and apparently to get work done before it was approved, bulldozers dug a 150-foot-wide, two-mile-long swath through a registered historic sacred site.

Water protectors quickly moved in to block the dozers. A private security firm was brought in to evict ‘trespassers’. Dog attacks, described as “absolutely appalling” by a former K9 officer, were filmed by the media as sheriff deputies watched idly by. ( Wikipedia, ”Dakota Access Pipeline”)

North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple declared the area a ‘state of emergency’. Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier invoked a mutual aid pact with six neighboring states, calling for law enforcement help. Dalrymple alerted 100 National Guard soldiers from the 191st Military Police Company.

Now there were law enforcement officers from several states supplemented by military police to guard oil company interests. This escalation was accompanied by an influx of military vehicles and equipment, which in turn escalated violence against the water protectors.

Confrontational Nonviolence Begins. By September, over 300 Native American tribes were represented at Standing Rock along with some 4,000 supporters. This was the largest single gathering of indigenous Americans in over a century – since ‘Custer’s Last Stand’ at Little Bighorn. Supporters rotated their presence. A Canadian tribe walked to Oceti Sakowin.

3 This case was dismissed on September 9th, appealed, and lost.

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Claiming eminent domain, the Sioux erected their ‘1851 Treaty Camp’

directly in the bulldozers’ path. It was forcibly removed October 27th by riot-gear-equipped police, sheriff deputies, state troopers, and National Guard soldiers. They used pepper spray, bean-bag rounds, and an earsplitting sound cannon.

At least 141 were arrested and 40 injured with broken bones and bean-bag welts. Arrestees were strip searched and indelibly marked with numbers, reminiscent of Nazi camps. Amnesty International opined: In some instances, police have responded to protesters with pepper spray and bean bags … Those recently arrested have reported being strip searched and forced to pay bail for minor offenses. …

Under international law and standards, arrests should not be used to intimidate or prevent people from participating in peaceful assembly.

If individuals are arrested, they should not be restrained for prolonged periods of time, and should be treated humanely. Invasive searches should only be carried out if absolutely necessary …

(AIUSA Press

Release)

Four days after the destruction of the ‘1851 Treaty Camp’, Yes!

Magazine reported:

There have been a lot of questions surrounding the influx of military-style troops and equipment … On Thursday, police executed a particularly violent sweep of a camp that left structures destroyed, cars impounded and others burning on the roadside. The highly militarized response – armored vehicles and heavy weaponry – was recorded by many people caught in the assault.” (Fuller) ACLU later published a comprehensive list of 75 agencies sending militarized police. That sparked public outrage. Sheriff Brian Gootkin (Gallatin County, Montana) turned his detail around while on the way to Standing Rock, saying: “I got messages from England, Poland, New Zealand, Australia,” and the US by the hundreds. The messages made clear that mutual aid “was meant for natural disasters and catastrophic events … not for protecting a corporation’s pipeline construction.”

(Monet)

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Sheriff Dave Mahoney (Dane County, Wisconsin), after a week at Standing Rock, pulled his deputies out. Sheriff Stanek (Hennepin County, Minnesota) was at Standing Rock with 29 deputies but said they wouldn’t return. After the October 27th violence, agencies helping Morton County declined. (see Monet)

United Nations Involvement. Tribal Chairman Archambault told the UN Human Rights Council on September 20th that the Sioux’s sovereign rights have been violated according to two still-valid treaties.

He said: “I am here because the oil companies are causing the deliberate destruction of our sacred places and burials,” and that they want “to build an oil pipeline under the river that is the source of our nation’s drinking water.” (Medina)

Two days later, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, stated: “The tribe was denied access to information and excluded from consultations … environmental assessments failed to disclose the presence and proximity of the Standing Rock Reservation. … US authorities should fully protect and facilitate the right to freedom of peaceful assembly of Indigenous peoples, which plays a key role in empowering their ability to claim other rights.” (Germanos)

Three UN rapporteurs (on human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, on human rights and the environment, and on cultural rights), plus four other UN experts, endorsed Tauli-Corpuz’s statement.

Chairman Archambault invited Grand Chief Edward John (Akile Ch'oh) – expert member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues – to visit Standing Rock. John is hereditary chief of the Tl'azt'en Nation in northern British Columbia. He studied the situation for three days; talking with water protectors, elders, cultural and spiritual leaders, and senior law enforcement officials.

179



John reported “I cannot, nor will I, minimize or disregard in any way the very compelling stories of those … [who] showed me their injuries, bruises, black ink markings on their arms, court documents as evidence of the criminalization of their protest, the necessity to appear in criminal court …all wondering about why and how this would happen in America.” (John)

John recounted the constant aerial surveillance by aircraft and drones, ground surveillance and searchlights from a nearby hill, and the presence of armed riot police, soldiers and security guards. These have

“all contributed to heightened insecurity and intensity …to a ‘war zone’

atmosphere …” (John)

Noting federal inaction, John said:

The total lack of presence and action by the United States government

… must be addressed. In addition to the Bill of Rights, the United States must be reminded of the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR] as well as the 2010
public pronouncement of support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. …

Specifically, it appears that the government of the United States and its political subdivisions at the state and local level are in violation of numerous provisions of the ICCPR. Furthermore, numerous provisions of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples have not been upheld, specifically considering what I witnessed, Article 7 [addressing physical and mental integrity, liberty, and security of person as well as safeguards against genocide and any other violence]

and Article 8 [destruction of culture, cultural values and integrity as distinct peoples] as well as Article 19 of the UN Declaration are of central concern. (John)

Counterterrorism and Psy-Ops4. After the guard dog attack, DAPL
engaged TigerSwan, a for-hire private militia, to oversee all DAPL

4 Psychological Operations,

180



security forces, provide consultation and intelligence, and promote a good reputation for DAPL.

Spies infiltrated the water protector camps to gather information and disrupt operations. Camps and actions were under live video feed and constant surveillance by drones, helicopters, and airplanes.

TigerSwan provided daily intelligence updates, situation reports, and photos of water protector activity. This ‘intelligence’ also went to local and state agencies as well as the FBI, Homeland Security, Justice Department, Federal Marshalls, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. Federal officials had full knowledge of treaty and human rights violations and did nothing.

TigerSwan suggested national security threats by referring to water protectors “as ‘an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component’ and compared the anti-pipeline water protectors to jihadist5 fighters.” (Brown, Parrish, and Speri) Military jargon was used in reports. The camps were a ‘battlefield’, nonviolent actions were ‘attacks’, and water protectors were

‘terrorists.’ Such labels provide “insights into how law enforcement’s interactions with the water protectors … could have become so trigger-happy violent and war zone-like. … it’s not hard to imagine how things could have easily escalated to peaceful protesters being blasted with rubber bullets and fire hoses in below-freezing temperatures.”

(Johnstone – to be discussed below)

5 A jihadist fights a holy war. The alleged 9-11 hijackers were called jihadists, a word which now connotes terrorist and religious extremist.

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By the end of 2017, North Dakota Law Enforcement had spent more than $600,000 on riot gear: “The purchases … included pepper spray, flash-bang and smoke grenades, riot helmets, gas masks, night-vision goggles, more than 2,000 rounds of non-lethal ammunition and more.”

(Nicholson)

Police on Hilltop across Cantapeda

Creek from Oceti Sakowin Camp

Photo by Mark Aldridge

“[R]esearchers from Harvard, Stanford, Cincinnati, and Garner-Webb concluded that the Pentagon’s 1033 weapons transfer program made participating departments more likely to engage in deadly violence.”

(Bates)

DAPL’s ‘security force’ is the type of ad hoc militia and police violence that proactivists are up against today.

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TigerSwan’s entry is significant. “As policing continues to be militarized and state legislatures around the country pass laws criminalizing protest,6 the fact that a private security firm retained by a Fortune 500 oil and gas company coordinated its efforts with local, state and federal law enforcement to undermine the protest movement has profoundly anti-democratic implications.” (Brown, Parrish, and Speri)

Dallas Goldtooth
added that: “By
comparing Indigenous

Peoples and civilians
to Jihadist fighters,
police and security
were essentially given
permission to carry
out war-like tactics on

Water Protectors.”

Oceti Sakowin Camp -- Showing the Camp Entrance, (IEN Press Release) Highway 1806, and Backwater Bridge

Source: Unknown

Backwater Sunday. The entrance to Oceti Sakowin Camp is on State Highway 1806. As one leaves the camp and turns right (north) on 1806
toward Bismarck, they will very quickly cross Backwater Bridge spanning Cantapeta Creek. A short distance farther is the DAPL
construction site.

This was the route used by water protectors to travel from camp to demonstration. Shortly after demolition of the ‘1851 Treaty Camp’, 6 As of June 2019; N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Indiana, and Tennessee have criminalized pipeline protest; Idaho, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio have legislation pending; and Wyoming, Colorado, Mississippi, Georgia, and Pennsylvania have defeated such legislation.

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Morton County officials used two burned out vehicles to block the bridge. That also blocked the quickest route to Bismarck; adding 40
minutes to emergency vehicle travel time.

On Sunday evening, November 20th, Standing Rock entered the global spotlight. A group of water protectors used a semi-truck tractor to pull away the burned-out vehicles blocking Highway 1806. They had removed one vehicle when, at about 6:00 PM, they were engaged by riot police with sophisticated military vehicles. What followed was videotaped live and broadcast internationally from a nearby hill.

It was a freezing 25-26o F night. Water protectors increased to about 500. The police started firing flares, rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannons, mace, and sound cannons.

Hundreds suffered hypothermia from being drenched in subfreezing weather. More were knocked unconscious and bleeding from rubber bullets. Eye witnesses reported rubber bullets intentionally aimed at head and crotch for maximum injury. Camp medic teams were overwhelmed. A school gymnasium in Cannon Ball served for emergency treatment.

The confrontation lasted till the wee hours of the morning. Camp medics estimated 300 injured; 26 of them hospitalized. An elder suffered cardiac arrest but the medics revived him with CPR. A youth had a seizure from a flash grenade. Medic Linda Black Elk said people were:

walking through the dark of a winter North Dakota night, some of them so cold, and sprayed with water for so long, that their clothes were frozen to their body and crunching as they walked. So you could hear this crunching sound and this pop-pop-pop, and people yelling (to the police) “We’ll pray for you! We love you!” …

All of a sudden there were these bright, blinding spotlights, so you could see each other, but you couldn’t see [the police]…. Every once in a while you could hear someone scream who had been hit by a rubber bullet. (Brown)

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The Standing Rock Medic and Healing Council asked the police to stop using water cannons: “As medical professionals, we are concerned for the real risk of loss of life due to severe hypothermia under these conditions.” (Brown)

Medic Noah Morris said: “They were just hosing people down with their water cannon that continued for the four hours I was out there watching.” (Brown) Morris said it was so cold when they were flushing tear gas out of people’s eyes that the water and milk-of-magnesia turned to ice when it fell to the ground.

Sophia Wilanski, a 21-year-old water protector from New York City, almost lost an arm by a concussion grenade. These weapons are not supposed to be thrown directly at people but eye witnesses said that was done: “[Wilanski] got hit by a rubber bullet and she fell. And then they shot a percussion grenade and it got her in the arm.” (Stefanac) Two men got out of a giant armored vehicle labeled Stutsman County:

“They were laughing. One of them said something like ‘That was a beautiful shot.’ We couldn’t believe it was the police saying it.”

(Stefanac) Sophia’s account of the incident is relayed through her father, Wayne Wilanski:

… A grenade exploded right as it hit Sophia in the left forearm … Both her radial and ulnar artery were completely destroyed. Her radius

[bone] was shattered and a large piece of it is missing. Her medial nerve is missing a large section as well. All the muscle and soft tissue between her elbow and wrist were blown away. … The police did not do this by accident – it was an intentional act of throwing it directly at her. (Medic Press Release)

The Water Protector Legal Collective filed suit against Morton County, Sheriff Kirschmeier, and others on behalf of others injured: x

Vanessa Dundon was hit in the eye with a tear gas canister.

x

Jade Kalikolehuaokakalani Wool had two grenades blow up near her head, knocking her down, burning her face, and sending shrapnel into it.

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x

Crystal Wilson was drenched with a water cannon, tear gassed, and struck with a munition.

x

David Demo, while filming police, was shot with a water cannon and then in the hand with a munition.

x

Gary Dullknife III saw a water protector knocked to the ground by water cannon. As police sprayed her on the ground, he tried to move her away and was shot in the chest, stomach, and leg by impact munitions.

x

Mariah Marie Bruce was sprayed with water cannons and then hit in the genitals with a grenade.

x

Frank Finan, while taking pictures, was shot in the abdomen and knocked to the ground by a rubber bullet.

x

Israel Hoagland-Lynn tried to help two people and was shot in the head with an impact munition. (Moro)

The 23 November 2016 press release by Oceti Sakowin Camp Media (see Appendix-C) refutes numerous claims made in the ‘official story’.

Nonviolence prevailed.

Pressure and Intimidation. Protecting the oil company was taking a toll on Morton County. Following Backwater Sunday the arrest total was 528. Policing costs was close to a million. Almost 1,300 officers were sent from 24 counties. Both courts and jails were overburdened.

Meanwhile, water protectors were increasing. People were drawn to Oceti Sakowin and rotated regularly. There were usually about 4,000.

“At the peak of protests, the camp population climbed to as high as 10,000 people.” (CNN) Law enforcement, in spite of their equipment and violent tactics, were hugely outnumbered. This was a very distressing threat to DAPL. They tried a new tactic.

The Corps announced that Oceti Sacowin must be vacated by December 5th to avoid more violence and evade the harsh North Dakota winter. Cheyenne River Tribe leader Harold Frazier said any effort to evict would be met with prayer and nonviolent resistance.

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Governor Dalrymple followed up with Executive Order 2016-08
demanding immediate “mandatory evacuation” of Oceti Sakowin Camp in compliance with the Corps’ order. The Order cited upcoming extreme weather, and concluded: “Any person who chooses to enter, reenter, or stay in the evacuation [area] does so at their own risk …”

(E.O. 2016-08)

Oceti Sakowin replied with a press release titled “Sovereign Creed,”

which read in part:

WHEREAS the Governor of North Dakota and the Sheriff of Morton County are relative newcomers to Lakota land, it is understandable they would be concerned about severe winter weather.

WHEREAS the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota people of the Great Sioux Nation have survived in this region for millennia without concerns of state or county governments …

WHEREAS the people of the Oceti Sakowin Camp have chosen to stay on sovereign 1851 Treaty land to protect the water …

WHEREAS the Great Sioux Nation is not subject to the imposition of any foreign codes, conveniences, laws, precepts, rules; nor do we require any approvals, authorizations, consents, endorsements or permissions from any foreign government upon sovereign land belonging to the Great Sioux Nation. …

Now, THEREFORE WE DEMAND the armed forces and the state government stop creating emergencies for the people of Oceti Sakowin Camp on behalf of privately held business and investors bent on stripping and drilling these sacred lands. … ( Sovereigns Creed) The Sioux continued to winterize their tipis, yurts, hogans, and other buildings. Compost toilets replaced porta-potties during freezing weather. The Sioux knew they would have to leave before spring snow melt because the camp is on a flood plain, but they were determined to stay the winter.

The eviction orders were bluffs, and the Sioux called them. However, two events moved the December 5th deadline to the back burner: 187



x

On December 4th the Corps notified Dakota Access that the permit to drill under the Missouri River would not be issued and called for a full Environmental Impact Statement.

x

Also on December 4th, amid the first winter blizzard, a contingent of over 2,000 veterans arrived.

In January, newly elected President Trump signed executive memorandum 82FR11129 reactivating pipeline construction. The Corps issued the final permit to drill under the river on 8 February 2017.

Unlike the Chinese youth at Tiananmen Square, the Sioux did not cling to Oceti Sakowin Camp out of sentiment and symbolism. The movement had globalized and spring flooding was possible. It was time for Wopida – a Sioux word meaning sharing energy among all people.

“Today, on the day of the great full moon (12 January 2017), the Oceti Sakowin Sacred Fire at Standing Rock was ceremonially extinguished.

The Spiritual Leaders and the Ithanchans [Chiefs] present will now travel to each of the Camp Circles of the Seven Council Fires and spiritually unite the Oceti Sakowin.”

Torches were lit and Sioux youth took the fire westward for the start of the Inaugural 7th Generation Global Wopida Run from Standing Rock to Fort Mason (to be discussed in the next chapter). “Along with the Global Wopida, the Compassion Torch reminds us to take action; full of heart, with love for all that is sacred in the world.” ( Pray With Standing Rock)

As the task of closing down the campsite progressed, and the number of occupants decreased, newly elected governor Doug Burgum issued an order that Oceti Sakowin Camp be evacuated by 2:00 PM on February 22nd. Riot police, military vehicles and bulldozers lined up at the camp entrance.

188



Most of the handful of occupants left voluntarily. At 2:00 PM the bulldozers and equipment moved in and razed what remained of the camp. About ten occupants stayed to be arrested peacefully; bringing the overall total facing trial close to 800.

North Dakota law enforcement grandstanded while Standing Rock Wopida thrived. Goodness flourished. Gene Sharp wrote: “When brutal repression is inflicted on strictly nonviolent resisters, this can cause the opponents to be exposed in the worst possible light.” (Sharp, p. 406)

Addendum. I have related the Standing Rock story in some detail to illustrate the depth of compassion, discipline, and respect that motivated this campaign. Unarmed water protectors endured in confronting militant violence under adverse conditions. What started off as a pipeline protest unified a global movement to respect Mother Earth. This didn’t just happen. There were centuries of cultural formation behind it – something called The Indigenous Way.

The Indigenous Way.

Indigenous people hold many sacred beliefs and they were very visible in the water protectors at Standing Rock. They were visible in their prayerfulness, their respect for Mother Earth, their worship of the sacred, the relatedness of all people, and in so many other ways. The Sioux call this The Indigenous Way. To illustrate The Indigenous Way I will rely on the writings of Ohiyesa.

Ohiyesa was born a Santee Sioux in Minnesota in 1858. His mother died shortly thereafter and he was separated from his father and siblings during the 1862 Dakota War. He fled with his grandmother to North Dakota and was raised according to Sioux tradition.

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At age 15 Ohiyesa was reunited with his father, took the name of Charles Alexander Eastman, earned a medical degree from Boston University, and spent many years doctoring his people on two South Dakota reservations.

He later entered politics as an advocate for the Sioux. Among his many books was an essay titled The Soul of the Indian, in which he tried to explain the life of the first peoples before they met the white man. It is from this work that I have extracted the following points: 1 – “The original attitude of the American Indian toward the Eternal, the ‘Great Mystery’ that surrounds and embraces us, was as simple as it was exalted. To him it was the supreme conception, bringing with it the fullest measure of joy and satisfaction possible in life.” (Eastman, Ch. 1)

2 – “There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature.

… That solitary communion with the Unseen which was the highest expression of our religious life … may better be interpreted as ‘consciousness of the divine’.” (Eastman, Ch. 1) 3 – “[T]he love of possessions has appeared a snare, and the burdens of a complex society, a source of needless peril and temptation.

Furthermore, it was the rule of [Indigenous American] life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less fortunate brothers.

Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride, cupidity, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree – a matter profoundly important to him.” (Eastman, Ch. 1) 4 – “To the untutored sage, the concentration of population was the prolific mother of all evils, moral no less than physical. He argued that food is good, while surfeit kills; that love is good, but lust destroys; and not less dreaded than the pestilence following upon crowded and unsanitary dwellings was the loss of spiritual power inseparable from too close contact with one’s fellow men.”

(Eastman, Ch. 1)

5 – “We believe that the spirit pervades all creation and that every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied Force, and as such an object of reverence.”

(Eastman, Ch. 1)

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6 – “From the moment of [a mother’s] recognition of the fact of conception to the end of the second year … it was supposed by us that the mother’s spiritual influence counted the most. Her attitude and secret meditations must be such as to instill into the receptive soul … the love of the ‘Great Mystery’ and a sense of brotherhood with all creation.” (Eastman, Ch. 2) 7 – “At the age of about eight years … the distinctive work of both grandparents is that of acquainting the youth with the national traditions and beliefs. … to repeat the time-hallowed tales with dignity and authority … The old are dedicated to the service of the young, as their teachers and advisers, and the young in turn regard them with love and reverence.” (Eastman, Ch. 2) It is this oral history that gives the youth a feeling of belonging – solidarity with their indigenous brothers and sisters, and their common roots.

8 – “Personal modesty was early cultivated … together with a strong self-respect and pride of family and race. … The [male] youth was encouraged to enlist early in the public service, and to develop a wholesome ambition for the honors of leader and feast-maker, which can never be his unless he is truthful and generous, as well as brave, and ever mindful of his personal chastity and honor.”

(Eastman, Ch. 4)

That is just a skimming of the surface but it must suffice for here. A true and workable Constructive Program is, after all, a way of living that transcends the fabricated differences between secular and spiritual, science and religion, organic and material.

The Seven Lakota Values. The western division of Sioux – the Lakota

– have distilled their Constructive Program to Seven Lakota Values: 1.

Praying

2.

Respect

3.

Caring and Compassion

4.

Honesty and Truth

5.

Generosity and Caring

6.

Humility

7. Wisdom

When the Lakota Sioux established Oceti Sakowin Camp to confront DAPL, they instilled these values as the code of conduct for everyone 191



who comes to the camp. Pipeline construction will be confronted according to indigenous values and customs, and no other. Everyone in camp was asked to attend an Orientation/Logistics Meeting to understand these values and the proper conduct in camp. A guideline sheet explained each of these values in more detail as they apply to camp life.7

The following is a composite description of the Orientation meeting reported by my family’s three water protectors; Teri, Mary, and Mark: The orientation meeting was powerful as well as unsettling --
threatening to my comfort zone. As with all meetings, it began and ended with a prayer.

Two women gave matter-of-fact speeches to introduce what we would experience at this orientation and in camp: that each individual has a responsibility to question the ways in which their own thoughts and actions came into being. The first woman spoke with a gentle yet assertive voice. I was happy to hear her tell the group what was expected and if anyone is unable or unwilling to live up to those expectations, they should leave. I had been bothered by certain displays of lightheartedness I had witnessed earlier in camp that didn’t seem to align with the seriousness of the situation.

It was a challenge to unravel what we think is truth, and to redefine it through an egoless space. The second woman ended her talk saying

“I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry”; meaning, I know it is a process to discover where you come from, who you are, and how to be yourself; I will love you through it, while at the same time call you out when you are in your ego or acting outside of the camp principles. The overall principles are: 1) We are all related, and in this camp the prevailing way is indigenous; 2) Begin a new legacy; 3) Be useful, look out for the whole; and 4) Take home what we learned about ourselves, community, spirituality, nonviolence, acculturalization, and indigenous perspectives.

7 https://www.facebook.com/OcetiSakowinCamp/posts/1028578090620756

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A young "warrior" spoke after the first two women. He said the indigenous meaning of warrior is one who can remain nonviolent in actions and reactions, not one who is a great physical fighter. He said it was very difficult for him to reach that status. He described the importance of loving yourself first so you are free to love others. Love of self is not selfishness, it frees you to discover your path and find your voice. He stressed that fighting is the very last part of being a warrior – the very last option. Fighting is easy. It's the non-fighting attributes of being a warrior that are difficult to learn, but those are what truly make one a warrior.

Whatever they may call it, the Sioux know they have a Constructive Program that offers a far superior lifestyle than the fascism and capitalism now being confronted. They are adamant that their Indigenous Way is not diluted by other cultures, no matter how well-meaning the people from those cultures may be.

The Twelve Principles for Direct Action. Everyone planning to participate in Direct Action at Standing Rock was required to take nonviolent training. The Sioux presented the training in accord with twelve principles. To describe the training I will rely on my water-protector daughter, Mary:

With drone and plane flying overhead, and the militarized police on the hillside, about 100 water protectors gathered in a sunny field at the Oceti Sakawin camp for a two-hour nonviolence training.

We began by getting to know our neighbors – enacting the camp theme of stepping outside of ourselves to care for the whole.

Identifying who we are, where we come from, why we came to camp, and experiences (or not) in nonviolent direct action, facilitates a self-assessment and builds relationships. This opening up and connecting motivates responsibility and 193



accountability to each other and the group as a whole, which is a key factor to maintaining nonviolence.

The principles of nonviolent direct action were reviewed with the understanding that the principles are dynamic and have been through many revisions. The principles are decided by the camp leadership and there were quite a few in the beginning. As the camp grew, simplification and clarity were necessary. On this day there were 12 principles:

1.

We are protectors (not protestors)

2.

We are peaceful and prayerful

3.

“isms” have no place here

4.

We are nonviolent

5.

Respect locals

6.

No weapons or what can be considered weapons 7.

Property damage does not get us closer to our goal 8.

All campers must get an orientation

9.

Direct action training for all in actions 10. No children in potentially dangerous situations 11. We keep each other accountable

12. This is a ceremony – act accordingly THE STANDING ROCK PRINCIPLES

Photo by Mary Aldridge

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Each principle was reviewed with the overarching theme that each one of us is individually accountable to these principles, and we are individually accountable to hold others accountable.

They were designed to a ceremony – to act, to keep peace, and to keep people safe. It was understood that it only takes one person to threaten the safety of all. Ceremony and prayer are a constant.

The next talk was from the medical and mental health teams. The discussion outlined the tactics of repression being used by the militarized police; fear and pain. They discussed the human reaction when fear and pain are inflicted, and called for a self-evaluation and preparedness to deal with those reactions and to maintain our ability to persevere.

A state of constant prayer is required along with a conviction of nonviolence; however, the human element of emotion is always present. Each person needs to know their own limitations on controlling emotions and to retreat before they reach that limit (no shame). Everyone is obliged to assist others to retreat when their actions are not in line with nonviolence. This proceeds from the camp orientation’s stress on maintaining a personal lack of ego.

Giving and accepting advice on nonviolence accountability is always with the understanding that it is to maintain the principles of the camp and the success of the whole – it is not personal criticism and should not be taken as such. Getting out of the

“me” into the “we” can also remove the “us and them” during confrontation, although the latter is a bit more challenging.

The medical team offered a discussion on the chemical makeup of teargas and pepper spray and the impact on mucus 195



membranes, the use of masks for protection, the folly of wearing contact lenses, and the need to always carry a water bottle. They demonstrated how to rinse teargas out of eyes. They cautioned against the confusion and mental state that can erupt when weapons are used by the militarized police (teargas, concussion grenades, rubber bullets, etc.).

Mental health spoke of concerns regarding the stress impact from fear and pain and post-traumatic stress. Both medical and mental health were always present on the front line, though in recent actions they have been specifically targeted with pepper spray when helping the injured or simply because of their identifying red armband. Consequently, everyone was being trained to help with medical and mental health issues arising on the front line.

The Water Protector Legal Collective (a project of the National Lawyers Guild) explained their role both in camp and when water protectors are arrested. Legal encouraged everyone to register with them regardless of being involved in direct action or not. They keep records of people’s emergency contacts and preference/insistence regarding legal situations (i.e.; release on citation or stay in jail). They suggested everyone write the Legal Collective phone number on their forearm so it is available in any event. Legal has a bail fund and requested that people go through them for bail to expedite the process by reducing the number of agencies involved. Legal also tracks potential surveillance measures by asking folks to complete a form for any abnormal happenings on their phones or other electronic usage.

The final part of the training was to review previous actions from the camp and what transpired. It was a review of what worked 196



and didn’t work, and why. It analyzed police response/action and what to expect on the front lines. What stood out the most for me in regards to police action was what the facilitator described as

“abuser’s language”. The example was that protectors were being told their masks (handkerchief shields for teargas) were considered an offensive act and must be removed. Did the police take this position to justify their control actions, out of fear, to capture the faces on camera, or what? Were they not able to recognize the new masked attire resulting from their use of teargas? I can understand how the numbers of people at Oceti Sakawin camp ignite fear in the police. How can we transcend their fear and promote conversation on their responsibility –
protecting public interest vs corporate profits?

As we reviewed ways to come together as a group it was evident that there were decisions at every turn and our response is both individual and within the group. Decisions to hold space, move forward, or retreat. There were also decisions on our strength as a group; lock arms, sit down, stay as one group or break into smaller groups. The different techniques were shown with an evaluation of how they have been used and with what outcomes.

Then it was time for this group of 100 strangers to practice. We were given a path to walk to the (pretend) front line at which point we would encounter police with pepper spray. Anyone that was sprayed was out of action until someone rinsed your eyes.

With amazement, within 50 yards the group had formed rows of eight with interlocked arms (verbal cues were being passed along the line). As obstacles and police were encountered the row formations quickly changed to accommodate the situation.

197



Many of us were able to pass the police actors. As the folks at the end of the line were being “attacked”, the group seemed to be aware, stopped, and sat down. I didn’t hear any verbal cues and had a keen sense that we were holding space for those at the end of the line. This group cohesion was an astounding experience.

The scenario continued with the police coming to the line and pepper spraying people. Though it was not entirely realistic as people were not getting hurt, it did elicit confusion and lessons.

In a quick debriefing, we learned it was helpful to move the injured away from the front. What stood out for me in our sit down was the physical endurance to stay in place and the supportive communication and checking in with others while on the line.

I have only been to two other pre-action nonviolence trainings and they were quite different. Though nonviolent language/behavior is important, it is how one prevails during confrontation and injury that sustains our commitment to nonviolence.

Our animal instinct of fight or flight is not uncommon. Centering our values, maintaining a prayerful state of mind, and keeping our vision on the goal foster the courage to be determined but nonviolent. Being accountable to oneself and also the group means acknowledging one’s vulnerabilities and limitations, and stepping back before the limit is reached. Each person has a selfless role to play in the whole, and each person’s part is valuable. Holding loving mutual accountability among group members empowers everyone to prevail and strengthens the whole.

This is the deep seated heritage that DAPL capitalists come face-to-face with when they put profits ahead of people. Unlike the People Power Revolution which had a common, short-term goal and fell apart 198



shortly after that goal was achieved, Standing Rock water protectors know very well they have a better way of life to offer. It has been deeply ingrained in them for centuries and it is reflected in their very lifestyle. The Indigenous Way is a Constructive Program so powerful that violent oppression with every less-than-lethal weapon available along with the latest military equipment was not able to diminish it.

A massive day of action on 15 November 2016 resulted in 250
separately-organized demonstrations against DAPL in 43 of the 50

United States.

Coming on the heels of Donald Trump’s election

‘victory’, it was described as the largest and most coordinated anti-DAPL action to date.

Demonstrations of solidarity were carried out in cities all over the United States and beyond. Municipal governments passed ordinances in support of the Standing Rock Tribe. The Los Angeles Times reported that 1.3 million people had checked in at Standing Rock on Facebook. (Tehekmedyian and Etehad) Opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline and support for Standing Rock went global to unify a worldwide indigenous movement acting in solidarity The Indigenous Way reenergized the world movement which is perhaps the most profound global, nonviolent bonding that history has seen. (A more detailed discussion will follow in Chapter 11) That is because all indigenous people, regardless of location, share the same basic Indigenous Way.

But will The Indigenous Way support Confrontational Nonviolent actions in all the environments and cultures that need to be enfolded to make a global movement successful? Can it be translated to a Global Satyagraha Movement? That is the topic of the next chapter.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

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References and Further Reading for Chapter-9.

Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) Press Release; “Amnesty International USA to Monitor to North Dakota Pipeline Protests,” 28 October 2016. .

Bates, Adam; “Militarization Makes Police More Violent,” ( CATO at Liberty, 29 August 2017).

Brown, Alleen; “Medics Describe How Police Sprayed Standing Rock Demonstrators with Tear Gas and Water Cannons,” The Intercept, 21

November 2016,

Brown, Alleen; Parrish, Will; and Speri, Alice; “Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to ‘Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies’” ( The Intercept, 17 May 2017) CNN; “Deadline Passes for Pipeline Protesters to Leave Camp,” 23 February 2017.

Das. Devina; “Gandhi and His Constructive Programme,” ( Youth Forum, 23

December 2016). At http://youthforum.co.in/gandhi-and-his-constructive-programme/

Eastman, Charles Alexander (born Ohiyesa); The Soul of the Indian; 1911. .

E.O. 2016-08; Executive Order of North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrmple, 28

November 2016.

Form-8K; filed with US Securities and Exchange Commission on 10 February 2015 by Energy Transfer Partners, LP.

Fuller, Emily; “How to Contact the People Sending Militarized Police to Standing Rock,” Yes! Magazine, 31 October 2016.

Germanos, Andrea; “UN Experts to United States: Stop DAPL Now,”

( Common Dreams, 25 September 2016).

Griffin, Will; “After Two Wars, Standing Rock is the First Time I Served the American People,” ( Common Dreams, 1 November 2016). .

IEN Press Release; “IEN Responds to Leaked Documents Confirming Counterterrorist Tactics Were Used in Standing Rock (Indigenous Environmental Network, 27 May 2017).

John, Edward; “Firsthand Observations of Conditions Surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline;” Report and Statement from Chief Edward John, Expert 200



Member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (North Dakota, USA) 1 November 2016.

Johnstone, Caitlin; “US Oligarchs Shown Using Military Espionage Against Peaceful Water Protesters In Leaked Documents,” ( Rogue Journalist, 29

May 2017)

Kyi, Aung San Suu; Freedom from Fear (NY; Penguin; 1991, 1995, 2010) Medic Press Release; Prepared by Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council at the Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Camps, 22 November 2016.

Monet, Jenni; “Sheriffs Refuse to Send Troops to Standing Rock as Public Outrage and Costs Mount,” Yes! Magazine, 23 November 2016.

Moro, Tash; “Water Protector Legal Collective Files Suit for Excessive Force against Peaceful Protestors,” National Lawyers Guild Press Release, 28

November 2016.

Nagler, Michael; The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action (San Francisco; Barrett-Koehler Publishers; 2014) Nicholson, Blake; “More Than $600,000 Spent on Police Gear for Pipeline Protest,” ( Associated Press, 16 December 2017) Popovic, Srdja; Blueprint for Revolution:How to U Rice pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, and Simply Change the World, (New York; Spiegel & Grau; 2015).

Pray With Standing Rock: Birth of a Global Movement; First Edition, January 2017. At: https://praywithstandingrock.com/ebook Sharp, Gene; Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (Boston; Porter Sargent Publishers; 2005) Stefanac, Suzanne; “Butte Men Witness Injury at Standing Rock, Dispute Official Account,” Montana Standard, 24 November 2016.

Tehekmedyian, Alene and Etehad, Melissa; “2 Years of Opposition, 1,172

Miles of Pipeline, 1.3 Million Facebook Check-ins. The Numbers to Know About the Standing Rock Protests,” ( Los Angeles Times, 1

November 2016).

Vizzions, Ryan; No Spiritual Surrender: A Dedication to the Standing Rock Movement (Printed in China, 2019).

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The movement born at Standing Rock has since grown into a beautiful worldwide network of relatives and allies … Our youth united Oceti Sakowin in a way most of us never imagined possible, and we are endlessly humbled by their capacity for imagining a better, more sustainable future for us all.

-- Pte San Wastewin (White Buffalo Woman)

“Jennifer Weston”

Hunkpapa Lakota citizen from Standing Rock (Vizzions, p. 15)

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10 – Global Satyagraha

You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

― Rabindranath Tagore

I found two ways of getting into a cold mountain stream. One is diving in, absorbing the initial shock, and swimming vigorously. Blood circulation soon gets me ‘used to the water’ so I can enjoy the swim.

The other is dipping in a toe, shivering, and gingerly taking another step. Slowly edging forward, step by torturous step, eventually gets me submerged. But, perhaps by then the incentive to swim has diminished A third option is to just sit on the bank and look at the water. As Tagore says, that gets us nowhere.

I use Tagore’s “cross the sea” as a metaphor for ‘implementing Global Satyagraha’. Rational people dream of an ideal world where everyone looks out for others and we don’t need governments or borders. The

‘toe dippers’ do what they can and struggle with a few noble causes.

But most people just sit on the bank and look, thinking the dream is admirable but impractical.

We need people diving in. Martin Luther King Jr. believed in his dream. Why not try to actualize ours? The infrastructure is there. We have nothing to lose and very, very much to gain.

All we need is
motivation and a place to dive in

The first splash will be rounding up a working group representative of major nonviolence organizations worldwide. They will prepare a composite dream to circulate for approval. It will take a little effort to reach consensus, but that is possible. Then we will have the Global Constructive Program.



The Global Constructive Program.

We are closer to a Global Satyagraha Movement than we may think.

The concept of nonviolent social change is well-known. The techniques of nonviolence have been developed. The content and procedure for nonviolent training has been tried and tested. We don’t need a new organizational structure. The infrastructure for Global Satyagraha has been evolving for over a century.

The 100-day actions (discussed below) demonstrate that diversity can be united, that mass actions can be conducted without violence, and that they can be conducted simultaneously worldwide. The only remaining task is to craft that composite dream – the Global Constructive Program.

In a world of many and diverse cultures, a Global Constructive Program needs to be visible, simple, and concisely address everyone’s basic need. It will be a vision that can be fleshed out to meet regional and local needs while reflecting the ultimate dream of all humanity.

The Proactive Nonviolence Cooperative formulated a sample Global Constructive Program for the 21st Century. Its vision statement concisely depicts the ultimate dream of those who worked on it. I’m using it as a model in this Guidebook:

We citizens of Planet Earth recognize that our home in the Universe is a delicate balance of forces and phenomena with a finite quantity of natural resources.

In order to live more harmoniously as stewards of this celestial globe, and for the benefit of future generations, we see the need for widening circles of caring communities that accommodate diversity for all.

By ‘caring’ we mean empathizing with the humanness in each of us while not tolerating the violence that humanness often causes.

‘Accommodating diversity’ means recognizing as a fact that each person is unique concerning ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-204



economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and other ideologies; and respecting that fact.

It entails exploring those differences in a safe and nurturing environment that transcends
simply tolerating one another’s
uniqueness.

This is the seed for a new cultural paradigm. 1, 2

The first two paragraphs are goals. The remainder ensure understanding those goals. I will elaborate on each paragraph.

First paragraph: We citizens of Planet Earth recognize that our home in the Universe is a delicate balance of forces and phenomena with a finite quantity of natural resources. We acknowledge that Mother Earth is fragile and that we are responsible for her health. We do not own Planet Earth. Resources are not our property to waste or exploit. We are an integral part of this planet with a responsibility to nurture it for future generations. That is the first non-negotiable goal.

In order to live more harmoniously as stewards of this celestial globe, and for the benefit of future generations, we see the need for widening circles of caring communities that accommodate diversity for all. That spells out the corrective action needed to fulfill our obligation. We have to change our thinking. We have to change our lifestyles. We have to truly love one another – everybody; no matter how different they may be or how injurious they may seem. That is the second non-negotiable goal.

1 The Proactive Nonviolence Cooperative (Proactive Co-op) is a group of people brainstorming proactive nonviolent strategies by e-mail. Collectively, they represent centuries of experience in nonviolent social change, including training and conflict resolution.

2 I have replaced this last sentence. It formerly read: “This is the seed for a democracy that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

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By ‘caring’ we mean empathizing with the humanness in each of us while not tolerating the violence that humanness often causes.

To
assure that ‘caring’ is not taken as rhetoric, an exact definition is supplied. ‘Caring’ is a strong word. When a person cares with great compassion, a strong pathos is shared.

Stewart Burns described how Martin Luther King Jr. “came to see collective pathos as the fundamental condition of both humanity and

[goodness] – potentially linking all humans with each other and with their inner [goodness].” (Baldwin and Anderson, p. 126) That is the context in which ‘caring’ is used.

‘Accommodating diversity’ means recognizing as a fact that each person is unique concerning ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and other ideologies; and respecting that fact.

It is not just tolerating someone, or passively accepting co-existence. It means recognizing the goodness in every person and striving to understand it.

It entails exploring those differences in a safe and nurturing environment that transcends
simply tolerating one another’s
uniqueness. Differences are explored through dialogue because dialogue leads to pathos sharing. A nurturing environment is one of trust with no fear of ridicule. Such an environment is fashioned, in creative steps where every person will eventually feel safe to talk about their differences.

This is the seed for a new cultural paradigm. It will transcend democracy, constitutions, and national borders. It heralds a new world order that will evolve in positive steps toward perfection.

This new way of life – this new universal culture -- starts with channeling all existing nonviolent activity through the Global Constructive Program. To illustrate why that is necessary, I will 206



review activities during Trump’s first 100 days and analyze how they align with a Global Constructive Program Donald Trump’s First 100 Days in the White House.

On 8 November 2016, Donald Trump became President elect. His pledge to curtail environmental controls, defund social programs, ban Muslims, deport illegal immigrants, and increase military spending –
all during the first 100 days – made it difficult for social justice activists to appear more than anti-Trump reactionaries. There was a lot of reaction but there was also a lot of potential for much more. It started coming together the day after the 2016 election.

Women’s March on Washington (January 21st).

On election day
night, retired Hawaiian lawyer Teresa Shook posted a Facebook invitation for women to protest in D.C. on inauguration weekend. The next morning she had over 10,000 RSVPs. Independently, fashion designer Bob Bland posted a similar invitation. The two women combined forces and the Women’s March on Washington was born.

There were growing pains. Phrases, procedures, and even the name for the March were adjusted to please various factions. Bland wrote that

“Asian and Pacific Islanders, Trans Women, Native Americans, disabled women, men, children, and many others” can find their place in this grass-roots movement. She asked white women to “understand their privilege, and acknowledge the struggle that women of color face.” (Tolentino)

That created backlash, mostly from white women. One posted: “Every woman in our culture is a 2nd class citizen, period.” Another replied:

“Whatever your race, you’re no better than Trump voters with that statement.” “Fuck you is my immediate response,” wrote another. A 207



white woman organizer posted her resignation saying: “Dear White Women; this is not about us.” (Tolentino) It was driven home that women
are not all of one mind and solely
defined by gender. Co-Chair

Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-

American Muslim, opined: “I
think it has been the downfall of
the progressive movement in the

United States that we have not
figured out how to organize all the

The Pussyhat – Icon of the
different progressive social justice Women’s March on Washington.

The pussycat-eared cap was
movements into one intersectional
motivated by Trump’s “locker-
movement.” (Felsenthal)

room boasts” of sexual conquest.

Nevertheless, the organizers3 successfully negotiated the issues. The March was set for January 21st; the day after Trump’s inauguration.

They garnered more cooperation by addressing issues and making it pro-women rather than anti-Trump. OkayAfrica founder Vanessa Wruble, Director of Operations on the National Committee, went further: “Yes, it’s about feminism – but it’s about more than that: it’s about basic equality for all people.” (Felsenthal) Sarsour called it “a stand on social justice and human rights issues ranging from race, ethnicity, gender, religion, immigration, and healthcare.” ( Wikipedia) “A statement on the Women’s March website says the event is about much more than women’s rights, and will ‘send a bold message … that women’s rights are human rights’.” (Press Release – Indigenous Women Rise)

3 Organizers of the March consisted of: 4 Co-Chairs, 5 Honorary Co-Chairs, 18 National Committee members in charge of specific areas, and 70 other coordinators for specific functions. They were all from diverse backgrounds and not all of the committee members and coordinators were women.

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LaDonna Harris (Comanche Nation), president of Americans for Indian Opportunity, was Honorary Co-Chair of the Women’s March on Washington. Indigenous Women Rise4 was the contingent of approximately 1,000 participants which led the D.C. event. Sarah Eagle Heart, CEO of Native Americans in Philanthropy, said: “We need to bring women together in a circle of prayer, but also to organize for afterward – how to come together to develop a platform and prioritize research efforts.” (Ditmer, January) Half-a-million people marched in D.C. More than 600 US cities had marches with a tally of 3.2 million. (Vick) It has been called the largest single-day protest in US history. ( Wikipedia) Some 198 marches took place in 84 other countries – on all seven continents, including Antarctica. ( Wikipedia) Total global participation is estimated at 5 million. (Ibid)

Co-Chair Tamika D. Mallory, Harlem native and outspoken civil rights activist, emphasized that maybe “it took your own pain to realize we’re all bound up in this thing together. For me, success for this March doesn’t happen on January 21. It happens after.” (Felsenthal)

First Inaugural 7th Generation Global Wopida Run (January 12th-

February 5th). A legend of the Seven Council Fires is that Chief Crazy Horse prophesied in 1877 that in seven generations the Sioux youth, guided by their elders, will re-unite not only all indigenous peoples of 4 Indigenous Women Rise is a partnership of many organizations: Advance Native Political Leadership, Native Americans in Philanthropy, Native Voice Network, Native Voices Rising, National Indian Women’s Resource Center, Ultra Violet, North American Region of Continental Network of Indigenous Women of the Americas, and other major groups working to promote indigenous issues.

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Turtle Island (North America) but all races of the world. Crazy Horse was a great warrior who led the Battle of Little Big Horn.

In 1877, Crazy Horse was having a pipe ceremony with Sitting Bull in the Black Hills. He related a vision he had. Crazy Horse’s words, according to author Molly Martin, were translated by Chief Joe Chasing Horse, a relative of the great chief, from a grandmother who was present at that council fire. Crazy Horse said:

 Upon suffering beyond suffering; the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world.

o A world filled with broken promises, selfishness, and separation.

o A world longing for light again.

 I see a time of seven generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again.

 In that day there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things, and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom.

 I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells.

 For when you are at that center within you and I am in that place within me, we shall be as one. (Larkin)

It is believed the 7th generation is the present one.

That would be

Generation-Z – Gen-Z. Lighting torches from the sacred fire at Oceti Sacowin on 12 January 2017, ceremonially extinguishing that fire, and six Sioux youth runners taking the torches of sacred fire on the First Inaugural 7th Generation Global Wopida Run, was all done to fulfill Crazy Horse’s prophecy.

Local 7th Generation Runners on the west coast, led by the Standing Rock runners, carried the Global Compassion Torch and the spirit of Standing Rock across the Golden Gate Bridge, to a welcoming ceremony on the Great Meadows of Fort Mason in San Francisco.

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“The First Inaugural 7th Generation Global Wopida Run carries the news that at this time of great global change, the promised time has come for the 7th Generation to rise and inspire all generations to heal and resolve ‘Standing Rocks’ everywhere on Mother Earth. Guided by their elders, the Runners carry the message that we are one Human Family Interrelated with all Life, and share a common destiny. The Hurt of One is the Hurt of All; the Honor of One is the Honor of All.”

(Press Release for the Inaugural 7th Generation Wopida Run)

A Day without Immigrants (February 16th). Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13769 on January 25th, barring immigrants from seven Muslim countries from entering the US. The next day, the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance, representing 19,000 taxi drivers, mostly Muslim and Sikh, called a one-hour strike at JFK International Airport.

From 6:00-7:00PM, to demonstrate the value of immigrants in America, NYC taxis would not pick up passengers arriving at International Terminal 4. Solidarity strikes took place at Philadelphia, San Francisco, Austin, Houston, and possibly other airports.

Inspired by the taxi strikes, Bodega owners called a one-day strike to show how much people depend on them. Bodegas are small deli/corner-grocery/convenience stores that stay open 24/7. They are ubiquitous in NYC and owned mostly by Yemeni Muslims. Some 1,000 Bodegas closed for 24 hours on February 2nd while the owners went to Brooklyn for protest and prayer. “Accordingly, it was jarring for many New Yorkers to see the ultimate symbol of consumer access suddenly close en masse.” (Chandler)

These strikes inspired A Day without Immigrants on February 16th.

Organized on social media, it called on immigrants to stay home from work, boycott purchasing at all stores, and keep children home from school. It demonstrated what the American way of life would be like 211



without immigrant labor. Excepting indigenous peoples, we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants.

A Day without a Woman (March 8th).

In October 2016, women’s
groups in Israel, Ireland, Italy, Russia,, South Korea, Poland, and Argentina planned a one-day International Women’s Strike. In February 2017, organizers of Women’s March on Washington started planning another event. The two sets of organizers joined forces as A Day without a Woman, to take place on International Women’s Day, March 8th.

More than 50 countries participated and approximately 400 separate events were planned globally. Participants were requested to: x

Abstaining from work – paid or unpaid.

x

Refraining from shopping except from shops owned by women or other minorities.

x Wear red to signify revolutionary love and sacrifice, even if unable to refrain from work.

Although many women in poverty could not participate, this massive one-day display of political muscle is something politicians could not ignore.

Tax March (April 15th). During his presidential campaign, Trump said he’d
release his tax
returns. They would tell
what Trump’s business
profits and losses were,
his deductions and what
he paid; and, most
important, his ties to
foreign businesses.

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But, after his inauguration he reneged on his promise. That prompted Vermont Law School professor Jennifer Traub to Tweet a suggestion for a nation-wide Tax March on April 15th. Writer Frank Lesser tweeted a similar proposal and it “turned into a movement overnight…”

(Stevens)

The Tax March was organized by a coalition of 70 social change groups. The coalition reported: “More than 125,000 people in more than 200 communities around the world marched on April 15th …”

(Tax March). If there was more global participation the media was lax on reporting it.

Although the media focused on Trump’s tax returns, March organizers present it as “a growing national movement that extends far beyond one day of marching. … we are tired of paying into a system that is rigged in favor of the super-rich. … any reform to the tax code should be about closing loopholes for the wealthy and big corporations and building an economy that invests in working families.” (Tax March)

March for Science (April 22nd).

Shortly after inauguration, Trump
signed a flurry of executive orders reducing the effectiveness of the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Health, and other social programs. He then appointed directors to these organizations who were hostile to their purpose. Scientists were gagged from discussing their work publicly and Trump indicated he would not make evidence-based policy decisions because research is unimportant. Information not to his liking was dismissed as “fake news.”

Red flags were thrown down in the scientific community. Harvard science history professor Naomi Oreskes said she couldn’t “think of a time when scientists felt the enterprise of science was being threatened

[as] in the way scientists feel now.” (St. Fleur) 213



Someone made a Reddit comment that scientists need a march.

University of Texas postdoctoral fellow Jonathan Berman started a Facebook page and soon had 300,000 members which eventually grew almost three fold.

NYC health educator Carol Weinberg also envisioned a scientists’

march. She and Berman became co-chairs of the March for Science on Earth Day, April 22nd. Partnerships were formed with dozens of science groups. Then the organizers opened the March to all diverse groups and protest movements concerned about science.

Ivy League scientists didn’t like associating with far left politics. Many said the march should not be political. Others pointed out that, by its nature, science is automatically political. Being political is not being partisan (skewed toward one political party). The March is about defending the integrity of science – that is, the scientific method and empiricism necessary to understand nature. That is everyone’s job.

What first appeared to be a snap to organize became complicated. The goal was not easily defined. Journalist Ed Yong searched the March for Science website and Facebook page to categorize why people were marching. He collated 21 goals. The March’s mission statement was adjusted to focus on diversity.

Co-chair Carol Weinberg believes the “discrediting of the scientific method is what we need to stand against.” (Yong) Beka Economopoulos, co-founder of a mobile natural history museum, agreed: “I think it’s a coming out party for a movement of engaged scientists and supporters, who are more outspoken about the ways in which science can serve the public good and the need to protect such science.” (Yong)

Diversity congealed to unity. Marches and rallies took place in more than 600 cities on six continents. Some 100 science organizations and societies endorsed the March. “We marched because science is critical 214



to our health, economies, food security, and safety. We marched to defend the role of science in policy and society.” (March for Science website)

Stanford science historian Robert N. Proctor classified the March as

“pretty unprecedented in terms of the scale and breadth of the scientific community that’s involved,” and stems from the “perception of a massive attack on sacred notions of truth that are sacred to the scientific community.” (Mooney)

People’s Climate March (April 29th).

The first People’s Climate

March was organized in 2014, prior to the UN Special Session on Climate. 400,000 people jammed the streets of New York for that one.

Both the 2014 and 2017 Marches were planned and organized by the People’s Climate Movement (PCM).

PCM was planning a March for Climate, Jobs, and Justice prior to the Trump Administration. But after Trump’s campaign rhetoric about abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and his subsequent administrative actions as president, the focus narrowed to a People’s Climate March. It would take place on April 29th, the 100th day of Trump’s 100-day agenda. The White House actions viewed at that time as a dangerous assault on the environment are: x

Less than a week after taking office, Trump gag-ordered scientists in the EPA and Dept. of Agriculture from Appointed Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator. Pruitt is close to Oklahoma’s fossil fuel industry and describes himself as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” (Pruitt) x

Ordered less discussion of scientific work with the media or the public; and froze federal grant spending at the EPA.

x

A Presidential Memorandum (January 23rd) froze all hiring in the Executive Branch. This deprived the EPA of 350 unfilled jobs including some 100 scientists and engineers.

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x

Three Presidential Memorandums (January 24th). Two approve resuming construction of DAPL and Keystone XL pipelines. The third mandates that all pipeline materials be made in the US.

x

Executive Order 13778 (February 28th) directs the EPA to revise or rescind Obama’s 2015 “Waters of the United States” rule – a Clean Water Rule that protected waters from pollution.

x

Trump’s first budget (March 16th) cut the EPA 31% – more than any other cabinet department. This deprived the EPA of $2.6 billion plus 3,200 jobs over and above those left unfilled by the hiring freeze.

x

Executive Order 13783 (March 28th) rescinds any regulations that unduly burden development of domestic energy sources. It allows oil, gas, and coal extraction on land previously protected.

x

EO 13783 also orders the EPA to review Obamas “Clean Power Plan” which capped emissions from powerplants, put limits on methane leaks, and placed a moratorium on federal coal leasing.

Trump said this will “lift restrictions on American energy, and allow this wealth to pour into our communities.” (Ditmer, April) x

Executive Order 13792 (April 26th) orders a review of the 554 million acres of land Obama designated as protected national monuments.

This potentially opens that land for fossil fuel extraction.

x

Executive Order 13795 (April 28th) orders a review of restrictions on offshore oil drilling that were put in place after the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It opens the possibility of offshore drilling in protected areas of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

x

Trump threatened to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (which he can’t do until November 2020). The 195
members set a global warming limit of no more than 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels.

x

The EPA will spend more than $36 million to cut its workforce by 1,000 people.

x

The day before the march, April 28th, the EPA purged its website of virtually all scientific data and information on global warming.

March Organizers put the D.C. number at 200,000 vociferous but peaceful marchers of all ages and color that filled Pennsylvania Avenue and sidewalks for 20 blocks. There were more than 370 sister marches in other US cities (including New York, Miami, Loa Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians) and still more in other countries (including Philippines, New 216



Zealand, Uganda, Kenya, Germany, Greece, United Kingdom, Portugal, Holland, Brazil, Mexico, and Costa Rico).

The Indigenous Bloc, organized by the Indigenous Environmental Network (EIN), led the March. “As Indigenous Peoples we recognize that we are connected. We know that when the Arctic melts, communities in the Global South are impacted. We know that when fossil fuel development destroys rainforests in the Amazon our relatives in the north will feel the effect.” (Press Release – Indigenous Rising Media)

Analysis of the First Hundred Days Actions.

All the 100-day actions were direct actions against specific wrongs.

Symbolic days or occasions were sometimes chosen but the actions were clearly direct.

They were Confrontational Nonviolence and demonstrated that global participation is readily forthcoming when actions address global issues.

The 100-day actions demonstrated two other capabilities necessary for successful mass actions. Many of them – especially the Women’s March and the March for Science – showed that masses of people from diverse backgrounds can work together. Also, the actions proved that masses of people can demonstrate nonviolently. These two things are important when we get to the stage for Global Satyagraha.

Three immigrant actions – the Taxi Strike, the Bodega Shutdowns, and A Day without Immigrants – were in reaction to Trump’s Muslim ban.

That chain of three actions took place on short notice and demonstrated excellent capability to organize quickly and still execute with precision.

The two women’s actions were organized internationally. Global mobilizations have been demonstrated.

Both were about women’s
rights although the Washington March organizers emphasized human 217



rights. Nevertheless, the name of the march and the pussyhats kept the media focused on women.

The Tax March focused on the United States and, thus, had scant international participation.

The difficulty of organizing the March for Science again illustrates the diversity that must be considered for effective global action. The multiple goals revealed a diversity that must always be anticipated.

Finally, on the 100th day, the People’s Climate March addressed an issue concerning every person on the planet. There was global solidarity and the global Confrontational Nonviolence was inspiring.

Again, much diversity was accommodated and nonviolence maintained.

I can see only one means of improving the First 100 Days Actions.

Had they had a Global Constructive Program to bind them together, follow-on activity would have been more successful. There were many claims that a movement was starting, but without the cohesion of a Constructive Program they were wishful claims. Lacking a Constructive Program, these actions were not proactive. They were not Satyagraha.

There was one exception. Satyagraha was performed by the First Inaugural 7th Generation Global Wopida Run and the indigenous blocs of the other Marches. They were unified by the Indigenous Way.

The groundwork has been laid and the potential has been demonstrated for Global Satyagraha. There is much hope that the Global Constructive Program can be achieved in the near future. To borrow Martin Luther King’s evaluation of the beloved community, the Global Satyagraha Movement is “already, but not yet.” (Cited by Stewart Burns in Baldwin and Anderson, p. 131)

Let me summarize:

1.

All the 100-day actions were reactive; they were all direct action, and they were all Confrontational Nonviolence.

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2.

Many of the 100-day actions crossed issues lines and they all demonstrated that huge masses can work together nonviolently.

3.

With the exception of indigenous participation, none of the 100-day actions were supported by a Constructive Program and, therefore, neither proactive nor Satyagraha.

4.

Although there was global solidarity during some of the actions, there was no Global Satyagraha because there was no Global Constructive Program.

The Global Constructive Program for the 21st Century, described above, is so all-encompassing that every issue of the 100-day actions could derive from it. Had it been in place, there would have been a thread of continuity running through all the 100-day activities, and a sustainability that would have actually become a global movement.

Will Global Satyagraha Work?

Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan studied 323 resistance campaigns (both violent and nonviolent) which took place between 1900 and 2006.

They found nonviolence to be almost twice as effective as violence.

Some of these victories were only temporary, but they were victories.

The frequency of nonviolent campaigns has increased since 1900 and so have their success rates. The success rate of violent campaigns, on the other hand, has decreased. (See Chenoweth and Stephan, pp. 6-7) Chenoweth said on Ted Talk: “No single campaign in that period failed after they’d achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5
percent of the population.” She added: “But get this: every single campaign that exceeded that 3.5 percent point was a nonviolent one.

The nonviolent campaigns were on average four times larger than the average violent campaigns.” (Fisher)

That sounds like a solid statistic with a good sampling over an extended period. But 3.5 percent of the 7.5 billion global inhabitants is 262.5
million people – about the population of the United States. That is pretty overwhelming.

219



A more realistic approach may be to look only at the Developed World.

It is the Undeveloped World that is suffering, but that suffering is caused by the Developed World.

If nonviolence organizations of the Developed World put the Global Constructive Program to work, the problems of the World’s poor would be greatly alleviated. So let’s target the Developed World.

According to the UN’s 2016 Human Development Report, 51 countries have a Human Development Index (HDI)5 of 0.800 or higher. (UNDP, p. 202) For the purpose of this guidebook I will call them the Developed World. They are listed in Appendix-D

Population of the Developed World is 1,354,320,257 people.

3.5
percent of that is approximately 47.4 million people. That still seems overwhelming but the situation becomes more focused when we understand that 300 million people in developed countries live in poverty. (UNDP, p. 30)6

It seems workable to obtain active and
sustaining support for a Global Constructive Program from less than one-sixth of those poverty-stricken people.

People who say Satyagraha only works in oppressed countries don’t realize how many oppressed people live in developed nations. When impoverished people see a chance to improve their lifestyle, support for Satyagraha will be forthcoming.

But first, the Global Constructive

Program must be in place.

5 The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic of life expectance, education, and income per capita indicators.

6 Applying the 3.5% of population rule to the US would mean 11.4 million proactivists could conduct a successful nonviolent campaign. With 40.6
million (12.7%) of US residents living in poverty it seems like fertile recruiting grounds for a proactive nonviolent revolution. Furthermore, 5.8%
of the US population lives in deep poverty – less than half the federal poverty level. (See The Souls of Poor Folk: A Preliminary Report, Institute for Policy Studies, December 2017, pp. 8 & 9).

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Initiating the Global Constructive Program.

The Global Constructive Program should reflect the spirit of global renewal clearly and concisely. It should not be encumbered with monotonous detail. It should be a framework that can be filled in to meet regional and local situations. The fleshed-out version for one area may be different from another. But the framework will be the same.

There are important reasons for keeping a common, worldwide framework:

1)

Everyone must know and appreciate that they are all working on the same program with the same goals. T

2)

It will keep thought and action focused on bringing out the goodness in everyone – even the evil-doer.

3)

Doers of evil will know they are facing a much greater force than just an uprising in their local area.

4)

It will keep renewal activity proactively directed against causes rather than reacting against doers..

5)

The means will be the end -- unity in nonviolence is the only means for a free and peace-sustaining end.

A large percentage of existing nonviolence organizations agreeing on a vision statement as a goal around which to focus their activity puts a Global Constructive Program in place.

The biggest obstacle is getting those organizations to think about a vision statement. Martin Luther King Jr. confronted that problem when trying to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He wrote: “Whil e the heads of each of these organizations were able and dedicated leaders with common aims, their separate allegiances made it difficult for them to come together on the basis of a higher unity.” (King, 1958) It is that higher unity that the Global Constructive Program provides.

It is that higher unity that the invisible government works so desperately to prevent. Yet, that is the step that must be taken if future 221



actions are to have beneficial effect.

We should dive in and start
swimming.

That gets us to Part III – Removing Barriers from the Goodness Field.

In the next chapter I will illustrate how The Indigenous Way is already in place as the foundation for a Global Constructive Program for all people of all color and all creeds.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

References and Further Reading for Chapter-10.

Baldwin, Lewis V. and Anderson, Victor; Editors; Revives My Soul Again: The Spirituality of Martin Luther King Jr., (Minneapolis, MN; Fortress Press; 2018).

Chandler, Adam; “The Yemeni Bodega Strike” ( The Atlantic, 4 February 2017).

Chenoweth, Erica and Stephan, Maria J.; Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (NY, Columbia University Press, 2011)

Deats, Richard L.; Marked for Life: The Story of Hildegard Goss-Mayr (NY, New York City Press, 2009)

Ditmer Renae; “Indigenous Women Front and Center at Anti-Trump DC

Protest” ( Indian Country Media Network, 24 January 2017.

Ditmer Renae; “Climate March to Raise Awareness and Alarms on Trump Policies” ( Indian Country Media Network, 27 April 2017.

Fisher, Max; “Peaceful Protest is Much More Effective than Violence for Toppling Dictators” ( The Washington Post, 6 November 2013) King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (Boston, Beacon Press, 1958).

King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood; 26 February 1965.

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Larkin, Molly; “Prophecy of Crazy Horse” (27 November 2012). Posted on Molly Larkin’s website at https://www.mollylarkin.com/prophecy-of-crazy-horse/

March for Science website; https://satellites.marchforscience.com Mooney, Chris; “Historians Say the March for Science Is ‘Pretty Unprecedented’” ( The Washington Post, 22 April 2017).

Press Release for The Inaugural 7th Generation Wopida Run (Compassion Games: Survival of the Kindest, 25 January 2017).

Press Release – Indigenous Rising Media, 30 April 2017.

Press Release – Indigenous Women Rise; “Indigenous Women Rise: Women’s March on Washington,” 10 January 2017.

Pruitt, E. Scott; “About the Attorney General: Brief Biography of Attorney General Scott Pruitt.”

http://web.archive.org/web/20170108114336/https://www.ok.gov/oag/Med ia/About_the_AG/

Stevens, Matt; “The Tax March Explained: Protesters Hope to Pressure Trump Into Releasing Returns” ( The New York Times, 15 April 2017).

Tax March; the coalition that organized the Tax March. Website at http://taxmarch.org

Tolentino, Jia; “The Somehow Controversial Women’s March on Washington” ( The New Yorker, 18 January 2017).

UNDP – United Nations Development Programme; 2016 Human Development Report (Released 21 March 2017)

Vick, Karl: “Perhaps the Largest Protest in US History Was Brought to You by Trump” ( Time magazine, 25 January 2017).

Wikipedia, “2017 Women’s March,” last edited 3 May 2017.

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I still have a dream, because, you know, you can’t give up on life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose the courage to be, that quality to go on in spite of all.

And so today I still have a dream.

– Martin Luther King, Jr. - 1967 Christmas Sermon 224

PART III

REMOVING BARRIERS FROM THE

GOODNESS FIELD

Prelude to Part III

… My first duty is to start, for the first time, to live as a member of the human race, which is no more (and no less) ridiculous than I am myself. And my first human act is the recognition of how much I owe everybody else. … the world was made by God and is good, and unless that world is our mother, we cannot be saints because we cannot be saints unless we first become human.

-- Thomas Merton, Journal entry, 3 March 1951.1

The oneness of the kingdom of humanity will supplant the banner of conquest, and all communities of the 1 Merton, Thomas [Edited by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo]; The Intimate Merton: His Life and His Journals, (New York, Harper One, 1999), p. 81.

earth will gather under its protection. No nation with separate and restricted boundaries … will exist. The United States of America will be known only as a name. Germany, France, England, Turkey, Arabia –
all these various nations will be welded together in unity. When people of the future are asked, ‘To which nationality do you belong?’ the answer will be, ‘The nationality of humanity …’ The people of the future will not say, ‘I belong to the nation of England, France, or Persia’; for all of them will be citizens of a universal nationality – the one family, the one country, the one world of humanity – and then these wars, hatreds, and strifes will pass away.

-- Abdu’l-Bahá; “The Promulgation of Universal Peace,” 16 April 1912.2

Part I of this Guidebook positively identified our opponent in the struggle for a just and peaceful world. We now know exactly where to focus our effort so we don’t waste energy in a fruitless manner. Part II explained the necessity of the Global Constructive Program to unify proactive nonviolence, and how nonviolence organizations can put it in place. So far, the two critical requisites for Global Satyagraha are understood and established. Now it is time to perform Global Satyagraha. That is the topic of Part III.

This Part III will delve into the obstacles our opponent erects to block the flow of goodness. Indigenous people of the world are leading the way to global unity by seeking a better world. They have narrowed the cause of evil down to the delusion that we own Mother Earth and can exploit her resources unrestrained. The obstacles will be fuller defined and ways to overcome them will be explained. Self-purification under the Nonviolent Warrior Ethos is an essential prerequisite for actualizing the vision of the Global Constructive Program.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

2 Excerpt from notes taken by Ahmad Sohráb of talk given by Abdu’l-Bahá at the Hotel Ansonia in New York. (Source: Bahá’į Reference Library)

11 – The Indigenous Way: Love and Respect for All that is Sacred

… we were all created to live in a harmonious, awake, loving and intelligent relationship with all other aspects of creation. This is what Mitakuye Owasin , “all my relations,”

of the Dakota, Nakota, Lakota nations means. It is what Mino-bimaadiziiwin, “The Good Life” means in the Anishinaabe original instructions. It is the power of the

“Good Mind” in the cosmology of the Iroquois nations.

Within the Rights of Nature-Mother Earth Movement, the similar concepts of Buen Vivir, meaning “Good Living,”

that has roots in the cosmovision of … Indigenous peoples of the Andes ....

This is the guiding principle of this movement demanding Earth jurisprudence that our Indigenous Environmental Network is a member of.

-- Tom B.K. Goldtooth, (Biggs, Goldtooth, and Lake, pp.

16-17)

The Indigenous Way started as a culture of survival. Recognizing that survival comes from nature, Indigenous people developed a reverence for Mother Earth. They saw the work of the Creator in everything.

They realized that water, forests, air, fire, and everything existing is endowed with a sacred, interoperating oneness.

Today the Indigenous Way is still a culture of survival, but of more serious proportions. It is a struggle for the survival of Mother Earth, herself. It is a battle against the selfishness and greed of the culture of entertainment. Mother Earth has been abused by illusions of ownership and the greed of exploitation. Her life cycles and balances have been upset and Mother Earth is in mortal danger.

Threats of extinction stem from improper management of so-called natural resources – failure to recognize that her constituent elements are living entities with rights to exist, function, and reproduce. Correcting this misconception requires a paradigm shift from ownership and exploitation to a new tradition embracing respect.



Recognition of life in everything is not new. The Shinto tradition recognizes a Kami in everything and worships that Kami. The Hindu religion recognizes a consciousness in everything. Indigenous people recognize a consciousness in everything, but not everything is aware of its consciousness.

In Chapter-7, I presented what I call the Fourth Viewpoint. It postulates that every thought event combines all relevant previous events since the beginning of time into a Matrix of Potentialities. In higher-order beings, one, and only one, of those potentialities will emerge as a conscious thought. In lower-order beings, such as rocks and water, that awareness does not happen. So when Ohiyesa says

“every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself,” that is not pagan superstition. (Eastman, Ch.

1) It is a concept well-grounded in scientific philosophy.

The Indigenous Way is a credible model for a 21st Century culture. In the remainder of this chapter I will explain that statement, starting with recognizing the rights of Mother Earth in our legal framework.

Mother Earth’s Rights – 21st Century Beginnings.

Indigenous people are striving to legalize Mother Earth’s rights. This reverses the notion that ecosystems are property to be owned and exploited. It emphasizes that respecting nature is required for survival.

Ecuador 2008. Due to Indigenous pressure, Ecuador was first to give Mother Earth a constitutional right. Article 71 of its 2008 Constitution says in part: “Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes. All persons, communities, peoples and nations 226



can call upon public authorities to enforce the rights of nature.” That is very revolutionary language.

That Article was tested in 2011 through a road-widening project that planned on dumping excavated material into the Vilcabamba River.

The Provincial Court of Justice of Loja ruled that “the defendant is violating the right that nature has to be fully respected in its existence and maintenance of its vital cycles, structures, functions, and evolutionary processes.” (Sentence No. 11121-2011-0010, 30 March 2011; cited in Greene)

Bolivia 2010. The ‘World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth’ was held during April 2010 in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It formulated the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth (See https://therightsofnature.org/universal-declaration/) .

The Conference also laid the foundation for the creation of the

‘International Rights of Nature Tribunal’ before which people can give public testimony on abuses of Mother Earth and the violation of the rights of Mother Earth. I will discuss these tribunals more below.

The ‘Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature’ (GARN) was created as a consequence of the Conference. GARN’s mission is to build a worldwide network that is collectively working together to recognize and effectively implement Rights of Nature laws in order to change the direction humanity is taking our planet. This also involves promoting the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and hosting International Rights of Nature Tribunals.

In December 2010, Bolivia passed the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth (Law 071). It defines Mother Earth as a dynamic living system comprised of all living systems and organisms which are interrelated, interdependent, complimentary, and which share a common destiny.

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United States 2012-13. In 2012, Indigenous leaders from North and South America held the ‘Conference on Rights of Mother Earth: Restoring Indigenous Life Ways of Responsibility and Respect’ at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. It explored ways to give Mother Earth legal rights under secular law.

In October 2013, Global Exchange sponsored a 3-day meeting on Mother Earth’s legal rights. Thirty two international social-movement leaders met at California’s Stillheart Institute on Ohlone land. The resulting Stillheart Declaration called for action aimed at “dispelling the arrogant belief that the earth ‘belongs’ to humans [which] will require fundamentally aligning global, regional, and local economic and legal structures to exist within natural systems.” (Admin.)

Aotearoa (New Zealand) 2014. The Te Urewera Act was negotiated between the Tēhoe tribe of the Māori people and the government to give Te Urewera National Park the rights of a person. Originally, the government had no intentions of giving the park to the tribe. But the tribe suggested that nobody own it – that the land owns itself. That led to the novel Te Urewera settlement.

Big Steps taken at COP21.

The 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change took place in Paris during November-December 2015. COP21 unanimously adopted the Paris Climate Agreement. It has been rightly criticized for setting goals without a timeline. It also allows ‘carbon markets’ whereby a country with low CO2 output can sell its unused CO2 quota to high polluters.

However, unofficial events around COP21 told another story.

Indigenous people from around the world participated because: 1) 228



Indigenous people have the wisdom and knowledge to confront global warming, and 2) the global representatives at COP meetings need to hear what Indigenous people have to say. Three historic events took place on the periphery of COP21.

Event #1. Alliance of Guardians of Mother Earth. Chief Raoni Metuktire, of the Kayapo Tribe in Brazil formed an alliance of this large assembly of Indigenous people. The resulting Alliance of Guardians of Mother Earth noted that participants represent 370
million people forming 5,000 different groups from 70 countries spread over five continents.

Two years later, Chief Raoni invited the Alliance to reconvene on Kayapo land in Brasilia, where they formalized the Declaration of Alliance of Guardians and Children of Mother Earth (see http://allianceofguardians.org/doc/call2017/AMNG_Global-Call-2017-

&-Annex_EN.pdf). It called for recognizing the sacredness of Mother Earth and legislating laws granting rights to ecosystems.

Event #2. Kawsak Sacha – the Living Forest. During COP21, the Kichwa Native People of Sarayaku, in the Ecuadorian Alps, promulgated their proposal of Kawsak Sacha (Living Forest). It recognizes the rights of Mother Earth and is central to maintaining a global ecological balance. The first paragraph of the Kawsak Sacha Declaration speaks to the depth of their spiritual connectedness: Kawsak Sacha is a living being, with consciousness, constituted by all the beings of the Jungle, from the most infinitesimal to the greatest and supreme. It includes all the beings of the animal, vegetable, mineral, spiritual and cosmic worlds, in intercommunication with human beings, giving them what is necessary to reanimate their psychological, physical and spiritual facets, thus restoring the energy, life and equilibrium of the original peoples. (http://kawsaksacha.org) 229



Everyone loves trees – they provide shady parks and beautiful forests but, more importantly, they provide oxygen to breathe. Deforestation of large areas diminishes the CO2-oxygen cycle. Coupled with fossil fuel burning, this increases CO2 in the atmosphere, leading to global warming. Kawsak Sacha helps to spread the Indigenous wisdom that Mother Earth and her ecosystems are our shared home.

Event #3. International Rights of Nature Tribunal.

The 2010

International Rights of Nature Tribunal – established in Bolivia – was reaffirmed as a permanent ‘people’s tribunal’ to “develop new legal principles, legal institutions and practices that are appropriate to address the critical challenges of the 21st Century.” (Biggs, Goldtooth, and Lake, p. 33) For the Indigenous people it is a forum for sharing their cosmovision and explaining their physical/spiritual connectedness with all nature.

Existing courts adjudicate laws that regulate activities causing Global Warming (euphemistically called Climate Change) and other hazards; thereby legalizing the destruction of Mother Earth. The Tribunal has freedom to hear and publicize cases that violate the laws of nature –
something not accepted in current legal frameworks.

The 3rd session of the Tribunal took place during COP21. Judges heard two days of testimony revealing crimes against Mother Earth.

The decisions rendered by the Paris Tribunal “will form a foundation for future local and global Rights of Nature Tribunal hearings, and will give moral weight to civil movements everywhere demanding climate justice.” (Tribunal News Release).

The 5th International Rights of Nature Tribunal was held on December 2-13, 2019 in Santiago, Chili; concurrently with COP25 which had been moved from Santiago to Madrid, Spain because of street demonstrations. The Tribunal remained in Santiago to support the 230



Chilean social and environmental movement. The Tribunal addressed threats to water and life from the salmon industry, mining, carbon extraction, and deforestation in Pantagonia, Chile; lithium mining in the Chilean Atacama Desert; and fracking in Vaca Muerta, Argentina.

Amazon perils in Ecuador, Columbia, Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru was proposed as a case for the 6th Rights of Nature Tribunal to be held in 2020; with additional fact finding taken place in the meantime.

Standing Rock Spreads Wopida Globally.

Standing Rock provided a massive injection of unity and solidarity among Indigenous peoples worldwide. Donald Trump’s executive actions trashing the environment further solidified that unity. The Indigenous Way is rising worldwide.

Aotearoa (New Zealand) 2017. On 15 March 2017, the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) treaty between the New Zealand Government and the Whanganui tribe of the Māori people gave the Whanganui River the legal rights of a person. Minister Chris Finlayson said: “I know some people will say it’s pretty strange to give a natural resource a legal personality, but it’s no stranger than family trusts, or companies, or incorporated societies.” (NZN) Tribal negotiator Gerrard Albert added: “Māori cosmology understands we are part of the universe … the mountains and rivers are our ancestors. Our cultural identity as a people is inseparable from the river – it is more than water and sand, it is a living spiritual being.”

(Biggs, Goldtooth, and Lake. p. 24) Known as river people, the Whanganui tribe chant: Ka au te awa. Ko te awa ko au (I am the river.

The river is me).

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The next phase of the 2014 Te Urewera settlement (described above) and the Te Awa Tupua treaty (described here) “includes educating and bringing pakeha (European New Zealander) residents into the Māori world view in a way that allows everyone to be connected to it spiritually and holistically . . .” (Biggs, Goldtooth, and Lake, pp. 25-26)

India 2017.

Five days later, March 20th – citing the New Zealand precedent – the High Court for the Himalayan State Uttarakhand declared the Ganges River and its main tributary, the Yamuna River, and all of their tributaries, to be “legal and living entities having the status of a living person with all corresponding rights, duties, and liabilities.” (Safi)

Over a billion Indians revere “Mother Ganges” as sacred. Polluting or otherwise damaging those rivers, according to the new court order, is tantamount to harming a person. But, unlike New Zealand’s precedent, the Ganges and Yamuna do originate in that State but they flow beyond its jurisdiction.

On July 7th, the Uttarakhand state government appealed to the Supreme Court of India, which stayed the lower court’s decision until the appeal is decided.

Later that month the Supreme Court overruled the state court’s ruling.

Nevertheless, in a separate decision in April, the same High Court of Uttarakhand ruled the Gangotri and Yamunotri Glaciers, which feed into those rivers, also have the legal rights of a living being. Likewise for to Himalayan waterfalls, lakes, meadows, and forests in the State of Uttarakhand. These entities do lie within the state’s borders and the state court does have jurisdiction.

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Columbia 2017. Magistrates of the Constitutional Court in Columbia ruled in May 2017 that the Atrato River has the constitutional rights of a person. Aimed at stopping environmental destruction from gold mining, the court wrote: ”Now is the time to start taking the first steps toward effectively protecting the planet and its resources before it is too late.” (Quoted in Biggs, Goldtooth, and Lake, p. 27) The Atrato flows from the Andes to the Caribbean Sea through one of the world’s densest tropical rainforests. Including tributaries and wetlands, it covers about 50% of the state of Chocó. Mining pollution deprives people of clean water and affects cultural values. Tierra Digna – a social justice group – had petitioned for this protection since 2015.

The court ordered the Columbian government to “construct a mining and energy policy in accordance with social and environmental needs”

and strengthen “its institutional presence to confront effectively all illegal mining.” (Emblin) The Ministry of Environment must implement a plan to decontaminate the river’s tributaries and set up a panel of experts to enforce the court order.

United States 2017. In September 2017, the Colorado River Ecosystem v. State of Colorado lawsuit was filed in US District Court. It sought that the river and its ecosystem possesses the rights of a person. It is the first federal lawsuit in the US seeking to establish legal rights for Mother Earth.

But on December 3rd the plaintiffs cancelled their own lawsuit. The Colorado attorney general threatened: “If you choose not to voluntarily withdraw your amended complaint … the defendant will pursues all sanctions and remedies available …” Sanctions for “pleadings with improper purpose or frivolous arguments … typically carry heavy 233



fines.” (Fendt) Not wishing to waste time, energy, and resources on sanction litigation, the plaintiffs complied.

Nevertheless, it is interesting that in federal “court records the party listed as filing the lawsuit was, in fact, ‘The Colorado River Ecosystem’, despite the ecosystem’s apparent lack of legal standing to file such a lawsuit.” (Fendt)

In another 2017 event on October 27th:, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF)1 and Tulane University Law School hosted the ‘First US Rights of Nature Symposium’ at Tulane University in New Orleans. The array of presenters was impressive: x

Hugo Escheverria – Ecuadorian environmental lawyer involved in recognizing Mother Earth’s legal rights.

x

Mari Margil – Associate director of CELDF and leader in drafting Ecuador’s 2008 constitution.

x

Natalia Greene – Ecuadorian instrumental in developing Article 71 of Ecuador’s 2008 constitution.

x

Michelle Malone – Manager of Australia’s Rights of Nature Tribunals.

x

Shrawan Sharma – Collaborates with CELDF on secure legal rights for the Nepalese Himalayas.

x

Pella Thiel – Co-founder of the ‘Swedish Transition Network’ and

‘End Ecocide Sweden’.

x

Winona Duke – Founder of Minnesota’s ‘White Oaks Land Recovery Project’ on White Earth Reservation.

x

Shannon Biggs – Co-founderd the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN).

x

Bill Greendeer (Rekumani) – Member of the Deer Clan of the Hoočak Nation of Wisconsin – a clan dedicated to protecting Mother Earth and Sacred water from pipelines, fracking, and open-pit mining.

x

Deon Ben – Navajo focusing on incorporating traditional ecological knowledge into the land management.

1 CELDF is a pioneer in the ‘Rights of Mother Nature’ movement. It helped with the Ecuador Constitution and was a legal advisor in the Colorado River litigation. It works in many countries including India, Nepal, and Australia.

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x Casey Camp-Horinek (Zhuthi) – Outspoken tribal elder/actress/activist against fossil fuel production.

I have listed these presenters to illustrate the dynamics and global interaction of indigenous peoples in promoting respect for Mother Earth

The foregoing is not a comprehensive list of activities to promote the rights of Mother Earth. To commemorate International Mother Earth Day on 22 April 2019, the United Nations General Assembly compiled a report on activities that promote interactive dialogue on Harmony with Nature. That report is a much more complete listing of national legislation granting rights to Nature, pending legislation granting such rights, and policy trends relating to the rights of Nature. (See A/74/236)

Global Warming.

At the November 2017 COP23 meeting in Bonn, Germany; Indigenous people falsified the claim that ‘Carbon Markets’ are the solution to Global Warming. They are a shell game to juggle quotas but have no effect on overall carbon reduction. Carbon Markets allow over-polluters to continue over polluting by buying licenses from countries that don’t use their pollution quota.

The Climate Justice Alliance2 and the Indigenous Environmental Network3 took this occasion to release their 30-page report, Carbon Pricing: A Critical Perspective for Community Resistance (Volume 1).4

2 The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) is an alliance of over 50 community organizations, movement networks, and support organizations on the frontlines of the climate crisis in North America. CJA’s constituencies are rooted in Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, and poor white communities. ( Carbon Pricing, p. 14) 235



It
helps people
understand the technical
information associated
with global warming and
how the invisible
government spins that
information for
corporate profits.

Nigerian Nnimmo

Bassey said: “I think this
is a very significant
event today launching
this [report] because the
future of the planet will
depend on communities
standing strong against
false solutions. COP is
nothing but a carbon
stock exchange …”

(GJEP Staff)

COP24 was held at Katowice, Poland in December 2018. Article 6 of the Paris Agreement suggests voluntary action by nations to reduce CO2 emissions. But Article 6 also allows carbon trading.

3 The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is a network of Indigenous communities worldwide that was formed by community-based American Indians, Alaska Natives and First Nations of Canada – including youth, women, elders, traditional and spiritual Indigenous societies – to address the rights of Indigenous peoples and environmental and economic justice issues in N. America. ( Carbon Pricing, p. 15; and Biggs, Goldtooth, and Lake, p. 19) 4 PDF copy available at http://co2colonialism.org/

236



Over 150 organizations sponsored ‘The People’s Demands of COP24’

addressing the Article 6 good faith expectations of voluntary carbon reduction, and the counter-productivity of trading carbon.

1.

Keep fossil fuels in the ground.

2.

Reject false solutions that are displacing real, people-first solutions to the climate crisis.

3.

Advance real solutions which are just, feasible, and essential.

4.

Honor climate finance obligations to developing countries.

5.

End corporate interference in and capture of the climate talks.

6.

Ensure developed countries honor their ‘Fair Shares’ for largely fueling this crisis.

Fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden admonished the final plenary session of COP24 for its failure to reverse global warming: You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.

Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.

We need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground, and we need to focus on equity. And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, maybe we should change the system itself. (Thunberg) Just weeks prior to COP25 in Madrid, the IEN and CJA released Volume 2 of Carbon Pricing.5 It addresses the fallacies of Article 6
of the Paris Agreement which was the center of debate during COP25. At the time of this writing, COP25 decisions are not yet available.

Pipelines.

Prior to the election of Donald Trump, the Keystone XL addition to TransCanada’s pipeline system was halted by Indigenous and environmental resistance. By the end of 2016 the Dakota Access 5 PDF copy available at http://co2colonialism.org/

237



Pipeline (DAPL) was stalled at the Missouri River because of faulty environmental studies and massive support for protecting Treaty Lands.

Then Trump took over the White House.

Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). On his second full day in office, Trump issued a ‘presidential memo’ directing the Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) to grant an easement for DAPL to drill under the Missouri River. Nobody in the new administration consulted with the Sioux.

On 14 February 2017 the Standing Rock Sioux filed a motion for summary judgment with the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The judge was asked to rule on three legal issues: 1.

Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to complete a full EIS that examines all the risks and alternatives of significant projects.

2.

Treaty Rights. The Sioux have undisputed treaty rights to the area where the pipeline will go under the river. These rights guarantee against any federal action that’ll harm the reservation water supply.

3.

Trump’s Decision. The extent to which an administration can reverse the previous administration’s decisions is limited.

Trump’s policy reversal was not adequately justified.

The court pondered the motion while the pipeline was completed.

Four months later, on June 14th, Judge James Boasberg ruled that Trump’s decision to restart the pipeline violated the law in all three of those issues. However, rather shut DAPL down pending litigation, he requested more briefs. Oil continued to flow.

A week later the court set a schedule for continuing the lawsuit including a timeline for arguments regarding shutting down the pipeline while the Corps performs the EIS. The Corps filed its brief but did not commit to running an EIS. Oil continued to flow.

238



On August 7th the Standing Rock Sioux were joined by the Cheyenne River Sioux in filing a comprehensive brief on why the pipeline should be turned off pending an acceptable EIS. The Corps claimed it could possibly justify not requiring a full EIS so the judge didn’t shut down the pipeline. The Corps fiddled. Oil continued to flow.

In mid-November, another pipeline spilled 200,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota. That prompted the judge to order three periphery measures the Sioux had requested:

1.

The Sioux must be included in planning an oil-spill response near Lake Oahe.

2.

An independent audit of DAPL’s compliance with the permit with the Sioux assisting in auditor selection.

3. DAPL must file reports on all incidents and repairs to the pipeline.

Paper shuffling continued, and so did the flow of oil. Note that essentially all activity regarding Standing Rock since closing Oceti Sakowin camp has been litigation, with much stonewalling. A similar situation in the Civil Rights movement prompted civil-rights lawyer Michelle Alexander to warn:

Civil rights advocacy has not always looked the way it does today. …

from the days of the abolitionist movement through the Civil Rights Movement – racial justice advocacy has generally revolved around grassroots organizing … In recent years, however, a bit of mythology has sprung up regarding the centrality of litigation to racial justice struggles. The success of … Brown v. Board of Education has created a widespread perception that civil rights lawyers are the most important players … With all deliberate speed, civil rights organizations became professionalized and increasingly disconnected from the communities they claim to represent. (Alexander, p. 225) We must remember that litigation is played on the opponent’s playing field. It is sometimes necessary, but it should never be the main approach. It must never replace Proactive Nonviolence.

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Alberta Tar Sands. Many pipelines are under construction but for this Guidebook I will focus on the Athabasca oil sands (Tar Sands) in Alberta province of Canada. It is a large reserve of extremely heavy bitumen crude oil which has been called one of the largest and dirtiest pools of carbon on the planet.

The Tar Sands occupy a Boreal forest almost the size of Florida. To extract oil, the forest must be clear cut. Then the bitumen tar is sluiced 240



from the sand by water jet. It takes 2-4 barrels of water to produce one barrel of bitumen.

Huge lakes of toxic wastewater sit next to the Athabasca River, which is the primary source of food and water for Indigenous people. An estimated billion gallons of toxic waste leaks into the river each year –
destroying Indigenous cultural lifestyle and devastating their health with polluted water, fish, and game.

Tar Sands bitumen is thicker than regular crude and has a higher sulphur content, which makes it more toxic. It must be suspended in water in order to be pumped through a pipeline. Over 800 bitumen oil pipeline spills have occurred in Canada on Indigenous land Three major new pipelines are planned to carry Tar Sands crude from Alberta Province to various coastal destinations – TransCanada’s Keystone XL (to the Gulf Coast), Enbridge’s Line 3 (to the Great Lakes), and Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline (to the Pacific).

TransCanada’s Keystone XL (KXL). The KXL route cuts through the Ogallala Aquifer – one of the world’s largest aquifers which lies under portions of eight states and 27% of the irrigation land in the US. KXL
also cuts through much private land. Some states allow TransCanada to invoke eminent domain if the land owner refuses to negotiate.

Four days after being sworn in, Donald Trump reactivated the $8-billion KXL project. Unlike DAPL, it could not restart quickly.

TransCanada had to re-apply for permits and re-do pipeline negotiations.

What did happen immediately was opposition. Indigenous people, land owners, and environmentalists signed a ‘Pledge of Resistance’ to do whatever they are able, to prevent pipeline construction.

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Joye Braun (Cheyenne River Sioux) said: “[Trump] effectively called a war against the Great Sioux Nation, saying that he didn’t care about Indigenous people … We will stand and we will fight using nonviolent action and prayer to protect our people, to protect our land, and to protect our water.” (McKenna)

On 23 March 2017, Trump signed a presidential permit giving TransCanada the official go-ahead.

Indigenous campaign organizer Dallas Goldtooth said: “Donald Trump should expect far greater resistance than ever before. We do expect resistance spirit camps to be erected along the route of the KXL
pipeline. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe have both sent statements that they are willing to hold physical space in resistance to the construction of this pipeline and will adhere to the clear principles of nonviolent direct action as well.” (Johnson) Larry Wright, Jr., chairman of Nebraska’s Ponca Tribe, added: “Our tribe had no consultation in the process and what it would mean for our people and our sites that we hold dear and sacred.” (Johnson) On May 17th, representatives from the Blackfoot Confederacy (Canada), the Great Sioux Nation (US), and the Ponce Tribe (US) signed a Declaration Opposing Oil Sands Expansion and the Construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The preamble reads: We, The First People, were and remain the Stewards of the land and with this declaration renew our vow to carry that sacred obligation in defense of our Mother, the Earth, and all born of her body and nurtured at her breast who are no longer heard amidst the dissonance of industrialization and corporate domination.

Indigenous people partnered with homeowners and environmentalists to install renewable energy generators in the pipeline’s path. Called Solar XL, this plan forces TransCanada to destroy renewable energy installations in order to install a fossil fuel pipeline. Placement of panels started in July 2017.

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The Solar XL coalition includes the Indigenous Environmental Network, Native Organizers Alliance, Brave Heart Society, Dakota Rural Action, Bold Nebraska, and 350.org. Some 17,000 people have promised to protect the solar panels if TransCanada tries to dismantle them. That’s more than the maximum at Standing Rock.

KXL will also violate treaty rights of the Cheyenne River Tribe in South Dakota. Tribal chairman Howard Frazier asked: “How many more years of taking will you celebrate before Mother Nature will no longer allow it? Do not forget that we are ruled by a law of nature that cannot be trumped by man-made laws.” (Cheyenne River Sioux News Release) Representatives of tribal nations met on the Lower Brule Reservation in South Dakota to revitalize the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred from Tar Sands Projects. See: https://www.ienearth.org/international-treaty-to-protect-the-sacred-from-tar-sands-projects/

Besides the Kul Wicasa Lakota of the Lower Brule Reservation, signatories include the Sisseton Wahpeton Tribe of Lake Traverse Reservation, the Oglala Lakota of Pine Ridge, the Ihanktonwan Nakota of Yankton, the Hunkpati Dakota of Crow Creek, and the Sicangu Lakota of Rosebud – all in South Dakota.

The Ponca Nation of

Oklahoma also signed.

Kul Wicasa headsman, Lewis Grassrope, said: “We, the Oyate of Wiconi un tipi [People of life in a tepee] have set up camp in Kul Wicasa, … We are here to continue to restore balance and save Mother Earth from any atrocious acts against her. Our charge is to be good relatives and stand in unity with all creation ...” (IEN News Release) On 8 November 2018, Federal Judge Brian Morris issued an order stopping Trump’s presidential permit. He chastised Trump’s dismissal of scientific findings that had stopped KXL in 2015. He also ordered a complete analysis of the impact on Indigenous lands and current data on oil spill risks and effects.

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On 15 March 2019 the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the November injunction.

Two weeks later Trump revoked his stalled permit and simply issued another for KXL to continue. Duh!

Enbridge’s Line 3.

Enbridge Energy Ltd.’s $7.5 billion, 36-inch diameter Line 3 is planned to traverse 1,031 miles from Hardisty, Alberta; through Saskatchewan and Manitoba provinces in Canada; then through Minnesota in the US to Superior, Wisconsin. The 340
miles in the US is expected to cost US$2.9 billion.

Line 3 is advertised as a replacement for the ‘aging,’ ‘corroded,’

existing line that was built in the 1960s.

In the US, Line 3 route follows the old line only to Clearbrook. From there, a new corridor is proposed.

According to Enbridge, the old line will be abandoned and decommissioned. That means it will stay in the ground with all the 244



danger and contamination that entails. It can then be quietly

‘recommissioned.’ Considering the push for Tar Sands oil, that seems to be a strong possibility..

Minnesota is known as “The Land of a Thousand Lakes.” The state actually has 11,842 lakes larger than 10 acres. That’s a lot of water to pollute. The pipeline route also passes through three main North American watersheds, including the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

The proposed new route also “threatens critical resources on Ojibwe treaty lands, where tribal members retain rights to hunt, fish, gather, hold ceremony, and travel.” (Chow)

The Line 3 final EIS was released by the Minnesota Commerce Department on 17 August 2017. Two findings were (1) the pipeline would have significant adverse impacts on Indigenous people and (2) the State of Minnesota has no need for another crude oil pipeline.

Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) found four
deficiencies.6 A corrected final EIS was issued 12 February 2018. The PUC approved it but Enbridge must still show a need for the pipeline.

The PUC asked Administrative Law Judge Ann O’Reilly to submit her recommendations because she was presided over litigation challenging Line 3, and had heard much testimony from both sides.

O’Reilly reported on April 23rd that the route endangers environmental sensitive Mississippi headwaters and crosses Ojibwe Treaty Land with rights to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice. She recommended a permit only if Line 3 follows the old route as an in-trench replacement, with the old line removed.

6 The Commerce Deparment performs and prepares the EIS and, if adequate, the PUC issues the permit.

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Nevertheless, the PUC on June 28th approved Enbridge’s preferred route through Treaty Land if Minnesota’s need for the pipeline is shown.

Citizen groups, two Ojibwe bands, and the Commerce Department petitioned the PUC to review its approval. The PUC
refused.

On February 12th, under a new governor, the Department of Commerce again appealed to the PUC to review its findings – the initial step for a new litigation if the PUC issues a permit. The citizen groups and two Ojibwe bands, along with a Chippewa band, were expected to do likewise.

Approval by the PUC is not the final step. Water and soil permits are required from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the state’s Pollution Control Agency, and the Corps.

Resistance is brewing because “it is essential that we carry the energy from [Standing Rock] forward, to many other places where Indigenous people are resisting the fossil fuel infrastructure projects that threaten our lands and water. We are not fighting a pipeline, we are building a movement. …” (Maxwell)

Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion.

Kinder

Morgan’s $7.4 billion (Canadian) Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion is planned to carry Tar Sands crude 715 miles from Edmonton, Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia. It will pass over 1,309 pristine waterways and five national parks.

The proposed route follows a smaller line which began operation in 1953. Capacity will be almost tripled. Oil tanker traffic through the Salish Sea and Strait of Juan de Fuca will also increase from 5 ships per month to 35, and raise the oil spill risk to 95% probability.

The

Canadian National Energy Board warned in 2016 that the pipeline would increase greenhouse gas emissions and tanker traffic 246



The most formidable
opponents are the

Indigenous Secwepemc
people. 322 miles of the
proposed route passes
through their land. In June

2017, members of the

Secwepemc Nation
released the Secwepemc

Declaration on Protecting

Our Land and Water
against the Kinder Morgan

Trans Mountain Pipeline

(hereinafter called ‘the Declaration’).

The first sentence reads: “We, the Secwepemc, have never ceded, surrendered, or given up our sovereign title and rights over the land, water, or resources within Secwepemcul’ecw [the Secwepemc Nation].”

Understanding that sentence is crucial to understanding the Secwepemc threat to pipeline construction. When the British declared sovereignty over British Columbia, they did not make treaties with the First Peoples as they had done in the rest of Canada. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 stated that “Indian land” had to be ceded to the British before it can legally be considered part of British Columbia. That Proclamation was codified in the Constitution Act, 1982.

When Secwepemc say they “have never ceded, surrendered, or given up” sovereignty, they are stating their position as a sovereign nation. A pipeline permit from Secwepemcul’ecw is just as much needed, legally, as a permit from the Canadian government.

The Declaration continues: “Kinder Morgan has signed deals with a few Indian Band Councils” but they “have no independent decision-247



making power regarding access to our Secwepemc territory,” and we

“collectively hold title and governance regarding Secwepemcul’ecw and the collective consent of the Secwepemc is required for any access to our land, waters and resources.”

The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized that aboriginal title to their land gives Secwepemcul’ecw a collective right that is held as a nation.

The Declaration also explains that the federal government unilaterally approved the original pipeline in 1951, without Secwepemc consent, because the Indian Act excluded Indigenous participation. The Secwepemc are now better informed and are determined that history will not repeat itself.

After expressing solidarity with all Indigenous people and all other people energized by Global Wopida, they conclude the Declaration by invoking international law:

We, the Secwepemc, have the inherent right to self-determination, which is also recognized under international human rights law. Canada is a signatory to the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which includes the rights to freely determine our political status and

[to] freely pursue our economic, social and cultural development. This fundamental international legal principle is also enshrined in the UN

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [UNDRIP]. It is further expressed through the principle of Indigenous free, prior, and informed consent in UNDRIP and international environmental agreements.

The Indigenous Network on Economics and Trade prepared an alternative risk assessment titled Standing Rock of the North: An Updated Summary Risk Assessment of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion. It explains both ‘Indigenous jurisprudence’ and ‘risks to investors’; neither of which Kinder Morgan had declared when seeking funding.

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The Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs started a campaign to inform banks and lending institutions of these ‘undeclared risks’, and persuade them to disinvest from fossil fuel pipelines. Dutch Bank ING
stated that it will no longer finance projects associated with Canadian tar sands.

The Secwepemc Women’s Warrior Society vowed to prevent ‘man camps’ that temporary shelter large numbers of pipeline workmen.

Kinder Morgan had applied for a permit to build a 1000-man Blue River Campsite on 40 acres of Secwepemc land.

Women Warriors’ November 2017 Women’s Declaration against Kinder Morgan Man Camps stated: “We have never provided and will never provide our collective free,
prior, and informed consent – the
minimal international standard –
to the Kinder Morgan Trans

Mountain Pipeline Project or the

Kinder Morgan Man Camps.”

(Secwepemc News Release)

When Woman Warrior Kanahus

Manuel was at Standing Rock,
she lived in a tiny house for three
months. In June 2017 she introduced the idea of building these to block the pipeline.

The Tiny House Warriors campaign was born. Ten of these 7x12-foot homes were placed in locations that directly obstruct the pipeline route.

Poverty stricken Secwepemc families were chosen to occupy these houses which are insulated, equipped with wood-burning stoves and solar panels, and decorated with aboriginal artwork. Supporters volunteered to build and haul them to their assigned location.

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Tiny houses reestablish village sites and assert Secwepemc jurisdiction to protect their land. It is tantamount to being a property owner with whom a right-of-way must be obtained.

The only way the pipeline could go through would be to forcibly remove the tiny houses. But Indigenous people have warned: “If the Canadian government [uses] executive force and militarized action against Indigenous land protectors, a growing coalition of civil society allies and Indigenous nations are preparing for their land defense. …

The specter of ‘Standing Rock North’ looms large.” (Standing Rock of the North)

On 30 August 2018, Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal halted construction of the pipeline, saying the pipeline review process was

“impermissibly flawed.” There were two deficiencies: (1) failure to address increased tanker traffic was a fatal error and (2) failure to consult with First Nation People because they were deemed a minor impact.

Kinder Morgan had been negotiating to sell the pipeline project to the Canadian Government. Less than an hour after the court decision, Kinder Morgan shareholders signed approval of the sale and bowed out of the picture. The dilemma was now in the hands of Pierre Trudeau’s government.

There was silence for several months. Then, on 22 February 2019, the National Energy Board again approved the pipeline. Trudeau gave his blessing on June 18th for construction to begin.

A Reuters news dispatch dated 21 August 2019 reported construction underway in Alberta Province and at the Burnaby storage terminal in British Columbia; and if remaining permits are approved as planned, completion is projected for 2022. (Williams) On 18 September 2019
the Brirish Columbia Court of Appeals declared that the existing environmental assessment is still valid. Nevertheless, at the time of this 250



writing I can find no mention of negotiations with the Secwepemc Nation.

Conclusion.

I have barely touched on Indigenous protest . There are many other pipelines under construction. There is desecration of Sacred Lands and waters. I will list a few:

x

Kanaka Maoli people resisting a 30-meter telescope on Mauna Kea, their Sacred Mountain in Hawaii.

x

Indigenous people struggling to keep oil-drilling rigs away from wildlife refuges (such as the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska) and national monuments (like Bears Ears in Utah).

x

Others defending their reservations and sacred lands from the fossil-fuel industry – such as Aboriginal Garawas in Australia’s Northern Territory, Indigenous Mapuche women in Argentina’s Pentagonia; and the success of Ecuador’s Waorani tribe in preventing oil exploration in ancestral Amazonian lands.

x

Platinum miners of Marikana, South Africa, are still demanding a full apology and just compensation for the families of 44 miners killed in the 2012 massacre.

x

Indigenous peoples in the southern Philippines still seek their right to ancestral domains, self-empowerment, social justice, and human rights.

x

Years after being devastated by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, Puerto Ricans are working to power themselves, feed themselves, educate themselves and become self-sufficient.

x

Indigenous people prevented construction at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, of a concentration camp to imprison their relatives that crossed the so-called border seeking asylum.

x

Western Shoshone people resist making Yucca Mountain on the Nevada Test Site a nuclear waste dump

The list goes on. Indigenous actions are not scattered instances in isolated areas. First Nation people everywhere on this planet are meeting and planning and struggling. Global Wopida is spreading.

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Indigenous people know with certainty that they are part of a strong and growing global movement.

Big Oil and their CEOs got a shot across the bow when 60 major investors urged oil and gas companies to be more responsible regarding global warming. Their May 2018 open letter to Financial Times read: For the Paris Climate Agreement to succeed, the oil and gas industries must be more transparent and take responsibility for all its emissions.

… As long-term investors, representing more than $10.4 trillion in assets, the case for climate change is clear. We are keenly aware of the importance of moving to a low-carbon future for the sustainability of the global economy and prosperity of our clients. (Quoted in Paraskova)

All the problems we face today can be traced back to exploitation of Mother Earth. Treating ecosystems as property has brought humanity to the brink of climate and ecological collapse. We desperately need a cultural shift toward understanding Mother Earth as a living entity governing all life with her cycles and balances, and that she has inherent rights that must be respected.

No expert is more qualified to teach this respect than Indigenous peoples of the world who have been experiencing natural processes for millennia. The Indigenous Way can rescue us. It is the Way to understand nature and the Way to love Mother Earth. That includes learning to love one another because we are all part of Mother Earth.

The Indigenous Way is the closest we have to the Global Constructive Program today.

It is a foundation upon which the more inclusive Global Constructive Program is being built for tomorrow.

In this chapter I have depicted how the Indigenous Way has united Indigenous people worldwide in solidarity to protect Mother Earth.

The Indigenous Way is not a document or an organization. It is a ‘Way of Life’ they have pursued for millennia and has been handed down through generations. In the next chapter I will explore ways to spread 252



the energy further by uniting existing nonviolent initiatives into Global Satyagraha.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

References and Further Reading for Chapter-11.

A74/236; United Nations General Assembly Report; Harmony with Nature: Report of the Secretary-General, 26 July 2019. At https://therightsofnature.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-UN-REPORT-ON-HARMONY-WITH-NATURE-1.pdf.

Admin.; “New Release: A Call to Action for Nature’s New Economy,”

( Global Exchange, 20 February 2014).

Alexander, Michelle; The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (NY, The New Press; 2010, 2012).

Biggs, Shannon; Goldtooth, Tom B.K.; and Lake, Osprey Orielle; Editors; Rights of Nature and Mother Earth: Rights-Based Law for Systemic Change, (Movement Rights; Indigenous Environmental Network; Women’s

Cheyenne River Sioux News Release; “Statement from Chairman Harold Frazier Regarding the Public Service Commission’s Decision on Keystone XL Pipeline,” 20 November 2017.

Chow, Lorraine; “Enbridge Dealt New Setback After Judge Pushes Back Decision on Line 3 Pipeline,” ( EcoWatch, 28 December 2017).

Eastman, Charles Alexander (born Ohiyesa); The Soul of the Indian; 1911.

Emblin, Richard; “Columbian Court grant the Atrato River rights and protection,” ( The City Paper, Bogota, 8 June 2017).

Fendt, Lindsay; “Colorado River ‘Personhood’ Case Pulled by Proponents,”

( Aspen Journalism, 5 December2017) GJEP Staff; “Groundbreaking ‘Carbon Pricing Report’ Released by Indigenous Group at COP23,” ( Global Justice Ecology Project, 17

November 2017).

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Greene, Natalia; “The First Successful Case of the Rights of Nature Implementation in Ecuador,” (Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature/CEDENMA/ Fundación Pachamam, 2011).

IEN News Release; “Nebraska Approves KXL Route: Indigenous Groups Respond,” (Indigenous Environmental Network News Release, 20

November 2017).

Johnson, Ron; “Battle Lines Being Drawn Over Keystone XL Again,” ( Earth Island Journal, 29 March 2017).

Maxwell, Thane; “Beyond DAPL, the Line 3 Pipeline Looms on the Horizon,”

( Honor the Earth, 3 December 2016).

McKenna, Phil; “Keystone XL, Dakota Pipelines will Draw Mass Resistance, Native Groups Promise,” ( Inside Climate News, 31 January 2017).

NZN; “Whanganui River the first in the world to be given legal status as a person,” ( NewsHub, 15 March 2017).

Safi, Michael; “Ganges and Yamuna Rivers granted same legal rights as human beings,” ( The Guardian, 21 March 2017).

Secwepemc News Release; “Secwepemc Indigenous Women Vow to Shut Down Kinder Morgan Man Camps Amidst National MMIW Inquiry, (Secwepemc Women’s Warrior Society and Tiny House Warriors; 28

November 2017; Kanahus Manuel, media contact).

“Standing Rock of the North:” An Updated Summary Risk Assessment of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion, (Indigenous Network on Economics and Trade, 2018).

Thunberg, Gretta; Speech to plenary session of the 24th Council of Participants (COP24) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 14 December 2018.

Tribunal News Release; “International Rights of Nature Tribunal Established,”

(Paris, 6 December 2015).

Williams, Nia; “Trans Mountain Pipeline Construction Restarts with Completion Expected in 2022,” (Reuters, 21 August 2019).

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12 – Sarvodaya via Wopida

I believe that I have discovered some of my deepest convictions reflected in this great book of Ruskin, and that is why it so captured me and made me transform my life.

Gandhi, p. 299

Gandhi was referring to John Ruskin’s book Unto This Last. As he was boarding a train at Johannesburg, South Africa, one evening, a friend handed him this book. He read it from cover to cover during the 24-hour journey to Durban. Three points impressed him: (1) the good of an individual lies in the good of all; (2) all classes of work are worth the same because everyone has an equal right to earn their livelihood from their work; and (3) the life of the hardest physical work is the life worth living.

Gandhi was so impressed with Unto This Last that in 1908 he translated in into Gujarati and titled it Sarvodaya – meaning “uplifting of all beings.” He adopted the word Sarvodaya as his own philosophy and principles. Sarvodaya was Gandhi’s goal and Satyagraha was his method to achieve it. Vinoba Bhave named India’s first post-independence social movement ‘Sarvodaya’. It exists today.

[Sarvodaya] has as its target the establishment of a whole network of such self-supporting village communities. The family relationships which are confined at present to the blood group will be extended to cover the whole village where distinctions based on race, creed, caste, language and so forth will completely be eliminated. (Gandhi’s Views) This all sounds good for rural India but how can Sarvodaya work in highly industrialized communities like the US? It would take a major breakthrough – a paradigm shift. Can such a shift be initiated?

American physicist/philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn found that major breakthroughs haven’t come about by building on old theories. “The transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one from which a new tradition … can emerge is far from … extension of the old paradigm.

Sarvodaya via Wopida

Rather it is a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals, a reconstruction that changes some of the field's most elementary theoretical generalizations …” (Kuhn, pp. 84-85) Thomas Merton also thought that “to judge according to our old, habitual ways of thought means to judge wrongly. … the entire human race has a most serious obligation to face the inadequacy of these familiar attitudes and to do something about getting re-educated. ... to get rid of systematic moral utopia which excuses acts of barbarism when justified by appeals to patriotism, freedom and so on.” (Merton, p. 41)

Gandhi thought achieving Sarvodaya required restructuring the entire social order. We, today, can’t shape the culture of entertainment into mutual respect and empathic caring. We need a new paradigm. I suggest ‘Sarvodaya via Wopida’ – uplifting of all beings by sharing the energy among all people – as the path toward a new cultural paradigm.

It is a viable procedure for achieving a culture of goodness.

I have emphasized throughout this Guidebook that we do NOT need a new organization. I have also emphasized that we do NOT need a new direction for existing organizations to work. What we DO need is a

‘new perception’ that brings all the diversity of nonviolence taking place today into a ‘united focus’.

The ’new perception’ needed for this paradigm shift is recognizing the need to uplift all beings in order to uplift any – Sarvodaya.

The ‘united focus’ is achieved by defining our basic and immutable goals as the Global Constructive Program. That will kindle the flow of energy to be shared with all people – Wopida.

Gandhi’s approach was to first establish a network of self-supporting communities. Rural India in Gandhi’s time consisted of numerous small villages. Today’s counterpart consists of cities, towns, villages, and other smaller communities. Much is already in work.

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Sarvodaya via Wopida

Charter for Compassion.

Karen Armstrong, religion scholar and author, received the 2008 TED

Prize.1

Besides the cash award she was allowed one wish which TED.com would help fulfill. Armstrong wished for the world to help her create and spread a Charter for Compassion based on the Golden Rule.

A website was launched and thousands of visitors from over 100
countries contributed ideas. In February 2009 a ‘Council of Conscience’ was formed to distill the plethora of comments into a Charter for Compassion, which was unveiled in November of 2009

(https://charterforcompassion.org/charter).

‘Charter for Compassion International’ describes itself as “an umbrella for people to engage in collaborated partnerships worldwide. … to bring to life the principles articulated in the Charter for Compassion …” (Charter for Compassion website)

‘Charter for Compassion International’ originally focused on cities to build their network of compassionate communities, but soon discovered other communities who wanted to be centered on compassion. The network expanded to include villages, barrios, hamlets, townships neighborhoods, shires, counties – even islands, provinces, states, republics, and countries.

‘Charter for Compassion International’ does not define what constitutes a compassionate community but “invites communities of all sizes to bring compassion to life in practical, specific ways through 1 Technology, Entertainment and Design [TED] converged in 1984 as a nonpartisan nonprofit, devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks. Today TED covers almost all topics in more than 110
languages. (TED.com website)

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Sarvodaya via Wopida

compassion-driven actions – in neighborhoods, businesses, schools and colleges, healthcare, the arts, local government, peace groups, environmental advocacy groups, and faith congregations.” (Charter for Compassion website)

At the time of this writing there are Communities of Compassion in 50
countries. Ninety nine cities worldwide have affirmed the Charter for Compassion by legislation. There are initiatives in another 273 cities to create, evaluate, or sustain action plans for Communities of Compassion.

One of those 273 is ‘Nonviolent Carbondale’.

Nonviolent Cities Project.

Having Southern Illinois University in its midst, Carbondale has seen its share of activism. Its 26,000 residents generated large demonstrations during the Vietnam war and after ‘Kent State’. Later the city saw violence during the late-20th-century Halloween riots and during the 2011 Occupy Movement.

This history of turmoil motivated concerned people, led by then Human Relations Commission president Hugh Muldoon, to form ‘Nonviolent Carbondale’. That put the city on Charter for Compassion’s website as one of the 273 creating and sustaining a community-of-compassion action plan.

In addition to being a nexus for bringing organizations and businesses together in a spirit of compassion, the ad hoc ‘Nonviolent Carbondale’

coalition sponsors annual city-wide events designed to promote nonviolent thinking. Individuals, organizations, and businesses are encouraged to participate in teaching and learning the nuances of compassionate lifestyles.

The first ‘11-Day event’ started on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and ended on International Peace Day. These annual teaching sessions last 258

Sarvodaya via Wopida

11-days – 11 Days for Peace, 11 Days for Compassion, 11 Days for Food Justice, etc.

Notices are sent to partner organizations, community organizations, businesses, and talented individuals prior to each annual event; informing them of the theme and asking them to advertise their business or conduct their activities along that theme.

They are also invited to present a program, exhibition, or other inspirational presentation during those 11 days. After each of these entities puts together its own unique program, they are all compiled into an 11-day calendar and distributed as flyers and posted on websites. Hundreds of people have been involved with preparation and thousands have participated in other ways.

In 2016, John Dear from Pace e Bene (Peace and All Good) was invited to speak at Carbondale. He discovered a city with “a new holistic approach … a positive vision for the future …” which gives “everyone in Carbondale a new vision, a new idea, of what their community could become. …” (Dear)

‘Nonviolent Carbondale’ is a model for proactive nonviolent approaches to uplift local communities in the same spirit as Gandhi’s Sarvodaya program uplifted the villages of rural India. Dear took the concept back to Pace e Bene and instituted the ‘Nonviolent Cities Project’ as part of its ‘Campaign Nonviolence’.

The Project calls on activists to explain the concept of nonviolence to fellow citizens and city officials – to show how police departments, educational systems, religious institutions, and other community organizations can make the city thrive better with collective and institutionalized compassion.

Pace e Bene developed a 10-Step Organizing Plan to become a nonviolent city, which goes something like this: 259

Sarvodaya via Wopida

1)

Create a local steering committee, write a vision statement to describe your goal, and then prepare a Mission Statement telling how you plan to achieve that goal.

a)

The vision statement might include: i)

Absence of violence including police violence. Institutionalized nonviolence.

ii) Absence of racism, segregation, and other types of prejudice.

Nonviolent integration.

iii) Absence of poverty, homelessness, and illiteracy.

Compassionate assistance for the underprivileged.

iv) Absence of domestic violence. Love and communication among all family members.

b)

The mission statement could include reaching out to, contacting, or encouraging:

i)

City officials: mayor, city council, human rights commission, housing authorities, police officials, etc.

ii) Religious, educational, and civic leaders.

iii) Youth and grassroots activists.

iv) The poor and marginalized.

v)

Children and the elderly.

vi) News reporters and the local media.

2)

Find a major civic institution to become a base for your ‘Nonviolent City’

project, such as a local library, community center, religious institution, or civic organization.

3)

Organize an initial public meeting/forum to discuss your plan, including the vision statement and mission statement. Make this meeting an organizing meeting – set dates and places for future meetings, and publicize them. Challenge the people to visualize what their community would be like as a nonviolent city. Encourage them to set that vision as a goal, and the years ahead as a journey toward that goal, which everyone can be a part of. [Perhaps this is the best time to finalize the vision statement]

4)

Study the violence in your local community in all forms, and begin to systematically address these forms of violence, how it can be ended, and how people and city institutions can become more nonviolent. [Perhaps this is the time to finalize the mission statement]

5)

Schedule a meeting of the steering committee, and others interested, with the mayor and city council. Discuss your vision of a ‘nonviolent city’ and the concrete steps that all can take together to make that vision come true.

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Sarvodaya via Wopida

6)

Attend city council meetings as a group and propose ways your local community can become more nonviolent. Help your city council adopt the vision of your community as a ‘nonviolent city’.

7)

Set up a volunteer network organized to reach everyone in your city.

Assign tasks for systematic outreach. Encourage everyone to share the work and do their part to promote a truly ‘nonviolent city’.

8)

Organize a city-wide ‘launch’ of the campaign that is inclusive, celebratory, and visionary; but also has concrete tasks for new volunteers to work on. We recommend that you launch your ‘nonviolent city’

campaign with a week of events and actions as part of the national

‘Campaign Nonviolence’ week of actions beginning on September 21st every year, International Peace Day.

9)

Set up a website and social media page to promote your ‘nonviolent city’.

Set up a media committee to promote the vision of a ‘nonviolent city’ in your newspaper, TV news, local talk shows, radio and social media.

10) Reach out to every sector of the community to help promote and build a more nonviolent city. That means reaching out to everyone from the mayor and city council members to the police chief and police officers, to all religious leaders and communities, to all civic leaders, to all educators and healthcare workers, to housing authorities, to prison officials, to youth and grassroots activists, to nonprofit community groups, to the poor and marginalized, and to children and the elderly.

[Compiled from and quoted from various descriptions of the 10-step Organizing Plan]

A little over a year later some 50 US cities, and many foreign ones, had responded. Gil Gustafson of Minneapolis/St. Paul wrote: “We are creating a vision in very concrete terms of what a nonviolent Twin Cities will look like (such as gun control and school curriculums of nonviolence), and how to implement that vision in upcoming months.”

(Pace e Bene website.)

From Tennessee, Janice Vanderhaar wrote in a city paper: “What I hope for the world begins in our own community. … We could become a beacon of light for the world. I pray that we in Memphis can continue to create a world of peace through nonviolence.” (Pace e Bene website.)

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Sarvodaya via Wopida

West coast resident Ruth Ann Angus wrote: “My vision sees an end to the adulation of war, an end to homelessness, racial discrimination, and poverty in Morro Bay [CA]. We are working with existing good programs and searching for ways to increase them and create new ones.” (Pace e Bene website.)

On 20 September 2017, Sr. Andrea Koverman, SC, “introduced the launching of the Nonviolent Cincinnati Project.” (Pace e Bene website.)

During the autumn of 2017, San Diego held a Nonviolence Conference.

John Dear summed it up: “This is what we need – a new vision for ourselves, our communities, and our world; a vision of a new world of nonviolence. To me, that is the only vision worth pursuing. Together, we can start dreaming about what our local community would look like if it were nonviolent, then start discussing what concrete steps to take to make that dream a reality.” (Pace e Bene website.) When I first heard of the ‘Nonviolent Cities Project’ I immediately recognized it as one of the very few proactive nonviolent programs taking place today. It is proactive for two reasons: 1) it is applied to the source of violence to root it out, and 2) it offers a better choice to replace violence once it is rooted out. Now I will turn to Sanctuary Cities.

Sanctuary Cities.

They came in Gestapo-like, reminiscent of Kristallnacht. It wasn’t Germany 1938; it was Oakland 2018. It wasn’t a pogrom against the Jews carried out by Hitler’s Sturmabteilung (storm troopers); it was a roundup of immigrants carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) troopers. It was a sweep of neighborhoods code-named “Keep Safe” – a reaction to California becoming a sanctuary state.

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That bill creating sanctuary California codified the following realism: Immigrants are valuable and essential members of the California community. Almost one in three Californians are foreign born and one in two children in California has at least one immigrant parent.

A relationship of trust between California’s immigrant community and state and local agencies is central to the public safety of the people of California.

This trust is threatened when state and local agencies are entangled with federal immigration enforcement, with the result that immigrant community members fear approaching police when they are the victims of, and witness to, crimes, seeking basic health services, or attending schools, to the detriment public safety and the well-being of all Californians. (Calif. Gov. Code, Section 7284-2(a) through (c)) In his signing statement Brown wrote: “These are uncertain times for undocumented Californians and their families, and this bill strikes a balance that will protect public safety while bringing a measure of comfort to those families who are now living in fear every day.”

(Murphy and Sanchez)

Jon Rodney, spokesman for the California Immigrant Policy Center, said: “With this bill, the number of shameful deportation tactics will be stopped and prohibited, and others will be limited. … and in recognizing that immigrants are such a vital part of California’s heart and soul.” (Murphy and Sanchez)

State Senator Kevin de León, tweeted: “Signing of SB54 comes at a critical time in US history. With Donald Trump we have seen a racial divide we have not seen in decades.” (Murphy and Sanchez) But, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions denounced the bill as

“unconscionable.”

The Trump administration tried to obtain an injunction against California’s sanctuary law but on 5 July 2018 US

District Judge John Mendez, in Sacramento, refused to block California’s noncooperation with ICE.

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Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan2 disagreed with Brown that SB54
would not hinder federal enforcement of immigration laws. He said ICE “would have no choice but to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and work places.” (Ulloa)

On 1 January 2018, California’s sanctuary law went into effect.

Homan told Newsweeek that if Brown “thinks ICE is going away, we’re not. … I’m going to significantly increase our enforcement presence in California, we’re already doing it.” (Sinclair) Homan’s fulmination prompted Oakland councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan to reply: “The head of ICE has made … it clearer that ICE is not actually focusing on solving serious and violent crime, but is focused on being part of Trump’s political vendetta.” (Liberty Staff) The January 16th issue of the San Francisco Chronicle announced a major sweep by ICE that was expected to round up over 1,500
undocumented immigrants “while sending a message that immigration policy will be enforced in the sanctuary state, according to a source familiar with the operation.” (Aleaziz)

The source requested anonymity but said it could happen within weeks and was expected to be the Trump administration’s largest law-enforcement operation to date.

Outraged, US Senator Diane Feinstein said immigrants “must not be targeted in raids solely because they are Californians … the 2 Thomas Homan was appointed interim director of ICE in January 2017 with orders to crack down on undocumented immigrants. Possibly to have his own pick running the show, Trump didn’t nominate Homan to be permanent director until the following November. That’s when Homan met stiff resistance in Senate confirmation because of his aggressive tactics and excessive arrests of immigrants with no criminal record. In March 2018, 18
senators asked Homeland Security “why the administration took nearly 10
months to officially nominate an ICE director.” (Gomez) Homan resigned the following month, after serving over a year as temporary director.

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administration is carrying out its enforcement actions to make a political point and not based on security of the country (Aleaziz) Oakland had been a sanctuary city for over a decade. Councilwoman Kaplan said: “The head of ICE under Trump has publicly stated that his intention is to strike fear into communities, and now he is targeting California and cities like Oakland.” (CBS SF) Mayor Libby Schaaf added: “The level of fear and anxiety in this community is at unconscionable levels.” (CBS SF) The city council then unanimously voted to end all cooperation with ICE.

On February 24th, Mayor Schaaf announced she had “learned from multiple credible sources that … ICE is preparing to conduct an operation in the Bay Area, including Oakland, starting as soon as within the next 24 hours. … Oakland police officers are prohibited from participating in ICE activities …” (Schaaf) Noting that “ICE has used activity rumors in the past as a tactic to create fear,” Schaaf reminded residents that “Oakland is a city of law-abiding immigrants and families,” and it is her “duty and moral obligation as Mayor to give those families fair warning when that threat appears imminent.” (Schaaf)

ICE struck within hours, reporting 242 arrests. ICE said 180 had criminal records (115 with prior felony convictions, or for significant or multiple misdemeanors) or had violated deportation orders. Having a criminal record is not cause for arrest. Using that term does suggest removal of a public safety threat, which tends to mitigate Mayor Schaaf’s claim that warning of ICE raids builds trust and makes the community safer.

Homan claimed that “864 criminal aliens and public safety threats remain at large in the community, and I have to believe that some of them were able to elude us thanks to the mayor’s irresponsible decision.” (ICE News Release) Homan had previously opined: “We 265

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gotta take [sanctuary cities] to court, and we gotta start charging some of the politicians with crimes.” (Rodriguez) Schaaf said she would go to jail to defend sanctuary cities and doubled down all the more as she was pressured. She recalled a Mexican couple with no criminal record who had been deported last August.

The couple’s 23-year-old daughter was left to care for her US-born younger brother. Schaaf added:

I hope we take this moment to recognize that we have to fight against the racist myth that the Trump administration is trying to perpetuate, that immigrants are dangerous criminals ... This is racist and it is false.

Ample evidence shows that American-born citizens are actually more likely to commit crimes than immigrants. We have a criminal justice system. We should let that work. We should not conflate it with our broken immigration system. (Flynn)

Schaaf stated on February 27th that she considered herself part of “the resistance.” Then another public official joined “the resistance.” SF

Bay Area ICE spokesman James Schwab turned in his resignation on March 9th because he didn’t want to “perpetuate misleading facts” and continue to evade answers about the ‘Keep Safe’ raid. (DeRuy) He said the 232 arrested was more than ICE expected and that far less than 854 eluded arrest, and those who did were not exceptional because ICE
raids never catch all the targets.

On March 22nd, 12 US Senators requested Homeland Security to investigate the resignation of Schwab and what he meant by misleading public statements about operation ‘Keep Safe’. The senators also requested answers to 14 other related issues; including the number of arrestees with criminal records and the type of crimes (felony or misdemeanor), the number of arrestees who had committed violent crimes, and the number of arrestees who had no cause for arrest.

Sanctuary is not new in US history. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793
was opposed by sanctuary givers. Slaveholders claimed their rights to retrieve property according to Article IV, Section2 of the US

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Constitution. However, in the 19th century the states started balking at being coerced into enforcing federal laws.

An attempt in 1818 to revise the Fugitive Slave Act to force state and local jurisdictions to enforce federal laws failed. Then the US Supreme Court ruled in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) that state and local governments could not create laws governing fugitive slaves but neither were they required to enforce federal laws. Discord continued and that led to the Civil War.

During the 1980s, the Reagan administration denied asylum to refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador. San Francisco passed an ordinance specifically forbidding local police and courts from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. That started the “Sanctuary City”

(a.k.a. Sanctuary Jurisdiction) program.

Not all sanctuary jurisdictions have exactly the same rules but the general pattern for sanctuary is:

x

Do not enforce federal immigration laws.

x

Do not share non-public information about immigrants unless the feds have a court order.

x

Do not honor ‘Immigration Detainer’ orders to notify ICE when illegals are released from jail or prison.

x

Do not participate in raids or arrests although ICE has authority to conduct such in sanctuary jurisdictions.

x

Aliens in a sanctuary jurisdiction will be arrested for criminal behavior just as a US citizen would be.

Currently in the US there are 4 sanctuary states, 127 sanctuary counties, and 28 sanctuary cities3; for a total of 159 sanctuary jurisdictions. [See Appendix-E]

A sanctuary state does not necessarily mean all lower jurisdictions in that state must offer sanctuary. However, in California at least, state 3 Some observers report that California, alone, has 35 cities that use the sanctuary label. However, some cities merely use it symbolically as a gesture of political support for undocumented immigrants.

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and local authorities cannot ask about a person’s immigration status or be deputized as an immigration agent.

Sanctuary offered is to any
alien, immigrant, or refugee. Oddly, though, California state prisons are not bound by the sanctuary status.

During Donald Trump’s first week in the White House, he signed Executive Order 13768 allowing any alien to be deported if they “in the judgment of an immigration officer … pose a risk to public safety or national security.”

Immigration officers, on their own whim or prejudice, could arrest any alien.

Section 9(a) of Trumps Order states that “jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes …”

Section 1373 requires state and local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE in arresting illegal aliens.

Cities and counties filed suit in U.S. District Court; claiming 8 U.S.C.

1373 is unconstitutional according to the Tenth Amendment, which reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or the people.”

The lawsuits also quoted US Supreme Court decisions, including Printz v. United States (1997): “The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the State’s officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.” (521 U.S. 935) On 25 April 2917, US District Judge William Orrick III (Northern District of California) issued a nation-wide injunction halting Executive Order 13768 while litigation proceeds.

Attorney General Sessions then issued a directive in July saying sanctuary jurisdictions must cooperate with ICE or lose federal grant funding. US District Judge Harry Leinenweber (Northern District of 268

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Illinois) issued a nation-wide injunction striking down Session’s directive.

In response to the Los Angeles lawsuit, US District Judge Manuel L.

Real (Central District of California) issued a preliminary injunction on 14 September 2018, barring withholding of anti-gang grants for noncooperation with ICE. Then on 5 October 2018, US District Judge Orrick ordered the federal government to pay $28 million to California sanctuary cities that had been withheld for non-cooperation.

Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio is the other extreme.

He was convicted in July 2017 of criminal contempt of court for ignoring a federal injunction against ‘immigration round-ups’. Trump pardoned him the next month.

Arpaio spent large amounts of taxpayer money apprehending undocumented immigrants. “He’d moved hundreds of male detainees to a new jail … When the jails became overcrowded, he moved his prisoners to concentration camps – tent cities with no respite from temperatures as high as 135 degrees. Detainees in his [custody] were often physically abused, and deaths occurred at unprecedented rates.”

(Misra)

Arpaio had been working under the so-called 287(g) Program – a Memorandum of Understanding with ICE that, having received ICE
training, local law enforcement agencies can enforce immigration laws.

If Arpaio received a presidential pardon while working under the 287(g) Program, it will certainly motivate other like-minded jurisdictions to sign on.

Backlash can be expected, especially when the sanctuary program becomes effective. So let us feel encouraged. All sheriffs are not like Joe Arpaio. Contra Costa County (CA) Sheriff’s Department announced in July 2018 that ICE could no longer hold detainees in their 269

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county jail. This resulted in loss of significant compensation for the county, but human rights won out.

A program that will increase the need for sanctuary cities is the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) program. People from ten countries are allowed this protective status for humanitarian reasons. All current TPS terms will have expired by 2020. The Trump administration plans to deport some 390,000 people whose TPS will not be renewed; many of whom have lived in the US for 20 years or longer, have jobs in this country, and have raised their children in this country. If they stay in the US, they will become illegal immigrants in need of sanctuary Summary on Cities.

Cities are the smallest jurisdiction and the logical place for proactive nonviolence to begin. There is potential to infuse cities with “family relationships” that can “be extended to cover the whole village [or city]

where distinctions based on race, creed, caste, language and so forth will completely be eliminated.” (Gandhi’s Views) Such a relationship is what makes the cities projects meaningful and lasting.

‘Charter for Compassion International’ could easily embrace a Global Constructive Program calling for “widening circles of caring communities that accommodate diversity for all.” There would be no change in the way ‘Charter for Compassion International’ presently works. It exemplifies how a ‘Regional Strategy’ can employ the Global Constructive Program for its special application, but with greater unity.

‘Nonviolent Carbondale’ developed its own local plan of action that is completely in harmony with Charter for Compassion under the Global Constructive Program.

Carbondale can be analogized to a ‘Local

Tactic’ that decides its own way toward achieving compassion while 270

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‘Charter for Compassion International’ provides a toolbox to get started (https://charterforcompassion.org/about1/charter-tool-box).

‘Nonviolent Cities’ can be visualized as another ‘Regional Strategy’.

This might appear redundant to the compassionate city effort, but that is not so. Each has its own unique approach and the term ‘nonviolent’

may be more appealing to some people than ‘compassion’, and vice versa. Many cultures require many techniques.

Both ‘Charter for Compassion International’s

‘tool box’ and

‘Campaign Nonviolence’s ‘10-Step Organizing Plan’ are compatible with a Global Constructive Program, and could derive the same benefits from it.

The ‘Sanctuary Cities Movement’ is another regional process which would fit well into a Global Constructive Program. It would be enhanced if it had a regional strategy for the US – if only advisory – to unify the activities of existing sanctuary cities and motivate more to join in.

Such a regional strategy could be developed similar to how the

‘Nonviolent Cities Project’ was inspired by ‘Nonviolent Carbondale’.

Sanctuary jurisdictions have been established in four states and many counties. But only 29 of over 30,000 incorporated towns and cities in the US are sanctuary cities. That is less than 0.1%. There is massive room for growth. Imagine the effect!

Providing sanctuary for families that could be separated appeals to humanitarian emotions. Deportation of undocumented youth, who were brought in as infants and know no other home, also kindles humanitarian emotions. Inhumane activities motivated the mayor of a large city to act. They have motivated an ICE official to resign.

Sanctuary cities are a powerful humanitarian alternative to today’s racism.

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Suppose, with a Global Constructive Program in place, or even a regional strategy, a call goes out to increase the number of sanctuary cities to 10,000. Then suppose every member of every organization spends one hour per week – just 1 hour – lobbying and getting others to lobby their city officials to provide sanctuary. I don’t have the statistics but I am confident we’d see a massive increase in sanctuary cities.

Imagine the effect that would have on the whole immigration issue.

There are other issues over which cities could be the organizing medium. All the marches for many issues during Trump’s first 100
days in office were mainly organized with cities as the geographic area.

That same appears to be true for actions to reverse global warming.

Cities are ideally the basic unit in which to organize proactive nonviolent activities.

Cities are the place where activism has results. This was illustrated in June 2018 when activist pressure convinced the Berkeley (California) City Council to declare a climate emergency, a call to stop all fossil fuel projects, and start a ‘just transition’ to 100% renewable energy.4

That is a cogent example of dumping an old paradigm to create a new set of rules for the planet.

Conclusion: Sarvodaya via Wopida.

Another analogy I like for the Global Constructive Program is a campfire. Everyone gathers around a campfire to enjoy warmth, discussion, singing, storytelling, fun games, and conduct ceremonies.

For indigenous people, fire is sacred. Oglala Lakota Black Elk said

“the fire in the center represents Wakan-Tanka [the Creator] within the 4 Ireland has recently become the first nation to start divesting entirely from fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy.

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world.” (Larkin) There is always a fire at the center of indigenous ceremonies – the people dance around it and celebrate around it.

There was a Sacred Fire centered in Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock. People could sit around it to meditate and converse; or just get warm. The camp was a camp of prayer and the work of the water protectors was a ceremony. Gathering around the Global Constructive Program should also be a ceremony.

The Global Constructive Program expresses our spirituality/humanity.

It is the vision of a new cultural paradigm for the global society.

Around that vision we gather in solidarity with joy and singing and hope and celebration. We celebrate by Sarvodaya via Wopida.

Group identities have already formed for a new culture of goodness.

Nonviolence groups have specialized knowledge in the fields of: x nuclear and general disarmament;
x reversing global warming;
x equitable distribution of resources;
x care and respect for Mother Earth;
x health care for all people;
x universal and wholesome education;
x just immigration reform;
x nonviolence training,
x and much more.

These autonomous groups fit into the group identification aspect of a new culture of goodness. The next cultural identification level is the individual who puts all this knowledge into action. I call them nonviolent warriors. Gandhi called them satyagrahis. We will get into that in the next chapter.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

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References and Further Reading for Chapter-12.

Aleaziz, Hamed; “Feds Planning Massive Northern California Immigration Sweep to Strike Against Sanctuary Laws,” ( San Francisco Chronicle, 16

January 2018, updated 17 January 2018).

CBS SF; “Oakland Mayor Says She’ll Go to Jail to Protect Sanctuary City Policy,” ( CBS SF Bay Area, 17 January 2018).

Dear, John; “Building New ‘Nonviolent Cities’,” ( HuffPost, 15 March 2017).

DeRuy, Emily; “Senators Call for Probe Into Schwab’s Resignation,” ( The Mercury News, 23 March 2018).

Flynn, Meagan; “Oakland Mayor Who Tipped Off Immigrnts to ICE Raid Drawws Justice Department Scrutiny,” ( The Washington Post, 2 March 2018).

Gandhi, Mohandas K.; An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth (Boston; Beacon Press; 1957) Gandhi’s Views; Comprehensive Website by Gandhian Institutions - Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal & Gandhi Research Foundation. At http://www.mkgandhi.org/cwmg.htm

Gomez, Alan; “Thomas Homan, Trump’s Top Immigration Enforcer, Reigns,”

( USA Today, 30 April 2018).

ICE News Release; “ICE Statement on Immigration Enforcement Activities in Northern California,” (ICE Newsroom, 27 February 2018).

Kuhn, Thomas S.; The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago & London; Univ. of Chicago Press; 1962).

Larkin, Molly; “Sacred Fire: the manifestation of Spirit” (8 April 2015).

Molly Larkin web page at https://mollylarkin.com/sacred-fire-the-manifestation-of-spirit/

Liberty Staff; “Oakland Mayor Will Go to Jail to Protect Sanctuary City Policy,” ( Liberty Headlines, 18 January 2018).

Merton, Thomas; Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice, (Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 1968).

Misra, Tanvi; “‘Anti-Sanctuary’ Cities Continue to Multiply Under Trump,”

( CITYLAB, 22 August 2017).

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Murphy, Katy and Sanchez, Tatiana; “Jerry Brown Signs Sweeping California Immigration Bills into Law,” ( The Mercury News, 5 October 2017, updated 6 October 2017).

Rodriguez, Nicole; “Trump Administration Wants to Arrest Mayors of

‘Sanctuary Cities’,” ( Newsweek, 16 January 2018).

Schaaf, Libby; “Mayor Schaaf Encourages Residents to Consult Immigration Resources Due to Potential ICE Activity.” (News Release from Office of Mayor Libby Schaaf, 24 February 2018).

Sinclair, Harriet; “Trump’s ICE Pick Thomas Homan Warns Sanctuary State California ‘Hang tight’ Amid Immigration Crackdown,” ( Newsweek, 3

January 2018).

Ulloa, Jasmine; “California Becomes ‘Sanctuary State’ in Rebuke of Trump Immigration Policy,” ( Los Angeles Times, 5 October 2017).

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When we build ... let it not be for present delights nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think ... that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor, and the wrought substance of them, See! This our fathers did for us!

-- John Ruskin

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13 – The Nonviolent Warrior Warriors are not what you think of as warriors.

The warrior is not someone who fights, for no one has the right to take another life.

The warrior, for us, is the one who
sacrifices himself
for the good of others.

His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless,
those who cannot provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of humanity.

-- Sitting Bull

“Love yourself first so you are free to love others,” spoke the young warrior at Oceti Sakowin.

“Love of self is not selfishness,” he
continued, “it frees you to discover your path and find your voice.”

Loving ourselves is not always easy. We may not like what we see in the mirror. We may see much that needs purifying.

Gandhi put the highest priority on self-purification. It came before action and good works. It was the overriding qualification for a Satyagrahi – a Nonviolent Warrior. Gandhi sought self-purification for decades and his guidebook was the Bhagavad Gita.

When I first read the Gita I was disillusioned. It described a battlefield with chariots of opposing armies amassing along the sides, swords at ready and archers stringing their bows. I put the book down in disgust, but later read that Gandhi had a similar reaction until he discovered the battlefield is a metaphor for the War Within – the struggle for self-purification. I tried reading it again and was inspired. The story goes like this:

Hindu mythology relates the Battle of the Kuros some 3,000 years ago.

The kingdom of Hastinapura lay about 60 miles northeast of modern



Delhi. The king had two sons; Pandu, the eldest, and Dhritarashtra, who was born blind. Pandu later inherited the kingdom and had five sons. But Pandu died early. Dhritarashtra raised his brother’s sons and named Yudhishthira, the eldest, as heir apparent to the throne. Until Yudhishthira reached maturity, Dhritarashtra acted as de facto king but was never formally enthroned. He became known as the blind king.

The blind king also had sons and his oldest, Duryodhana, was greedy and jealous that his father didn’t name him as successor to the throne his father had occupied for many years. The antagonism festered and culminated in the historic battle on the Field of the Kuros.

Yudhishthira’s army is memorialized as the forces of good and Duryodhana’s of evil. Yudhishthira won after 18 days of fierce fighting but almost every combatant had been slain.

The Gita uses this battle as a metaphor for the interior battle for self-purification. Chapter one does sound realistic. It opens on the eve of battle. The opposing armies are camped on opposite edges of the field.

The roaring of conch shells, whooping of war cries, rumbling of war drums, clanging of cymbals, and blaring of cow horns fill the air and shake the earth. From an overview a sage narrates events to the blind king. The principle actors are Prince Arjuna, third son of Pandu and a master archer, with Lord Krishna1 as his charioteer.

Arjuna tells Krishna to drive onto the field between the two armies.

Arjuna then sees in the armies facing him on both sides the familiar faces of “fathers and grandfathers, teachers, uncles, and brothers, son and grandsons, in-laws and friends. Seeing his kinsman established in opposition, Arjuna is overcome by sorrow.” ( Gita, 1:26-28)2

1 In the Hindu tradition, Krishna is the human incarnation of God; similar to Jesus in the Christian tradition; representing right knowledge, or truth.

2 In this chapter I will be using the Eswaran translation of the Gita (see References) unless otherwise noted.

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His body trembles and shudders at the horror of fighting his family, friends, and relatives. He senses forebodings of evil he cannot identify, and tells Krishna: “‘This is a great sin. We are prepared to kill our own relations out of greed … Better for me if the sons of Dhritarashtra, weapons in hand, were to attack me in battle and kill me unarmed and unresisting.’ … And casting down his bow and his arrows, he sat down in his chariot in the middle of the battlefield.” ( Gita, 1:45-47) Renouncing the Spoils – Our Inner War.

Thus ends the first chapter. The Gita continues. In Chapter 2 the struggle moves from external physical combat to an interior struggle between the forces of good and evil. One has to read carefully to recognize this transition but as the chapter unfolds it becomes clearer.

Although the Gita is one of the most sacred books of Indian spirituality, it also contains very practical advice on how to become a good human being. It teaches two ingredients for perfection – ‘selfless action’ and ‘right knowledge’. It does not teach nonviolence. Neither does it teach self-realization. Gandhi said the Gita teaches “the best way to attain self-realization” – how to make real your true Self; how to know and become fully aware of your inner goodness.

He chose that best way as renunciation of fruits of action. “This is the centre round which the Gita is woven. This renunciation is the central sun, round which devotion, knowledge, and the rest revolve like planets.” (Gandhi, p. 8) Once when asked how the Gita could help his cause if it doesn’t teach nonviolence, Gandhi challenged the man to live according to the Gita and simultaneously harbor violent tendencies toward anyone.

The reason that man would be unable to harbor violent tendencies is because the Gita does teach nonviolence in a subtle way when it teaches detachment from the fruits of action. Gandhi discoursed: 279



“When there is no desire for fruit, there is no temptation for untruth or violence. Take any instance of untruth or violence, and it will be found that at its back was the desire to attain the cherished end.” (Gandhi, p.

11)

Renunciation of the fruits of action does not mean renunciation of action. There are two types of action. The first is action motivated by selfish desire, which should be abandoned without further consideration. There is no good outcome from undertaking an action motivated entirely by selfishness.

The second type of action is motivated by goodness. These actions are necessary and they will produce good fruits. We should welcome those fruits but not become attached to them for personal excess. Good action should be performed for goodness alone, not for personal enhancement. That does not mean living in destitution. Nor does it mean eschewing technology. We should use whatever resources and take advantage of whatever technology that helps us fulfill our purpose in life. It is that purpose that must be carefully determined.

What renunciation means is to not hanker for those fruits and to not perform action merely to attain those fruits for personal pleasure –
necessities and some re-creation OK, but not excess pleasure.

Renunciation means keeping only the fruits one ‘needs’. Gandhi used the term ‘selfless action’ for work performed for the sake of goodness alone. We can enjoy that resulting goodness but not feel smug about it.

Fruits are not always material – thoughts can be fruits. Success can win acclaim; but seek to remain humble and unaffected. When people are insulting or obnoxious, do not respond in-kind but speak kindly or not at all. Maintain good thoughts because every thought counts.

We can rely on our inner goodness for comfort and bliss, and thus rise above the external pleasure and satisfaction experienced in the world of the senses.

When we can do that we will see the goodness in all 280



beings; and in all Creation. Our craving will be for the well-being of all people.

Renunciation is not achieved by talking about it or being well-informed. “It is attainable only by a constant heart-churn.” Knowledge is necessary but “without devotion [knowledge] will be like a misfire.

Therefore, says the Gita, ‘Have devotion, and knowledge will follow’.”

(Gandhi, p. 9)

Devotion to Mother Earth and all her creatures induces the ‘heart-churn’ that leads to what Gandhi called ‘right knowledge’. When our inner goodness is the core of our personality we will not entertain selfish habits. I like the way Henry Van Dyke wrote it over a century ago:

“But how have I failed so miserably,” he asked, “in all the purpose of my life? How could I have done better? What is it that counts here?”

“Only that which is truly given,” answered the bell-like voice. “Only that good which is done for the love of doing it. Only those plans in which the welfare of others is the master thought. Only those labours in which the sacrifice is greater than the reward. Only those gifts in which the giver forgets himself.” (Van Dyke, pp. 367-368) Van Dyke was referring to actions. If a person renounces the fruit only in the mind, with no effort to change the living pattern, he or she “live content in the ‘city of nine gates’ (the body) as its master. They are not driven to act, nor do they involve others to act.” ( Gita, 5:13) This type of mental anesthesia is enhanced by the culture of entertainment. To be continually entertained a person constantly desires ‘more’. That is the consuming pattern the culture industries promote. That is the lifestyle a nonviolent warrior renounces.

On the other hand, Savodaya, the uplifting of all beings, is the paradigm shift for culture that the nonviolent warrior seeks to make real. When the mind is set on that goal, selfless action follows. Then, 281



by not being attached to the fruits and not acquiring excess out of greed, life goes on in a simple but meaningful fashion.

The story goes that Gandhi was asked to explain the Gita in twenty words. He said he could do it in three: “Renounce and Enjoy.” That is the secret of self-realization – the way to make real that compassionate person we want to see in the mirror.

More important than
understanding the phenomenal world of the sense organs is to understand our own inner goodness.

Nevertheless, most of us bask in the culture of entertainment while experiencing our phenomenal world as we want to know it – without thought.

The mind is the instrument of thinking and it has interesting nuances.

In describing them as the Gita does, I will retain four Sanskrit words because they provide novelty and clarity. They are guna, tamas, rajas, and sattva; and their derivatives.

The Roots of Thought and Action.

The phenomenal world is the world as we understand it through our sense organs. It consists of an outer world of matter and an inner world of mind. We experience the outer
world with our sense organs and what is
sensed can differ from person to person.

The senses are deceptive, as illustrated
by the familiar Necker Cube. When
you stare at the center the shaded side
may seem to be the back. Then the
image can flip and the shaded area
seems to be the nearest side. Similar
illusions are experienced with all five
senses.

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The mind processes what is sensed. It visualizes, intuits, and acquires knowledge; and what the mind gathers determines our personality traits. It is influenced by the phenomenal world but also has the ability to ‘reason’ and if the phenomenal world does not seem reasonable it can be overridden by our inner goodness – if we ‘will’ that to be done.

Deepak Chopra says: “The most precious gift of the mind – its total freedom – is the source of our creativity.” (Chopra, p. 187) However, if we allow the phenomenal world to guide our thinking and actions we will develop personality traits consistent with the culture of entertainment. That is the behavior our invisible government desires.

It is the behavior activated when the gunas are free to control our mind.

Gunas are the three qualities that make up our phenomenal worlds; sometimes referred to as the forces of nature,3 or the three basic qualities of created things. They are tamas, rajas, and sattva.

Tamas is inertia and ignorance. It includes resistance to change, indifference to progress, dogmatic in thought, and reluctance to try new concepts. Ignorance is reflected by inexperience, disinterest in other’s needs, indifference to analyzing issues, and not prone to initiating action. A tamistic personality is unmindful, oblivious, witless, and insensitive.

Rajas is incessant energy and undirected action. The action is usually self-serving and prompted by emotion and passion with no analytical thought. Rajas is the gadfly that cannot stay put. A rajistic personality is active, energetic, impulsive, and entertains a constant train of random thought. It clings to possessions and always desires more. Being competitive, it resents opposition, schemes to overcome obstacles, and becomes frustrated with setbacks. Rajas interacts with the other two gunas to animate them. And the other two gunas moderate rajas.

3 Not to be confused with the four fundamental forces of nature as defined by physics and quantum mechanics.

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Sattva is enlightenment, healing, goodness, wholesomeness, truth, creativity, balance, virtue, confidence, detachment, and self-control. It does not repressively regulate, but unifies desire and character in natural harmony. A sattvic personality is happy, calm, resourceful, selfless, and compassionate. Our inner goodness strives to have Sattva interact with Rajas to actualize good thoughts. If inner goodness is blocked, Tamas will interact with rajas to amplify its undirected action.

Tamas and sattva are personality qualities. They interact with rajas to produce action. The degree of each one’s interaction determines the quality of activity that follows, and the personality formulated.

Everyone is affected by these gunas. Their changing interplay, and to the extent that interplay is controlled by our inner goodness, determines our personality and actions.

For the purpose of this Guidebook I will lump all definitions of personality – ego,4 persona, self-concept, temperament, character, etc. –
together as ‘personality’ because they are all learned behavior that have become habits. They are all created by the gunas – we are not born with them. If they have become bad habits, bad habits can be broken.

What has been with us since birth is our inner goodness and it is common to all people. It is not affected by the gunas and it applies

‘reason’ to the mind to moderate the guna interplay and influence. It is the influence of ‘reason’ that can prevent the gunas from dominating our personalities with worldliness.

When the mind processes only what is received from the sense organs, it repeats habitual desires. But if the mind listens to our inner goodness, we act in a more responsible manner. Mascaró wrote that “if we want things as objects of possession we are in the lower regions of 4 In this Guidebook the term ‘ego’ refers to our false self which allow the gunas free reign.

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‘having’, but if we find in things objects of contemplation and inner communion we are in the higher region of ‘being’.” (Mascaró, p. 26) It is the gunas that are the doers of our actions. Because we misunderstand the function of our personality and how it is affected by the gunas, we think we are the doers. Remember, however, that personality is learned behavior; and if we listen to ‘urges’ from our inner goodness, our inner goodness can temper how the gunas interact.

The gunas are still the doers but we control what they do. That is a concept that is important to understand. Our inner goodness can moderate how the actions are performed, if the mind accepts that moderation, but it is still the gunas that do the work. I will compare three translations of the Gita in hopes that three interpretations of this concept will make comprehension easier. First, Eknath Easwaran: All actions are performed by the gunas of prakriti.5

Deluded by
identification with the ego, a person thinks. “I am the doer.” But the illumined man or woman understands the domain of the gunas and is not attached. Such people know that the gunas interact with each other;

[so the people] do not claim to be the doer. ( Gita, 3:27-28) The delusion referred to is between ‘ego’ and ‘inner goodness’ – we are the inner goodness (true Self) we were born with, whereas the ego (false self) is learned behavior. It is delusional to think we are the ego (false self). When people identify with their inner goodness, instead of the ego, they are not deluded. Mohandas Gandhi translated those two verses somewhat similarly:

All action is entirely done by the gunas of prakriti. Man, deluded by the sense of ‘I’, thinks, ‘I am the doer’. But he … who understands the truth of the various gunas and their various activities, knows that it is 5

“Prakriti is the field of what can be known objectively, the field of phenomena, the world of whatever has ‘name and form’: that is, not only of matter and energy but also of the mind.” (Easwaran, p. 37) Prakriti is what has been described above as the phenomenal world.

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the gunas that operate on the gunas; [and] he does not claim to be the doer. ( Gita, 3:27-28 Gandhi translation) Juan Mascaró translated the process in this manner: All actions take place in time by the interweaving of the forces of Nature; but the man lost in selfish delusion thinks that he himself is the actor. But the man who knows the relation between the forces of Nature and actions, sees how some forces of Nature work upon other forces of Nature, and [he] becomes not their slave. ( Gita, 3:27-28

Mascaró translation)

Not becoming a slave to the gunas means listening to the urges from that small inner voice – our inner goodness. Then our actions will be reasonable. The gunas still do the work but, rather than letting them wander randomly, we direct them; we are the boss, they are the workers.

By ‘realizing’ our inner goodness, we have achieved self-realization, or Self-realization. Thomas Merton, a monk of the Christian tradition, wrote: “There is no evil in anything created … The obstacle is in the

‘self’ [small ‘s’], that is to say in the tenacious need to maintain our separate, external, egotistic will. … It is then the false self that is our god, and we love everything for the sake of this self.” (Merton, p. 21) Merton succinctly described the culture of entertainment.

With that distinction between a guna-controlled ‘personality’ that craves the fruits of action, and one guided by inner goodness, let us now, each by oneself, look in that mirror again. What do we see predominating; tamas or sattva? Can we detect our inner goodness by its effect on the way the gunas interact? How does our inner goodness temper that interaction? Look very closely. We are alone in our thoughts so we can be forthright about what we see.

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What We Might See in the Looking Glass.

A.J. Muste said: “We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is a logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we must attack that way of life.”

(Hentoff) Muste expressed the need to address ‘cause’ which is the essence of proactive nonviolence. The ‘way of life’ for us Yankees is the culture of entertainment which derives from guna- formed egos .

Protecting the supply of entertainment, and the profit that leads to entertainment, is the cause of wars.

With a demanding culture of
entertainment so ingrained in our personality, it is very difficult to recognize our arrogance and to understand the suffering our entertainment causes. The Nonviolence Movement has so far not been able to mitigate that suffering. I understand that to be because the Nonviolence Movement lacks higher unity. An examination of guna interactions may be instructional.

Gunas interact in various degrees and proportions to form varieties of personalities. It is impossible to identify the myriads of personalities in the Nonviolence Movement today. I will, therefore, have the audacity to describe what I perceive to be a typical nonviolence practitioner (TNP). My intention is to illustrate a process by which every nonviolence practitioner can examine him/herself and implement a plan for self-realization.

I see the TNP, guided by inner goodness, to be enlightened on social issues with predominantly a sattvic personality. Rajas provides the passion, energy, and action but the selflessness and compassion of sattva cancels out rajas’ self-serving motives – self-control overcomes emotional and impulsive reactions; creativity and balance displace resentment and frustration; unity of desire and character leave no room for possessiveness and seeking more; and mindfulness/critical thinking direct the train of thought toward understanding truth. I believe the 287



competitive aspect of rajas is still present and that is one cause for division.

Regarding tamas: the enlightenment, goodness, and virtue of sattva overcome the elements of ignorance and insensitivity. Activist inertia still exists and that is another cause for lack of unity.

Summarizing my evaluation: The TNP has the qualities of sattva; interacting with the passion, energy, and action of rajas; but still retaining rajas’ competitiveness. However, Tamas slows this sattva-rajas interaction with activist inertia. The TNP should listen closer to inner goodness urges regarding competition and inertia.

Activist inertia is a major obstacle to accepting a Global Constructive Program and the resulting worldwide unity-of-purpose and solidarity-in-action. Overcoming activist inertia and replacing competition with cooperation are the final steps for the TNP to become a proactive nonviolent warrior. Of course training and practice will continue in order to achieve more experience and knowledge, and to refine mindfulness and critical thinking. But this follow-on activity will be as a nonviolent warrior honing his or her skills.

Activist inertia and competitiveness, or lack of cooperation, are keeping the Nonviolence Movement from achieving higher unity. These are the critical areas for each of us to address and overcome so that a Global Constructive Program can be realized. As the Gita phrases it: Be a warrior and kill desire, the powerful enemy of the soul.

Kill therefore with the sword of wisdom the doubt born of ignorance that lies in thy heart.

Be one in self-harmony … and arise, great warrior, arise.

( Bhagavad Gita, 3:43 & 4:42 – Mascaró translation) A start in that direction is to integrate a Nonviolent Warrior Ethos into our lifestyle.

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A Nonviolent Warrior Ethos.

A Nonviolent Warrior Ethos is not an oath, sworn to live by, nor is it a creed with a pre-planned response for every event. It is the common aspiration of the warrior community. It motivates us to live for the good of everyone.

The Nonviolent Warrior Ethos prepares us for the dark days of evil. It stirs the boldness to speak truth to the terrifying power of institutionalized violence. It is the basis of all religious and moral beliefs but transcends them all in its potential to mobilize warriors for world justice.

The Nonviolent Warrior Ethos is a role model for children and youth.

It sparks creative thinking on helping all people. It offers a life-goal which far outshines the pseudo glory propagated by gang and military recruiters. Young “warriors in training” (Pema Chödrön’s term) develop survival skills to live in an unpredictable world.

The Nonviolent Warrior Ethos is more than an ideology to hope for, or a myth to dream about. It is an urge to actively build something better.

It binds global comradeship among those who aspire to a world of goodness.

The Nonviolent Warrior Ethos is a badge of honor. Wear it proudly and sing its virtues loudly because it is the passion that will prevail.

Standing Rock showed that people everywhere will bond as nonviolent warriors to support just causes. Earth is ready for the bonding that will bring global, benevolent social change.

Does this sound like a fairy tale? The power of nonviolence is overwhelming. A model Nonviolent Warrior Ethos developed by the Proactive Nonviolence Cooperative proffers six phrases: 1.

I am a Nonviolent Warrior.

2.

I seek Truth, Beauty, and Goodness; which establishes harmony in what I think, feel, and do.

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3.

I see all people related through a higher spiritual/moral power, or universal connectedness.

4.

I pursue empathetic caring, commitment, courage, and perseverance in a complex and multi-dimensional world –
uncovering powerful principles; understanding diverse wisdom; and caring for those trapped by fear, judgment, and aggression.

5.

I honor, stand with, and defend those who are harmed, threatened, repressed, or exploited; especially the children and youth who are the future of humanity.

6.

I will pursue justice, human dignity, and a non-killing world.

Just as an addict must admit to being an addict before help is possible; so, too, warriors in training must denounce addiction to violence by

‘realizing’ their inner goodness. Say: “I am a Nonviolent Warrior.”

Say it over and over. Say it when you feel manipulated by the invisible government. Say it when tempted to oppress another. Say it in public and say it privately. Say it to be what you want to be: “I am a Nonviolent Warrior.”

Our Universe is a school for nonviolent warriors. And like any school we must take one lesson at a time. We encounter opportunities daily and we must use every encounter to train our thinking, feeling, and action. Muriel Lester cautioned: “You never learn wisdom so long as you have to look on the world as a place where you can do what you like …” (Lester, p. 90)

The first three phrases in the Nonviolent Warrior Ethos are areas where training is needed to understand the truths that make a nonviolent warrior. The first phrase has just been addressed so I will continue with an examination of the second.

I seek Truth, Beauty, and Goodness; which establishes harmony in
what I think, feel, and do.

Thus is described the persistent inner
activity needed for a nonviolent warrior . It defines the practice of

‘willing’ our inner goodness to control how we observe the world with 290



our sense organs. When we can see Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in our phenomenal world we have achieved harmony in mind, perception, and action – harmony with the real world. I will review those observations one at a time.

Seeking Truth establishes harmony in what I think. Most people rely on the screen world for information. The screen world is geared toward entertainment. The screen world is not the place to obtain good information. Truth won’t be found on the screens.

Likewise, be skeptical of most newspapers and magazines. When an appealing article is found, research the author’s background. Look for prejudices, vested interests, and social status – anything that might influence the author’s viewpoint.

Good books lay firm foundations for judging the facts necessary in seeking Truth. But ‘busy’ people don’t have time for books. The invisible government maligns good books by attaching derogatory labels. Branding a book a ‘conspiracy theory’ implies that only naïve people would read it. So it goes unread.

People provide information. We meet them every day – some good and some not so good. Trying to reach that inner goodness common to all humanity teaches us much. Sharing that inner goodness is a ‘two way street’ in the search for Truth.

“Remember that the possession of a healthy, free and un-oppressed mind can be ours if we are willing to observe the necessary discipline.”

(Lester, p. 92) Seeking Truth is a discipline that establishes harmony in what we think.

Seeking Beauty establishes harmony in what I feel. As we examine the beauty of nature we recognize a fine-tuned system functioning in a 291



harmonious manner. The most powerful telescopes only reach the

‘Observable Universe’, but that small part is awesome.

The Observable Universe contains an estimated 2 trillion galaxies. We live in one called the Milky Way. It contains 200-400 billion stars and is 100,000 light years across. That means it takes 100,000 years for light, traveling at 186,282 miles per second, to travel across the Milky Way. That is just one of the two trillion, and it is only moderate in size.

The Andromeda Galaxy, our closest neighbor, has an estimated 1
trillion stars and is approximately 220,000 light years across. Although Andromeda is the closest galaxy, it is still 2½ million light years away.

It is one of the farthest celestial objects that can be seen with the naked eye, and the light we do see was emitted 2½ million years ago. That was when genus homo first emerged on Earth.

Our solar system is a small part of the Milky Way galaxy. It was formed 4½ to 5 billion years ago and is composed of eight (not counting Pluto) planets orbiting a star called the Sun. Earth is in elliptical orbit varying between 146 and 152 million kilometers (91 and 94.5 million miles) from the Sun.

That distance is very critical. We all know how important liquid water is for survival. If Earth was 10 million kilometers closer to the Sun, the heat would not let water vapor condense – a little bit farther away and ice would not melt. Earth is just the right distance to provide that 0-100oC temperature range so we can be here.

Animal life inhales molecular oxygen (O2) and exhales carbon dioxide (CO2). Vegetable life, in reverse, inhales CO2 and exhales O2. This process results from photosynthesis.

Trees leaves and other vegetation contain chlorophyll which absorbs light. Photosynthesis uses the absorbed light energy to chemically combine water (brought up through the roots) with the CO2 (inhaled through the leaves) to produce sugar (that feeds the plant). Excess 292



oxygen is exhaled through the leaves. This CO2-O2 cycle is one of many harmonic beauties of nature that balances oxygen in the atmosphere so we can be here.

Our human bodies are completely made up of atoms. Every atom in the Universe was produced by nuclear reactions called nucleosynthesis.

Atoms up to the weight of iron are produced from primordial hydrogen by stellar nucleosynthesis in stars. Supernovae (exploding stars) use those atoms to form heavier atoms by supernovae nucleosynthesis. The beauty of humanity is that we are all made from this stardust.

Understanding this beauty of nature, and knowing we are part of it, literally and physically, establishes harmony in how we feel.

Seeking Goodness establishes harmony in what I do. Inner goodness controls the gunas.

The gunas, left to themselves, will create bad thoughts which lead to bad actions. Such neglectfulness is a habit that can be broken. We can persist in priming good thoughts until goodness dominates our thinking. Then we feel in harmony in everything we do.

I see all people related through a higher spiritual/moral power, or
universal connectedness. Our inner goodness as the real ‘Me’ but we cannot call it ‘mine’. It exists in everyone and everywhere. There are many manifestations of goodness: caring, empathy, sympathy, concern, understanding, compassion, acceptance, kindness, happiness, truth …

etcetera … and above all, love. Goodness is in all of us; and once sought-and-found, there is a compelling force to experience it with others.

The goodness field is the cosmic connectedness that unifies all people.

People of the Great Sioux Nation say: “We are all related.” We may not be related by blood but we are related by goodness. The indigenous people of Ecuador understood this when they called the Vilcabamba 293



River their ancestor. People of the Whanganui tribe of New Zealand call themselves the river people.

When the young warrior at Oceti Sakowin said “love yourself first so you are free to love others,” he was saying that recognizing and loving our own inner goodness frees us from the guna interactions that form egothink so that we can see and love the goodness that binds all people as a cosmic family.

The final three phrases of the Nonviolent Warrior Ethos, repeated below, come about through practice.

I pursue empathetic caring, commitment, courage, and perseverance in a complex and multi-dimensional world – uncovering powerful principles; understanding diverse wisdom; and caring for those trapped by fear, judgment, and aggression.

I honor, stand with, and defend those who are harmed, threatened, repressed, or exploited; especially the children and youth who are the future of humanity.

I will persevere in the nonviolent struggle for peace, justice, human dignity and a non-killing world.

The Nonviolent Warrior Ethos describes the goodness field with human expression; and that description of goodness will be the core of our Global Constructive Program. The nonviolent warrior’s task, then, is to popularize that vision, and make it a goal for which all people aspire.

The next chapter will explore ways of doing that.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

References and Further Reading for Chapter-13.

Chopra, Deepak; Life After Death: The Burden of Proof, (New York, NY; Three Rivers Press; 2006).

Easwaran, Eknath (Introduction and Translation); The Bhagavad Gita, (Tomales, CA; Nilgiri Press; 1985, 2007).

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Gandhi, Mohandas K.; The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi, (Blacksburg, VA; Wilder Publications, Inc.; 2011). English translation by Mahadev Desai.

Hentoff, Nat; Peace Agitator: the story of A.J. Muste (New York; A.J. Muste Memorial Institute; 1963, 1982).

Lester, Muriel (Edited by Richard Deats): Ambassador of Reconciliation: A Muriel Lester Reader, (Philadelphia; New Society Publishers; 1991) Mascaró, Juan (Introduction and Translation); The Bhagavad Gita, (Baltimore, MD; Penguin Books; 1962).

Merton, Thomas; New Seeds of Contemplation, (New York, NY; New Directions; 1961, 1972)

Van Dyke, Henry; The Unknown Quantity (New York; Charles Scribner’s Sons; 2012).

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We need courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit.

But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart.

We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life or to cover it over with any philosophy –
material or spiritual. We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.

-- Jack Kornfield

Buddhist practitioner, author, and teacher-trainer 296

14 – Create a Culture of Goodness

…he was coming straight in my direction.

He stopped
directly beneath me. … Chuck’s colorful pilot chute blossomed … and shot straight toward me …

From the instant I saw Chuck’s pilot chute emerge, I had a fraction of a second to react. For it would take less than a second to tumble through his deploying main parachute and

– quite likely – into Chuck himself…

People say things move more slowly in situations like this and they are right. My mind watched the action in the microseconds that followed as if it were watching a movie in slow motion.

The instant I saw the pilot chute, my arms flew to my sides and I straightened my body into a head dive, bending ever so slightly at the hips. The verticality gave me increased speed, and the bend allowed my body to add … horizontal motion.

I passed him going over 150 miles per hour …Somehow I had reacted in microseconds to a situation that, had I actually thought about it, would have been much too complex for me to deal with.

-- Alexander, pp.5-6.

Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander is describing a near miss while skydiving. Sometimes events happen too fast and our preconscious has to directly signal muscular action. I had a similar experience in the Philippines during World War II.

While walking along a mountain path in the Caraballo Mountains of Luzon, I stopped suddenly, dead in my tracks. I looked around but could see nothing alarming. But as my gaze shifted downward I saw, just inches ahead of my toe and about six inches above the ground, a taut string stretched across the path. One step more and I would have tripped a booby trap.

In Chapter 7, I introduced the concept of preconscious thought processing. I will review that briefly and then add more.



Every ‘thought event’ takes about 200 milliseconds (one-fifth of a second). During that time ‘physical reality’ is gathered from the collective unconscious:

1. Every thought event since the beginning of time is apprehended.

2. Duplicates and those not relevant are discarded.

3. Those remaining are sorted into every possible combination from everything down to nothing.

4. Each combination is a potential thought in the preconscious matrix of potentialities.

5.

Then ‘nonphysical reality’ – which I like to think of as the primordial goodness force – enters the matrix to urge us to choose the one potentiality among zillions that will bring the most goodness.

6.

From this matrix, one and only one potentiality will actuate as a conscious thought completing that thought event.

If we are controlling the gunas by paying attention to urges, the thought that actualizes will be from the goodness force. All of this takes only about one-fifth of a second.

After that thought actualizes, it becomes part of the collective unconscious that enters the matrix of potentialities for the next thought event. This steady chain of thoughts is like a 300-frame-per-minute moving picture show depicting our conscious awareness of the world.

Sometimes, however, action is required so quickly there is no time to process a thought. The goodness force bypasses the mind and sends direct instructions for muscular motion. That is what stopped me on that mountain path in the Philippines.

Evolution started with the physical formation of cosmic structures, the cycles of nature, and life itself. Today it has moved on to evolution of the mind and the ability of the mind to reason and interact with goodness.

Martin Luther King, Jr. used the term “cosmic companionship” to describe the interaction of the goodness force with humans. I have found it to be an empowering and comforting companionship. Since I 298



have become familiar with preconscious processing, I look forward to the urges. When faced with a decision I find myself hoping for an urge. When I don’t know how to proceed, I listen closely for an urge.

The urges are more pronounced for important decisions but sometimes, for the most insignificant little choice, I think I feel an urge. Practice seems to make me more aware of them. And the more I become aware of them, the deeper I feel that cosmic companionship.

Thought Development, Habits, and Bias.

Knowledge of thought processes helps us to help others think rightly by recognizing their cultural entrapment. Overcoming public apathy will topple the main pillar of support for egothink.

Dr. Viktor E. Frankl described apathy at Dachau as “the blunting of emotions” because the prisoner has “surrounded himself with a very necessary protective shell.” (Frankl, p. 35) People today are also
prisoners. They can’t imagine life beyond pleasure. They’re deluded by persistent, subtle propaganda. The protective shell of apathy blunts any reasoning by inner goodness.

Blatant abuse of revered thinking has jaded emotions since the turn of the century. It started with an obvious loser being declared President of the United States. The “new Pearl Harbor” on 9/11 being a false flag attack seemed so unbelievable that people went into denial. Collective apathy set in when the PATRIOT Act vaporized human rights.

Shock therapy continued when Trump’s executive orders rolled back decades of environmental and social gains. Shock and awe works.

People feel powerless. Emotions are blunted.

But minds do respond to reason. Heeding urges stimulates right thinking, if the people do heed them. The task of the nonviolent warrior is to help people do that.

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That means addressing patterned (habitual) behavior. The culture industries have patterned styles to promote entertainment. Nonviolent resisters have patterned actions to resist patterned entertainment. The invisible government has patterned responses that perpetuate entertainment and trample all resistance to it .

So goes the habitual cycle where patterned resistance is squashed by patterned force and patterned entertainment continues to create the same pattern of suffering. A better understanding of thought processing is needed to break this habitual pattern.

Unconscious Activity, the Collective Unconscious, and Preconscious

Processing.

We are unable to tangibly experience the unconscious so we tend to relegate it to the realm of myths. Nevertheless, unconscious activity is so common that our lives depend on it. The second-by-second functioning of our bodies depend on it. Decisions are consistently made by it.

Something decides how fast the heart will beat, and when it will beat faster if more oxygen is needed. The entire circulatory system is a complex network requiring constant monitoring to function properly.

The same can be said for the gastro-intestinal system, the nervous system, and any other system of the body. Unconscious analysis and processing is taking place continuously.

Another example is habit. Recall doing something automatically, without thinking; like driving home with a wandering mind and then having no recollection of anything along the route just traveled. That was unconscious activity at work.

According to British psychologist Max Velmans, “the suggestion that consciousness of input is preceded by a period of preconscious 300



processing is broadly supported by cognitive research – and a common estimate of preconscious processing time is in the order of [a quarter of a second].” (Velmans)

An example is speaking. “To be able to speak words in an understandable, serial fashion … requires a prior organization of the representations … in the intended sequence.” (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows)

Reading a sentence seems to be a simple, conscious process.

“However, deciding when a mental process becomes conscious is not as easy as it seems.” (Velmans, emphasis his) Identifying visual patterns requires both semantic (the meaning of words) and syntactic (how words are put together) analysis before they can convey information to the conscious mind. Velmans uses a simple exercise which I will duplicate here. Read the following sentence quickly to yourself.

If the garbage man is not paid, he will refuse to pick up the refuse.

Now examine what you have just read. Semantically, the word ‘refuse’

is a heteronym that is used twice in the sentence, but with different meanings and pronunciation each time. First it is used with a long ‘e’

and the stress is on the second syllable; to mean decline or reject. The second time, the ‘e’ is pronounced ‘eh’ and the accent is on the first syllable, to mean waste or garbage.

Syntactically, it is the sentence structure and arrangement of words that indicate the meaning and pronunciation in each case. This information has to be processed before the sentence makes sense. “Clearly, the syntactic and semantic analysis … must have taken place prior to the allocation of [accent] patterns; and this, in turn, must have taken place prior to the phonemic images entering awareness.” Not just the word, but the entire sentence has been processed in the preconscious. “You are conscious of what is written, but not conscious of the complex input analysis involved.” (Velmans)

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Something from the past had to put that semantic and syntactic analysis into the matrix of potentialities. Earlier in life that person had a goal to learn to read. During the learning period, repetition of information was passed on from one ‘thought event’ to the next. Eventually the ability to identify words and analyze sentence structure no longer required conscious attentiveness – it was processed preconciously.

Preconscious processing takes place milliseconds before any activity.

Psychologists Gordon Moskowitz and Emily Balcetis wrote: “People choose how, under what conditions, and by what means they will satisfy needs.

These decisions eventually become routine, automatically and unconsciously activated under similar circumstances.” (Moskowitz & Balcetis) This process is commonly called ‘habit’. There are goodness habits and ego habits. The culture of entertainment perpetuates ego habits.

How do we influence preconscious activity in a way that helps people recognize their patterned behavior? How do we motivate them to break that habit? For decades the Nonviolence Movement has been appealing to conscious reasoning. Priming the preconscious will work better.

Preconscious Priming.

Habits are formed by behavior which is fed from one thought event to the next until it becomes automatic. That is called ‘preconscious priming’. When a person’s life is guided solely by the five physical senses, that person becomes primed with egothink.

People view life in terms of achieving goals which sometimes produce stereotypes – mental prejudices derived from oversimplified opinions shared by a social group. Stereotypes are stimulated to conscious thought when the object of the prejudice is encountered.

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In the culture of entertainment, stereotypes are typically directed toward obstacles to entertainment. Encountering these obstacles stimulates preconscious stereotypes to actualize as conscious thinking.

Nevertheless, prejudiced behavior does not inevitably follow
prejudiced thoughts.

Goodness can be activated simultaneously with the stereotypes. The degree to which goodness influences the mind is inversely proportional to the intensity of the prejudiced stereotype. People with low prejudice will usually override the stereotype, whereas those with a high prejudice will usually give goodness lip service and act according to the stereotype.

Nevertheless, if people set a goal to eliminate prejudice, and persistently strive to achieve it, preconscious activity can eventually be primed to prevent prejudiced stereotypes from being actuated in the first place. Good thoughts actuate in their place. That is breaking the habit.

Good thoughts prompt actions that help the planet. Action prompted by thought is called ideomotor action

Ideomotor Action.

English physician William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1885) first described ‘ideomotor’ as an idea leading to muscular action. American philosopher/psychologist William James developed the concept that every dominant thought results in some form of action. He suggested a little exercise:

Try to feel as if you were crooking your little finger, whilst keeping it straight. In a minute it will fairly tingle with the imaginary change of position; yet it will not sensibly move, because it’s not really moving is also a part of what you have in mind. Drop this idea, think of the movement purely and simply, with all brakes off, and presto! It takes place with no effort at all. (Cited in Allott) 303



That induced behavior is ideomotor action. It usually happens so spontaneously that we don’t recognize the link between thought and action.

Cognitive psychologists at Radboud University (Netherlands) describe two phases of ideomotor action – conscious, and then unconscious.

First there is the conscious thought of a goal that leads to ideomotor action. But once action starts, the physical senses automatically assist by perceiving ‘images’ to unconsciously guide bodily movements to achieve that goal. This secondary activity is called ‘perception-guided movements’.

Conceiving the idea to achieve a goal is paramount because the idea is conscious and is what initiated the perception-guided movements.

Ideas are conceived in the mind ( conception). Sensing with the physical senses ( perception) is often an unconscious habit that guides the motions to carry out the idea.

Assume that I want to phone a friend. I have the “conceptual goal of making a phone call. Subsequently, selection and control of concrete image-guided movements involved in grasping the phone [and]

transporting it to the ear” are habitual ‘perception-guided movements’

necessary to make the phone call. (Ondobaka and Bekkering) The actor is unaware of the ‘perception-guided movements’ necessary to achieve the action goal. That’s because they are habitual and unconscious. Nevertheless, those perception-guided movements are valid forms of ideomotor action.

This is important for priming to overcoming stereotypes because there is less resistance in the unconscious. ‘Perception-guided movements’

can be induced by others because “individuals copy movements of their co-actors with whom they interact, without the presence of a conscious intention to do so.” (Ondobaka and Bekkering) 304



For instance, a New Yorker moves to Texas and she develops southern speech and mannerisms; a crowd forms and the mob mentality develops; violence on television excites aggressive behavior tendencies. All of these things are perception-guided ideomotor action without awareness.

The influence of what the five physical senses experience results in action that “is automatic, … passive, unintentional, and nonconscious.

… it is precisely when the individual is not aware of a perceptual process that conscious control over it is not possible. … social behavior can be triggered automatically by features of the environmen t.” (Bargh, Chen, and Burrows; pp. 233 & 242- emphasis mine) An ‘ideomotor action’ strategy could be to create an environment where people consciously set a goal to embrace goodness. Those with lower cultural prejudice will be the first to respond. The Charter for Compassion, Nonviolent Cities, and Sanctuary Cities projects have pioneered this approach.

Once the goal is accepted by most of a community, activities can be planned that induce perception-guided movements toward achieving that goal. Carbondale’s ’11-Day’ event is a good example. It is well to understand the process because it facilitates better planning.

Another efficacious strategy for shifting action from entertainment to goodness is by highlighting the contradiction between a person’s actions and values – that is, to create cognitive dissonance.

Creating Cognitive Dissonance.

Merriam-Webster defines ‘cognitive dissonance’ as a “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.” Felicity Menzies calls it “the uncomfortable emotion 305



experienced when individuals are aware of an inconsistency in their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors.” (Menzies) It is easiest to create cognitive dissonance in people with low cultural prejudice. It can be created by tacit appeal to their inner goodness. An effective approach is to give new meaning to what people already know. I will review three examples – two successful and one that could have been.

Laughtivism in Serbia. ‘Laughtivism’ was coined by Srdja Popovic, executive director of CANVAS.1

Peter Gabriel said “Srdja used
imagination, cunning, and humor to create a movement that not only toppled the brutal [Serbian] dictator Slobodan Milošević but also became a blueprint for nonviolent revolution around the world.” Todd Gitlin added: “As long as you want to change the world, why not do it joyfully? It’s not just funny. It’s seriously funny. No joke.” (Popovic, back cover)

Laughtivism is all about injecting thought-provoking humor into nonviolent resistance to create cognitive dissonance. Virtually everything important is expected to be conducted seriously. What is expected is predictable. Humor upsets the balance.

Humor “doesn’t just make you chuckle – it makes you think.”

(Popovic, p. 100) Chapter V of Blueprint for Revolution gives examples of laughtivism tilting the playing field in favor of nonviolent actors – police frantically chasing dozens of message-inscribed ping pong balls rolling down a steep street; hundreds of people ‘making out’

to protest a fundamentalist ordinance prohibiting kissing in public; 1 The Centre for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS) has worked with pro-democracy activists from more than 50 countries,” including those who ousted the dictators Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (Tunisia) and Gamal Mubarak (Egypt) during the Arab Spring which began in 2010.

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dictatorial authorities wondering who to arrest when they find giant Lego men holding protest signs on a street corner.

Humor is a low-risk level for the public to initially engage in nonviolent action. For instance, an oil drum on which is painted a picture of the dictator is found on a street corner. A baseball bat is leaning against it. A sign reads: “Smash the dictator for one dinar.”

People stare and wonder until a venturesome soul drops a dinar in the slot atop the drum, picks up the bat, and swings a hefty blow on the painted nose. At first there are cautious snickers and giggles; finally outright laughter.

Fear now diminished, others drop a dinar and swing the bat. The frolic is joyous. The perpetrators sit across the street sipping coffee and watching the fun. The last view of the oil-drum-dictator is of police struggling to put it in the paddy wagon.

This stunt is exactly what Otpor! (Resist!) did in Belgrade. Ordinary people had fun publicly demonstrating their feelings – for many, their first nonviolent action. People overcame fear and more were influenced to participate. A main fascist support pillar – fear – was crumbling.

MY ANALYSIS. Milošević’s image stimulated the ‘fear’ stereotype that had been patterned by preconscious priming. Then someone overcame the stereotype, perhaps because of cognitive dissonance created by failure to act because of fear.

Ideomotor action was
induced. The drum was smashed.

Perception-guided ideomotor action induced by a co-actor (the first to swing the bat) induced others to smash the dictator. Courage gradually overrode the fear stereotype.

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Empowering the Serbian people in such well-planned actions continued, gained momentum, and climaxed in 2000 when some 17
opposing political parties united as the ‘Democratic Opposition of Serbia' to oust Slobodan Milošević in a democratic election.

Cacerola Night in Argentina. The night of December 19-20, 2001 was the night of cacerola (beating on pots and pans) in Buenos Aires.

Argentina’s economy, politics, and social order were in crisis. Massive unemployment and rising prices had been caused by privatization.

People begged for food at supermarkets, or simply took it.

Fearing devaluation of the peso, depositors made a rush on the banks so they could spend their money while it still had value.

Dictator

Fernando de la Rúa imposed austerity measures and froze bank accounts on December 19th.

People were furious. Banks were vandalized, stores were looted, and, over the next several days, 39 people would be killed by police and security guards.

People at home heard the rioting and saw it on television. They were angry, and rioting added to their emotions. Someone, nobody knows who, vented frustration by leaning out a window and beating on a cooking pot.

Someone across the street started beating a pot -- then more, and still more. Someone went out the door beating a pot and saw others in their doorways beating pots. They moved to the corner, and then overflowed into the street.

Cacerola spread from neighborhood to neighborhood; and then, aided by television, to other cities. People began walking. They had no destination; they just walked. More joined along the way. News came 308



that the finance minister had resigned. Someone yelled “That it is not enough. They all must go.”

Those words, spoken for the first time, clicked with the cacerola marchers. The chant went through the crowd: “They all must go. They all must go.” It became a mantra and marchers now had a purpose.

They continued to chant as they gathered outside the dictator’s residence – “They all must go.”

And they all did go. The dictator left that very night with all his cabinet. Pablo, observed:

That’s how it was. … [It] began with a sound – the sound of someone banging on a pot. That sound grew, and then bodies began to move from their houses to the corner, and then to the center of the ciy, and finally to Plaza de Mayo. Bodies moved and pots banged, and finally that new phrase was spoken – not speeches, not explanations, not political party placards. No one knew exactly who was there, whether people were from the left, right, or center. There were housewives, young people – everyone was there – and they said with a common voice, “They all must go.” (Sitrin, pp. 22-23) Snap elections later took place to fill the vacancies. Five government officials sequentially served temporarily as acting president, but they all had to go.

MY ANALYSIS.

Cacerola night certainly had a lot of perception-guided motions but it seemed to start with cognitive dissonance. First, there was the conflict between fear and a strong desire to act. Ezequiel described cacerola marchers as “the type of people that had never gone out into the street to protest, or at least not since before the dictatorship.” (Sitrin, p. 33).

Watching the rioting on TV intensified cognitive dissonance – they felt like joining in to vent their emotions but not by violence. Frustration 309



from the dissonance caused someone to bang on a pot. Perception-guided ideomotor action then put the cacerola march under way.

“People didn’t know where they were marching, or why they were marching, they were just so fed up … we were so very fed up with everything.” (Sitrin, p. 31) It perfectly exemplified perception-guided motion motivated by other actors. There was no leader and no plan –
people just started banging and migrated out the door and into the street.

An action goal was then formulated. It “was a sound, Oh, que se vayan todos (they all must go) was the only thing said. There was no program or formed political position. It wasn’t planned. It was something innate.” (Sitrin, p. 31)

The motto gave them unity, purpose, and
direction – an action goal.

It wasn’t rioters that drove a corrupt government out. They were handled quickly. What the government couldn’t deal with was masses of nonviolent citizens jamming the streets chanting “they all must go.”

Paloma said: “I remember … boom! People lost their fear …” (Sitrin, p. 24) Ideomotor action took over.

I call this action successful because, like People Power, it achieved nonviolent regime change at a critical time. Unfortunately, there was no plan for filling the vacancy.

Lessons from Syria. Arab Spring began in Tunisia on 18 December 2010. Dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced out on January 14th. Egyptians, after 18 days of protests, forced dictator Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak to resign on February 11th.

Emboldened by the success in Egypt and Tunisia, Syrians took to the streets of Damascus on 15 March 2011, calling for democratic reforms and release of political prisoners. Repercussions were violent.

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“They’d jumped the gun … and started marching in the streets before they were ready,” wrote Srdja Popovic. “With images of the Arab Spring inspiring millions throughout the region, the Syrians thought it would be a simple enough thing to take down Assad.” (Popovic, p. 79) Activists from Egypt and Tunisia had taken training at CANVAS to prepare for their revolution. Syrian activists attended CANVAS
training after their revolution had started.

Had there been a constructive program in place, the potential was enormous. “The impact of nonviolent resistance in Syria … was tremendous. It mobilized hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of until-then apathetic citizens, produced hundreds of ‘leaders’ from people who were mostly unknown except locally, united diverse cross sections of the Syrian population, … [and] succeeded in weakening the power of the regime to a degree that armed resistance … failed to accomplish. All … while the ranks of civil resisters were being decimated by massacre …” (Bartkowski and Kahf) Demonstrations spread to other cities. The Alawites (a Shia Muslim sect) and Sunni Muslims, with sometimes deadly differences, came together in solidarity to call for Assad’s departure.2

Assaults by
government troops were brutal but they sparked more determination and participation in the nonviolent movement. Assad blamed armed gangs for the demonstrations but video footage belied that accusation.

By April, local communities were organizing themselves. On April 30th the Syrian Nonviolent Movement (SNM) was founded to form a national coalition. It brought the protest groups together under an umbrella called ‘Freedom Days’. Its mission statement declared: 2 Sunni Muslims make up the majority of Syria. Besides religious differences between Sunni and Alawite, there is also political friction because Assad is Alawite, as is most of the military leadership. It is a significant sign of unity when Alawites join the Sunnis in protests against the government.

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We believe in nonviolent struggle and civil resistance as a principle and method in achieving social, cultural, and political change in Syrian society, and in enabling Syria to take its role in building human civilization. (SNM page at:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/SyrainNonviolence/about/?ref=page_int ernal)

The aim of SNM is to spread the conviction that change must come without violence. I could not determine if the founders of SNM
included some or all of the 17 young dissidents who took training with CANVAS, but the focus and strategizing improved under the SNM
umbrella.

To escape being targeted by the military, nonviolent groups often dissolved and regrouped under new names. Fake locations for demonstrations were discussed publicly and then the group would assemble at a different place, demonstrate for 10 minutes, and disperse.

Rose stated: “We do other activism but we will not stop demonstrating; to taste freedom, if only for 10 minutes.” (quoted in Bartkowski and Kahf)

Soldiers started defecting during Autumn 2011 because of being forced to massacre unarmed civilians and torture those arrested. Defections were critical to nonviolent regime change in Egypt and Tunisia –
likewise for People Power in the Philippines.

In Syria, however, the nonviolent movement wasn’t prepared to assimilate defectors. Consequently, defectors formed their own groups and they only knew violence. They first tried to protect protesters but that gave Assad an excuse to escalate violence. .

Defectors were forced to move their base to Turkey, where they formed the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Defectors were mostly Sunni Muslims so Assad started using Alawite-controlled army units. He also allowed gangs to loot, kidnap/torture children, execute minorities, and traffic women.

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After formation of the FSA, the regime used heavier and indiscriminate firepower, and air strikes. That prompted a call from international observers to arm the FSA with more firepower. By the end of the year foreign mercenaries were joining the FSA. Violent civilian resistance groups popped up in major cities.

Violence escalated. Armaments and equipment, mostly from the US, began to flow in through neighboring countries. The covert CIA

‘Operation Timber Sycamore’ trained revolutionaries in Qatar and Jordan. Al-Qaeda, ISIL3, and other jihadist fighters poured in.

By July 2012, Syria was in a state of Civil War. “The war in Syria is the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century. What started out as an inspirational nonviolent movement for democracy has devolved into one of the most violent civil wars in recent history.”

(Sowers)

MY ANALYSIS. “A mass demonstration, as anyone who has ever organized any successful campaign will tell you, is the last step you take, not the first.” (Popovic, p. 175) The Egyptians spent nearly two years preparing for the Arab Spring. When they finally mobilized in Tahrir Square to demand Mubarak’s resignation, they had the people behind them. In Syria there was no strategy.

In Syria, nonviolence looked promising at first. “What started as peaceful demonstrations of tens of thousands of people in a few cities and towns turned to massive protests of hundreds of thousands of people across the country by the end of July 2011 … the movement was winning government concessions … dismissal of the governor of 3 ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is more commonly referred to as the Islamic State if Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The Levant takes in more territory – it is the area bordering the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt to Greece.

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Daraa, the release of hundreds of political dissidents, the grant of citizenship rights for Kurds, and removal of the 48-year-old emergency law.” (Bartkowski and Taleb)

Perception-guided ideomotor action was inspired by co-actors in Tunisia and Egypt. But it eventually floundered for lack of training and knowledge and strategy to handle various contingencies; including how to accommodate dissenting military personnel. In Egypt, Tunisia, Serbia, and the Philippines; dissident troops did not defect. They just failed to carry out orders, thus obstructing military operations.

Had dissident Syrian soldiers remained in the ranks, they could have added to nonviolence operations. A plan to reach dissident soldiers, and train them in techniques of nonviolent disruption from the inside, is a critical part of any nonviolent regime change strategy.

Dispelling the idea that nonviolence works only against humane regimes must be part of all nonviolence training. The Syrian uprising can be held up as an example. While it lasted, the Syrian episode put Assad on the defensive and gained concession. His violence brought more people into the nonviolent ranks.

Had Syrian activists better analyzed all conditions faced to accomplish regime changes the Syrian situation today could be drastically different.

Some things that were overlooked are:

x

Determine the ethnic makeup of the military.

x

Establish early communication with the troops through personal contact, social media, leaflets, etc.

x

Help dissident soldiers understand their options.

x

Consider what functions dissident soldiers might perform and how they can fulfill those functions.

Successful techniques have been developed for counseling conscientious objectors in the military. Those techniques can be used to counsel potential defectors. Conscientious defection arises from 314



cognitive dissonance. Soldiers struggling with that can be receptive to help.

The Syrians had no international support. They had no timely communication domestically or internationally while the internet was shut down. They lacked supplies to adequately produce leaflets, flyers, and other documents necessary for a nonviolent campaign. Had there been a Global Constructive Program in place, the Global Satyagraha Movement would have supplied technology and material support.

A Global Satyagraha Movement needs to address all of these deficiencies, yes, but it also needs to set its sights on a culture of goodness to fill the gap when than regime change happens.

This is all hindsight, of course, but we can learn by asking: “What if

…?” Now I will address some tools for priming the public mind and creating cognitive dissonance , while at the same time developing spirit and higher unity in the Global Satyagraha Movement.

Tools to Build Spirit for Global Satyagraha.

Music, Buttons, slogans, logos, and gestures are powerful tools for creating good thoughts. They prime preconscious activity to overcome stereotypes that block inner goodness. They also forge unity, spirit, and solidarity in the Global Satyagraha Movement. .

Music to Build Spirit and Create Compassion. Music raises emotions and emotions are what motivate action. Music unifies movements –
labor, liberation, social-change, and more. It will do the same for the Global Satyagraha Movement. It unifies by creating moods of joy and unity and solidarity. Under a Global Constructive Program music will remind us that we belong.

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Jacob Jolij and Maaike Meurs tested how participants viewed their environment according to mood. Participants furnished their own mood music. One experiment was to characterize ambiguous faces mixed in with a set of randomly
presented schematic faces, while
playing mood music. They pushed
one key if the face was perceived as
happy and another if sad.

The results indicated that while in
positive mood participants were more
likely to judge ambiguous faces

(numbers 3, 4, and 5) as happy. But
when in a negative mood they often
judged the same faces as sad.

That is a simplified description of the
experiment but it illustrates how
happy emotional music can help
people see happiness – goodness. Some suggested uses to provide goodness music are:

x

Rap as a catching style for telling stories. It could explain Mother Earth – her trees, rivers, water, earth, fire, etc. – and highlight their sacredness.

x

Ballads set legends to music. There is emotional unification in reminiscing our nonviolence heritage; and the goodness to which we belong.

x

Ballads of nonviolent warriors would recall romantic and nostalgic memories and create new ones.

More importantly, they could
introduce lesser-known warriors.

Goodness music helps the nonviolent warrior get full motivation from life experiences. Goodness music can challenge youth to nonviolence in a more profound way than patriotic songs entice them to violence.

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Logos and Hand Signs. While driving down I-5, I see golden arches in the distance. I think of hamburgers. Culture industries get more immediate and more frequent recognition from a logo than from advertising. The logo has ambiance – it sells.

Logos have also been used by social-change movements. The spinning wheel on India’s flag is a tribute to its nonviolence heritage. The clenched fist signifies determination by: IWW Union strikers (1917); Spanish Civil War rebels (1936-1939); Yugoslav Partisans resisting Nazis (WW II); Black Panthers (1960s); Otpor! (1998-2004); and Egyptians during Arab Spring (2010-2011).

The Global Satyagraha Movement needs a logo to actualize thoughts of goodness, and assert solidarity.

For illustrative purposes, I will transform the clenched fist to include the letter ‘G’ (alphabet of the deaf) for Goodness. It is made with the index finger and thumb while the other three fingers remain clenched in determination. It can be a hand sign or a logo adaptable to stenciling or rubber stamping.

Once the Global Satyagraha Movement earns a reputation that evokes the pathos of goodness, the logo and hand sign will be a visual trigger to activate goodness thoughts in the public mind.

Mottos and Slogans. A motto is a great tool for building esprit de corps. The military understands this well. Also social change movements: ‘Black Power,’ ‘Black is Beautiful’, and ‘Otpor!’

(’Resist!’). The Global Satyagraha Movement might choose something 317



like ‘Unity in Goodness’; Latinizing as Unitatis in Bonitatem for a cool attention-grabber. Keep it short, simple, and snappy.

Slogans used for activities are more numerous and less formal. They stimulate thoughts when spoken or displayed. Graffiti is traditionally unacceptable but, under authoritarian regimes, a slogan or stenciled logo has symbolized ‘taking back public space’.

Graffiti also
announces details of mass demonstrations.

Summing up.

Planning actions to stimulate thinking is not new. Understanding thought processes and what affects them improves that planning.

Focusing planning on affecting thought processes is being proactive.

There are three main techniques to keep in mind to overcome egothink: 1.

Prime preconscious thought processing to overcome stereotypes and form good habits.

2.

Design actions that trigger perception-guided ideomotor action.

3.

Create cognitive dissonance by highlighting incompatibility between inner goodness and egothink.

All of these have been defined above and illustrated with examples.

They are key to planning proactive nonviolent actions. Preconscious thought processing isn’t accomplished in one action. Holding regular vigils at key locations is a good strategy.

It is important that signs and banners used in these vigils be carefully designed to trigger cognitive dissonance. Nonviolent communication (discussed in the next chapter) is critical in both personal encounters and the message on signs/banners.

Triggering perception-guided ideomotor action gets people into the act.

That is good, no matter how inconsequential the act may be. Enticing the first person to do something to prompt perception-guided activity in others is a challenge with huge rewards.

Acting with co-actors is

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excellent for creating cognitive dissonance. Planning such actions takes radical thinking and novel ideas.

The ultimate goal in getting people to think is to create cognitive dissonance. That is the mental evaluation most likely to unblock inner goodness. Getting people to see something they are very familiar with in a new light is superb.

Light dawns and the phenomenal world
changes.

I experienced cognitive dissonance while designing strategic nuclear weapons. I was at first comfortably convinced that strategic weapons were needed to deter nuclear war. Then public debate began on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty). I learned that ABM
defenses were needed because strategic missile were getting more accurate and more reliable. I began to see the announced deterrence strategy in a new light.

Extreme accuracy and high reliability are not needed for retaliation under the Mutually Assured Deterrence (MAD) Strategy. Reality dawned! The Trident missile was very familiar to me. Now I saw that I was working on an offensive first-strike weapon. Cognitive dissonance bedeviled me until I quit. That led to simple living and, eventually, a new appreciation of what really fulfills me.

This chapter has addressed thought processes and ways to prime goodness thoughts and dispel harmful stereotypes as a meaningful way to create a culture of goodness. . The next and final chapter will have the nonviolent warrior applying proactive techniques in confrontational situations.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

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References and Further Reading for Chapter-14.

Alexander, Eben; Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, (Simon & Schuster; NY, 2012).

Allott, Robin; “Language and Evolution: Homepage Robin Allott,” Available at http://glotta.ntua.gr/StateoftheArt/Motor-Action/ideomota.htm Bargh, John A.; Chen, Mark; and Burrows, Lara; “Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action, ( Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 71, No. 2, pp.

230-244, 1996).

Bartkowski, Maciej and Kahf, Mohja; The Syrian Resistance: A Tale of Two Struggles.” Part 1 ( Open Democracy, 23 September 2013).

Bartkowski, Maciej J. and Taleb, Julia; “Myopia of the Syrian Struggle and Key Lessons (Part 1),” ( Insights Into People Power, 3 February 2015).

Frankl, Viktor E.; Man.s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy (New York, NY; Washington Square Press; 1959, 1963).

Jolij, Jacob and Meurs, Maaike; “Music Alters Visual Perception,” PLoS ONE

6(4); e18861 (21 April 2011).

At https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018861

Menzies, Felicity; “Unconscious Bias Activities” (Culture Plus Consulting).

Moskowitz, Gordon B. and Balcetis, Emily; “The Conscious Roots of Selfless, Unconscious Goals,” ( Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2014, p.

151).

Ondobaka, Sasha and Bekkering, Harold; “Hierarchy of Idea-Guided Action and Perception-Guided Movement, ( Frontiers in Psychology, 27 December 2012) Popovic, Srdja; with Matthew Miller; Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World, (New York; Spiegel & Grau; 2015).

Sitrin, Marina, editor; Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, (Oak;and, CA; AK Press; 2006).

Sowers, Jeff; “How US Regime Change in Syria Destroyed a Nonviolent Movement and Pushed the Country Into Civil War,” ( Works in Progress –

Olympia’s Progressive Newspaper, Volume 29, No. 8; February 2019) Velmans, Max; “When Perception Becomes Conscious” ( British Journal of Psychology, Vol. 90, No. 4, pp. 543-566, Nov. 1999).

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15 – Proactive Nonviolence: Cosmic Experiments with Truth1

I think the one point I might emphasize your touching on more in the Guidebook is the courage to face and move through the total darkness of evil – in the unspeakable power it seems to have – then being overwhelmed by the light. The power of nonviolence is beyond our imagination.

-- Jim Douglass (Personal letter dated 16 March 2017) I first met Jim Douglass at the 1972 Hickam-3 trial in Honolulu. He was one of the three who exposed Hickam Air Base in Hawaii as the intelligence and targeting center for the Vietnam air war. It was that trial, and the educational activities surrounding it, that triggered Janet and me to set a date for ending my career of designing Trident missiles.

I later read Jim’s book Resistance and Contemplation. Now, almost half a century later, I remembered only one sentence from that book:

“From now on, brother, everybody stands on his own feet.” (Douglass, p. 55)

I have now returned to that book to find the context of those words.

They were spoken by Thomas Merton on 10 December 1968, to Buddhist monks at a monastery in Bangkok; just a few hours before his accidental death. He was relating the experience of a friend, a Tibetan lama, who had been forced into exile by invading Chinese. Desperate and alone, the lama wrote to his abbot friend asking what he should do now. The abbot’s reply was short and direct: “From now on, brother, everybody stands on his own feet.”

After relating that anecdote, Merton cautioned: “To my mind that is an extremely important monastic statement. If you forget everything else that has been said, I would suggest that you remember this for the 1 In a personal letter, Jim Douglass wrote that this Guidebook “makes me think of cosmic experiments with truth.”



future: ‘From now on, everybody stands on his own feet’.” (Douglass, p. 55) Jim explained the significance of that peculiar reply: From now on, brother, everybody stands on his own feet. The time for relying on structures has disappeared. How does it feel? To be on your own. With no direction home. The stone is at the bottom of the hill and we are alone. If everything is taken away, what do you do next?

Where do you go from the top of a thirty-foot pole? For that is where we are now, brothers and sisters, (Douglass, p. 56) Support structures have crumbled extensively since that was written.

Government now sidelines all people and things that don’t fuel corporate profits or make billionaires richer. Standing on our own feet means relying on our inner goodness. Then we will be linked through the cosmic goodness field with others relying on their inner goodness.

We will be a society of nonviolent warriors.

A Society of Nonviolent Warriors.

Relying on inner goodness is not retreating from a corrupt world.

That’s not what standing on our own feet means. We are nonviolent warriors, guided by inner urges, working in higher unity to unblock the goodness force. Proactive nonviolence is the tool we use to free people from the culture of entertainment The Constructive Program lets us stand on our own feet.

Nonviolent warriors are ready for action. Techniques have been developed and training methods have been perfected. The ability to organize diverse groups globally has been demonstrated. The infrastructure is in place for a Global Satyagraha Movement.

We have correctly identified our opponent. They are not persons or groups of persons. Neither are they organizations like the NRA, TigerSwan, or Proud Boys. Our opponent is the mental attitude that blocks the flow of goodness – such as greed and lust for power. Our 322



opponent is the false self and its distorted phenomenal world.

Our
opponent is egothink.

Trying to counter egothink through conscious minds doesn’t work. Our opponent has already actuated those ego-driven thoughts. They cannot be undone. Proactive nonviolence addresses preconscious processes to overcome the ego’s control of the mind so as to actuate good thoughts.

To do that, nonviolent warriors recognize the importance of sharing pathos – that strong desire of the heart. Others, sensing the vulnerability and trust of sharing pathos, feel tenderness, compassion, and empathy toward the sharer. Their minds become more receptive of goodness. Nonviolent communication leads to sharing pathos.

Nonviolent Communication.

Nonviolent communication through words or deeds is the way to convey convictions of the heart. That also means knowing when not to speak or act. Gandhi cautioned: “One must know in a critical situation when to speak and when to be silent, when to act and when to refrain.

Action and non-action in these circumstances become identical instead of contradictory.” (Kripalani, p. 222)

The urge guides us in that decision. I have often started to say something to correct someone, or offer a differing opinion, when the urge comes to keep my mouth shut. Later I am happy that I did.

At other times, I am urged to make a trivial remark. In grocery stores, for instance, I might see a person eying a package of sweets and quip something about chocoholics. That usually brings mutual laughter and good feelings. It enhances the ‘I-Thou’ attitude. Too often people pass silently, eyes averted, submerged in ‘I–It’.

When thoughtful speech and caring actions reach the preconscious mind of another, it steps up the flow of goodness. I-Thou incidents, 323



multiplied megafold, are proactive behavior priming a culture of goodness.

Marshall B. Rosenberg outlined four components of nonviolent communication (NVC): “The first component of NVC is to observe without evaluating; the second component is to express how we are feeling. … The third component of NVC is the acknowledgment of the needs behind our feelings. … The fourth and final component of this process addresses what we would like to request of others in order to enrich life for us.” (Rosenberg, pp. 37, 60, and 67. Emphasis his) Nonviolent communication does not confuse thoughts with feelings or needs. Thoughts are opinions, feelings are emotions, and needs are deeper. Yearning to fulfill needs is pathos. I will elaborate.

1. Observe without Evaluating. The nonviolent warrior never combines an observation with an evaluation. The evaluation must be distinctly separate. Assume a scenario at the Lockheed Martin (LM) facility in Sunnyvale, California; where the Trident missile system is engineered and managed.

A local resistance group holds periodic vigils at the main gate. A female LM employee walks by and asks: “I FREQUENTLY SEE YOU

GUYS OUT HERE. WHY?”

An unthinking response might be: “BECAUSE THE TRIDENT MISSILES

MADE HERE COULD END CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT.” That may be true but it puts the employee on the defensive. Combining the observation (Trident missiles being made there) with the evaluation (a destroyer of civilization) is a rigid statement that squelches positive communication.

A nonviolent warrior would reply mindfully – first making a self-introduction to put the dialogue on an I-Thou exchange. After achieving a first-name basis, the warrior returns to the question.

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“REGARDING YOUR QUESTION, WE BOTH KNOW TRIDENT MISSILES ARE

MADE HERE. I AM AFRAID THEY COULD END CIVILIZATION AS WE

KNOW IT. I ALSO ABHOR THE WASTE OF TALENT AND RESOURCES THAT

COULD BENEFIT THE HUMAN FAMILY.” The first sentence – the observation – is a non-threatening statement of fact that everyone can accept. It makes no evaluations.

2. Express how I feel about the observation. The second sentence –
the evaluation – expresses fear for civilization. Fear is personal and emotional.

Emotions are stronger than thoughts because they arise from a deeper personal need. An emotion-based evaluation is preferable because it can lead to a deeper conversation. Sharing emotions provides clues toward identifying each other’s needs.

Don’t confuse thoughts with emotions. Rosenberg says if you start to say ‘I feel …’; pay attention to what follows. If followed with ‘like’,

‘that’, or ‘as if’ (I feel like …; I feel that …; I feel as if …) you are expressing a thought, not an emotion. Following ‘feel’ with a pronoun or noun is also expressing a thought.

What should follow the word ‘feel’ is an emotion (I feel angry …; I feel happy …; etc.). But beware, thoughts can still sneak in. Saying “I feel uncertain about my job,” or “I feel neglected in that crowd” are thoughts evaluating yourself as uncertain; or how others feel you are not worthy of attention.

3. Acknowledge the need behind our feelings. Needs are expressed in various ways. When our youngest son was in grade school he brought home an art project. He had drawn our solar system with all the planets in proper order except one. Earth was missing. That picture 325



graphically revealed our son’s ‘feelings’ about nuclear weapons, which indicated his ‘need’ for security.

Identifying needs is a critical component of nonviolent communication.

We have to know what requires satisfaction before it can be satisfied.

It is necessary to correctly identify the roots of our emotions.

I’ve got a feeling, that’s got me reeling.

So I’ve gotta find somewhere

The unmet need, that’s sure to lead

To the pathos I have to share.

In our hypothetical event, the warrior added a third sentence: “I ALSO

ABHOR THE WASTE OF TALENT AND RESOURCES THAT COULD BENEFIT

THE HUMAN FAMILY.” That reveals a need to see humanity better cared for. Satisfying that need would also remove the fear for civilization.

Nonviolent communication is more successful when both parties reveal feelings and needs. How can the warrior help the LM worker identify her need? He tries an exploratory question: “DOES OUR PRESENCE

OUTSIDE THE GATE BOTHER YOU?”

That question can be answered many ways, but it is a good starter. The conversation could lead to how she feels about her work and what her family thinks of her working on nuclear missiles. It may take a while to break through the protective shell but showing compassionate concern will pry open the cracks.

Finally, it seems appropriate to ask: “IF YOU WERE OFFERED AN

APPEALING JOB OF EQUAL PAY, WOULD YOU ACCEPT IT?”

Such a
question could lead to potential solutions for the needs of both warrior and employee.

4. What would I like to request of others in order to satisfy my need?

Needs are accompanied by a yearning to satisfy those needs. That yearning is pathos. It is the sharing of pathos that prompts the caring 326



and compassionate bonding that leads to mutual trust. Once trust is established, the two can pursue more meaningful talks on how they can help each other fulfill needs.

My observation, from when I worked on the other side of that LM gate, was that most employees would rather be doing something different.

They are humans with needs and many are trying to suppress cognitive dissonance.

I’ve had discussions with fellow employees about family events and church programs. I’ve attended lunch-break gatherings to discuss our various religious traditions. Stanley Burris, president of the entire Lockheed-Sunnyvale facility, occasionally attended.

While employed by Lockheed (before the merger with Martin) I also worked with the Mid-Peninsula Conversion Project, spearheaded by American Friends Service Committee. It investigated ways to convert from a weapons-making economy to numerically more socially-useful jobs of adequate pay. I got the urge to write a letter-to-the-editor of the Lockheed Star on that subject. It stirred things up on ‘mahogany row’

because I received an invitation from President Burris to discuss the letter.

That was in 1972 and I don’t remember that discussion in detail. I do recall Burris saying that perhaps Lockheed does owe more to the community. Whatever plans he may have had to fulfill that need never materialized. He retired shortly afterwards. Even so, on that long-ago day I could sense his inner goodness. I believe we were both looking for ways to meet each other’s need.

Back to the LM main gate. Sensing hesitation after that last question, the nonviolent warrior explains that this vigil group is part of a Global Satyagraha Movement that has a vision of earthly harmony called the Global Constructive Program.

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The conversation progresses to starting a group of motivated LM
employees to search ways to free themselves from the monetary enticement of military contracting. During the 1970s there was such a group called ‘New Ways to Work.’ They were employees from several local industries who just wanted to do something more useful for humanity.

I was involved with a similar group of Lockheed engineers. A close friend and I recruited a group of engineers to look into better ways to use our skills. Lockheed was between contracts and layoffs were immanent, so the recruiting wasn’t difficult. We met periodically after work in a pizza bar; sharing a pitcher of beer while discussing how to do something better.

We made contact with the head of the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital prosthetics department, in Oakland, California. The Vietnam war was raging and Oak Knoll was a rehabilitating center for marines whose legs had been blown off by land mines. The prosthetics department was involved from the actual amputations through all the therapy; even to the designing of prosthetics.

Our Ad Hoc Group of Engineers, as we called ourselves, drove to Oak Knoll every few weeks to discuss bioengineering improvements with the prosthetic staff. At that time a broken hip was repaired with a ‘pin’

and artificial knees had not been perfected.

Unfortunately, Lockheed won the Trident contract and our group dwindled. But it was a good experiment.

The warrior then explained the Global Constructive Program in more detail. The LM employee agreed to search for sympathetic people who would meet on their own time to plan for change. The nonviolent warrior pledged support and resources. Dialogue was underway.

Impossible? No, there are precedents far and wide. Valuable experience gained from past experiments will contribute to the success 328



of future attempts. Future experiments will now be supported by the Global Satyagraha Movement. “The Power of Nonviolence is beyond imagination.”

Summary. I have used a hypothetical setting to illustrate a few nonviolent communication techniques – they are not all-inclusive. Nor is nonviolent communication restricted to verbal communication; nor to confrontation scenarios. It includes every means of conveying thoughts and feelings – body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, choice of words, radiated pathos, songs, drama, drums, prose, poetry, even silence – anything that can altruistically influence another’s thought process.

Above all, when a nonviolent warrior listens to a person, he or she listens intently, with compassion. There is no judging or evaluating.

The focus is full attention on the speaker while also trying to hear what is not being said. Listening with compassion helps to sense pathos.

All aspects of social activity have potential for nonviolent communication. With a little effort we can prime our preconscious to habitually speak and act nonviolently. Rosenberg’s book is very helpful.

Planning A Cosmic Experiment with Truth.

Now we are prepared to visit a hypothetical local planning meeting.

Nothing can be more frustrating, and require more focus on nonviolent thoughts and speech than trying to reach consensus in a diverse group.

This hypothetical group is focusing on nuclear weapons but the techniques discussed apply to any issue.

It is critical that local groups feel the higher unity of the Global Satyagraha Movement. The local group must be strongly dedicated to 329



the Global Constructive Program. To start the meeting, I recommend a short group contemplation on how this local experiment ties into the planetary vision.

Create an unambiguous feeling of unity with the Global Satyagraha

Movement.

I will use the first two sentences of the model Global Constructive Program for the 21st Century to illustrate this.

“We citizens of Planet Earth recognize that our home in the Universe is a delicate balance of forces and phenomena with a finite quantity of natural resources.” Nuclear weapons are the centerpiece of a vast military juggernaut that disrespects Mother Earth. It protects selfish ownership and wasteful exploitation of nature’s bounties. Seeking abolition of nuclear weapons is our contribution to a global movement of complimentary and diverse activity seeking a culture of goodness.

“In order to live more harmoniously as stewards of this celestial globe, and for the benefit of future generations, we see the need for widening circles of caring communities that accommodate diversity for all.”

Each of us in this local group strives to understand and care for one another. We recognize our diversity and practice mutual respect. This community is our contribution to the Global Satyagraha Movement.

A cosmic perspective is important for local experimenters because the goodness force works universally but is personified in each of us as our inner goodness. Proactive nonviolence requires an acute awareness of the goodness field because today’s culture is dominated by egothink.

The gunas have free reign.

Tamas, activated by undirected energy from rajas, steeps the mind in ignorance, laziness, selfishness, and insensitivity.

Sattva, lacking
energy from rajas, struggles unsuccessfully to teach the mind compassion. This is egothink obstructing the flow of goodness.

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But, the mind is reasonable. Priming good habits, ideomotor action from good thoughts, and cognitive dissonance can change the guna interplay.

That is not the same as propaganda by the invisible government.

The invisible government stimulates egothink. The nonviolent warrior unblocks goodness.

Now, experiencing higher unity, the local planning group is ready to start planning.

Planning an experiment with truth requires innovation, novelty, and imagination. No-holds-barred brainstorming is advised. Popovic’s book, Blueprint for Revolution, is helpful.

The calendar is approaching March 1st – Bikini Day; anniversary of the 15-megaton Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) test in 1954 at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Our hypothetical planning group decides to prepare an experiment for that day. It must be perceived as direct, not symbolic.

The goal will be to provoke cognitive dissonance. Novel and informative handouts will be essential – ‘Novel’ to trigger the preconscious; ‘Informative’ to present information in a new context.

Communication is limited during an action. Handouts continue the story.

Shortly after quitting work on Trident, I participated in weekly leafleting at Lockheed. We struggled hard to provide information they were not being told. One morning I handed a leaflet to a former co-worker. He said he looked forward to receiving them each week because they contained information he wasn’t getting anywhere else. I also discovered that someone inside was reproducing our leaflets and posting them on Lockheed bulletin boards. One can’t say more than

‘good morning’ when greeting employees of the way to work.

Handouts continue the story.

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Much took place during Castle Bravo that people don’t know about.

That test “was subject to massive error and miscalculation by scientists.” (Gutwald) The bomb, originally planned to have the explosive power of 4-8 million tons (megatons) of TNT, was measured at a whopping 15 megatons. Research for handout material revealed:

- - - - - - -

Within a second the fireball was 4½ miles across. A minute later the mushroom cloud was 47,000 feet high and 7 miles across. In 10
minutes it was 132,000 feet high and 62 miles across; and still spreading. Over 7,000 square miles of the Pacific were contaminated.

The first H-Bombs (fusion reactions) were triggered by atom bomb (A-Bomb) primaries (fission reactions) – a two-stage reaction called

‘fission-fusion’. Tritium (hydrogen-3) was the first fusion fuel. Castle Bravo was the first H-Bomb to test Lithium-6 deuteride for fusion fuel.

However, there wasn’t enough available so Lithium-7 deuteride was used to fill space. It was assumed to be inert – just absorb a neutron from the fission detonation to become Lithium-8.

It didn’t work that way. The neutrons from fission did produce Lithium-8 but the highly energetic neutrons from the fusion detonation interacted with Lithium-7 to produce high-energy alpha particles and tritons (tritium nuclei). These newly-created and unexpected tritons reacted with unspent primary fuel (uranium-235) to cause another fission detonation (fission-fusion-fission) that yielded to 15 megatons.

Scientists had inadvertently discovered how to make more powerful bombs. The unplanned 15 megaton blast spread radioactive fallout over a much wider area than planned. This unexpected contamination of Micronesian people was blamed on a wind shift.

Rongelap was hit hardest with radiation levels 200 to 1,000 times background radiation. Iodine-131, with a half-life of only 8 days, was especially radioactive. The Micronesia Support Committee reported: 332



x

90% of Rongelap children younger than 12 developed thyroid tumors.

x

40% of all exposed Marshallese developed thyroid tumors, many needing surgery.

x

From 1954-1958, Rongelap miscarriages & stillbirths were twice normal. (MSC Bulletin)

Meanwhile the Japanese fishing boat, Fifth Lucky Dragon, with a crew of 23, was positioned 40 miles outside the exclusion zone – supposedly safe. They were jolted awake on March 1st by a blinding light and a massive explosion. They paid little attention to the white ash falling from the sky.

By evening the crew was suffering Beta burns, headache, nausea, and other early radiation sickness symptoms. When they reached port two weeks later, suffering severe burns and falling hair, the whole crew was hospitalized and quarantined. Radioman Aikichi Kuboyama, age 40, became the first H-bomb fatality when he succumbed in September.

- - - - - - -

Our hypothetical planners decided their cosmic experiment with truth will be educational, as opposed to confrontational or demonstrative.

Most people comfortably believe nuclear weapons are preventing nuclear war and that science and technology has things under control.

Informational talks and handouts will describe the scientific blunder, the deception, and the human suffering as a different twist to existing knowledge. It must be presented in a manner that undercuts nuclear complacency to trigger thinking.

The presentation of human suffering will be narrowed to the life and family of radioman Aikichi Kuboyama. The pathos of this family must be starkly felt and related to current suffering and deception.

Location of the experiment will be a public place with much foot traffic. Two handouts –prepared in attractive, informal, and easy-to-digest style – will suffice. One will cover military deception history and how atrocities are committed under the nuclear umbrella.

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The other will depict the life and family of Aikichi Kuboyama. It will delve into intimate personal details, as opposed to statistics. Kuboyama is no longer with us so it is up to the warriors to research and reveal his pathos.

The Kuboyamas have a powerful pathos that can be researched. In 1979, Janet and I had the honor of visiting Aikichi’s widow, at her home. In her back yard she had constructed a shrine to honor Aikichi.

According to Buddhist tradition, there were incense sticks for visitors to light and position on the shrine..

Mrs. Kuboyama, knowing we were not Buddhists, told us we were not expected to burn incense. We said we would like to participate in the ritual. She was pleased by our gesture. We felt fortunate for having the opportunity to offer it.

It was an emotional moment. The

Kuboyama pathos was intense.

Arise, Oh Warriors, Arise and Unite.

Now we have arrived at the end of this Guidebook. But I do have one nagging question: Will Global Satyagraga be implemented in time to save our planet? Extinction lurks with no remedy in sight.

Vision of the Great Sioux Nation is that 7th generation youth will spread global Wopida, and they believe the present generation is the 7th.

Also, Generation-Z2 (Gen-Z) is now maturing to voting age.

Politicians should be trembling.

Fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden has inspired Gen-Z to action worldwide. She spoke from the heart at the closing session of COP24, ending her speech by saying “We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past, and you will 2 Generation-Z reach maturity (age 18) between 2013 and 2030 – voting age in the US.

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ignore us again. We have run out of excuses, and we are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people.

Thank you.” (Thunberg)

Greta called for students to make themselves heard and strike against global warming by not attending school. The first strike of the Global Strike for Climate Movement took place in March 2019 with 1.6
million from 125 countries participating.

The second in May 2019
featured 1,600 events in 125 countries. The third climate strike in September 2019 has been estimated at between 6 and 7.6 million, from 150 countries. (Source: Wikipedia, “September 2019 Cliimate Strikes”)

The pathos of Hiroshima atom bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow was intense when she describes the blinding flash at 8:15 that fateful morning. She felt like she was floating. When she regained consciousness, in silence and darkness, she was trapped beneath the wreckage of her school. She ended her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize saying: “When I was a 13-year-old girl, trapped in the smoldering rubble, I kept pushing. I kept pushing toward the light.

And I survived. … To all in this hall and all listening around the world, I repeat those words that I heard called to me in the ruins of Hiroshima:

‘Don’t give up! Keep pushing! See the Light! Crawl toward it’.”

(Thurlow)

Gen-Z sees the light. They recognize that structures have crumbled and they must stand on their own feet. The spunk and fire of Gen-Z was epitomized at Parkland, Florida.

It happened on Valentine’s Day 2018. A disgruntled 19-year-old former student entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School, gunned down 16 students and a geography teacher, and wounded others. It was the 29th mass shooting in the first 45 days of 2018. The Atlantic portrayed typical public reaction as a three-act play: 335



Act I

A wave of grief, shock, and anger sweeps the nation.

Act II

Gun-control activists kick off another call for stricter laws. Gun enthusiasts offer condolences but claim legislation won’t help.

Act III A deadlock ensues. Nothing changes. People resume life as usual.

Not so at Parkland. Act II played out differently. Students stood up.

They stood on their own feet and took action.

Seventeen-year-old Cameron Kasky had been huddled in a classroom with others while gunshots reverberated throughout the building. He said “our politicians abandoned us by failing to keep guns out of schools. … But this time, my classmates and I are going to hold them to account.” (Kasky)

Harvard professor Meira Levinson marveled that MSD students were

“still in the first days of dealing with trauma, anger, grief, and they’re putting it toward really careful and thoughtful political and civic action

– it’s just amazing.” (quoted in Wong)

Just hours after their classmates had been killed, still dazed and traumatized, surviving students vented their emotions on Facebook.

Kasky posted: “Thank you to all the second amendment warriors for protecting us.” (quoted in Witt)

Later that night Kasky posted more: “Can’t sleep. Thinking about so many things. So angry that I’m not scared or nervous anymore . . . I’m just angry.” And then: “I just want people to understand what happened and understand that doing nothing will lead to nothing.

Who’d have thought that concept was so difficult to grasp?” (quoted in Witt)

At a candlelight vigil the following evening, students Alex Wind, Sofie Whitney, and Kasky decided “something needs to happen; there needs to be a central space; there needs to be a movement.” (quoted in 336



Wikipedia, “Never Again MSD.") They invited friends to Kasky’s house for a planning meeting.

The planners named their movement ‘Never Again MSD’. By midnight they had opened a Facebook page posting “Stay alert.

#NeverAgain.” (quoted in Wikipedia, “Never Again MSD.")

#NeverAgain became a familiar Twitter hashtag. Within four days of the shooting they had over 35,000 followers and had raised $1.2
million on a Go Fund Me site. Gen-Z kids know social media – they were born and raised with it.

Seventeen-year old junior-class president, Jaclyn Corin, lost a close friend in the shooting. After the candlelight vigil she talked with her congresswoman. The two of them worked together with state officials to arrange bus transportation for 100 students and 15 parent chaperones to address the state legislature in Talahassee.

Corin joined Never Again MSD the next day. When asked how the students had become so knowledgeable on gun control, Corin replied:

“We knew this stuff. It’s not like a new, fresh, horrible thing that’s happening, it’s been preexisting even before we entered the world.”

(quoted in Witt)

Three days after the shooting, hundreds attended a rally at Broward County Federal Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, calling for legislation on sensible gun regulation. Gen-Z put politicians on notice that “We call B.S.” MSD senior, Emma Gonzales, a self-proclaimed ‘dramatic kid’, gave a passionate 11-minute speech ending with this litany:

… we are prepared to call BS. Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don’t know what we’re talking 337



about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works.

We call BS. (speech reproduced in CNN Staff) Gen-Z is not appeased by the political platitudes that have mollified older generations for decades. MSD student body president Sabrina Fernandez said “this change will not be pushed to the side. We will not be just another statistic. We will NOT stop until we see change!”

When asked how she and her classmates would make this shooting different, she responded: “We make sure that we don’t give up. We make sure that when the media leaves and the news dies down, we KEEP GOING! We will never stop until these tragedies NEVER
happen AGAIN!” (quoted in Cottle)

On Sunday, Day 4, Kasky had a slumber party at his house with the core Never Again MSD members. But no one slumbered. By morning they had planned the state capitol visit and set wheels in motion for a national school walkout and a global March for Our Lives.

On February 20th, Corin led her bus-trip delegation to Tallahassee for a march and rally on the state capitol to demand gun control legislation.

Perhaps recognizing that Gen-Z are just turning voting age, the lawmakers passed some conciliatory gun laws but didn’t ban assault rifles or high-capacity magazines.

Never Again MSD had wider influence. Oregon passed some gun-control laws. Corporations severed affiliations with the NRA, including “the First National Bank of Omaha; car rental companies Hertz, Avis, Enterprise, and Budget; insurer MetLife; Symantec software; home security firm SimpliSafe; and airlines including Delta and United.” ( Wikipedia, “Never Again MSD.") The Go Fund Me rose to $3.7 million. Large donations came from celebrities. Never Again MSD decided to use half to finance March for Our Lives and divide the remainder among the victims’ families.

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Although coordinated by others, it was Never Again MSD that inspired a nationwide school walkout on the one-month anniversary of the Parkland shooting. The walkout lasted 17 minutes to honor the 17
killed. Over 3,130 walkouts took place – mostly organized by students.

All of this activity was not without backlash and harassment, but Gen-Z
kids knew how to respond. A candidate for the Maine legislature had to apologize and withdraw his candidacy. Pictures of Gonzales tearing up the Constitution were shown to be touched-up – she was ripping a rifle target. Michelle Cottle wrote in The Atlantic:

… They have given speeches and interviews, written op eds, and gone toe-to-toe on national TV with pro-gun politicians and activists.

They have used social media to respond to snarky critics. They have Twitter-smacked Fox News bomb-thrower Tomi Lahren and succeeded (with the help of their legion of social media followers) in extracting an apology from the professional provocateur Dinesh D’Sousa. More satisfying still, when far-right conspiracy mongers started vomiting nonsense about false-flag operations and claiming that some of the survivors were actually “crisis actors,” the survivors stuffed the nutters’ words right back down their throats. These kids are masters of social media. They aren’t going to take any crap from the kooks and the trolls. (Cottle)

Never Again MSD co-sponsored March for Our Lives with ‘Every Town for Gun Safety’. Marches took place all around the globe on March 24th. 800,000 marched in Washington D.C. Many survivors of mass shootings took part. Over 800 marches took place in the US and covered every state. The goal, as stated in the event’s mission statement, is “that a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues.”

Supporting events were held on every continent except Antarctica; including Japan (Tokyo & Nagoya), Australia (Brisbane), Denmark (Copenhagen), Spain (Madrid), France (Paris), Italy (Rome), Germany (Berlin),

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Following the March for Our Lives event, Never Again MSD focused on making gun control an issue in the 2018 mid-term election. They encouraged their peers to attend town hall meetings. They conducted bus speaking tours. They urged Gen-Zs to register and vote en masse.

It was the slaughter of their classmates that triggered Gen-Z to action.

Today there are multitudes of atrocities committed in the name of ownership, exploitation, profits, and entertainment. US and US-furnished drone strikes result in massive collateral damage (a euphemism for the indiscriminate slaughter of noncombatants).

US military intervention continues to destroy nations, create orphans and refugees, and fill cemeteries. US military aid fuels proxy wars, torture, decimation, and more. Greedy self-fulfillment is destroying our planet. A Global Satyagraha Movement is the practical alternative to global destruction.

Where are the nonviolent warriors? Nonviolence campaigner John Dear stresses that "we need nonviolent warriors who think and act on behalf of all humanity, all creatures, and all creation, who have a vision of a more nonviolent world, and who help lead us to that vision."

(Personal email dated 6 June 2019) So, again, where are the nonviolent warriors?

Arise, Oh Warriors! Arise and Unite! Earth suffers. Goodness waits.

It is time to give form to a new cultural paradigm. It is time to stand on our own feet.

So wake up y’all and stand tall. Yeah

So wake up y’all and stand tall.

Too many kids are dying.

We need the world to change. Oh, we need the world to change.

Left and right and here and there, school shootings are happening everywhere.

Us kids are filled with fear.

We need the world to change. Oh, we need the world to change.

(Copyright © 2019 by Riley Burns)

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

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References and Further Reading for Chapter-15.

CNN Staff; “Gun Advocates: ‘We Call BS’, (CNN, 17 February 2018).

Cottle, Michelle; “How Parkland Students Changed the Gun Debate,” ( The Atlantic, 28 February 2018).

Douglass, James W.; Resistance and Contemplation: The Way of Liberation, (Garden City, NY; Doubleday; 1972).

Dumbach. Annette and Newborn, Jud; Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, (London; Oneworld Publications; 1986, 2006) Gutwald, Matthew; “Marshall Islands Nuclear Testing and Health Effects,”

(Coursework for PH241, Stanford University, 23 March 2017).

Kasky, Cameron; “My Generation Won’t Stand for This,” (CNN, updated 20

February 2018). At https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/opinions/florida-shooting-no-more-opinion-kasky/index.html Kripalani, Krishna; All Men Are Brothers: Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as Told In His Own Words, (Ahmedabad, India; Navajivan Press; 1960).

MSC Bulletin; Micronesia Support Committee Bulletin; April-May 1979.

Popovic, Srdja; with Matthew Miller; Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World, (New York; Spiegel & Grau; 2015).

Rosenberg, Marshall B.; Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, (Encinitas, CA; PuddleDancer Press; 2015).

Swenson, Tommy; “Lucky Dragon 5 and the Terrifying Truth that Inspired Godzilla,” ( Birth, Movies,Death, 28 July 2013). At https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2013/07/28/lucky-dragon-5-and-the-terrifying-truth-that-inspired-godzilla

Thunberg, Greta; Speech at UN Climate Change COP24 Conference, Published 15 December 2018.

Thurlow, Setsuko; “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech,” 10 December 2017.

Witt, Emily; “How the Survivors of Parkland Began the Never Again Movement,” ( The New Yorker, 19 February 2018).

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Wikipedia, “Never Again MSD."

Wikipedia, “September 2019 Climate Strikes”

Wong, Alia; “The Parkland Students Aren’t Going Away,” ( The Atlantic, 24

February 2018).

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APPENDICES

Each of us is meant to walk through our days finding our own unique ways of contributing to cosmic goodness. Each person’s sacred work is ongoing. It happens in the immediate moment in every choice you make and every interaction with your self and others. There is no action that is too little, every action carries weight, every action has the power to manifest goodness in this world.

-- David Garrigues, Yoga Teacher
https://davidgarrigues.com/writings/cosmic-goodness

Appendix-A

The Goodness Field

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

-- Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1)

In this Appendix, I will first outline the evolution of the Universe, according to the Standard Model of Cosmology; and the historical discovery of the four fundamental forces of nature. Then I will demonstrate how a goodness force fits into this picture and is necessary to modulate the four fundamental forces in making the Universe suitable to support life. I will use logical deduction according to the scientific method, and existing test data.

Once upon a time, 13.7 billion years ago, there existed a cosmic egg.

Nobody knows where it came from and nobody understands it. No one can even find it because this cosmic egg was infinitely small. But even if it could be found, nobody would be able to gather it because it is infinitely heavy and contains all the matter in what we now know as the Universe.

On a day when there was no yesterday, this cosmic egg hatched with such tremendous force that in a billionth of a second, expanding a trillion times the speed of light, an 86-billion-year-old Universe was formed. During this ‘inflationary period’; gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear fusion, and nuclear fission split apart from super symmetry to become the four fundamental forces of the Universe.

This is not a fairy tale. It is the Big Bang Theory by which science explains the formation of our world. (See Morowitz, p. 40) The
cosmic egg is an attempt to explain the origin of matter. The idea of an inflationary period was added late in the 20th century to make the

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theoretical age of the universe conform to what astronomers were seeing.

Observed data indicates large structures in the Universe (clusters and super clusters of galaxies) took more like 100 billion years to form.

The inflationary period added 86 billion years to the theoretical age of the Universe.

Robert Lafavi lamented: “While I have always put

‘proof’ on a pedestal, I now see it as a human process; that is, proof is relative…. Any proof is based upon that which we take without proof.”

(Lefavi, p. 104)

The Big Bang Theory, however, only explains 4.6% of the Universe.

Dark matter makes up 24% and dark energy 71.4%. They’re called dark because scientists know they are there but can’t identify them.

Dark matter was conceived in the 1930s when scientists recognized that the pull of gravity is not strong enough to hold clusters of galaxies together. A force 100 times stronger is needed. Decades later, astronomers noticed that stars orbiting within galaxies did not follow the flat-disk pattern of a galaxy controlled by gravity. Their spherical orbits extended way out beyond the gravitational pull of galaxies. Dark matter was conjectured as providing the gravitational pull to satisfy these phenomena.

During the 1990s it was ‘observed’ that distant supernovae (exploding stars) indicated that expansion of the Universe is accelerating while gravity should be slowing it down. To explain this, dark energy was conjured up as an anti-gravity force.

Science recognizes four fundamental forces of nature that govern all matter in the Universe. These four fundamental forces are defined by three scientific theories – Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, his General Theory of Relativity, and the Quantum Field Theory.1 To put 1 A quantum particle is the smallest particle from which matter is composed.

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the goodness force in context, I will give a short history and description of forces and theories.

Isaac Newton first recognized gravity in the 1660s when an apple allegedly bonked him on the head. He wondered why it fell straight down instead of flying off in any direction. From Newton’s first theory of gravity, through Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, to the present day; nobody has discovered the quantum particle of gravity.

As we entered the 20th century, science still believed that the atom was the smallest element forming all matter, although J.J. Thompson had just discovered the electron three years earlier (in 1897). Those horse-and-buggy days of science changed as the 20th century made astounding advances in physics and astronomy.

Max Planck came up with the concept of light and energy traveling in finite packets, but he thought it was a mathematical trick. Einstein reviewed the math and discovered the photon in 1905 – the force carrier for electromagnetism.

He introduced his Special Theory of

Relativity that same year, in which he theorized a four-dimensional grid to depict spacetime (three space dimensions at a specific time). A particle moving through spacetime, such as a photon, leaves a path of spacetime points.

Einstein then addressed gravitation with his General Theory of Relativity and applied it to the Universe in 1917. Deflection of the spacetime grid as a celestial body passes through it, similar to water being pushed aside by a passing boat, bends light to create gravity.

Larger bodies stretch spacetime farther and cause a stronger gravitational pull. Astronauts can jump higher on the moon than on Earth.

In the late 1920s, science formulated the Quantum Field Theory (Quantum Mechanics) which searches out the smallest sub-atomic particles (quantum particles). Particles in a quantum field don’t have 345

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definite position or energy. They alternate between particles and waves

– which is another unexplained phenomena called ‘wave-particle duality’.

Until the 1930s, scientists thought the universe was controlled by only two forces – electromagnetism and gravity. Then physicists found protons in the atoms’ nuclei which have a positive electromagnetic charge, and should be repelling each other. Likewise scientists couldn’t understand why some atoms decayed radioactively while others did not. In 1932 physicists theorized there must be a strong nuclear force (fusion) to bind atomic nuclei together, and a weak nuclear force (fission) that causes radioactive decay to balance unstable nuclei. The quantum field for the strong force was first theorized in 1935. It was not until 1983 that a theory was formulated for the weak force.

During the 1960s, some scientists recognized that experiments couldn’t exactly duplicate nature unless conducted in a closed system, and the only completely closed system is the Universe itself. A scientific experiment only represents reality if everything in the Universe is considered, which is impossible in an exxpriment. One thing that testing couldn’t explain was why certain quantum particles (quarks and leptons) took on mass.

In 1964 the Higgs Field Theory was framed to explain particles having mass. Without the Higgs force the Quantum Field Theory would not work because there would be no mass for the fundamental forces to work on. Leptons and quarks (quantum particles of matter) would forever drift around space at the speed of light and there would be no physical Universe to live in.

Unlike other quantum fields, which need physical particles (matter) to work, the Higgs field occupies the entire Universe (like the goodness 346

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field) and slows down energy to form matter. Science claims to have discovered the Higgs boson, a scalar boson, in 2012. 2

Physical and astronomical sciences are still in the theory stage but science has made tremendous advances. The more that is discovered, the bigger the picture gets, and the less is known about it. Science thrives on ignorance –“the one thing you know is that there is so much more out there that you will never know.” (Firestein, p. 13) With that background to put the goodness field in proper perspective, I will now examine the goodness force according to existing knowledge and the ‘scientific method’.

Testing Goodness by the Scientific Method.

Since the Age of Enlightenment (circa. 1650-1800), science has been very rigid about testing and verification before declaring anything a scientific theory. The ‘scientific method’ was formulated to guarantee logic and objectivity and it currently consists of eight steps.

Step 1 is to formulate a question on what exactly is to be answered.

This is critical because it clarifies what the experiment is to investigate.

The question must be focused and unambiguous to guide the following steps in the right direction. The question I have formulated is: Is goodness a force that has guided evolution of the Universe to support life?

2 Quantum particles of forces are called ‘bosons’ (i.e. the photon, quantum particle of the electromagnetic force, is a boson). Bosons for the four fundamental forces of nature, which need matter in order to work, are called

‘gauge bosons’. The Higgs boson, which is universal and exists without matter, is called a ‘scalar boson’.

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Step 2 is to construct a hypothesis on how to obtain the information desired and/or what the outcome of experimentation might be.

This is conjecture only but it outlines the best approximation of what can happen during experimentation. It uses all scientifically-proven information available to brainstorm how the experiment might go. The hypothesis must be tentative only, and capable of being proven false if it is indeed false (falsifiable), even though it cannot yet be proven true.

If it is not falsifiable it cannot be a scientific theory.

The goodness force needs to be stronger than the other forces so it can modulate them to support life. It must also be universal because it must act on everything in the Universe. For the Goodness Field Theory I propose the following hypothesis:

The goodness force is significantly stronger than other forces and has a field that encompasses the Universe. It modulates other forces to make the Universe a better place for life. Existing scientific test data supports this hypothesis which can be easily falsified by merely demonstrating one act of goodness, allowed to act unhindered by humans, that does not make the Universe a better place for life.

Step

3 is to make a logical prediction of all the possible consequences of the hypothesis. This is the step in which a theory is formed.

Mathematics is used as well as logical deduction. The hypothesis should be distinguished from possible alternatives. When this prediction results in a mathematically verified theory, it is ready for testing.

I question the validity of requiring a mathematically verified theory before testing because what is later observed does not always agree with the original math. There have been hundreds of cases where a prediction has been verified by math and then went into testing. But, alas, test results repeatedly disagreed with the math.

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Science then dubbed the anomaly a ‘fundamental physical constant’

(something that is mathematically unverifiable but proven by repeated testing) and plugged it into the math. Presto! The math verifies the theory. As of 2018, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology has listed 353 of these constants and their values are revised every few years. Nevertheless, the logical deduction remained valid. Logical deduction would have sufficed, in the first place, to justify testing.

Also, mathematical equations frequently resolve as infinity. Science sometimes declares unresolvable equations a ‘singularity’ and accepts the theory without proof (such as the Big Bang Theory, the Inflationary Period, the Higgs Theory, Gravity, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, etc.).

Mathematician David Hilbert warned that when “infinity is needed to complete mathematics, it occurs nowhere in the physical universe.”

(Cited in Ellis and Silk)

In the case of the Goodness Field Theory, however, making the theory work with numbers before testing is irrelevant because all necessary testing has been done. This testing has taken place in all the pertinent fields of science: Re-evaluating existing data with an awareness of goodness is sufficient. My prediction for that effort is: Existing data will show that every cosmic and natural event that has taken place since the beginning of time has advanced the capability of the Universe to support life. Logical deduction indicates that some force is modulating the fundamental forces of nature to guide the outcome of evolutionary events so that they consistently improve that life-supporting capability. The Goodness Field Theory explains this universal trend.

Step 4 is to test the prediction.

This is the point where theory
becomes fact or is proven false. Experiments must use scientific controls and any other means to eliminate errors. Control groups and 349

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placebos may be in order. Initial failure does not automatically disprove the hypothesis since other factors could be the culprit, and another test might be deemed appropriate.

I will briefly review only two areas of what has already been observed and tested – the formation of matter and the evolution of planet Earth.

This brief review will epitomize the need for a goodness force to make the entire Universe suitable to support life, because the four fundamental forces of nature operate by rigid physical laws and are not artistic or inventive.

Forming Atoms.

After the inflationary period there was still a problem because all the quantum particles liberated by the Big Bang were flying aimlessly around space at the speed of light. They were pure energy with no physical matter. There was no matter to slow them down. The four fundamental forces could not work because they only work on material objects. Science had to find some theory to slow down the energy particles so they could congeal into something solid. The Higgs Field Theory solved the problem.

The Higgs field must be primordial because it must occupy the entire Universe and cannot have an origin. When energy particles pass through the Higgs field they are slowed down to gel into matter. Now the fundamental forces can operate. First the strong nuclear force (fusion) pulled particles called quarks together to form protons and neutrons.

The strong nuclear force then pulled protons and neutrons together in pairs to form simple hydrogen nuclei (one proton and one neutron).

Then the electromagnetic force pulled an electron (negatively charged) to orbit each nucleus (positively charged), making hydrogen atoms.

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Gravity then came into play to clump hydrogen atoms together into first-generation stars that reach temperatures of 3 million degrees Kelvin. That supports a process called ‘stellar nucleosynthesis’ where the strong nuclear and electromagnetic forces work together to combine hydrogen atoms into heavier atoms with more protons and neutrons in the nucleus and more electrons in orbit; up to the weight of iron.

Eventually the star ages and explodes, forming a supernova which reaches the brightness of a billion Suns. Supernovae provide the heat to create atoms heavier than iron (supernova nucleosynthesis) and dispense them as cosmic dust. Cosmic dust then formed by gravity into higher-generation stars which also create heavier atoms.

‘Cosmic ray spallation’3 is another form of nucleosynthesis that takes place when cosmic dust is zapped by cosmic rays.4 The terrific impact energy literally splits the nuclei of heavy atoms, forming lighter atoms not otherwise formed – particularly Helium-3, Lithium, Beryllium, and Boron.

Unstable isotopes (radioactive atoms) decay to become stable atoms through Beta decay and Alpha decay. Beta decay is the weak nuclear force (fission) working to correct an unstable proton-neutron ratio in the nucleus. If there is an excess of neutrons, one of them becomes a proton, and vice-versa.

Alpha decay is an interaction between the strong nuclear force (which holds protons and neutrons together) and the electromagnetic force (which tries to disperse positively-charged protons). Under some 3 Spallation: a nuclear reaction in which lighter particles are ejected as the result of bombardment (as by high energy protons and cosmic rays) (Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary)

4 “Cosmic rays are very-high energy particles such as protons, the nuclei of helium atoms (alpha particles) and the nuclei of many heavier elements.

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conditions, an alpha particle (helium nucleus – two neutron/proton pairs) is emitted and a lighter atom remains.

Forming Planet Earth.

Cosmic dust spreads in all directions at
various velocities. Gravity clumps some together to form higher generation stars. Other particles, rather than being drawn into the new star, pass tangentially at a distance and speed where the conservation of angular momentum puts them in orbit about that star. Particles sharing the same orbit either clump together to form planets or asteroids, or simply remain as an orbiting ring of cosmic dust. Gravity pulls solar systems, stars, and other cosmic matter together as a galaxy.

Step 5 is to analyze the results of testing. A thorough, careful and unbiased analysis of the test data is critical. The examiner must not skew analysis toward a desired outcome. For multiple tests a statistical analysis may be required. If testing is successful, it must be determined if the proven hypothesis is enough or if testing of other hypotheses is necessary.

The Anthropic Principle is something physical scientists would like to explain as material evolution, but can’t. It has parallels to the Goodness Field Theory; and even the Higgs Field Theory. Simply stated the Anthropic Principle says that our existence proves the Universe was crafted to support conscious and intelligent life.

Physicists can’t get around that fact, but they adamantly claim everything happened by chance.

English mathematical-physicist
and science-philosopher Roger

Penrose performed a statistical study of the Anthropic Principle for our entire universe. Considering the ratio between the phase-space volume of our anthropic universe and the total phase-space volume of all possible universes, the probability of our anthropic universe coming 352

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together by chance is one in 1010^123 (Ten to the 10123 power).5

American philosopher Robert J. Spitzer illustrated the immensity of that probability:

The odds of our anthropic universe arising amidst the total phase-space volume of possible universes for a creation event is so exceedingly, exceedingly, exceedingly remote that its notation in regular exponential form is one part in

101000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000. This number is so large that if we were to write it out in ordinary notation (with every zero being, say, ten point type) it would fill up a large portion of the universe. (Spitzer, p.

59)

Rupert Sheldrake observed: “The mechanistic revolution in seventeenth-century science [the Enlightenment] abolished ends, purposes, goals, and final causes. Everything was to be explained mechanically, by matter being pushed from the past … This four-hundred-year-old doctrine is still an article of faith in the creed of science, but it does not fit the facts. Therefore scientists keep reinventing ends or goals in disguised forms.” (Sheldrake, p. 131) Having put chance and probability in proper context, I will now show how objective examination of past discoveries support the Goodness Field Theory; and how the goodness force interacts with the fundamental forces of nature in constructing an anthropic universe.

Analysis of Forming Atoms. The Standard Model for quantum mechanics theorizes 17 quantum particles which make up all matter in the Universe (the undiscovered graviton is not included). They are categorized as fermions or bosons. Fermions are material elements called quarks and leptons. There are two types of bosons – those that 5 In order to make another ‘scientific’ theory work – String Theory – a finite number had to be assigned for the total number of universes possible. The number chosen is 10500.

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carry the fundamental forces of nature to interact with fermions (gauge bosons) and those that fill the entire Universe, such as the Higgs boson (scalar bosons). The goodness boson would be a scalar boson.

The Abbreviated

Standard Model
shown here only
includes first
generation fermions
which form 99.9%
of the Universe.

Second and third
generation fermions
occur at very high
energy levels and
decay quickly to
first generation
fermions. Anti-
particles are not
shown and neither
is the Higgs boson.

Gravity is not
included in the

Standard

Model
because its boson,
the graviton, has
never been
discovered

Electromagnetism is carried by photons, the strong nuclear force is carried by gluons, the weak nuclear force is carried by W or Z bosons, and gravity is carried by gravitons (if they are ever found). To make quantum mechanics work, each particle of matter (fermions) has an anti-particle of opposite charge. Of the 12

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anti-particles required, only the positron (anti-particle of the electron) has been discovered.

When a particle and its anti-particle meet they annihilate each other and emit an energy wave. This phenomenon is called wave-particle duality.

Before atoms can be formed, the fermions must have mass. Science theorizes they take on mass when they pass through the Higgs field.

That slows them down and they congeal.

First, the electromagnetic force was modulated by the goodness force to give leptons a -1 electron volt (eV) charge and quarks a ± fraction of an eV charge.

The process of forming atoms started with producing neutrons and protons that make up the nucleus of an atom. That involves putting quarks together with the strong nuclear force which is very strong but very short in range – it only acts within the atomic nucleus. Neutrons and protons are composed of three quarks and three anti-quarks, held together by gluons.

They are not just any quark or anti-quark. First, the electromagnetic charges must be selected. Up quarks have +⅔ eV charge and down quarks have -⅓ eV. Neutrons are composed of one up and two down quarks, giving them a net electromagnetic charge of zero. (+⅔-⅓-⅓=0) Protons use two up and one down – giving them a net charge of +1 eV.

(+⅔+⅔-⅓=1) That is why each proton attracts one electron which, by definition, has a charge of -1 eV. A helium nucleus, containing two protons, attracts two electrons; and so on up.

Each proton and neutron has a corresponding combination of anti-up and anti-down quarks whose net charge is zero for anti-neutrons and -

1eV for anti-protons. The anti-proton attracts a positron (+1 eV), the anti-particles of an electron.

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In addition to their electric charge, Quarks also have a color charge.

The strong nuclear force has three color charges which, for identification, are called red, blue, and green. There are also has three anti-color charges. Unlike the positive and negative electric polarity of the electromagnetic force, there are three color and three anti-color polarities for the strong nuclear force.

Of the three quarks that make up a proton or neutron there must be one of each color. Likewise, the three anti-quarks in a proton or neutron must be one of each anti-color. Therefore protons and neutrons are color and anti-color neutral.

Gluons have no electromagnetic charge. They do carry one color charge and one anti-color charge. With three color and three anti-color charges, that makes a possible combination of nine gluon charges. If all nine are used they would be color neutral and there would be no force to hold things together. To break this symmetry, nature uses only eight different combinations in each proton or neutron – one combination is left out.

Gluons interchange with quarks by changing the quark’s color. For instance, if a red quark interacts with a blue/anti-red gluon, the anti-red of the gluon will annihilate the red charge of the quark and it will become a blue quark. These interchanges produce the strong force interaction which cannot be observed and which scientists have difficulty describing. It is so strong that it also acts between protons and neutrons to hold them together in the nucleus To make a proton or neutron requires a lot of selecting – selecting quarks and anti-quarks with the proper electromagnetic charge combinations and the correct mixture of color charges; and mixing those with the correct eight color-pairs of gluons. That is a lot of possible combinations to fall together by chance, repeatedly, for every
atom in the Universe, and come out 100% correct every time. Logical 356

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deduction suggests that the goodness force is operating to make the Universe more able to support life, .

For an atomic nucleus to be stable, the number of neutrons and protons must be close to equal. If there is an imbalance, the atom radioactively decays. One type of decay is Beta, which is the weak nuclear force carried by W and Z bosons. W Bosons can have either a +1 eV charge (W+) or a -1 eV charge (W-). They are not thought of as particle/anti-particle pairs because they are force carriers. The W boson is the only boson with mass and an electromagnetic charge. Which one will carry the weak force depends on circumstances.

If there are an excess of neutrons in the nucleus, some neutrons will become protons during Beta decay. A down quark (-⅓ eV) changes to an up quark (+⅔ eV) giving the particle a +1 eV charge, which is a proton. To compensate for that gain of +1 eV to make a proton, a W-boson (-1 eV) is emitted. But its half-life is only 3x10-25 second (.0000000000000000000000003 seconds) so it quickly decays to an electron (also -1 eV) and a neutrino which are emitted as radiation.

When there is an excess of protons, some protons will become neutrons during Beta decay. An up quark (+⅔ eV) in a proton will change to a down quark (-⅓ eV), resulting in a zero charge. To compensate for that loss of +1 eV, a W+ boson (+1 eV) will be emitted which will quickly decay to a positron (also +1 eV) and an anti-neutrino which are also emitted as radiation.

There is a third circumstance. During Beta decay a phenomenon known as ‘neutrino scattering elastically in matter’ is often observed.

Scientists recognized that for this to happen it was necessary for a Boson with zero charge to carry the Weak Force. Therefore physicists concluded that a Z (for zero charge) boson was present. Like the graviton, the Z boson has never been found – it is only known by circumstantial evidence.

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Alpha decay also occurs from an unstable arrangement in the nucleus.

An alpha particle (a helium nucleus – two protons and two neutrons) is emitted by a phenomenon called ‘quantum tunneling’, when the mass of a helium nucleus tunnels through a barrier ordinarily not possible.

This phenomenon is often explained by wave-particle duality, where the various quantum particles penetrate as energy waves and then reassemble to be protons and neutrons.

With Alpha decay the nucleus of the parent element loses two protons and two neutrons, and becomes a lighter atom. Beta decay also changes the parent element to a different atom but of the same weight because nothing is lost from the nucleus. The fundamental forces working by mechanical laws cannot make the intricate selections necessary for Beta of Alpha decay. Logical deduction points to a life-supporting goodness force being involved.

I have gone into detail on the forming of an atom to illustrate the intricate degree to which the goodness force modulates the mechanical fundamental forces of nature to form simple, stable atoms. The probability of just one atom falling together by accident is tremendous.

For all the atoms in the Universe – every last one – falling together by chance is simply ridiculous. Logical deduction points emphatically to a goodness force controlling the mechanical forces in doing this work.

This process is ongoing – it takes place continuously, particularly in stars supernovae, and cosmic ray spallation. We are all made of these atoms. We are all made of stardust.

Analysis of Forming Planet Earth.

When our solar system was
formed, planet Earth was placed in solar orbit 150 million kilometers from the sun. Earth’s elliptical orbit does not vary from that distance more than 4.5 million kilometers, which is very critical. If Earth were 10 million kilometers closer to the sun, solar radiation would not let water vapor condense to a liquid state.

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Had we been too much farther away, liquid water would not vaporize –
a little farther yet and ice would not melt. Liquid water is absolutely indispensable for life and it exists only in a narrow temperature range of 1000C.

Volcanic activity formed Earth with a carbon dioxide (CO2) rich atmosphere. Trees, grass, algae, and other vegetation inhale CO2
through their foliage. The foliage also contains photosynthetic cells which absorb light. Light energy causes the inhaled CO2 to chemically combine with water drawn up through the roots to form sugar or some other protein that nourishes the vegetation. Oxygen is exhaled as waste. A typical photosynthetic reaction is: 6H2O + 6 CO2 Æ C6H12O6 + 6O2

Six molecules of water plus six molecules of carbon dioxide produces one molecule of sugar plus six molecules of oxygen. The oxygen is exhaled by the foliage to the atmosphere. What is waste for vegetation is critical for animal life. This finely-balanced CO2-Oxygen cycle mutually supports all life on the planet.

Another obstacle to life on Earth was the lethal ultraviolet radiation from the sun. However, when water (hydrogen combined with oxygen) first appeared on Earth about 4½ billion years ago, it allowed aquatic plant life to grow because ultraviolet radiation can only penetrate a few millimeters deep in water.

Aquatic life started producing oxygen which built up in the atmosphere.

When ultraviolet radiation hit oxygen it formed ozone, and that created the ozone layer to protect life on Earth as we know it today.

They are only a sampling of the many cycles and balances which support all life. Again, logical deduction points to the goodness force at work.

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I will not comment on Step 6 (show repeatability), Step 7 (offer for peer review), or Step 8 (record and share the data) as they add no more pertinent details to this discussion

Overall Evaluation. .

The four fundamental forces of nature are very finely regulated to keep the Universe stable. If either gravity or the weak nuclear force were more or less than their present value by less than one part in 1040, the Universe would either explode or implode. If that strong nuclear force constant were reduced by less than 2%, it would not be able to hold together any atom heavier than hydrogen and there would be neither carbon nor oxygen. If it were increased less than 2% there would be no hydrogen which is necessary for water. Either way, there would be no life. (See Spitzer. p. 60)

Dark matter is theorized as holding galaxies together. But enough physical matter to create a pull 100 times that of gravity would be hard to hide. Logical deduction is that an unknown force is holding galaxies clusters together – perhaps the goodness force It is the Big Bang Theory that theorizes an expanding universe; and that dark energy is accelerating that expansion. If the Universe is not expanding, as many scientists believe, this strange force would not be anti- gravity at all. Perhaps it is another misunderstood function of the goodness force. Even if the Universe is expanding, the goodness force could be opposing gravity to prevent entropy.

The four fundamental forces of nature act according to mechanical laws which are rigid and predictable. The goodness force is necessary to modulate those forces to support life. There is no falsifiable theory that all this fine tuning happened by chance. Accidents are not scientific.

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Gravity has never been quantified but it is still a fundamental force of nature. We may hang on to something to keep from falling but gravity is still pulling. Likewise, goodness is also experienced although people may have fixations that prevent it from working properly.

Nevertheless, like gravity, we experience it, and we know ‘it is’.

Goodness is manifested in everything from the structure of the Universe to the make-up of every atom. We all have an inner goodness but we don’t own it any more than we own gravity. It is the same goodness that pervades the Universe and is shared by all things and beings.

Just as the Higgs boson mysteriously gave substance to the chaotic energy of the Universe so the fundamental forces of nature can operate; so, too, has the goodness force guided those mechanical forces through every step of evolution over billions of years to form a Universe habitable by living entities. When scientists can explain the origin of the Higgs field, they will have gone a long way toward defining the goodness field.

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

References and Further Reading for Appendix-A.

Ellis, George and Silk, Joe; “Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics,” ( Nature, 16 December 2014).

Firestein, Stuart; Ignorance: How it Drives Science, (New York, NY; Oxford University Press; 2012).

Hoyle, Fred; The Intelligent Universe: A New View of Creation and Evolution (NY; Holt, Rinehart and Winston; 1983)

Lefavi, Robert, PhD.; Reasons to Believe (Pasadena, Hope Publishing, 1999).

Morowitz, Harold J.; The Emergence of Everything: How the World became Complex (New York; Oxford University Press, 2002).

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Saul, Lukas A.; “The Emperor Has No Non-locality” (Academia.edu, April 2015). At

https://www.academia.edu/12743235/The_Emperor_Has_No_Nonloc ality

Schroeder, Gerald L., PhD; Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Bible (NY; Bantam Books; 1990).

Sheldrake, Rupert, PhD.; Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery (New York, Deepak Chopra Books, 2012)

Spitzer, Robert J., S.J., PhD; New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy, (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, U.K.; Wm. B. Eerdsman Publishing Co.; 2010).

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Appendix-B

White Supremacist and Other Hate Organizations in the US
x 11th Hour Remnant Messenger – believe whites are true biblical Israelites.

x 3%ers – American patriot organization which professes defending Constitutional rights. Ideologically similar to the Oath Keepers.

x American Freedom Party – SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) designated hate group.

x American Freedom Warriors – targeted by antifa as right-wing extremists.

x American Nazi Party – anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi, Holocaust denial.

x American Renaissance – New Century Foundation website.

SPLC designated hate group.

x Aryan Brotherhood – “Blood-in, blood-out” motto. Involved in drug trafficking, male prostitution, gambling, and extortion in prison; and virtually every type of criminal activity on the streets.

x Aryan Brotherhood of Texas – large and violent prison gang in the US. White supremacist.

x Aryan Nations – white supremacist neo-Nazi. Arm of Church of Jesus Christ-Christian. FBI and Rand Corp. call this group a terrorist threat.

x Asatru Folk Assembly – part of racist branch of Heathenry movement.

Ǧ

x Atomwaffen Division (atomic weapons division – neo-Nazi.

Recruits, leaflets, posters on college campuses x Council of Conservative Citizens – white supremacist and SPLC designated hate group.

x Creativity Alliance – (formerly World Church of the Creator) white supremacist, racist religion, worships white race.

x Diversity of Tactics – targeted by antifa as right-wing extremists.

x EURO – white supremacist led by David Duke. Hosts a website whitecivilrights.com.

x Hammerskins (a.k.a. Hammerskin Nation) – white supremacist, promotes white power through rock music. Many white power bands have been affiliated.

x Identity Evropa – white supremacist, hate group. Recruits, leaflets, posters on college campuses.

x Ku Klux Klan (KKK) – white supremacy, nationalism, classified as a hate group. Dozens of organizations use the KKK label.

x National Alliance – white supremacist, political. Founded by William Luther Pierce.

x National Association for the Advancement of White People –
white supremacist. Founded by Bryant Bowles. Claims to be a civil rights organization like NAACP.

x National Policy Institute – think tank, claims to be right’s counterpart to Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

x National Socialist Movement (US) – stages may marches and demonstrations.

x National Vanguard – founded by Kevin Alfred Strom and others of the National Alliance.

x Nationalist Movement – white supremacist.

x Oath Keepers – a far-right, anti-government civilian militia in the US. Made up of “active and former military, law 364

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enforcement officers and first responders” who attended Trump’s inauguration “to protect the crowd from infiltrators and ‘terrorists’ …” (Dinkelspiel and Orenstein) They often provide security at alt-right events.

x Occidental Quarterly – far-right journal with website TOQ

Online. SPLC designated hate group.

x Pacifica Forum – listed as white nationalist hate group by SPLC.

x Patriot Prayer – targeted by antifa as right-wing extremists.

x Phineas Priesthood – opposes mixing of races, homosexuality, abortion, taxation. Marked as anti- Semitic.

x Pioneer Fund – provides funding for studies on racial intelligence and the “science” of breeding superior human beings.

x Proud Boys – far-right men’s organization. Has been referred to as alt-right (although some say not). Founded in 2016.

Claim to be “Western chauvinists” who believe “women are best suited to stay home and have children, not enter the workplace.” (Dinkelspiel and Orenstein)

x Social Contract Press, The – anti-Latino and against Muslim immigration. SPLC designated hate group.

x Stormfront -- SPLC designated hate group.

x Traditionalist Worker Party – proclaims: “It’s a time for disunity and for hate. It’s time to hate the migrant communities …” (Cited by SPLC)

x Vanguard America – white supremacist with neo-Nazi leanings. Recruits, leaflets, posters on college campuses.

x VDARE – run by VDARE Foundation with website VDARE.com. SPLC designated hate group. Anti-immigrant.

x Volksfront – has been called neo-Nazi and racist by reporters.

Called “one of the most active skinhead groups in the US” by Anti-Defamation League, and a hate group by SPLC.

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x Warriors for Freedom – targeted by antifa as right-wing extremists. (Not to be confused with the non-profit Warriors for Freedom.)

x White Aryan Resistance – neo-Nazi, white supremacist, founded by Tom Metzger.

This list is not comprehensive and new organizations – especially small, local groups – are constantly being formed.

(Sources: Wikipedia, “ List of White Nationalist Organizations”; Southern Poverty Law Center; Moshe; and miscellaneous other sources.)

366

Appendix-C

Backwater Sunday

(Source: Oceti Sakowin)

OCETI SAKOWIN

CAMP

SEVEN COUNCIL FIRES

Press release: BACKWATER SUNDAY

Alleged ‘Non-Lethal’ weapons lead to serious injuries to Water Protectors

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NOVEMBER 23, 2016

Photos and video footage available by request.

Viewable here:

Contact:

John Bigelow

701-660-8940

Near Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, N.D.—A peaceful gathering of Water Protectors were subjected to excessive police force from Morton

Ǧ

County Sheriff personnel, supporting jurisdictions and national guard units from approximately 6:00pm Sunday, November 20th, 2016 until 6:00am the following morning. Over 300 unarmed people suffered injuries, most included hypothermia and chemical exposure to pepper spray and tear gas. They were attacked with projectiles including rubber bullets, sand bags, percussion grenades, and tear gas canisters—
and hosed down with a water canon pumping a mix of water and pepper spray onto people in subfreezing temperatures. These and other

“non-lethal” weapons were used on the Water Protectors continuously from the beginning of this incident until after 3:30am. Victims and witnesses report that the armed forces were aiming at “faces” and “the genital” area of the unarmed crowd. Medics on scene were subject to the same targeted assault.

One young woman suffered a direct hit from a percussion grenade, permanently damaging her left arm, which may require amputation.*

Due to the blockade, First Responders have been delayed an additional 45 minutes in transit—when every second counts.

The incident started around 5:30pm when Camp Security moved to clear the blockade. Staff convened at the Backwater Bridge just north of the camp to remove the barricade on highway 1806 in order to reopen the public roadway for Emergency Vehicles and First Responders. Morton County Sheriff personnel along with other jurisdictions and national guard units immediately fired an array of

“non lethal” weapons at the vehicle and security staff. These events were documented on site by media sources and will be shared as evidence of this mass casualty.

Two armored vehicles (previously burned) chained together have been serving as the primary blockade since October 28th, 2016. Morton County and supporting armed forces assured collective Tribal leadership and Camp Security that they would be removed no later than Monday October 31st, 2016. The barricade was reinforced with 368

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concrete barriers shortly after that discussion, and has remained in place and under armed guard for over three weeks to date.

As the blockade was being dismantled by security, a peaceful gathering of supporting Water Protectors formed on the bridge, witnessing events unfold. The armed forces to the north of the barricade immediately began firing tear gas canisters into the crowd. These canisters are charged like a flare and they started small grass fires that Protectors rushed to put out. No “protest” fires were ignited. Over the course of the night two small well-monitored fires were created far back from the line of fire, in order to provide some warmth to the soaked Protectors in the freezing temperatures. The use of the water cannon persisted for 7-9
hours, while the temperature fell to 23 degrees.

No propane canisters were brought to the action, nor were any converted to explosive devices as claimed by some law enforcement officials. No ‘metallic cylinder objects’ were rolled ‘toward others positioned under or around burned vehicles.’ Two burned vehicles on the bridge were removed some time ago and the only remaining vehicles in question were the armored ones that have blocked the highway for almost a month. No weapons are tolerated in the camps or are carried by peaceful Water Protectors. Allegations of people coming armed with weapons from any camp is patently false. Oceti Sakowin is a camp of prayerful Water Protectors, trained in peaceful, nonviolent action techniques and have no use for weapons.

Unknown are the origins of allegations that Water Protectors are being paid to protest. No one standing directly before the attacking armed forces is paid to get shot. They have gathered to protect treaty rights and the right to clean drinking water for 18 million people.

Morton County Sheriff and the North Dakota Joint Information Center news release dated November 22nd appears to be filled with false assertions, sloppy post-action accusations, and tenuous justification for human and civil rights violations on an epic scale. The proof of truth 369

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about what happened on the bridge this last Sunday night has been well documented and continues to be posted for public review.

We support the efforts of outside law enforcement to investigate the allegations of any weapons used by Water Protectors on November 21st. We would like to see the field photography associated with the collection of alleged weapons and proof any originated from camps. The only photos posted so far from law enforcement of alleged weapons shows no origin, providence, nor chain of custody to establish valid evidence.*The slight young woman, whose arm is permanently damaged, was seen backing away peacefully from the police barricade when she was targeted and attacked around 3:30am with a concussion grenade which hit her left arm and exploded, causing traumatic injury so severe that her arm may require amputation. As of 9am November 22nd she was between surgeries and has remained at risk. Film and photographic evidence of the actual source of her injury is being gathered and will be released through various media outlets and turned over to outside law enforcement agencies overseeing brutal police tactics employed against peaceful Water Protectors.

370

Appendix-D

51 Developed Countries: Population and HDI

POPULATION

HDI

HDI

COUNTRY

1 July 2016

2016

RANK REMARKS

Est.

United States

324,118,787

0.920

10

2-WAY TIE

Russia

143,439,832

0.804

49

Japan

126,323,715

0.903

17

Germany

80,682,351

0.926

4

United Kingdom

65,111,143

0.909

16

France

64,668,129

0.897

21

Italy

59,801,004

0.887

26

South Korea

50,503,933

0.901

18

Spain

46,064,604

0.884

27

Argentina

43,847,277

0.827

45

2-WAY TIE

Poland

38,593,161

0.855

36

Canada

36,286,378

0.929

10

2-WAY TIE

Saudi Arabia

32,157,974

0.847

38

2-WAY TIE

Australia

24,309,330

0.939

2

2-WAY TIE

Romania

19,372,734

0.802

50

Chile

18,134,835

0.847

38

2-WAY TIE

Netherlands

16,979,729

0.924

7

Belgium

11,371,928

0.896

22

Greece

10,919,617

0.866

29

Czech Republic

10,548,058

0.878

28

Portugal

10,304,434

0.843

41

Sweden

9,851,852

0.913

14

Hungary

9,821,318

0.836

43

United Arab

9,266,971

0.840

42

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Emirates

Austria

8,569,633

0.893

24

Switzerland

8,379,477

0.939

2

2-WAY TIE

Israel

8,192,463

0.899

19

Hong Kong

7,346,248

0.917

12

Singapore

5,696,506

0.925

5

2-WAY TIE

Denmark

5,690,750

0.925

5

2-WAY TIE

Finland

5,523,904

0.895

23

Slovakia

5,429,418

0.845

40

Norway

5,271,958

0.949

1

Ireland

4,713,993

0.923

8

New Zealand

4,565,185

0.915

13

Croatia

4,225,001

0.827

45

2-WAY TIE

Kuwait

4,007,146

0.800

51

Lithuania

2,850,030

0.848

37

Qatar

2,291,368

0.856

33

3-WAY TIE

Slovenia

2,069,362

0.890

25

Latvia

1,955,742

0.836

44

Bahrain

1,396,829

0.824

47

Estonia

1.309,104

0.865

30

2-WAY TIE

Cyprus

1,176,598

0.856

33

3-WAY TIE

Montenegro

626,101

0.807

48

Luxembourg

576,243

0.898

20

Brunei

428,874

0.865

30

2-WAY TIE

Malta

419,615

0.856

33

3-WAY TIE

Iceland

331,778

0.921

9

Andorra

69,165

0.858

32

Liechtenstein

37,776

0.912

15

TOTAL

1,354,320,257

372

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SOURCE: Wikipedia, “List of Countries by Population (United Nations),” United Nations Development Programme, p. 202

NOTES:

1. .035 X 1,354,320,257 = 47,401,209

Therefore, 3.5% of Developed World population is approximately 47.4 million

2. Developed Countries are those with a Human Development Index (HDI)1 of 0.800 or higher.

1 The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic of life expectance, education, and income per capita indicators.

373

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Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying “Everything’s going to be all right. It’s not the end of the world. And we’re doing the best we can.” But I don’t think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities?

My dad always says “You are what you do, not what you say.” Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us, but I challenge you, please, make your actions reflect your words.

– Severn Suzuki, age 12

Addressing United Nations Earth Summit

Rio de Janeiro, 1992

374

Appendix-E

Sanctuary Jurisdictions

Appendix-E

Sanctuary J
urisdictions

States

Colorado

California

Connecticut

Arapahoe County

New Mexico

Aurora

Colorado

Boulder County

Denver County

Cities and Counties

Garfield County

California

Grand County

Jefferson County

Alameda County

Larimer County

Berkley

Mesa County

Contra Costa County

Pitkin County

Los Angeles County

Pueblo County

Los Angeles

Routt County

Monterey County

San Miguel County

Napa County

Weld County

Orange County

Orange County

Connecticut

Riverside County

East Haven

Sacramento County

Hartford

San Bernardino County

San Diego County

District Of Columbia

San Francisco County

Washington

San Mateo County

Santa Ana

Florida

Santa Clara County

Alachua County

Santa Cruz County

Clay County

Sonoma County

Hernando County

Ǧ

Georgia

Massachusetts

Clayton County

Amherst

DeKalb County

Boston

Cambridge

Iowa

Lawrence

Benton County

Northampton

Cass County

Somerville

Franklin County

Maryland

Fremont County

Greene County

Baltimore

Ida County

Montgomery County

Iowa City

Prince George's County

Iowa City, Johnson County

Minnesota

Jefferson County

Marion County

Hennepin County

Monona County

Montgomery County

Nebraska

Pottawattamie County

Hall County

Sioux County

Sarpy County

Illinois

New Jersey

Chicago

Middlesex County

Cook County

Newark

Ocean County

Kansas

Union County

Butler County

Harvey County

New Mexico

Sedgwick County

Bernalillo

Shawnee County

New Mexico County Jails

Story County

San Miguel

Louisiana

New Orleans

376

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Nevada

Marlon County

Multnomah County

Clark County

Polk County

Washoe County

Sherman County

New York

Springfield

Tillamok County

Franklin County

Umatilla County

Ithaca

Union County

Nassau County

Wallowa County

New York City

Wasco County

Onondaga County

Washington County

St. Lawrence County

Wheeler County

Wayne County

Yamhill County

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Baker County

Bradford County

Clackamas County

Bucks County

Clatsop County

Butler County

Coos County

Chester County

Crook County

Clarion County

Curry County

Delaware County

Deschutes County

Eerie County

Douglas County

Franklin County

Gilliam County

Lebanon County

Grant County

Lehigh County

Hood River County

Lycoming County

Jackson County

Montgomery County

Jefferson County

Montour County

Josephine County

Perry County

Lane Countyn

Philadelphia

Lincoln County

Pike County

Linn County

Westmoreland County

Malheur County

Marion County

377

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Rhode Island

Walla Walla County

Wallowa County

Providence

Whatcom County

Rhode Island Department of

Yakima County

Corrections

Wisconsin

Texas

Milwaukee

Dallas County

Travis County

Virginia

Arlington County

Chesterfield County

Vermont

Burlington

Monteplier

Winooski

Washington

Chelan County

Clallam County

Clark County

Cowlitz County

Franklin County

Jefferson County

King County

Kitsap County

Pierce County

San Juan County

Skagit County

Snohomish County

Spokane County

Thurston County

378

Table of Contents

- PART I
- PART II
- PART III