Civil Disobedience

[Russell Kanning]

sure .... I would not want him imprisoned or anyone else. Some of us call that "anarchy".

if no one is in charge .... then there might be some destruction of private property .... some people call them protests ... some people call it colateral damage.

.... if there is mob rule ... then I would call that "democracy" ... and bad things might happen in that situation also.

Violent communists don't look that much different that violent insurgents and violent peace keepers to me.

[KBCraig]

Just pointing out that what the violent punks call "anarchy", isn't. They want to rule by violence. "Ruling" != anarchy.

[Russell Kanning]

What Are Lawful Orders?
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,127377,00.html

"The examples I've tossed out here were all civilian in nature, and they all occurred under conditions other than combat.  Do the same principles apply to a service member on active duty?  More specifically, does a Soldier have the right to practice civil disobedience?  Does he or she have the right to refuse an order?
 
For many military personnel, the knee-jerk response to that last question is no.  A Soldier follows orders.  Period.  That's the nature of military discipline.  You don't discuss it; you don't vote on it; and you don't call home to mom to see if it's okay.  You square your shoulders, suck in your gut, and carry out your orders."

[Russell Kanning]

from above article:

"When you break the law, you pay the price, even if the law itself is wrong.  Rosa Parks knew that and accepted it.  Mahatma Gandhi knew it, and he accepted it.  So did Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr., and a few hundred thousand other protesters and social activists, most of whom we'll never know by name."

Gandhi did not agree with this. I was just reading an excerpt from his book.

[Russell Kanning]

Christian Action of non-violent civil disobedience - BRING THE AUSTRALIAN TROOPS HOME   Feedback
- Jim Dowling
Join together with others as we bring prayer and resistance to the gates of the largest military base in South-East Queensland, the Enoggera Army Barracks.   



While Poland and Denmark have announced the immanent withdrawal of all troops, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Japan and New Zealand have already done so. England has also announced a major troop reduction

That our country is engaged in a serious war crime is without doubt. The invasion was loudly denounced by Pope John Paul 11 before it took place, and afterwards declared illegal by then UN Secretary General Kofi Anan. More recently, a senior prosecutor at the 1945 Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal, Benjamin Ferenccz, has declared George Bush should be tried the for illegal invasion of Iraq.

Join together with others as we bring prayer and resistance to the gates of the largest military base in South-East Queensland, the Enoggera Army Barracks. The best way we can support our troops is to demand they are withdrawn from a war which has only served to bring more suffering upon the Iraqi people. Further deployments should be stopped as the 'war on terror' is a war of terror.
Where:  Enoggera Army Barracks, Lloyd St., Enoggera


When:  10am, Saturday 10th March

Gather together at the corner of Lloyd and Wardell Sts. before moving in procession to the gates of the barracks




Preparatory NON-VIOLENCE TRAINING

69 Thomas St. West End

7:00pm. Wed. 7 March

[Russell Kanning]

On Civil Disobedience: An Interview with Howard Zinn      
Monday, February 26 2007 @ 07:04 PM PST
Contributed by: Anonymous
Views: 201
State of Nature: You once wrote that direct action "encompasses a great variety of methods, limited only by our imaginations". What methods do you find at our disposal today? And what limits does your imagination impose upon them?





Howard Zinn: Direct action means acting directly on the object of your protest or the source of your grievance, as opposed to petitioning or lobbying for your elected representatives to act. We see it in strikes, both historically and today, which are a form of direct action against corporations that, for instance, exploit their employees, or manufacture war weapons. Another form of direct action is non-violent (that is, avoiding violence against human beings) action, including forms of sabotage. Around 1980, 'ploughshares' groups (turn our swords into ploughshares) began invading companies that made weaponry, and committed minor acts of sabotage to protest the actions of these companies. Only recently, a group of religious pacifists calling themselves 'The St. Patrick's Four' poured blood on a marine recruiting station to protest the war in Iraq. Boycotts are another form of direct action. The national boycott of grapes, carried on in the 1960s by the farm workers of California against the powerful growers, brought about better conditions for farm workers. The desertion of soldiers from immoral war, or the refusal of men to be drafted for war, are also forms of direct action.

SoN: You say that our problem is civil obedience, not civil disobedience. "Both in war and in the law courts and everywhere else you must do whatever your city and your country command", states Socrates; and these words, you claim, have been impressed on our minds. You find in history many instances of submission to authority even in the face of terrible injustice, and very few of rebellion. Why do people submit so readily to injustice?

HZ: People submit to injustice for two reasons: one is that they do not recognize it as injustice. A young person submits to the exhortation to join the military without recognizing that he or she may go to a war which cannot be morally justified. The media and the educational system may not educate them about historical examples of resistance to injustice. Or people will submit to an injustice because they feel they have no alternative, that if they refuse they will be punished, perhaps by loss of a job, perhaps by being sent to prison. They may submit because people they have been taught to respect and trust – the President, their minister, even their family – may tell them they must submit to injustice because they owe something to their government, or their church or their family (as Plato had Socrates saying in The Crito, he couldn't escape from his death sentence because he owed something to his government).

SoN: Some would like us to believe that the present system provides legal and political means to bring about social change. Justice Abe Fortas of the Supreme Court, who wrote Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience, was one of these people, and your response to him is found in Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order (1968). Here and in other works you charge that the rule of law reinforces the unequal distribution of wealth and power and the ballot box proves to be utterly ineffective as an instrument to rectify injustice. What do you say to those who still insist that the law is neutral and democracy is alive and well?

HZ: If you study the actual workings of the justice system over the course of our history, it becomes clear that it favors the rich over the poor, the white over the black, the orthodox over the radical. The very structure of the system insures it, with judges generally coming from the upper classes, often appointed by the political elite, with money dominating the system at every turn, as in the greater difficulty of poor people in being represented adequately in court. If you study the legislation passed by Congress throughout history, from Hamilton's economic program in the first Congress to the tax laws of today, benefiting corporations and the wealthy, you will see that our representative system represents the wealthy in large part. If you observe our wars, you find that the so-called 'checks and balances' we learn about in school, where no one branch of government can dominate, simply don't work in times of war. The President decides on war, Congress goes along obediently, and the Supreme Court has never ruled that a war is unconstitutional, although judicial review is presumably part of their job, and every war since World War II has violated the requirement of the constitution that Congress alone can declare war.

SoN: "1789 and 1917 are still historic dates, but they are no longer historic examples", says Albert Camus. For him, the powerful weapons in the hands of the state and the danger that violent uprising in one country will lead to war on a global scale indicates that the time for revolution in the old sense has now passed. It seems that Camus is very much on your mind when you also question the feasibility of revolution in your writings and advocate non-violent direct action instead. But can non-violent direct action ever be as effective as revolution once was in history?

HZ: We must first question the effectiveness of violent revolution. In the United States, it superseded the British ruling class with a local ruling class, in the French Revolution it led to Napoleonic dictatorship and Bourbon monarchy, in the Russian Revolution it led to Stalinism, in China to Maoism. In South Africa, we saw a basically non-violent revolution by blacks end Apartheid, and while leaving many problems unsolved, it solved a fundamental problem without the massive violence of civil war or revolution. We've seen mass movements overthrow dictatorships without war or massive violence, whether in the Philippines or Indonesia, or since 1989 in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. No revolution, violent or non-violent, solves problems completely, but non-violent revolutions avoid the horrors of war and move a step in the direction of justice.

SoN: In Declarations of Independence you wrote that "as the war in Vietnam became more vicious and as it became clear that non-combatants were being killed in large numbers; that the Saigon government was corrupt, unpopular, and under the control of our own government; and that the American public was being told lies about the war by our highest officials, the [anti-war] movement grew with amazing speed". Let us substitute Iraq for Vietnam for a moment, and think of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost; the sectarian divisions driving the country towards civil war, its fire deliberately stoked by the Americans; the horrors of Fallujah and Abu Ghraib; the puppet Iraqi regime instituted to serve the interests of the forces of occupation; and the American public fed lies about the weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. True, the neo-con agenda has been largely discredited and today less than one in four Americans approve of the Bush administration's grand plan for Iraq, but there is still no real growth in the anti-war movement. What has changed since Vietnam?

HZ: True, the majority opposition to the war has still not reached the point, as in Vietnam, where the government had to consider withdrawing from the war. But the movement has helped turn an 80% support for the war into a 65% opposition to the war. It is more difficult these days to build a movement because of the greater control of the media by the government. But consider that we are only at an early stage in the development of the anti-war movement – it has taken longer – but the direction in which it has gone indicates that we are on the road to ending the war. Another factor delaying this is the nature of the Bush administration, more impervious to public opinion than either the Johnson or Nixon administrations were, more ruthless and dictatorial. More a closed little group of decision-makers listening only to themselves.

SoN: When David Barsamian interviewed you in 1998 you read him Langston Hughes' famous poem "A Dream Deferred", which you also quote in A People's History of the United States. The poem asks: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it explode?" If all the dreams deferred were to explode one day would you expect this explosion to be controlled and organised, as it was for the most part in the Civil Rights Movement, or indiscriminately violent and frenzied, as it is in the Middle East today?

HZ: In our country, because of our tradition of non-violent protest and achievement, as in the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, the Women's Movement, I would expect it to be non-violent for the most part (no non-violent movement has ever been perfectly so). It might include militant acts of civil disobedience, mutinies in the military, strikes and boycotts and demonstrations, but not the kind of situation we see now in the Middle East.

[Russell Kanning]

Pittsburgh Report on Successful Shutdown of Warfare Robotics Facility      
Saturday, March 03 2007 @ 03:09 PM PST
Contributed by: Anonymous
Views: 522


On Friday, March 2, Pittsburgh Organizing Group (POG) and supporters set out to shut down the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), a largely Pentagon-funded venture of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) that has become a world leader in warfare robotics. The action succeeded beyond the organizers' expectations.

Pittsburgh Report on Successful Shutdown of Warfare Robotics Facility

For the latest updates, press coverage, and more information, go to www.organizepittsburgh.org/m2

On Friday, March 2, Pittsburgh Organizing Group (POG) and supporters set out to shut down the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), a largely Pentagon-funded venture of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) that has become a world leader in warfare robotics. The action succeeded beyond the organizers' expectations.



Two actions were organized for the purpose of creating a barricade. The first was a non-publicized effort by four affinity groups to barricade the main entrances through the use of lockboxes (long pipes through which people's hands are locked together), u-locks, and a tripod. These groups deployed at 5am, before police were on the scene. This action alone blocked all vehicular access to NREC and severely disrupted the possibility of pedestrian traffic. The second piece of the action was a publicly announced 7:30am march from Friendship Park to NREC, which also intended to barricade the facility. As expected, a large number of police were deployed at various locations to ensure the march would not be able to successfully create a barricade.



It is no surprise that when you announce public plans for a shutdown of a three block-long multi-million dollar facility, especially one heavily funded by the military, that the state may make plans to stop you. The point of the unannounced action was to occupy and hold the space we wanted before the police arrived. The march was intended to bring more people to an ongoing barricade and leave open the possibility of a second attempt if the first was quickly removed. Instead of being forced to push through police lines, with the large confrontation and heavy risks that would have entailed, many people were already where they wanted to be.



It was large-scale disobedience that shut down the facility. Thirty-four people blockaded the main entrances to the facility in the largest act of civil disobedience/direct action in Pittsburgh since the war began. This action marked the first large-scale use of lockboxes, u-locks, and tripods in Pittsburgh and it was the use of these tactics that allowed us to hold the space we did for as long as we did. Having brought in members of Homeland Security one week before the action to train police on how to remove us, it still took the police over five hours to get 15 protesters out of the street, three hours after the police and paramedics actually began trying to cut people out. In the end, the police had deployed 50+ officers from a variety of departments, mostly concentrated at the back gate. FBI members were filming from an observable window across the street.



Midway through the action, the protest marching band showed up playing tunes and waving flags, keeping everyone's spirits high. A banner was dropped from the nearby 40th Street Bridge that read, "Shut Down the War Machine: Stop NREC." (The day before, current and former CMU students dropped a banner on CMU's campus that read, "Don't be a Cog in a War Machine.") Protesters at the front barricades unlocked and dismounted around noon after learning that we had successfully shut the facility down for the day, seven hours after we arrived.



The barricade remained as long as it did because POG utilized a new tactic. This success may otherwise have required hundreds of people engaging in direct confrontation with the police, which would likely have resulted in injuries and a much worse legal situation for the movement.



The action received what might be the most extensive coverage of any local anti-war protest since the beginning of the war. Most of the corporate and independent media in attendance interviewed people on the scene, sometimes reporting live, and throughout the day as well. Links to all the media coverage (with the exception of extremely extensive radio interviews and day long coverage) can be found on the March 2nd website, www.organizepittsburgh.org/m2 .



Not surprisingly, CMU's media response was to argue that the barricade did not completely affect their work. Through telecommuting, off-site events and a rearranging of schedules, they made other arrangements that allowed "nearly everyone" to continue some type of work.

But they missed the point of this action entirely. What we said we'd do, and did in fact do, was barricade the NREC facility as a tangible act of resistance against the war. Our goal was not to hold employees hostage at their homes to ensure they couldn't work on a military project, nor did we intend to stalk people to see what they were working on outside the facility. Much like our repeated shutdowns of the military recruiting station, this action was intended to interject an anti-war message at a war-related facility that has thus far received no public scrutiny.



Forcing recruiters to alter their schedules or denying them access to their offices, delaying the production of military equipment, occupying the offices of legislators, barricading a world leader in warfare robotics - none of these actions are some magic bullet to end war or force a structural change in society. All the work we do is in conjunction with a myriad of other education and action tactics by millions of other people in the country. Petitions, phone calls, letters to the editor, teach-ins, anti-war art, acts of direct action and civil disobedience all serve their part. A movement is spawned and nurtured by creating a climate of systematic resistance throughout large sectors of society. All of these actions contribute to a visible resistance to war, empire and occupation that is growing. POG sees our role, and capability, as continuing to push the movement towards direct action through well-tested methods and experimentation in new tactical directions.



We want to thank everyone who took part in the action, especially the folks who travelled from Illinois, Ohio, Maryland and elsehwere to risk arrest. We also want to thank folks who participated in solidarity outside the jail, attended the bail hearings (it certainly made a difference with the judge!), all of those who gave money and sent messages of support, the marching band, the supporters who housed people, mad props to the boom-boom-bamf group, and everyone who gave us the benefit of the doubt that we wouldn't be completely crushed by the state!



There are court appearances to come. There is also the certainty that we will continue to take on the military recruitment apparatus and confront CMU's direct contribution to warfare.



With love, solidarity and resistance.

Pittsburgh Organizing Group

great pictures
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2007030315092455

[Russell Kanning]

Non-Violent Protestors Defeat Israeli Bulldozer by Sitting on It

http://www.imemc.org/article/47238

[error]

Personally I'd rather have robots fighting other robots, than people fighting other people.

[Russell Kanning]

they could even play chess and then imprison the leader of the losing country

[error]

I understood you as far as playing chess, but...

What's this imprison stuff? What's this leader stuff? For that matter, what's this country stuff?

[KBCraig]

What Are Lawful Orders?
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,127377,00.html

"The examples I've tossed out here were all civilian in nature, and they all occurred under conditions other than combat.  Do the same principles apply to a service member on active duty?  More specifically, does a Soldier have the right to practice civil disobedience?  Does he or she have the right to refuse an order?
 
For many military personnel, the knee-jerk response to that last question is no.  A Soldier follows orders.  Period.  That's the nature of military discipline.  You don't discuss it; you don't vote on it; and you don't call home to mom to see if it's okay.  You square your shoulders, suck in your gut, and carry out your orders."

That is a great column, but I believe you mischaracterized it with your selected quote. I can't speak to what is being taught to service members today, but I can say with certainty that 25 years ago, that the obligation to disobey "unlawful orders" was drilled into every soldier at every training opportunity.

Orders of "where to go" are not unlawful. Orders of "what to do" or "who to shoot" can most certainly be unlawful. The writer Jeff Edwards does seem to understand the difference.

To continue quoting from the same column you quoted:

When he made the decision to disobey his orders, 1st Lt. Ehren Watada wasn't operating under a split-second life-or-death clock, and he wasn't struggling with the pressures of combat.  He had ample time to consider the probable results of his chosen course of action, and plenty of opportunity to decide if he was willing to pay the penalty for his decision to disobey orders.

He would have us believe that his motivations were ethical and legal.  Although I haven't yet heard him utter the words, he appears to regard his violation of military law as an act of civil disobedience.  Maybe it is.  But one of the core tenets of civil disobedience is the willingness to face the repercussions of violating the law.  Anything less is just posturing for the television cameras.

If Watada truly believes he's doing the right thing, that he's making a personal sacrifice for what is right, he should face his punishment with his head held high.  He should wear his incarceration as a badge of honor, as have so many activists who came before him.  Instead, he's jumping through every legal hoop imaginable to avoid the penalties for his actions.

When you break the law, you pay the price, even if the law itself is wrong.  Rosa Parks knew that and accepted it.  Mahatma Gandhi knew it, and he accepted it.  So did Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr., and a few hundred thousand other protesters and social activists, most of whom we'll never know by name.

I'm beginning to get the impression that Mr. Watada hopes to shortcut the process.  It seems to me that his plan is to break the law and then skip right past the ramifications to his victory speech.  I'm fairly certain that real life doesn't work that way.

First lieutenant Watada made the conscious decision to let his troops go into battle without him.  If he's going to make a personal sacrifice, it can't just be a token gesture.  It has to be the real thing.  Because the men and women of his unit aren't facing a token threat.  They're putting their lives on the line, and -- unless they log on to YouTube or the antiwar blog sites -- the officer who was sworn to protect and lead them is nowhere to be found.

I agree with Lt. Watada that the Iraq invasion was very separate from 9/11. I agree that it was ill-advised, and a serious mistake. That doesn't make deploying to Iraq an "unlawful order". I often thought my military chain of command was wrong, and that they were making poor decisions, but my disagreement didn't make those orders unlawful or immoral.

Kevin

[Russell Kanning]

that is funny. I tried to find the most basic quote. .... does a soldier have the right to refuse orders.

I didn't quote the whole thing because it was 2 pages long on their site.

He is completely wrong about the statement, "But one of the core tenets of civil disobedience is the willingness to face the repercussions of violating the law.  Anything less is just posturing for the television cameras." Most people who have taught or practiced cd are willing, but are not looking forward to face punishment. We are not whipping ourselves .... we are just not going to use force to resist the punishment.

[Dan]

Personally I'd rather have robots fighting other robots, than people fighting other people.

http://news.com.com/Giant+robots+in+the+backyard/2100-1026_3-5499730.html?tag=nl

[Russell Kanning]

Orrville woman among those arrested for civil disobedience
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March 18, 2007

By SARAH SKYLARK BRUCE

Staff Writer

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- An Orrville woman was arrested for participating in civil disobedience at the White House during the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq on Friday night.

Susan Mark Landis, a peace advocate for Mennonite Church USA, was one of about 200 nonviolent participants arrested by Lafayette Park Police.

The peace witness was marked by prayer and hymn-singing by the 3,000-4,000 people from numerous Christian denominations in attendance.

The event began with a worship service at the National Cathedral and continued through the streets, past Embassy Row, and culminated at the White House.

Some participants walked a directed route around the White House to surround the building with light from battery-operated faux candles. Others stayed in front of the White House to perform a planned act of civil disobedience.

Landis said her actions were motivated from "divine obedience" and a desire to appeal to the nation's conscience. Christian Peace Witness organizers spoke at length with park police before the event, Landis said.

Participants crossed a police line to pray at the fence surrounding the White House, she explained. The police warned the first 100 three times to leave and then began handcuffing the civil offenders.

The other 100-some participants including Landis also crossed over to the fence, Landis said.

She said they were charged with unauthorized protest because the Christian Peace Witness only had a permit to hold a program in Lafayette Park. Associated Press reports said the first 100 were charged with disobeying a lawful order.

Landis was among those charged with crossing a police line. All were fined $100, according to AP wire reports.

"We knew exactly what was coming," Landis said.

Risking arrest gets media attention, she said, and the participants wanted the opportunity to share their concerns with many people.

"By willingly giving up some of our freedoms ..." she said, "We hope to call attention to the higher law that is to love our enemies and not solve international conflict with war."

Just before the civil disobedience, Landis saw her friend Peter Erb from Mount Eaton.

She hugged him, Erb recalled. Then she said she was ready to risk arrest, he said, and she left to go participate. He noticed she was prepared with volleyball kneepads.

By that point, the lights illuminating the White House had been turned off, Erb said. After the participants waited at the fence for some time, the White House floodlights came back on. Then the arrests began.

Landis has never engaged in civil disobedience before, she said, but she felt called by God to do so this time. Not everyone experiences that call, she clarified.

The police officers were considerate, Landis said. They first asked if any elderly, cold or sick people would like to get on the warm buses before the rest, she recalled.

She felt sympathetic for the unhappy officer who told her he wanted to be at home with his wife and children, she said. She didn't see that officer again, but she wanted to tell him she supports the troops in Iraq and wants them to come home to be with their families, she said.

The police took her and the others to a garage-style holding area, Landis said. She fell asleep at some point and recalled returning to the event's headquarters at New York Avenue Church about 5:15 a.m. The handcuffs only stayed on for about an hour and a half, she said.

Though Landis is a Mennonite and considers herself a pacifist, the majority of the people in the Christian Peace Witness were from other denominations not traditionally associated with pacifism.

Baptists, United Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Episcopalians and Catholics were among those who led the worship service at the cathedral.

Landis attends Oak Grove Mennonite Church.

http://www.the-daily-record.com/news/article/1736582