The “clean record” law was a bold proposal that banned any politician convicted of crimes like corruption and money laundering from running for office. With nearly 25% of the Congress under investigation for corruption, most said it would never pass. But after Avaaz launched the largest online campaign in Brazilian history, helping to build a petition of over 2 million signatures, 500,000 online actions, and tens of thousands of phone calls, we won!

Avaaz members fought corrupt congressmen daily as they tried every trick in the book to kill, delay, amend, and weaken the bill, and won the day every time. The bill passed Congress, and already over 330 candidates for office face disqualification!

One Brazilian member wrote to us when the law was passed, saying:

I have never been as proud of the Brazilian people as I am today! Congratulations to all that have signed. Today I feel like an actual citizen with political power. — Silvia

Our strategy in Brazil was simple: make a solution so popular and visible that it can’t be opposed, and be so vigilant that we can’t be ignored.

This victory shows what our community can do – at a national level, in developing nations, and on the awful problem of corruption. Anywhere in the world, we can build legislative proposals to clean up corruption in government, back them up with massive citizen support, and fight legislators who try to block them.

France’s Le Monde called our “impressive and unprecedented petition” campaign a “spectacular political and moral victory for civil society.” And while this victory may be a first, we can make it the precedent for global citizen action.

Should Christians support capitalism? According to a leading English layman, despite all its material benefits, capitalism as we know it contains moral flaws with serious social consequences.

I’m in no position to preach to Christians, but I’m happy to pass on the views of Dr Michael Schluter, founder of Britain’s Relationships Foundation, which will be of interest to a wider audience (and can be found at www.jubilee-centre.org/resources.php?catID=1).

Schluter’s beef is against the failings of capitalism that arise from corporations, which have developed as its primary engine.

His starting point is the belief that God is a relational being, whose priority is not economic growth, but right relationships between humanity and himself and between human beings. Christ’s injunction to ”love God and love your neighbour” points to the priority of relational wealth over financial wealth because love is a quality of relationships.

Corporate capitalism’s first moral flaw, he says, is its exclusively materialistic vision. It rests on the pursuit of business profit and personal gain. It promotes the idolising of money, which Jesus calls ”Mammon”.

”People are regarded by companies as a resource, or as a cost in the profit and loss account, devoid of relational or environmental context. So capitalism constantly has to be restrained from destroying the social capital on which it depends for its future existence,” he says.

This focus on capital lends itself to the idolatry of wealth at a personal level, and the idolatry of economic growth at a corporate and national level. Shareholders pursue personal wealth with little knowledge of how it is generated, and senior management with scant regard for pay structures at lower levels of the company, while customers are persuaded by advertising to pursue self-gratification in its many forms.

Corporate capitalism’s second moral flaw is that it offers reward without responsibility. In the Parable of the Talents, Jesus implies that gaining money through interest on a loan is ”reaping where you haven’t sown”. Lenders may accept some small risk, but they accept no responsibility for how or where the money is used.

Debt finance generally results in relational distance rather than relational ”proximity” because the lender generally has no incentive to remain engaged with, or even in regular contact with, the borrower.

In the workings of large corporations, shareholders generally have little say in decision-making. Most investors provide share capital through a financial intermediary, such as a pension fund. Often they don’t know or care in which companies they hold shares. Even the financial intermediaries generally do little to influence company policy.

Perhaps, Schluter says, instead of ”no taxation without representation” we should adopt the slogan ”no reward without responsibility, no profit without participation”.

Corporate capitalism’s third moral failing arises from the limited liability of shareholders, which allows debts to be left unpaid where the company becomes insolvent. Worse, the unpaid creditors are often employees, consumers and smaller companies supplying goods and services.

Because the downside risks of borrowing are capped, while the upside risks aren’t, management has been willing to borrow huge sums relative to the company’s share capital and thus expand companies at a frantic pace.

In the finance sector, incentive schemes often reward risk-taking excessively on the upside with no downside penalties, reflecting the risk position of shareholders. Consequent mega-losses have to be financed by taxpayers to limit wider economic fallout.

Schluter’s fourth charge against corporate capitalism is that it disconnects people from place. In the Old Testament, the jubilee laws required all rural property to be returned free to its original family owners every 50th year.

This ensured long-term rootedness in a particular place for every extended family. A byproduct was to ensure a measure of equity in the distribution of property, which ensured a broad distribution of political power.

By contrast, capitalism regards land and property as assets without relational significance. This greater flexibility and mobility undoubtedly bring material benefits. But as extended family members move away from one another, and communities become more transient, they can no longer fulfil welfare roles.

Grandparents can no longer help look after grandchildren, and responsibility for care of older people and those with disabilities falls on the state, with the costs having to be met from tax revenues.

Schluter’s final charge is that corporate capitalism provides inadequate social safeguards. It has no concept of protecting the vulnerable through constraints on the market. Deregulation limits constraints on consumer credit although the devastating consequences of debt for personal health and family relationships are well known.

Deregulation ensures labour is available for hire 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whereas biblical law protected a day a week for non-work priorities including rest, worship and family.

The adverse consequences of these flaws start with family and community breakdown. ”The greater wealth of some sections of society in capitalist nations has to be set against the greater ‘relational poverty’ which extends to an ever greater proportion of the population. The danger is that over time these relational problems become self-reinforcing and self-replicating,” Schluter says.

Another consequence of capitalism’s failings over the longer term is a huge growth in government spending. As the number of damaged households increases, so does the size of the bureaucracy.

Government spending on welfare has reached a level many regard as unsustainable, Schluter argues, yet without it many vulnerable people would have little or no physical or emotional support.

As state agencies take over many of the roles of family and local community, they undermine the reasons why these institutions exist and thus further lower people’s loyalty and commitment to them.

Schluter’s conclusion is that Christians need to search urgently for a new economic order based on biblical revelation.

Ross Gittins is the economics editor.

In Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists and Quiet Lovers of Justice (Berrett-Koehler, February), Si Kahn argues that culture must be integrated into organizing, but he does not always succeed in showing how to do so. He discourages an “add culture and stir” approach, yet the stories he tells–singing to maintain hope while being arrested, designing an organization’s logo to communicate mission, values and inclusivity–are little more than that. And Kahn’s examples of “creative” organizing–such as forming alliances with the faith leaders of a campaign target–strike me as simply good organizing.

What Kahn does, however, is successfully critique some core assumptions of Alinsky-style organizing. Saul Alinksy, the founder of community organizing, began in the 1930s by working with neighborhood groups in Chicago to leverage change from local power-holders. The model he developed, in part based on the labor movement, has since been institutionalized by national training groups and adapted by activists in other movements. Alinsky’s currency recently got a boost when he was “discovered” by the media amidst the presidential campaign of a certain former community organizer.

But dissing Alinsky is now in vogue. Organizers today understand the problems of traditional Alinsky organizing: the focus on large mobilizations of people doesn’t encourage people to gain a deeper understanding of community issues; generates egoism among organizers; and sparks turf wars between organizations. The ideas of radical Brazilian educator Paulo Freire–who espoused a theory of organizing based on a cycle of critical reflection, action, and critical reflection again–have challenged Alinsky’s intellectual reign. Freire’s ideas have been increasingly adopted by organizers in the worker center movement and assimilated into foundation-speak.

Kahn, a community organizer for 45 years and a singer-songwriter, distances himself from Alinsky when he writes that community organizing must not only change power, but also people’s relationship to it. In other words, he calls for organizing to raise and transform consciousness. At the same time, Kahn holds to fundamental Alinsky organizing concepts, like appealing to people’s self-interest, even as he stretches those concepts. (He describes his own motivations for organizing as “moral self-interest.”)

But why not also recognize that some people are motivated by solidarity? Self-interest may initially lead people to join a movement, but solidarity can sustain involvement. Workers join the Arise Chicago Worker Center, where I work, most often out of self-interest–they want justice on the job. But others join because they believe in our mission to organize low-wage and immigrant workers. Sure, we can reduce this impulse to self-satisfaction–”feeling a part of something”–but I find that concept less compelling than solidarity.

Kahn poignantly questions the utility of the traditionally held “stop sign principle,” in which an organizer galvanizes the community around an easy, winnable target–like compelling a local official to install a stop sign at a dangerous intersection. The victory teaches people they have power and in this way, the theory goes, an organizer can prepare the community for increasingly bold campaigns against power-holders.

As Kahn points out, “You run out of fixed fights pretty quickly.” And after easy victories, the community may be unprepared and unable to deal with losing real battles. He advocates a more poetic vision of organizing, in which we fight for “the impossible”–campaigns that seem out of reach but ultimately can appear inevitable. Kahn’s position boils down to a simple question: Why not organize the community to fight for what it really wants?

He provides evidence for the wisdom of a more direct approach. He details how Grassroots Leadership, the national anti-private prison organization Kahn founded, in August 2009 convinced the Obama administration to end the federal government’s practice of detaining immigrant families at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center (a former state prison run by a corporation) outside of Austin, Texas, and scuttled federal plans to build three new family detention centers.

To gird himself for ambitious organizing, Kahn adopts a modest optimism, telling us that we “never know what is possible … and therefore we can never compromise with injustice.” At its best, Creative Community Organizing offers an ethical guide for organizers working in poor communities that they’re not from, and makes clear that progressive values must not be abandoned for strategic positioning. Kahn recounts a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) strategy to force department stores in Forrest City, Ark., to hire black workers. In order to divide and conquer, SNCC leaders decided in 1965 to boycott just one of four local stores, the “Jew store.” Kahn, who is Jewish and began his organizing career with SNCC that year, writes:

SNCC was fighting for the ultimate underdog, African Americans. To target another historic underdog, even if one more privileged than his Black customers–didn’t that just reinforce the injustice? I was not just learning how to do creative community organizing, I was being introduced to its ethical complications.

With stories like these, Creative Community Organizing challenges organizers to reflect on their relationship to the communities they work in. That kind of self-awareness and sensitivity are crucial if ordinary people are to make extraordinary change.

This article is permanently archived at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6024/

We need to celebrate courage and comradeship wherever we find it. Wherever we find it among our soldiers in combat we need to celebrate it loud and clear. But if we choose to celebrate ANZAC day, we need to do it with extreme caution, lest we forget that our celebration of those legends can be used to victimize succeeding generations of soldiers

A well-known Aussie Vietnam Vet who died recently was Bill ‘Kookaburra’ Coolburra.  As a 19-year-old indigenous volunteer, Bill was among the first Australian combat troops into Vietnam. He was a part of a group of ‘sappers’ (army engineers) known as ‘tunnel rats’, who had one of the most dangerous and stressful jobs of the war. His task was to clear the huge underground tunnel networks used by the North Vietnamese.

‘We had to descend into dark tunnels searching for Viet Cong with a torch and a pistol.’  Bill recalled. ‘Some of the tunnels were so small you had to inch your way along on your belly, hoping the next bend didn’t have a VC waiting for you with a shotgun to blow your face off.  The tunnels were dark and had their own smell.  As a result I have been unable to sleep in the dark since’.

When Bill reflected on his time in Vietnam he said, ‘I saw some terrible things done to village people and the memories have haunted me ever since.  It took me a long time to get over the sounds of helicopters flying over my home and even in these later years certain sounds have scared me. I witnessed “helicopter interrogation” (dangling a VC prisoner from a helicopter and threatening to drop them if they did not reveal enemy locations) and  I always felt guilty that I could do nothing to stop it happening.’

‘I saw many other things that have made life a living hell since returning home.‘ Bill said. ‘I have seen many of my old friends destroyed by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and many who lost their families as a result of the stress on them.

We tend to assume that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is due to fear of death and injury. But research by psychiatrist-paratrooper Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, shows that PTSD is due more to the guilt of killing than the fear of being killed – and the more men we turn into killers the more Psychiatric Casualties (PCs) we create.

Grossman suggests ‘the vast majority of men are not born killers.’ Grossman quotes Brigadier S.L.A. Marshall, whose study of soldiers’ conduct suggests ‘that the average healthy individual has such a resistance towards killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility’. According to Brigadier Marshall ‘at the vital point’ (when a soldier has to decide to fire or not) the average healthy individual ‘becomes a conscientious objector.’

Grossman says this view is reflected in the shots-per-soldier and the kills-per-shot recorded in every major war from the Civil War through to World War I up until World War II. During this period, between 75 and 95% of soldiers either did not fire their weapon or only fired into the air – refusing to kill the enemy – even when given orders to do so. Because,  one officer said, the truth is that “killing is the worst thing one man can do to another man”.

When the military realized how few men were firing at the enemy, Grossman says they embarked on a new program to turn their soldiers into killers. They knew they couldn’t change men’s natural aversion to killing, but they could put could soldiers under sustained systematic pressure to kill – by reframing killing as saving lives, portraying the enemy as sub-human, increasing the distance between the trigger and the target so soldiers can not see the humanity of the enemy, demanding every soldier’s immediate obedience to the commands of their leader and developing each unit’s capacity for collective violence.

Grossman says that as a result of this conditioning, since Vietnam infantrymen have had a 95% fire rate and marksmen have had a fire rate of 1.39 rounds per kill – and consequently the number of soldiers who have become PCs in combat has exploded. After 60 days of combat, 98% of all men become PCs. (The 2% that don’t are psychopaths.) So it should not surprise that of the 2.8 million G.I,s involved in Vietnam, up to 1.5 million returned as PCs.

Many Aussie PCs suffered PTSD. ‘Studies have proven that compared with other men of that generation Vietnam vets have higher rates of psychiatric disorders, heart disease, alcoholism and alcohol-related diseases, as well as a higher suicide rates.’

And now the cycle is starting all over again with the soldiers returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the Sunday Mail’s James Campbell The Department of Veterans Affairs says the numbers of veterans suffering with mental illness ‘has exploded in the past two years’. And the National Institute of Mental Health says, ’Suicides by veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could well top the combat deaths in the two conflicts,’

Once, when Bill Coolburra was asked about anti-war protesters, he said: ‘The protesters against the war aimed their anger at the wrong people.  They spat on us and treated us like dirt when we returned. They should have aimed it at those who sent us there!’

This ANZAC Day we would do well to remember Bill’s words; lest we forget our celebrations can be used by politicians and generals to persuade impressionable young people to overcome their natural aversion to killing and send them overseas to kill and be killed in the name of the country – and victimize a whole new generation of soldiers like Bill ‘Kookaburra’ Coolburra.

Shifts in global power, ongoing or potential, are a lively topic among policy makers and observers. One question is whether (or when) China will displace the United States as the dominant global player, perhaps along with India.

Such a shift would return the global system to something like it was before the European conquests. Economic growth in China and India has been rapid, and because they rejected the West’s policies of financial deregulation, they survived the recession better than most. Nonetheless, questions arise.

One standard measure of social health is the U.N. Human Development Index. As of 2008, India ranks 134th, slightly above Cambodia and below Laos and Tajikistan, about where it has been for many years. China ranks 92nd–tied with Belize, a bit above Jordan, below the Dominican Republic and Iran.

India and China also have very high inequality, so more than a billion of their inhabitants fall far lower on the scale.

Another concern is the U.S. debt. Some fear it places the U.S. in thrall to China. But apart from a brief interlude ending in December, Japan has long been the biggest international holder of U.S. government debt. Creditor leverage, furthermore, is overrated.

In one dimension–military power–the United States stands alone. And Obama is setting new records with his 2011 military budget. Almost half the U.S. deficit is due to military spending, which is untouchable in the political system.

When considering the U.S. economy’s other sectors, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and other economists warn that we should beware of “deficit fetishism.” A deficit is a stimulus to recovery, and it can be overcome with a growing economy, as after World War II, when the deficit was far worse.

And the deficit is expected to grow, largely because of the hopelessly inefficient privatized health care system–also virtually untouchable, thanks to business’s ability to overpower the public will.

However, the framework of these discussions is misleading. The global system is not only an interaction among states, each pursuing some “national interest” abstracted from distribution of domestic power. That has long been understood.

Adam Smith concluded that the “principal architects” of policy in England were “merchants and manufacturers,” who ensured that their own interests are “most peculiarly attended to,” however “grievous” the effects on others, including the people of England.

Smith’s maxim still holds, though today the “principal architects” are multinational corporations and particularly the financial institutions whose share in the economy has exploded since the 1970s.

In the United States we have recently seen a dramatic illustration of the power of the financial institutions. In the last presidential election they provided the core of President Obama’s funding.

Naturally they expected to be rewarded. And they were–with the TARP bailouts, and a great deal more. Take Goldman Sachs, the top dog in both the economy and the political system. The firm made a mint by selling mortgage-backed securities and more complex financial instruments.

Aware of the flimsiness of the packages they were peddling, the firm also took out bets with the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) that the offerings would fail. When the financial system collapsed, AIG went down with it.

Goldman’s architects of policy not only parlayed a bailout for Goldman itself but also arranged for taxpayers to save AIG from bankruptcy, thus rescuing Goldman.

Now Goldman is making record profits and paying out fat bonuses. It, and a handful of other banks, are bigger and more powerful than ever. The public is furious. People can see that the banks that were primary agents of the crisis are making out like bandits, while the population that rescued them is facing an official unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent, as of February. The rate rises to nearly 17 percent when all Americans who wish to be fully employed are counted.

Bringing Obama to heel

Popular anger finally evoked a rhetorical shift from the administration, which responded with charges about greedy bankers. “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street,” Obama told60 Minutes in December. This kind of rhetoric was accompanied with some policy suggestions that the financial industry doesn’t like (e.g., the Volcker Rule, which would bar banks receiving government support from engaging in speculative activity unrelated to basic bank activities) and proposals to set up an independent regulatory agency to protect consumers.

Since Obama was supposed to be their man in Washington, the principal architects of government policy wasted little time delivering their instructions: Unless Obama fell back into line, they would shift funds to the political opposition. “If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose” the support of Wall Street, Kelly S. King, a board member of the lobbying group Financial Services Roundtable, told the New York Times in early February. Securities and investment businesses gave the Democratic Party a record $89 million during the 2008 campaign.

Three days later, Obama informed the press that bankers are fine “guys,” singling out the chairmen of the two biggest players, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs: “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free-market system,” the president said. (Or at least “free markets” as interpreted by state capitalist doctrine.)

That turnabout is a revealing snapshot of Smith’s maxim in action.

The architects of policy are also at work on a real shift of power: from the global work force to transnational capital.

Economist and China specialist Martin Hart-Landsberg explores the dynamic in a recent Monthly Review article. China has become an assembly plant for a regional production system. Japan, Taiwan and other advanced Asian economies export high-tech parts and components to China, which assembles and exports the finished products.

The spoils of power

The growing U.S. trade deficit with China has aroused concern. Less noticed is that the U.S. trade deficit with Japan and the rest of Asia has sharply declined as this new regional production system takes shape. U.S. manufacturers are following the same course, providing parts and components for China to assemble and export, mostly back to the United States. For the financial institutions, retail giants, and the owners and managers of manufacturing industries closely related to this nexus of power, these developments are heaven sent.

And well understood. In 2007, Ralph Gomory, head of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, testified before Congress, “In this new era of globalization, the interests of companies and countries have diverged. In contrast with the past, what is good for America’s global corporations is no longer necessarily good for the American people.”

Consider IBM. According to Business Week, by the end of 2008, more than 70 percent of IBM’s work force of 400,000 was abroad. In 2009 IBM reduced its U.S. employment by another 8 percent.

For the work force, the outcome may be “grievous,” in accordance with Smith’s maxim, but it is fine for the principal architects of policy. Current research indicates that about one-fourth of U.S. jobs will be “offshorable” within two decades, and for those jobs that remain, security and decent pay will decline because of the increased competition from replaced workers.

This pattern follows 30 years of stagnation or decline for the majority as wealth poured into few pockets, leading to what has probably become the greatest inequality between the haves and the have-nots since the end of American slavery.

While China is becoming the world’s assembly plant and export platform, Chinese workers are suffering along with the rest of the global work force. This is an unsurprising outcome of a system designed to concentrate wealth and power and to set working people in competition with one another worldwide.

Globally, workers’ share in national income has declined in many countries–dramatically so in China, leading to growing unrest in that highly inegalitarian society.

So we have another significant shift in global power: from the general population to the principal architects of the global system, a process aided by the undermining of functioning democracy in the United States and other of the Earth’s most powerful states.

The future depends on how much the great majority is willing to endure, and whether that great majority will collectively offer a constructive response to confront the problems at the core of the state capitalist system of domination and control.

If not, the results might be grim, as history more than amply reveals.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.

Dear Friend,

It may sound strange – receiving an email from Jubilee about tax. But let me assure you, this is a different kind of tax. Robin Hood style, in fact.

Jubilee is spearheading a broad alliance of Australian groups in bringing the Robin Hood Tax campaign downunder. Our goal is to build on the current momentum from the global financial crisis to see a Robin Hood (Financial Transactions) Tax endorsed by the Australian Government at the G20 in June.

350 economists from more than 35 countries, including Jeffrey Sachs and the Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz have signed a letter to the leaders of the G20 countries calling on them to impose a tax on financial transactions.

Now they are joined by renowned Australian philosopher Professor Peter Singer, international banking expert Professor Ross Buckley, political satirist Julian Morrow and Reverend Tim Costello in supporting Australia’s involvement in this worldwide initiative to reduce global financial instability.

• Read more about the tax on our website, including an FAQ.
• Watch this brilliant Bill Nighy clip, directed by Love Actually’s Richard Curtis.
• A good idea? We think so. Visit www.robinhoodtax.org.au and have your say.
• And spread the word far and wide on Facebook and Twitter.

All the best!

Adele Webb
On behalf of the team at Jubilee Australia
_______________________________________________________
Jubilee Australia – Digging to the Roots of Poverty
e: info@jubileeaustralia.org
w. www.jubileeaustralia.org

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/11575

Traditionally the peace movement has focused on holding states to account for their injustices through tactics that rob them of their moral authority and social support. Think Ghandi. Think Martin Luther King. This tradition is outdated. Here’s why:

The rise of non-state actors

The first reason traditional pacifism is outdated is this: we are no longer dealing exclusively with states. Increasingly the actors in war include terrorist networks, insurgent movements and technologically empowered individuals. This has been variously labelled as the rise of asymmetric war, the globalization of civil war and the fourth genera- tion of war. Many forecasters are in fact seeing this as the future of war in a globalized, technologized society.

I remember the moment I realized that peace efforts aimed at preventing pre-emptive war in Iraq were doomed to failure. It was the moment I realized that we had no positive agenda for dealing with terrorists. We only had a plan for state actors. We had no plan for countering the violence of violent non-state actors. This doctrinal vacuum made it easy for states to demonize pacifists as terrorist sympathizers.

In the years since not much has changed. If peace movement wishes to be relevant for a wired world it needs to adapt. It needs to make this demonization more difficult. It needs to develop counter-terrorist de-escalation capability. It needs to challenge violence in all its forms.

The rise of non-enlisted warriors

The second reason traditional pacifism is outdated is this, we are no longer dealing exclusively with professional soldiers. Concurrent with the rise of non-state actors has been the rise of non-enlisted warriors, of military contractors (aka mercenaries), child soldiers and territorial warlords who lack the soldier ethos. These are people who fight for reasons other than national defence and national pride, who may be utterly uninterested in issues of moral authority, who may be immune to shaming via media exposure, who may be fighting for profit or mere survival. This again points to the need for new tactics.

The rise of non-human soldiers

Beyond the rise of non-enlisted warriors, we are also facing the rise of the machines. Military robotics is spreading like wildfire with technology transfers to police forces and even Hezbollah well underway. How can nonviolent activists appeal to the humanity of soldiers when they are no longer human? This is an even more serious challenge, but we need to catch up and fast.

Non-lethal weapons

Finally we also need to come to grips with the emergence of non-lethal weapons. Ironically, their very non-lethality makes soldiers less hesitant to use them. In fact, there have already been instances of police using military grade sonic weapons on civilian protestors as a form of crowd dispersal. Conversely, protestors are already working on neutralization technologies. But I’m nervous about this. Is it wise to enter into a defacto non-lethal arms race? Have we thought where this could be taking us?

So basically we need a new pacifism. Hopefully this has provoked some reflection. Particularly amongst peace churches and pacifist Christians. But I think there are issues here for just war Christians as well.

Maybe you have some answers? Maybe you have better questions?

- This article first appeared on http://mattstone.blogs.com

‘As demonstrated by earlier studies by Darley and Batson (1973), a situation that can effectively hinder the experience of empathy for our fellow man is being in a rush. An ingenious experimental setting was put into place where presumed powerful determinants, such as education, professional commitment to helping and an awareness of ethics were juxtaposed against the seemingly mundane factor of time pressure. In the experiment, priest seminar students encountered a man slumped in an alleyway coughing and in apparent need for help. The only aspect that was varied for 16 different subjects was the amount of hurry they were said to be in. The participants were on their way to a discussion with their professors (a few were even getting ready to talk about the Good Samaritan Parable, a Bible verse about the importance of helping strangers in need) and some of the participants were told that they were already late to the meeting and had to hurry up if they were to make it. The surprising result was that time pressure overrode years of education on Christian ethics and a life long commitment to the curing of souls and caused the participants to rush by their fellow human in need, some of them even stepping over the victim in the doorway in order to get faster to the awaiting ethics discussion! It would seem that the lack of time made empathizing with the victim more difficult, even though the priest seminar students presumably had a dispositional tendency for caring about the needy.”

from Dennis T. Kahn, ‘Bystander intervention and norm shifting: A social psychological research overview’, downloaded from www.levandehistoria.se/files/bystander_social%20psychological%20research%20overview.pdf, p.16.

Darley and Batson’s original research was published in:

Darley, J. M. & Batson, C. D. (1973). ‘From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 100-108. weblamp.princeton.edu/~psych/psychology/research/darley/