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Ah, Venice! It was amazing. I had never been, and Mrs. Spew hadn't been there since her college year abroad. I had an epiphany: water = scenic and old = scenic. So, yes, Venice is scenic squared. Just beautiful in pretty much every direction. Even or especially the worn down buildings look great. Our timing was pretty great, as the weather was comfy (a bit too comfortable for the one mosquito in our pensione room). Because we are already onto Venice, I am going to listicle may way through my realizations/observations we had along the way:Wow, there are a lot of bridges. As Mrs. Spew has some knee issues, we noticed each and every bridge.So glad we were not in high season, as there were a ton of people already, and those bridges are chockfull of people taking pictures. Plus most of the pathways are pretty narrow so things get congested quickly.So many restaurants!! It was easy to find amazing food--the hard part was deciding which place to eat. The pasta was simply terrific as was everything else.When I did my Italian trip as a college Eurailpass person, I had to limit my gelato intake due to budget constraints (the US had coordinated with Europe to push down the dollar just before my trip!). This time, I was only restrained by the threat of reflux as I am going to gain weight on this trip, so be it. I tried a different flavor each time, and enjoyed them all.Dogs? Heaps of dogs but so little grass. The green spaces in Venice are far and few between. Sure, some beautiful parks and gardens on various edges, but you can go on a long dog walk and not see any grass. I don't know if this is a regional thing or a fashion of the moment, but there were a fair amount of young women with the fiercest eyebrow game I have seen.We didn't go into any of the major museums/cathedrals due to timing and very long lines. But we did bump into various smaller, amazing, quite funky exhibits along the way. My fave was this oneDid I mention the food was amazing? Best pasta I have ever had. The pizza? I am still a homer--American pizza >> Italian pizza.We didn't gondola as we had blown the budget for that on a water taxi upon our arrival that... dropped us off not so close to our pensione.Oh, and that pensione--tight stairway for our large bags. It was partly run remotely so we could use use the codes given to us to get in. It worked once I figured it out. The place was in a super convenient spot, but our bathroom was not on the same floor as our room, which did not work so well in the middle of the night, especially for Mrs. Spew's knees. Bread always costs money (plus a service charge is always added), but we kept getting free shots of lemoncello. Since Mrs. Spew doesn't drink such stuff, I had to step up and take a second shot for the team. Yum. So more than a few examples of anarchist grafittiSaw plenty of signs, graffiti, offices for far left parties and movements including, yes, communists! Gasp!Glass blowing demo at the Glass Cathedral Venice is part of an archipelago with other islands in the lagoon. So, we took a water bus to Murano to check out the glass blowing industry and shop for souvenirs and gifts and then onto Burano for the brightest colored buildings. It was worth the trip although the water bus from the first to the second was very, very crowded. Again, glad it isn't peak season. The new tax to limit visitors is probably not going to work--unless it is sky high--as the place is worth it. Burano is prettyHoly packed boat, Batman We are now in Milan for the last part of our trip beyond Berlin. Mrs. Spew gets a few days in my apartment there before heading home, and then I have about 10 days before I head back as well. It has been a great Beatles week (8 days) and a great three months. I am very lucky--this whole thing has been a terrific experience. Which reminds me:Don't use the word terrific in Italy, as I did in a text to our Venice pensione manager, and she interpreted it as terrible or terrifying. She was much relieved when we figured out the confusion. I was really happy, not really upset.
Abstract. The aims of this thesis are to explore the speeches and rhetoric of United States Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon regarding the Apollo Moon landing project and look for the effects of that rhetoric on the general public's opinion on Project Apollo. The methods used for examining the presidential speeches are Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, where DA is used to look at the language on a general level, and CDA to analyse political relations within said language. The main finding from Kennedy's speeches is his advocation of ideological supremacy over Communist countries. Nixon's speeches were in stark contrast with Kennedy's, with détente being the dominant theme. This material is complemented with interview data provided by Kent State University Professor Kenneth Bindas. His "NASA Moon Landing Oral History Project" was conducted in 2015 and 2016, where his students interviewed 87 people, who were born in 1951 or before, therefore being a full-fledged member of the society by the Apollo 11 landing in 1969. Most of the interviewees do not refer to the two presidents at all, and bring up their personal stories, the Vietnam War and racial injustice as the key events of that time. Some of the interviewees refer to Kennedy in relation to the Moon landings, but Nixon, even though he was president during the time of the landings, is rarely mentioned in the interview data. Prior research, along with these interviews, point that Nixon's career and public image is very much overshadowed by the Watergate spying scandal, and his involvement in Project Apollo is rarely remembered. The thesis also covers some of the opinions people of different identity backgrounds had of Project Apollo. These are also found in the interview data, but also from other, prior research. The white male populace felt pride and patriotism when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, but minorities felt disconnected from it. Racial injustice towards the African-American populace distanced them from Apollo, as millions of dollars were poured into flying a handful of white men into space, when thousands of people of colour were housed in unhabitable conditions. In many of the interviews given by women, they have no or very little recollection of Apollo. This reflects their place in the society in 1969: to stay at home and look after the children, when men were out forming social circles to discuss and enjoy matters such as Apollo. The conclusion of this thesis is that Kennedy's agenda evident in his speeches, the importance of the Moon landings in the Space Race and ideological supremacy, is still remembered and thought of as a valid point, therefore Kennedy's rhetoric is considered a success. Nixon's policy of détente is evident in his speeches, but it is not referred to at all in the interview data, therefore his rhetoric was not as successful as Kennedy's.Tiivistelmä. Tämän pro gradu -tutkielman tarkoituksena on tutkia Yhdysvaltain presidenttien John F. Kennedyn ja Richard Nixonin puheita ja retoriikkaa Apollo-kuulennoista, ja tämän retoriikan vaikutusta kansan mielipiteeseen aiheesta. Tutkimusmetodeina toimii Discourse Analysis (diskurssianalyysi) ja Critical Discourse Analysis (kriittinen diskurssianalyysi), joista DA:n avulla tutkitaan kieltä yleisellä tasolla, ja CDA:lla myös poliittisia suhteita kielen sisällä. Kennedyn puheista välittyy argumentointi ideologisen ylivallan saamiseksi kommunistisista maista. Nixonin puheiden pääteema oli liennytys, mikä on käytännössä vastakkainen lähtökohta Kennedyn argumenteista. Tätä materiaalia tukee Kent State University -yliopiston professori Kenneth Bindaksen ystävällisesti luovuttama haastatteludata, jossa hänen opiskelijansa haastattelivat 87:ta henkilöä, jotka olivat syntyneet vuonna 1951 tai aiemmin, ja täten olivat täysiä yhteiskunnan jäseniä vuonna 1969. Suurin osa haastatelluista ei mainitse edellä mainittuja kahta presidenttiä ollenkaan, ja sen sijaan mainitsevat tuon ajan tärkeistä tapahtumista kysyttäessä muun muassa heidän henkilökohtaisia tarinoitaan, Vietnamin sodan ja rotuerottelun. Muutama haastateltava mainitsee Kennedyn suhteen kuulentojen puolesta puhujana, mutta vaikka Nixon oli presidentti lentojen aikaan, hänet mainitaan haastatteluissa vain hyvin harvoin. Aiempi tutkimus, yhdessä näiden haastattelujen kanssa osoittaa, että Nixonin ura ja maine on Watergate-vakoiluskandaalin tahraama, ja hänen osallistumistaan Apollo-projektiin ei juuri muisteta. Tutkielma kattaa myös mielipiteitä, mitä eri identiteetin omaavilla kansalaisilla oli Apollo-projektista. Nämä mielipiteet ovat esillä haastatteludatassa, mutta myös aiemmassa tutkimuksessa. Valkoiset miehet tunsivat ylpeyttä ja isänmaallisuutta Apollo 11 -lennon laskeutuessa Kuun pinnalle, mutta vähemmistöt eivät tunteneet samanlaista yhteyttä tapahtumaan. Rodullinen epätasa-arvo afrikkalaisamerikkalaista vähemmistöä kohtaan erotti heidät muun kansan yhteenkuuluvuuden tunteesta. Miljoonia dollareita käytettiin muutaman valkoisen miehen lennättämiseen Kuuhun, samalla kun rotuvähemmistöt kärsivät esimerkiksi elinkelvottomista asumisjärjestelyistä. Usealla haastatellulla naisella ei ole juurikaan muistikuvaa Apollo-kuulennoista. Tämä heijastaa heidän asemaansa vuoden 1969 yhteiskunnassa: naisten tuli jäädä kotiin huolehtimaan lapsista, samalla kun miehet pystyivät muodostamaan sosiaalisia piirejä, joissa keskustella ja nauttia Apollon kaltaisista aiheista. Tutkielman päätös on se, että Kennedyn puheissa esiin tuleva agenda, eli kuulentojen tärkeys "Space Race" -avaruuskilvassa ja ideologisen ylivallan saamisessa, muistetaan yhä. Haastattelujen ja aikaisemman tutkimuksen valossa Kennedyn retoriikkaa voidaan pitää onnistuneena. Nixonin liennytyspolitiikka käy ilmi hänen puheissaan, mutta siihen ei viitata ollenkaan aikalaishaastatteluissa, eli hänen retoriikkansa ei ollut yhtä onnistunutta kuin Kennedyn.
Part 1. Putting LGBTQ Issues on the Map -- 1. Maps of LGBT Issues Across the Globe (Stanley D. Brunn, Donna Gilbreath and Richard Gilbreath) -- 2. Representing the Perception of Violence in São Paulo, Brazil in Mental Maps: Queer Cartography as a Theoretical and Methodological Approach (Vinicius Santos Almeida) -- 3. Policy Makes a Family: Croatian LGBTQ Movement and the Struggle for Fostering Rights (Natalija Stepanović) -- 4. Law and Morality: Evolution of LGBT Rights in Estonia, Hungary and Poland—from Communist Past to Current Reality (Lehte Roots) -- 5. Queerness and Performance (un)doing the Map: Perspectives from the Global South (Kaciano Gadelha) -- 6. Representing the Hijras of South Asia: Toward Transregional and Global Flows (Aniruddha Dutta, Adnan Hossain and Claire Pamment) -- 7. Bench Love in Daneshjoo Park: Queering Public Spaces and Pedagogy for the Public in Teheran (Jón Ingvar Kjaran and Mohammad Naeimi) -- 8. LGBTQ+ Topographies: An Analysis of Socio-spatial Interactions by Mapping of Social Media in São Paulo and Berlin (Maycon Sedrez) -- 9. "The Whole Neighborhood is Becoming Gay!" Reflections on the Effects of Geolocated Dating Apps on the Practice and Perception of the Urban Space of Gay Men in Major French Cities (Clément Nicolle with translation by Nicholas Sowels) -- Part 2. Challenging Knowledge Production -- 10. Re-signifying Political Spatiality and Spatial Politics of all-Gender Spaces in New York (Stephanie Bonvissuto) -- 11. Enhancing the Erotic as Power: Sexuality and Pleasure in Feminist, Lesbian and Queer Spaces in Rome and Madrid (Giada Bonu) -- 12. Measuring Global Attitudes Toward Homosexuality: A Critical Review of LGBT indexes (Jaime Barrientos and Bladimir González) -- 13. Thinking Critically about 'Men who have Sex with Men' Data Collection and use in the Global South: Examples from the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Andrew Tucker) -- 14. Gay Men Living with HIV in England and Italy in Times of Undetectability: A Life Course Perspective (Cesare Di Feliciantonio) -- 15. How Gay Men Viewed old Gay Men when they were Young or First Came out (Peter B. Robinson and Paul Simpson) -- 16. The Changing Geography of Homosexuality in Santiago de Chile: Is the Individual a New Space for Analysis? (Pablo Astudillo Lizama) -- 17. Dangerous Liaisons: Neoliberal Tropes of the 'Normal' and 'Middle-class Respectability' in the Post-socialist LG(BT) Activism (Roberto Kulpa) -- 18. When the City Calls: Mapping Indigenous Australian Queer Placemaking in Sydney (Corrinne T. Sullivan) -- 19. LGBT People in Small and Medium Villages: Spatial Analyses of Everyday Experiences in a Catalan Region (Maria Rodó-Zárate) -- Part 3. Making LGBTQ Places and Spaces Visible -- 20. Toward a Queering of the Right to the City: Insights from the Tensions in LGBTIQ+ politics in Geneva, the "Capital of Peace" (Karine Duplan) -- 21. Space and Identity: Comparing the Production of Queer Spaces in Amsterdam and Hong Kong (Katie Poltz) -- 22. When the Gay Village is Somewhere else: Reflections on LGBTQ+ Public Policies in Catalan Rural Areas (Jose Antonio Langarita, Jordi Mas Grau and Pilar Albertín Carbó) -- 23. When a Kiss is not Just a Kiss? Geographies of Lesbian and Gay Intimacy in France (Marianne Blidon) -- 24. Parading for the Future: Queer Temporalities of Pride in an Ordinary Israeli City (Gilly Hartal, Adi Moreno and Yossi David) -- 25. A decade of Prague Pride: Mapping Origins, Seeking Meanings, Understanding Effects (Michal Pitoňák) -- 26. Resisting pinkwashing: Adaptive Queerness in Vancouver Pride Parades (Andy Holmes) -- 27. On being Trans in Norway: Negotiating Belonging Through and within the (cis)gender Imaginary (france rose hartline) -- 28. Recognition or Othering? Trans*Representation in Russian Media (Tania Zabolotnaya and Katharina Wiedlack) -- Part 4. Resisting Oppression and Violence -- 29. The 'S' Factor: Feminist and Queer Movements and the Production of Safer Spaces in Urban Contexts in Rome and Madrid (Giada Bonu) -- 30. Gender Violence and Public Spaces in France and the United Kingdom: Contributions by Trans Studies to Feminist Geographies (Milan Bonté) -- 31. Displaying (trans)gender in Space and Time: Deconstructing Spatial Binaries of Violence and Security in the UK and Portugal (Ana Cristina Marques) -- 32. Out in the Country and in the city: Discourses and Practices of Being out in the Hungarian LGBTQ Community (Rita Béres-Deák) -- 33. Limiting Queerness: Finding the Spatiality and Spatial Boundaries of LGBTQ+ Community Centers (Stephanie Bonvissuto) -- 34. Queer Vietnamese Youths' Manoeuvring and (re)negotiation of Filial Duties: Becoming the Good Citizen (Silje Mathisen) -- 35. Resilience in the Face of Heteronormativity: Experiences of non-heterosexual Young Women in the Family Home in Manresa, Catalonia (Júlia Pascual Bordas) -- 36. Lesbian Life in a French Prison: Surveillance, Refuge and Self-naming (Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz with Translation by Sandrine Sanos) -- 37. "It's not About Surviving; it's About Protecting Ourselves": An Exploratory Field Study on Male Homosexuality in French Working-class Neighbourhoods (Axel Ravier) -- Part 5. Building LGBTQ Community and Perspectives -- 38. Experiencing Double Penalty for Being Gay and Asian in the West: How Intersection Modifies Migration Decisions of South Korean Gays and Lesbians (Marion Gilbert) -- 39. LGBTQ+ Choirs, Community Music, Queer Artistic Citizenship in London (Thomas R. Hilder) -- 40. An Emerging World of LGBT Stamps: (Stanley D. Brunn) -- 41. The Other Side of Laugavegur: Past Queer Spaces in Reykjavik (Ásta Kristín Benediktsdóttir and Jón Ingvar Kjaran) -- 42. Gay Inheritance Decisions: Family of Choice or Family of Origin (Peter B. Robinson) -- 43. Childhood Schools and the Ideal Citizen: Efforts to Support LGBTQ Children in Australian Schools in the 1980s and 2000s (Scott McKinnon) -- 44. Teaching Teenagers about Gender Norms and Sexuality Through Spatiality in French Rurality (Alix Teffo Sanchez).
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Mary Elizabeth King on Civil Action for Social Change, the Transnational Women's Movement, and the Arab Awakening
Nonviolent resistance remains by and large a marginal topic to IR. Yet it constitutes an influential idea among idealist social movements and non-Western populations alike, one that has moved to the center stage in recent events in the Middle East. In this Talk, Mary King—who has spent over 40 years promoting nonviolence—elaborates on, amongst others, the women's movement, nonviolence, and civil action more broadly.
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
What is, according to you, the central challenge or principal debate in International Relations? And what is your position regarding this challenge/in this debate?
The field of International Relations is different from Peace and Conflict Studies; it has essentially to do with relationships between states and developed after World War I. In the 1920s, the big debates concerned whether international cooperation was possible, and the diplomatic elite were very different from diplomats today. The roots of Peace and Conflict Studies go back much further. By the late 1800s peace studies already existed in the Scandinavian countries. Studies of industrial strikes in the United States were added by the 1930s, and the field had spread to Europe by the 1940s. Peace and Conflict Studies had firmly cohered by the 1980s, and soon encircled the globe. Broad in spectrum and inherently multi-disciplinary, it is not possible to walk through one portal to enter the field.
To me it is also important that Peace and Conflict studies is not wary of asking the bigger hypothetical questions such as 'Can we built a better world?' 'How do we do a better job at resolving conflicts before they become destructive?' 'How do we create more peaceable societies?' If we do not pose these questions, we are unlikely to find the answers. Some political scientists say that they do not wish to privilege either violence or nonviolent action. I am not in that category, trying not to privilege violence or nonviolent action. The field of peace and conflict studies is value-laden in its pursuit of more peaceable societies. We need more knowledge and study of how conflicts can be addressed without violence, including to the eventual benefit of all the parties and the larger society. When in 1964 Martin Luther King Jr received the Nobel Peace Prize, his remarks in Oslo that December tied the nonviolent struggle in the United States to the whole planet's need for disarmament. He said that the most exceptional characteristic of the civil rights movement was the direct participation of masses of people in it. King's remarks in Oslo were also his toughest call for the use of nonviolent resistance on issues other than racial injustice. International nonviolent action, he said, could be utilized to let global leaders know that beyond racial and economic justice, individuals across the world were concerned about world peace:
I venture to suggest [above all] . . . that . . . nonviolence become immediately a subject for study and for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict, by no means excluding relations between nations . . . which [ultimately] make war. . . .
In the half century since King made his address in Oslo, nonviolent civil resistance has not been allocated even a tiny fraction of the resources for study that have been dedicated to the fields of democratization, development, the environment, human rights, and aspects of national security. Many, many questions beg for research, including intensive interrogation of failures. Among the new global developments with which to be reckoned is the enlarging role of non-state, non-governmental organizations as intermediaries, leading dialogue groups comprised of adversaries discussing disputatious issues and working 'hands-on' to intervene directly in local disputes. The role of the churches and laity in ending Mozambique's civil war comes to mind. One challenge within IR is how to become more flexible in viewing the world, in which the nation state cannot control social change, and with the widening of civil space.
How did you arrive at where you currently are in your thinking about IR?
I came from a family that was deeply engaged with social issues. My father was the eighth Methodist minister in six generations from North Carolina and Virginia. The Methodist church in both Britain and the United States has a history of concern for social responsibility ― a topic of constant discussion in my home as a child and young adult. When four African American students began the southern student sit-in movement in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, by sitting-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter, I was still in college. Although I am white, I began to think about how to join the young black people who were intentionally violating the laws of racial segregation by conducting sit-ins at lunch counters across the South. Soon more white people, very like me, were joining them, and the sweep of student sit-ins had become truly inter-racial. The sit-in movement is what provided the regional base for what would become a mass U.S. civil rights movement, with tens of thousands of participants, defined by the necessity for fierce nonviolent discipline. So, coming from a home where social issues were regularly discussed it was almost natural for me to become engaged in the civil rights movement. And I have remained engaged with such issues for the rest of my life, while widening my aperture. Today I work on a host of questions related to conflict, building peace, gender, the combined field of gender and peace-building, and nonviolent or civil resistance. At a very young age, I had started thinking as a citizen of the world and watching what was happening worldwide, rather than merely in the United States.
Martin Luther King (to whom I am not related) would become one of history's most influential agents for propagating knowledge of the potential for constructive social change without resorting to violence. He was the most significant exemplar for what we simply called The Movement. Yet the movement had two southern organizations: in 1957 after the success of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56, he created, along with others, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The other organization was the one for which I worked for four years: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pron. snick), which initially came into being literally to coordinate among the leaders of the student sit-in campaigns. As the sit-ins spread across the South, 70,000 black, and, increasingly, white, students participated. By the end of 1960, 3,600 would have been jailed.
SCLC and SNCC worked together but had different emphases: one of our emphases in SNCC was on eliciting leadership representing the voices of those who had been ignored in the past. We identified many women with remarkable leadership skills and sought to strengthen them. We wanted to build institutions that would make it easier for poor black southern communities to become independent and move out of the 'serfdom' in which they lived. Thus we put less prominence on large demonstrations, which SCLC often emphasized. Rather, we stressed the building of alternative (or parallel) institutions, including voter registration, alternative political parties, cooperatives, and credit unions.
What would a student need (dispositions, skills) to become a specialist in IR or understand the world in a global way?
One requirement is a subject that has virtually disappeared from the schools in the United States: the field of geography. It used to be taught on every level starting in kindergarten, but has now been melded into a mélange called 'social sciences'. You would be surprised at how much ignorance exists and how it affects effectiveness. I served for years on the board of directors of an esteemed international non-profit private voluntary organization and recall a secretary who thought that Africa was a country. This is not simplistic — if you don't know the names of continents, countries, regions, and the basic political and economic history, it's much harder to think critically about the world. Secondly, students need to possess an attitude of reciprocity and mutuality. No perfect country exists; there is no nirvana without intractable problems in our world. No society, for example, has solved the serious problems of gender inequity that impede all spheres of life. Every society has predicaments and problems that need to be addressed, necessitating a constant process. So we each need to stand on a platform in which every nation can improve the preservation of the natural environment, the way it monitors and protects human rights, transitions to democratic systems, the priority it places on the empowerment of women, and so on. On this platform, concepts of inferior and superior are of little value.
You also co-authored an article in 1965 about the role of women and how working in a political movement for equality (the civil rights movement) has affected your perceptions of the relationship between men and women. Do you believe that the involvement of women in the Civil Rights Movement brought more gender equality in the USA and do you think involvement in Nonviolent Resistance movements in other places in the world could start such a process?
From within the heart of the civil rights movement I wrote an article with Casey Hayden, with whom I worked in Atlanta in the main office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. Casey (Sandra Cason) and I were deeply engaged in a series of conversations involving other women in SNCC about what we had been learning, the lessons from our work aiding poor black people to organize, and asking ourselves whether our insights from being part of SNCC could be applied to other forms of injustice, such as inequality for women. The document reflected our growth and enlarging understanding of how to mobilize communities, how to strategize, how to achieve lasting change, and was a manifestation of this expanding awareness. The title was Sex and Caste – A Kind of Memo. Caste is an ancient Hindu demarcation that not only determines an individual's social standing on the basis of the group into which one is born, but also differentiates and assigns occupational and economic roles. It cannot be changed. Casey and I thought of caste as comparable to the sex of one's birth. Women endure many forms of prejudice, bias, discrimination, and cruelty merely because they are female. For these reasons we chose the term caste. We sent our memorandum to forty women working in local peace and civil rights movements of the United States. The anecdotal evidence is strong that it inspired other women, who started coming together collectively to work on their own self-emancipation in 'consciousness raising groups.' It had appeared in Liberation magazine of the War Resisters League in April 1966 and was a catalyst in spurring the U.S. women's movement; indeed, the consciousness-raising groups fuelled the women's movement in the United States during the 1970s. Historians reflect that the article provided tinder for what is now called 'second-wave feminism', and the 1965 original is anthologized as one of the generative documents of twentieth-century gender studies.
We have to remember that women's organizations are nothing new, but have been poorly documented in history and that much information has been lost. Women have been prime actors for nonviolent social change in many parts of the world for a long time. New Zealand was the first country to grant women the vote, in 1893, after decades of organizing. Other countries followed: China, Iran, later the United States and the United Kingdom. Women in Japan would not vote until 1946. IR expert Fred Halliday contends that one of the most remarkable transnational movements of the modern age was the women's suffrage movement. The movement to enfranchise women may have been the biggest transnational nonviolent movement of human history. It was a significant historical phenomenon that throws light on how it is sometimes easier to bring about social and political change now than in the past.
Nonviolent movements seem to be growing around the world, and not only in dictatorships but also in democracies in Europe and the USA. How do you explain this?
I think that the sharing of knowledge is the answer to this question. Study in the field of nonviolent action has accelerated since the 1970s, often done by people who are both practitioners and scholars, as am I. Organizing nonviolently for social justice is not new, but the knowledge that has consolidated during the last 40 years has been major. The works of Gene Sharp have been significant, widely translated, and are accessible through the Albert EinsteinInstitution. His first major work, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, in three volumes, came out in 1973 (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers). It marked the development of a new understanding of how this form of cooperative action works, the conditions under which it can be optimized, and the ways in which one can improve effectiveness. Sharp's works have since been translated into more than 40 languages. Also valuable are the works and translations of dozens of other scholars, who often stand on his shoulders. Today there may be 200 scholar-activists in this field worldwide, with a great deal of work now underway in related fields. Knowledge is being shared not only through translated works, but also through organizations and their training programs, such as the War Resisters League International and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, each of which came into existence in Britain around World War I. Both are still running seminars, training programs, and distributing books. George Lakey's Training for Change and a new database at Swarthmore College that he has developed are sharing knowledge. So is the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, which has built a dramatic record in a short time, having run more than 400 seminars and workshops in more than 139 countries. The three major films that ICNC has produced (for example, 'Bringing Down a Dictator'), have been translated into 20 languages and been publicly broadcast to more than 20 million viewers.
After its success, leaders from the Serbian youth movement Otpor! (Resistance) that in 2000 disintegrated the Slobodan Milošević dictatorship formed a network of activists, including experienced veterans from civil-resistance struggles in South Africa, the Philippines, Lebanon, Georgia, and Ukraine to share their experiences with other movements. People can now more easily find knowledge on the World Wide Web, often in their original language or a second language, and they can find networks that share information about their experiences, including their successes and failures.
I reject the Twitter explanation for the increased use of nonviolent action or civil resistance, because all nonviolent movements appropriate the most advanced technologies available. This pattern is related to the importance of communications for their basic success. Nonviolent mobilizations must be very shrewd in putting across their purpose, their goals and objectives, preparing slogans, and conveying information on how people can become involved. In order for people to join—bearing in mind that numbers are important for success—it is critically important to make clear what goal(s) you are seeking and why you have elected to work with civil resistance. This decision is sometimes hard to understand for people who have suffered great cruelty from their opponent, and who maintain 'but we are the victims', making the sharing of the logic of the technique of civil resistance vital.
What would you say is the importance of Nonviolent Resistance Studies in the field of International Relations and Political Science? And how do you counter those who argue that some forms of structural domination are only ended through violence?
In this case we can look at the evidence and stay away from arguing beliefs or ideology. Thanks to political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, who have produced a discerning work, Why Civil Resistance Works (2011), we now have empirical evidence that removes this question from mystery. They studied 323 violent and nonviolent movements that occurred between 1900 and 2006 and found that the nonviolent campaigns were twice as effective as violent struggles in achieving their goals, while incurring fewer costly fatalities and producing much greater prospects for democratic outcomes after the end of the campaign. They found only one area in which violent movements have been more successful, and that is in secessions. So, we don't need to dwell in the realm of opinion, but can read their findings. Other scholars have written about the same issues using qualitative data ― by doing interviews, developing case studies, and analytical descriptions ― but the work of Chenoweth and Stephan is quantitative, putting it in a different category due to its research methods.
Reading 'Why Civil Resistance Works' it caught my eye that nonviolent campaigns seem less successful in the Middle East and Asia than in other regions. Did you see that also in your own work? And if so, do you have an explanation for it? In addition, do you believe that the 'Arab Awakening' is a significant turn in history, or did the name arise too quickly and will it remain a temporary popular phrase?
What I encountered in working in the Middle East was an expectation, notion, or hope among people that a great leader would save them and bring them out of darkness. This belief seems often to have kept the populace in a state of passivity. Sometimes such pervasive theories of leadership are deeply elitist: one must be well educated to be a leader, one must be born into that role, one must be male, or the first son, etc. Such concepts of leadership discourage the taking of independent civil action.
I think that the Arab Awakening has been significant for a number of reasons. As one example, there had been a widespread (and patronizing) assumption in the United States and the West that the Arabs were not interested in democracy. We have heard from various sources including Israel for decades that Arabs are not attracted to democracy. As a matter of fact, I think that all people want a voice. All human beings wish to be listened to and to be able to express their hopes and aspirations. This is a fundamental basis of democracy and widely applicable, although democracy may take different forms. The Arab Awakening rebutted this arrogant assumption. This does not mean that the course will be easy. One of my Egyptian colleagues said to me, 'We have had dictatorship since 1952, but after Tahir Square you expect us to build a perfect democracy in 52 weeks! It cannot happen!'
Among the first concessions sought by the 2011 Arab revolts was rejection of the right of a dictator's sons to succeed him. The passing of power from father to son has been a characteristic of patriarchal societies, in the Arab world and elsewhere. Anthropologist John Borneman notes, 'The public renunciation of the son's claim to inherit the father's power definitively ends the specific Arab model of succession that has been incorporated into state dictatorships among tribal authorities'. In Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen (not all of which are successes), such movements have sought to end the presumption of father-son inheritance of rule.
I believe that we are seeing the start of a broad democratization process in the Middle East, not its end. The learning and preparation that had been occurring in Egypt prior to Tahrir Square was extensive. Workshops had been underway for 10 to 15 years before people filled Tahrir Square. Women bloggers had for years been monitoring torture and sharing news from outside. One woman blogger translated a comic book into Arabic about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, from the 1960s, and had it distributed all over Cairo. Labor unions had been very active. According to historian Joel Beinin, from 1998 to 2010 some 3 million laborers took part in 3,500 to 4,000 strikes, sit-ins, demonstrations, and other actions, realizing more than 600 collective labor actions per year in 2007 and 2008. In the years immediately before the revolution, these actions became more coherent. Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive, set up a Facebook page and used Google technologies to share ideas and knowledge about what ordinary people can do. The April 6 Youth Movement, set up in 2008, three years before Tahrir, sent one of its members to Belgrade in 2009, to learn how Otpor! had galvanized the bringing down of Milošević. He returned to Cairo with materials and films, lessons from other nonviolent movements, and workshop materials. This all goes back to the sharing of knowledge. Yet the Egyptians have now come to the point where they must assume responsibility and accountability for the whole and make difficult decisions for their society. It will be a long and difficult process. And it raises the question of what kind of help from outside is essential.
Why do you raise this point; do you think outside help is essential?
I know from having studied a large number of nonviolent movements in different parts of the globe that the sharing of lessons laterally among mobilizations and nonviolent struggles is highly effective. African American leaders were traveling by steamer ship from 1919 until the outbreak of World War II to the Indian subcontinent, to learn from Gandhi and the Indian independence struggles. This great interchange between black leaders in the United States and the Gandhian activists, as the historian Sudarshan Kapur shows in Raising Up A Prophet (1992), was critically significant in the solidification of consensus in the U.S. black community on nonviolent means. I have written about how the knowledge moved from East to West in my book Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Scholarly exchanges and interchanges among activists from other struggles are both potentiating and illuminating. Most observers fail to see that nonviolent mobilizations often have very deep roots involving the lateral sharing of experience and know-how.
You have written a book about the first uprising, or 'intifada', in the Occupied Palestinian Territories between 1987 and 1993. The second Palestinian uprising did not contain much nonviolent tactics though. Do you foresee another uprising soon? If not, why? If yes, do you think that Nonviolent Actions will play again an important role in that uprising, or is it more likely to turn violent?
Intifada is linguistically a nonviolent word: It means shaking off and has no violent implication whatsoever. (This word is utterly inappropriate for what happened in the so-called Second Intifada, although it started out as a nonviolent endeavor.) In the 1987 intifada, virtually the entire Palestinian society living under Israel's military occupation unified itself with remarkable cohesion on the use of nonviolent tools. The first intifada (1987-1993, especially 1987-1990) benefited from several forces at work in the 1970s and 1980s, about which I write in A Quiet Revolution (2007), one of which came from Palestinian activist intellectuals working with Israeli groups, who wanted to end occupation for their own reasons. These Israeli peace activists thought the occupation degraded them, made them less than human, in addition to oppressing Palestinians. The second so-called intifada was not a 'shaking off'. For the first time, it bade attacks against the Israeli settlements, which had not occurred before.
Let me put it this way: in virtually every situation, there is some potential for human beings to take upon themselves their own liberation through nonviolent action. We may expect that such potential is dormant and waiting for enactment. Disciplined nonviolent action is underway in a number of village-based struggles against the separation barrier in the West Bank right now, in which Israeli allies are among the action takers. As another example, the Freedom Theatre in Jenin is using Freedom Rides, a concept adopted from the U.S. southern Civil Rights Movement, riding buses to the South Hebron Hills villages and along the way using drama, music, and giant puppets as a way of stimulating debate about Israeli occupation. Bloggers and writers share their experiences (see e.g. this post by Nathan Schneider). For the first time, as we speak, the Freedom Bus will travel from the West Bank to make two performances in historic pre-1948 Palestine (Israel), in Haifa and the Golan, in June 2013. A Palestinian 'Empty Stomach' campaign, led by Palestinian political prisoners in Israel, has had some success in using hunger strikes to press Israeli officials for certain demands. With the purpose of prevailing upon Israel to conform to international resolutions pertaining to the Palestinians and to end its military occupation, Palestinian civic organizations in 2005 launched a Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign, drawing upon the notable example of third-party sanctions applied in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The Palestinian Authority has called for non-state observer status at the United Nations and supports the boycotting of products from Israeli settlements resistance.
More and more Palestinians are now saying, 'We must fight for our rights with nonviolent resistance'. Many Israelis are also deeply concerned about the future of their country. I recently got an email from an Israeli who was deeply affected by reading Quiet Revolution and has started to reach out to Palestinians and take actions to bring to light the injustices that he perceives. Tremendous debate is underway about new techniques, novel processes, and how to shift gears to more effective mutual action. The United States government and its people continue to pay for Israel's occupation and militarization, which has abetted the continuation of conflict, although it is often done in the name of peace! The United States has not incentivized the building of peace. It has done almost nothing to help the construction of institutions that could assist coexistence.
Also, it is very important for the entire world, including Israelis, to recognize intentional nonviolent action when they see it. The Israeli government persisted in denying that the 1987 Intifada was nonviolent, when the Palestinian populace had been maintaining extraordinary nonviolent discipline for nearly three years, despite harsh reprisals. Israeli officials continued to call it 'unending war' and 'the seventh war'. Indeed, it was not perfect nonviolent discipline, but enough that was indicative of a change in political thinking among the people in the Palestinian areas that could have been built upon. Although some Israeli social scientists accurately perceived the sea change in Palestinian political thought about what methods to use in seeking statehood and the lifting of the military occupation, the government of Israel generally did not seize upon such popularly enacted nonviolent discipline to push for progress. My sources for Quiet Revolution include interviews with Israelis, such as the former Chief Psychologist of the Israel Defense Force and IDF spokesperson.
Your latest book is about the transitions of the Eastern European countries from being under Soviet rule to independent democracies. You chose to illustrate these transitions with New York Times articles. Why did you chose this approach; do you think the NY Times was important as a media agency in any way or is there another reason?
There is another reason: The New York Times and CQ Press approached me and asked if I would write a reference book on the nonviolent revolutions of the Eastern bloc, using articles from the Times that I would choose upon which to hang the garments of the story. The point of the work is to help particularly young people learn that they can study history by studying newspapers. The book gives life to the old adage that newspaper reporters write the first draft of history. In the book's treatment of these nonviolent revolutions, I chose ten Times articles for each of the major ten struggles that are addressed, adding my historical analysis to complete the saga for each country. It had been difficult for Times reporters to get into Poland, for example, in the late 1970s and the crucial year of 1980; they sometimes risked their lives. Yet it's in the nature of journalism that their on-the-spot reportage needed additional analysis; furthermore newspaper accounts often stress description.
After the 1968 Prague Spring, when the Soviet Union sent 750,000 troops and tanks from five Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia, crushing that revolt, across Eastern Europe a tremendous amount of fervent work got underway by small non-official committees, often below the radar of the communist party states. This included samizdat (Russian for 'self published'), works not published by the state publishing machinery, underground publications that were promoting new ways of thinking about how to address their dilemma. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania were the most active in the Eastern bloc with their major but covert samizdat. As it was illegal in Czechoslovakia for a citizen to own a photocopy machine, 'books' were published by using ten pieces of onion-skin paper interspersed with carbon sheets, 'publishing' each page by typing it and its copies on a manual typewriter.
The entire phenomenon of micro-committees, flying universities, samizdat boutiques, seminars, drama with hidden meanings, underground journals, and rock groups transmitting messages eluded outside observers, who were not thinking about what the people could do for themselves. The economists and Kremlinologists who were observing the Eastern bloc did not discern what the playwrights, small committees of activist intellectuals, local movements, labor unions, academicians, and church groups were undertaking. They did not imagine the scope or scale of what the people were doing for themselves with utmost self-reliance. In essence, no one saw these nonviolent revolutions coming, with the exception of the rare onlooker, such as the historian Timothy Garton Ash. Even today the peaceful transitions to democracy of the Eastern bloc are sometimes explained by saying 'Gorby did it', when Gorbachev did not come to power until 1985. Or by attributing the alterations to Reagan's going to Berlin and telling Gorbachov to tear down the Wall.
By December 1981, Poland was under martial law, which unleashed a high degree of underground organizing, countless organizations of self-help, reimagining of the society, and the publishing of samizdat. Still, even so, some people believe that this sweeping political change was top-down. It is indisputably true that nonviolent action usually interacts with other forces and forms of power, but I would say that we need this book for its accessible substantiation of historically significant independent nonviolent citizen action as a critical element in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
You also mention Al Jazeera as an important media agency in your most recent blog post at 'Waging Nonviolence'. You wrote that Al Jazeera has an important role in influencing global affairs. Could you explain why? And more generally, how important is diversification of media for international politics?
Al Jazeera generally has not been taking the point of view of the official organs of governments of Arab countries and has usually not reported news from ministries of information. Additionally, it often carries reports from local correspondents in the country at issue. If you are following a report from Gaza, it is likely to be a Gazan journalist who is transmitting to Al Jazeera. If it is a report from Egypt, it may well be an Egyptian correspondent. Al Jazeera also has made a point of reporting news from Israel, and utilizing reporters in Tel Aviv, which may be a significant development. Certainly in the 2010-2011 Arab Awakening, it made a huge difference that reports were coming directly from the action takers rather than the official news outlets of Arab governments.
President George W. Bush did not want Al Jazeera to come to the United States, because he considered it too anti-American. I remember reading at the time that the first thing that Gen. Colin Powell said to Al Jazeera was 'can you tone it down a little?' when asking why Al Jazeera couldn't be less anti-American in its news. To me, either you support free speech or you do not; it's free or it's not: You can't have a little bit of control and a little bit of freedom.
Until recently, Al Jazeera was not easily available in the United States, except in Brattleboro, Vermont; Washington, DC; and a few other places. It was difficult to get it straight in the United States. I mounted a special satellite so that I could get Al Jazeera more freely. This does not speak well for freedom of the press in the United States. This may change with the advent of Al Jazeera America, although we still do not know to what degree it will represent an editorially free press.
News agencies are important for civil-resistance movements for major reasons. Popular mobilizations need good communications internally and externally! People need to understand clearly what is the purpose and strategy and to be part of the making of decisions. Learning also crucially needs to take place inside the movement: activist intellectuals often act as interpreters, framing issues anew, suggesting that an old grievance is now actionable. No one expects the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker, and everyone else in the movement to read history and theory.
When news media are interested and following a popular movement of civil resistance, they can enhance the spread of knowledge. In the U.S. civil rights movement, the Southern white-owned newspapers considered the deaths of black persons or atrocities against African Americans as not being newsworthy. There was basically a 'black-out', if you want to call it that, with no pun. Yet dreadful things were happening while we were trying to mobilize, organize, and get out the word. So SNCC created its own media, and Julian Bond and others and I set up nationwide alternative outlets. Eventually we had 12 photographers across the South. This is very much like what the people of the Eastern bloc did with samizdat — sharing and disseminating papers, articles, chapters, even whole books. The media can offer a tremendous boost, but sometimes you have to create your own.
Last question. You combine scholarship with activism. How do you reconcile the academic claim for 'neutrality' with the emancipatory goals of activism?
To be frank, I am not searching for neutrality in my research. Rather, I strive for accuracy, careful transcription, and scrupulous gathering of evidence. I believe that this is how we can become more effective in working for justice, environmental protection, sustainable development, pursuing human rights, or seeking gender equity as critical tools to build more peaceable societies. Where possible I search for empirical data. So much has been ignored, for example, with regards to the effects of gendered injustice. I do not seek neutrality on this matter, but strong evidence. For example, since the 1970s, experts have known that the education of women has profoundly beneficial and measurable effects across entire societies, benefiting men, children, and women. Data from Kerala, India; Sri Lanka; and elsewhere has shown that when you educate women the entire society is uplifted and that all indicators shift positively. The problem is that the data have for decades been ignored or trivialized. We need much more than neutrality. We need to interpret evidence and data clearly to make them compelling and harder to ignore. I think that we can do this with methodologies that are uncompromisingly scrupulous.
Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies at the UN-affiliated University for Peace and and is Scholar-in-Residence in the School of International Service, at the American University in Washington, D.C. She is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Her most recent book is The New York Times on Emerging Democracies in Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: Times Reference and CQ Press/Sage, 2009), chronicling the nonviolent transitions that took place in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She is the author of the highly acclaimed A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (New York: Nation Books, 2007; London: Perseus Books, 2008), which examines crucial aspects of the 1987 uprising overlooked or misunderstood by the media, government officials, and academicians.
Related links
King's personal page Read the book edited by King on Peace Research for Africa (UNU, 2007) here (pdf) Read the book by King Teaching Model: Nonviolent Transformation of Conflict (UNU, 2006) here (pdf)
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
0 0 1 5902 33646 School of Global Studies/University of Gothenburg 280 78 39470 14.0
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Editors -- Contributors -- 1. A spotlight on health and life courses in Europe using SHARE Waves 6 and 7 / Börsch-Supan, Axel / Bristle, Johanna / Andersen-Ranberg, Karen / Brugiavini, Agar / Jusot, Florence / Litwin, Howard / Weber, Guglielmo -- Part I. Personality and childhood -- 2. Personality, age and the well-being of older Europeans / Erlich, Bracha / Litwin, Howard / Brugiavini, Agar / Weber, Guglielmo -- 3. Personality and physical health among older Europeans / Shemesh, Jonathan / Schwartz, Ella / Litwin, Howard / Brugiavini, Agar / Weber, Guglielmo -- 4. Personality traits and financial behaviour / Bertoni, Marco / Bonfatti, Andrea / Celidoni, Martina / Crema, Angela / Dal Bianco, Chiara / Brugiavini, Agar / Weber, Guglielmo -- 5. Relationships with parents in childhood and well-being in later life / Damri, Noam / Litwin, Howard / Brugiavini, Agar / Weber, Guglielmo -- 6. Effects of adverse childhood experiences on mental well-being later in life / Buia, Raluca E. / Kovacic, Matija / Orso, Cristina E. / Brugiavini, Agar / Weber, Guglielmo -- Part II. Health inequalities - Education and income -- 7. Dynamic changes in determinants of inequalities in health in Europe with a focus on retirement / Lauridsen, Jørgen T. / Christiansen, Terkel / Vitved, Astrid R. / Weber, Guglielmo -- 8. Persistence in inequalities of frailty at older age: A comparison of nine EU countries / Arnault, Louis / Jusot, Florence / Sirven, Nicolas / Brieu, Marie-Anne / Halimi, Didier / Forette, Françoise / Weber, Guglielmo -- 9. How do early-life conditions shape health age profiles late in life? / Belloni, Michele / Cavapozzi, Danilo / Dal Bianco, Chiara / Pan, Yao / Trucchi, Serena / Weber, Guglielmo -- 10. Tracking and educational inequality in health in later life / Kratz, Fabian / Bristle, Johanna / Weber, Guglielmo -- Part III. Labour market, occupation and retirement -- 11. Long-term effects of different labour careers / Pettinicchi, Yuri / Börsch-Supan, Axel / Brugiavini, Agar -- 12. The economic situation of formerly self-employed workers / Pettinicchi, Yuri / Börsch-Supan, Axel / Brugiavini, Agar -- 13. Patterns of labour market participation and their impact on the well-being of older women / Chłoń-Domińczak, Agnieszka / Magda, Iga / Strzelecki, Paweł A. / Brugiavini, Agar -- 14. End-of-working-life gender wage gap: The role of health shocks, parental education and personality traits / Bertoni, Marco / Bonfatti, Andrea / Celidoni, Martina / Crema, Angela / Dal Bianco, Chiara / Brugiavini, Agar -- 15. Family dissolution and labour supply decisions over the life cycle / Cavapozzi, Danilo / Fiore, Simona / Pasini, Giacomo / Brugiavini, Agar -- 16. Working conditions and health of older workers / Belloni, Michele / Buia, Raluca Elena / Kovacic, Matija / Meschi, Elena / Brugiavini, Agar -- Part IV. Social transitions and economic crises -- 17. Health gap in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe: A life-course perspective / Bíró, Anikó / Branyiczki, Réka / Börsch-Supan, Axel -- 18. What is hidden behind the 'obvious'? SHARE data raise the curtain about health, early retirement and elderly care of ageing Bulgarians / Markova, Ekaterina / Yordanova, Gabriela / Börsch-Supan, Axel -- 19. The link to the past and the post-communist welfare state / Dobrescu, Loretti I. / Andrieș, Alin Marius / Börsch-Supan, Axel -- 20. The economic crisis, fiscal austerity and long-term care: Responses of the care mix in three adjustment countries / Lyberaki, Antigone / Tinios, Platon / Papadoudis, George / Georgiadis, Thomas / Börsch-Supan, Axel -- 21. Financial and non-financial transfers from parents to adult children after the economic crisis / Ostrovsky-Berman, Ela / Litwin, Howard / Börsch-Supan, Axel -- Part V. Social context and health -- 22. Changes in social networks and cognitive decline / Schwartz, Ella / Litwin, Howard -- 23. The role of social networks and disability in survival / Abuladze, Liili / Sakkeus, Luule / Litwin, Howard -- 24. Social embeddedness of care recipients and their spousal caregivers / Wagner, Melanie / Holdik, Ina / Litwin, Howard -- 25. The impact of living alone on physical and mental health: Does loneliness matter? / Barbosa, Fátima / Cunha, Cláudia / Voss, Gina / Matos, Alice Delerue / Litwin, Howard -- 26. Living alone in Europe and health behaviours / Mudražija, Stipica / Smolić, Šime / Čipin, Ivan / Litwin, Howard -- 27. Bereavement, loneliness and health / Fawaz, Yarine / Mira, Pedro / Litwin, Howard -- Part VI. Healthcare and health behaviour -- 28. The social dynamics of unmet need, catastrophic healthcare expenses and satisfaction with health insurance coverage / Jürges, Hendrik / Stella, Luca / Jusot, Florence -- 29. Differences in healthcare use between immigrant and local older individuals / Fiore, Simona / Kovacic, Matija / Orso, Cristina E. / Jusot, Florence -- 30. Life expectancy and health investments / Bertoni, Marco / Bonfatti, Andrea / Celidoni, Martina / Crema, Angela / Dal Bianco, Chiara / Jusot, Florence -- 31. Multiple chronic conditions in older people in European countries: A network analysis approach / Srakar, Andrej / Prevolnik Rupel, Valentina / Jusot, Florence -- Part VII. Objective health -- 32. Changes in body mass and cognitive decline - disentangling a seeming paradox / Weiss, Luzia M. / Kronschnabl, Judith / Kneip, Thorsten / Bergmann, Michael / Andersen-Ranberg, Karen -- 33. The association between self-reported physical activity and physical performance: Does advancing age matter? / Rise, Jens Elmelund / Juel Ahrenfeldt, Linda / Lindahl-Jacobsen, Rune / Andersen-Ranberg, Karen -- 34. Grip strength across Europe -North/ South and East/West divides / Barros, Pedro Pita / Pimentel-Santos, Fernando / Neto, David Dias / Andersen-Ranberg, Karen -- 35. End of life and palliative care in Europe: An exploration of SHARE data / Jürges, Hendrik / Laferrère, Anne / Lemoine, Adèle / Andersen-Ranberg, Karen -- Part VIII. Dried blood spot samples -- 36. Dried blood spot samples and their validation / Börsch-Supan, Axel / Börsch-Supan, Martina / Weiss, Luzia M. -- 37. Influence of fieldwork conditions and sample quality on DBS values / Weiss, Luzia M. / Börsch-Supan, Axel -- 38. Blood collection in the field - results and lessons from the polish test study / Weiss, Luzia M. / Börsch-Supan, Martina / Myck, Michal / Nocoń, Katarzyna / Oczkowska, Monika / Topór-Mądry, Roman / Andersen-Ranberg, Karen / Börsch-Supan, Axel -- 39. Identification of cytokine and lipoprotein markers for analyses in SHARE Wave 6 dried blood spots / Borbye-Lorenzen, Nis / Börsch-Supan, Martina / Börsch-Supan, Axel
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I have written about the effort to change the Canadian military's culture here although, to be clear, I am focused and expert (ish) on only one aspect of the culture change effort--changing attitudes and practices of civilian control. Most of the conversation is about making the military more inclusive, diverse, and equitable, and the CDSN has done much in this area via our personnel research theme. We have also discussed this much at the Battle Rhythm Podcast. We know, thanks to Machiavelli, that any reform will face resistance from those who benefited from the old way. And this is the case today, but there is more to it as I will explain. The story right now is about a special issue of the Canadian Military Journal and the storm that has been generated in response. Transforming Military Cultures is one of the nine networks currently funded by the Department of National Defence's Mobilizing Insights on Defence and Security program. The TMC group organized a special issue of this journal to present a critical perspective on the military and what needs to change. Yes, they used all kinds of buzz words that greatly annoy the right wing: critical race theory, decolonization, and anti-racism to name a few. * These kinds of analyses can be hard to read and process because they say: the way things have done has been harmful, and we need to change. This calls out those who have been influential in the military (and their civilian overseers) in the past as complicit--either encouraging or condoning an environment in which those in power could act within impunity and those without power suffered quite significantly. We know about the purge of LGBTQ2S+ from the military and intelligence services deep into the 1990s, we know about the problem of sexual misconduct from multiple reports by multiple retired supreme court justices, we have some understanding of the challenges Indigenous people have faced in and out of the CAF, and so on. So, yeah, it calls out mostly white men because white men have generally had power when this bad stuff was happening. It hurts the feelings of some apparently to be called out for the sins of the past. Suck it up, snowflakes.Anyhow, this special issue got a heap of attention when a far right propaganda outlet blasted it, essentially siccing its readers on the TMC people who have now faced some significant harassment. This is typical far right behavior, stuff that Trump does all the time (including providing Obama's address which led to a potential assassin showing up near Obama's house). Some of the judges and prosecutors involved with Trump's various prosecutions have been swatted--that is when someone files a false report with the cops that indicates there is an emergency that requires the heavily armed special police types to go to a certain address with the caller hoping that the police end up killing the target of their animus.The ruckus this has stirred up has also led opponents of culture change to engage in a writing campaign aimed at CMJ. Again, opponents to culture change largely but not entirely fit into one basket--those who find the ways of the past--of purged gays and lesbians, of women and men facing little recourse when sexually harassed, of senior officers abusing their authority, of historically excluded groups being relegated to inferior positions--to be the traditions they want maintained. There is one additional complication--that the far right outlet's take on all of this was included in a Royal Canadian Navy news summary that was widely distributed. The idea is that those in the navy should be aware of news stories, positive or negative, that are relevant to the navy. While the far right is quite relevant and the military should be kept abreast of what it is up to, I think including such outlets in a news summary is akin to putting the press releases of Al Qaeda or the Islamic State in a news summary. Again, the public affairs folks in the CAF should know what is being said about them, but I would not platform far right outlets in regular email summaries.And to be clear, while I want to avoid any false equivalence, I would not include press released by Greenpeace or Amnesty International or the Communist Party in a news summary either. To be absolutely clear, we live in a time where the violence and the incitement of violence is coming from one side of the spectrum. Far right terrorism has been far more harmful the past 20 years than far left violence. So, we need to keep in mind where the threat is coming from, and we need to be clear that platforming the far right without context is very problematic. I don't think there was ill intent here, but as one of my favorite bluesky follows often says, So, yes, the RCN needs to re-think what it sends around. And I stand with TMC and others who are fighting the good fight of changing the culture of the military so that almost all Canadians would be welcome to join and to serve with pride and success--all except the far right, white supremacists that is. *A reminder that basic logic suggests that if one is anti-anti-racism, one is pro-racism.
In: The Australian journal of politics and history: AJPH, Band 25, Heft 2, S. 254-293
ISSN: 1467-8497
Book reviewed in this article:A HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA. Volume IV: The Earth Abideth For Ever 1851–1888. By C.M.H. ClarkAUSTRALIAN LIBERALISM AND NATIONAL CHARACTER. By Tim RowseINSIDE THE AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT. By David SolomonTHE GOVERNMENT OF THE AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY. By Ruth AtkinsTHE ADVANCEMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN NEW SOUTH WALES TO THE PRESENT. By F.A. LarcombeFEDERAL AID TO AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS. By Don SmartTHE JOURNEY TO WORK. By Ian ManningSILVER, SIN, AND SIXPENNY ALE: A Social History of Broken Hill 1883–1921. By Brian KennedyLITERATURE AND THE ABORIGINE IN AUSTRALIA. By J.J. HealyTRADE PRACTICES AND CONSUMER PROTECTION: A Commentary on the Trade Practices Act 1974. Second edition. By G.Q. Taperell, R.B. Vermeesch and D.J. HarlandPOSTAL UNIONS AND POLITICS: A History of the Amalgamated Postal Workers' Union of Australla. By Frank WatersAUSTRALIAN ARMOUR: A History of the Royal Australian Armoured Corps, 1927–1972. By R.N.L. HopkinsCHAUVEL OF THE LIGHT HORSE: A Biography of General Sir Harry Chauvel, G.C.M.G., K.C.B. By A.J. HillPATRIARCH AND PATRIOT: William Grant Broughton 1788–1853, Colonial Statesman and Ecclesiastic. By G.P. ShawTHE AGRICULTURAL BUREAU: A Sociological Study. By Alan W. Black and Russell A. CraigCOLONIAL EVE: Souras on Women in Australia 1788–1914. Edited by Ruth TealeTHE CATHOLIC CAMPAIGN FOR STATE AID: A Study of a Pressure Group Campaign in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory 1950–1972. By M.C. HoganLAST QUARTER: The Next Twenty‐five Years in Asia and the Pacific. By Malcolm BookerEMPLOYMENT, INCOMES AND MIGRATION IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA TOWNS. By Ross Garnaut, Michael Wright and Richard CurtainPOLITICS IN NEW ZEALAND: A Reader. Edited by Stephen LevineTHE INDONESIAN TRAGEDY. By Brian MayUNLESS HASTE IS MADE: A French Skeptic's Account of the Sandwich Islands in 1836. By ThCodore‐Adolph Barrot. Translated by Rev. Daniel DoleSELF AND BIOGRAPHY: Essays on the Individual and Society in Asia. Edited by Wang GungwuTHE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF CHINA. Volume 10: LateCh'ing. 1800–1911, Part 1. Edited by D.C. Twitchett and J.K. Fairbank20th CENTURY CHINA. Third edition. By O. Edmund ClubbA SHORT HISTORY OF CHINA. By Gwendda MilstonP'YONGYANG BETWEEN PEKING AND MOSCOW: North Korea's Involvement in the Sino‐Soviet Dispute, 1958–1975. By Chin 0. ChungPOLITICAL CHANGE IN AN INDIAN STATE: Mysore 1917–1955. By James ManorBETWEEN A TORY AND A LIBERAL: Bombay under Sir James Fergusson, 1880–85. By Amit Kumar GuptaNEHRU AND THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT. By V.T. PatilBUSINESSMEN AND POLITICS: Rising Nationalism and a Modernising Economy in Bombay, 1918–1933. By A.D.D. GordonA HISTORY OF LADAKH. By A.H. FranckeTHE KILLING OF THE IMAM: South African Tyranny defied by Courage and Faith. By Barney Desai and Cardiff MorneyBRITISH GOVERNMENT IN AN ERA OF REFORM. Edited by W.J. StankiewiczLABOUR AND THE LEFT IN THE 1930s. By Ben PimlottCONSERVATIVE DISSIDENTS: Dissent within the Parliamentary Conservative Party 1970–74. By Philip NortoBRITISH FOREIGN POLICY UNDER SIR EDWARD GREY. Edited by F.H. HinsleyLLOYD GEORGE AND FOREIGN POLICY. Volume one: The Education of a Statesman: 1890–1916. By Michael G. FryWILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM: The Great Commoner. By Peter Douglas BrownI. Paul Langord, 'William Pitt and public opinion, 1757'2. John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III3. Stanley Ayling, The Elder PittTHE CHURCH AND POLITICS IN THIRTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND: The Career of Adam Orletonc. 1275–1345. By Roy Martin HainesISSUE VOTING AND PARTY REALIGNMENT. By Donald S. StrongAGGRESSION AMERICAN STYLE. By William H. BlanchardEVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT SINCE WORLD WAR II. Edited by Paul R. SchratzEMERGENCY EMPLOYMENT: A Study in Federalism. By Howard W. HallmanCONTAINMENT: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945–1950. Edited by Thomas H. Etzold and John Lewis GaddisTHE POLITICS OF ATTRACTION: Four Middle Powers and the United States. By Annette Baker FoxCLASS, RACE, AND WORKER INSURGENCY: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers. By James A. GeschwenderTHE FRONTIER IN LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY. By Alistair HennesseyPUBLIC PAPERS OF THE SECRETARIES—GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS. Volume 8: 1968–1971, U Thant. Edited by Andrew W. Cordier and Max HarrelsonSUEZ 1956: A Personal Account. By Selwyn LloydCONSCIOUSNESS AND HISTORY: Nationalist Critics of Creeksociety 1897–1914. By Gerasirnos AugustinosTHE POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP: Pompey and Cicero. By Beryl RawsonEPIRUS. By Arthur FosSTHE SOVIET UNION AND INTERNATIONAL OIL POLITICS. By Arthur Jay KlinghofferA SHORT HISTORY OF THE HUNGARIAN COMMUNIST PARTY. By Miklós MolnárFEUDALISM. By J.S. CritchleyMARXIAN POLITICAL ECONOMY: An Outline. By James F. BeckerTHE POLITICS OF BUREAUCRACY: A Comparative Perspective. By B. Guy PetersHUMAN RIGHTS. Edited by Eugene Kamenka and Alice Erh‐Soon TayADAM SMITH'S POLITICS: An Essay in Historiographic Revision. By Donald WinchASPECTS OF POLITICAL THEORY: Classical Concepts in an Age of Relativism. By W.J. StankiewiczTHE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT OF LEON TROTSKY. By Baruch Knei‐PazFISCAL RESPONSIBILITY IN CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY. Edited by James M. Buchanan and Richard E. WagnerESSAYS ON ECONOMIC POLICY. By J. Marcus FlemingTHE PROCESS OF ECONOMIC PLANNING. By Zoltan KenesseyTHE CULTURAL ROOTS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM. By Hermann GlaserTHE NEW LIBERALISM: An Ideology of Social Reform. By Michael FreedenEXPERIENCE AND ITS MODES. By Michael OakeshottREVOLUTIONS AND REVOLUTIONARIES: Four Theories. By Barbara SalertACTION AND INTERPRETATION: Studies in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Edited by Christopher Hookway and Philip PettitJOHN LOCKE AND THE THEORY OF SOVEREIGNTY: Mixed Monarchy nnd the Right of Resistance in the Political Thought of the English Revolution. By Julian H. FranklinTHE JOURNAL OF MODERN HISTORY, 49, 1977 — Special Issue on the English Revolution. Edited by William H. McNeill
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NDI President Derek Mitchell and NDI Board Chairman Secretary Madeleine Albright talk about her new book Hell and Other Destinations, and her experiences as Secretary of State. She reflects on U.S. foreign policy, democratic trends, and her hopes for the future.
This podcast was recorded May 27, 2020, prior to demonstrations in support of racial equality across the United States.
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Derek Mitchell: Hello. Welcome to DemWorks. My name is Derek Mitchell, president of the National Democratic Institute. We indeed are honored to once again to have Secretary Albright join us. Madam Secretary first, thank you again very much for doing this. Do you want to share some opening thoughts? I want to turn it over to you. Perhaps some things that have happened since we last got together about a month back. Secretary Albright: Terrific. Thank you very much, Derek. Two important meetings I've participated in the past weeks. What was very interesting, it was the ... First was a virtual hearing convened by the house foreign affairs committee. They couldn't have testimony, so this was a briefing, and I did it alongside Derek and Dan Twining from IRI, and the subject was authoritarianism, disinformation and good governance during COVID-19. And this was the first time that the committee had done this kind of a hearing, And I think it's a very important signal that they chose to focus on the subject of democracy. And I think that it's a great tribute to NDI that we were the first organization asked to debrief the committee. What is very, I think, positive is that leaders in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats recognize that good governance is critical to responding to the pandemic. And they know that NDI therefore has a key role to play in helping the world overcome the challenge and others like it. DM: We discussed it at that last town hall, featuring our chairman about how she was on the cusp of releasing a new memoir about her life. This one being about her very eventful life after leaving her job as the first woman vice secretary of state. Hell and Other Destinations was released in mid April. During my time in doors last month, I read her book and it really is funny, a funny and fascinating read. So my intention today is to open up another conversation with our chairman and do so first by asking some questions based on themes from her life that she discusses in her book. You said in your book that everyone should write a memoir. Why do you say that? And do you, or did you, have you kept a journal yourself? SA: Well let me say this. I have thought, because basically I come from an academic background that when one looks at what happened in a certain period of history, it's very important to read people's memoirs. Now what I have found as I've analyzed memoirs, and I have, is that people write it from a different perspective. And so it's important because often we disagree on the context or what we did or what our role was. But I think it is interesting to kind of have the memoirs and it's really worth the doing. And I think especially people that have been in public positions, but everybody, I think in terms of ... So let me just say, I have tried over the years to keep a journal. And I haven't really, because at a certain stage I was made much ... Obviously when I was young and had met a lot of people, I thought, "Isn't this great. I have to write about it." And then it always kind of stops after one month. Then, I did actually not keep a journal when I was in the government, because as we know ... I don't know if you remember, everything was being subpoenaed. But I had a lot of scratchy notes. And then what happened as I was writing Madam Secretary initially, was that when I found the schedule it was like the Rosetta Stone, because I could identify what the scratchy notes actually has something to do with. But embarrassingly, my mind would wander, and all of a sudden in the middle of my scratchy notes it was say, "Buy yogurt." And so I was multitasking even then, but I didn't keep a journal. And in many ways I wish I did, but there are so many records of the kinds of things that we all did together that I think my memoirs have been fairly complete. DM: I felt one of the most poignant chapters in the book was the story about how you discovered your maternal grandmother's journal. It was about five or six years ago while you're going through your father's artifacts. And it turned out your grandmother had been killed in the Holocaust in 1942, and the journal, you have excerpts with the journal in the back of the book and it was written as a kind of dialogue she had ... She wanted to have with your mother and maybe with you while you're all in England. It also reads like kind of a lonely mother who wanted to connect with an absent family alone and isolated and Czechoslovakia, as things happened around her. Dangerous world was swirling in 1942 ... Well, really it started in 42 for her in that journal. Can you talk a bit about the experience of discovering this journal, and through it your grandmother, so late and what it meant to you? Because we're also being isolated with things swirling out our doors, but also just what it meant to you to discover this and discover your grandmother so late. SA: Well, thank you for asking that. And I ... Just for people that don't know my story, I was raised a Catholic, married and Episcopalian, and found out I was Jewish. So I can have my religious discussions sitting in a corner. But basically, I did not know about my Jewish background until 1996. And I had gotten a letter from somebody that had the names of the villages and my grandparents' names and dates right, and that was just as I was being vetted to be secretary of state, and the White House lawyer asked all the questions about taxes and nannies and stuff, but then he said, "We always ask this question of everybody. Is there anything you'd like to tell us that we didn't ask you?" And I said, "Well, it's perfectly possible I'm of Jewish background." And they said, "So what? The president is not antisemitic." And it was only later when I was already an office that I was visited by some reporters who started giving me this disgusting index cards. These Nazis were very good record keepers and they had names of my relatives that have been sent to concentration camps. So to get to the journal part of it is my parents, we left Czechoslovakia in March, 1939, or escaped frankly. My father was in the Czechoslovak diplomatic service, and we escaped to England. And they ... When I think about all the things that happened, I find it harder and harder to get my head around it. My parents were in their 30s, they left their families behind and went to England, where they were isolated in many different ways. We came back and I won't go through the whole story, but my father died in 1997 and he had lots of papers, and then my mother moved to Washington and she brought all his stuff with her. And when she died, all of a sudden all of it got transferred to me. And I had some hesitation in looking at anything, frankly, because of how the memories, but then what happened is when I became a public official diplomatic security moved into in my garage and were around all the time and there were all these boxes. And they said, "You've got to put these in storage." So I put all these boxes into storage and I didn't look at them, and it wasn't until 2015 that I had to find something and I went to the storage and I start poking through the boxes. And all of a sudden, there's this old envelope, and inside it is a diary. A journal. And it kind of blows my mind. I look at it, obviously it's a ... And it's from my grandmother, and it is something that she wrote to ... They were letters to my mother describing what was going on. And it was kind of an interesting mixture of just day to day kind of things. "I did this, I washed my hair and I went shopping." And then all of a sudden it began to say things like, "They're talking about Aryans and non Aryans. I've never heard that distinction," she says. And goes through the kinds of things that the Jews in the town we're not able to shop in a variety of places. Oh, they had to give up all their warm clothes to the Nazi soldiers, and ... Just stunning. And in the middle it would say things, "How was it [Mudlanka 00:08:45]?" Which was me. "She's so cute." And it just was unbelievable. And it was really like a message in a bottle where all of a sudden it's hearing from a previous generation in terms of their hopes and their wishes. And obviously in the most incredibly complex time. And the other thing I try to figure out, how my mother even got this and I've tried to put together what the path of it was and how stunned she must've been when it showed up. And so I have translated it, and it is in the book. But it's really very meaningful and it has hope in it, which I think is such an important part. And one of my messages just generally is that we can't control everything around us. We can only control our behavior. And I think that that's something that also came through in my grandmother's journal. DM: It also is you talked about the various identities you have in a way as a Catholic Episcopalian Jew, in terms of heritage. And that issue of identity is a big one that we work with at NDI. And there's a big question for nations nowadays, given your past and your family, that of your family, how has the question of identity shaped you? SA: Well, I have definitely been a lot of different things. As a child, we spent the war in England then went back to Czechoslovakia briefly, and then my father was made ambassador to Yugoslavia. I think some of you've heard me tell this. The little girl in the national costume that gave flowers at the airport, that's what I did for a living. My father didn't want me going to school with communists, so I had a governess. And then I got ahead of myself, and as people know in Europe, you have to be a certain age to get into the next level. So my parents sent me to school in Switzerland, where I was finally told how I should spell my name, because my mother used to pronounce it [Mudlan 00:00:10:44]. And so anyway, I have the French spelling and I learned to speak French. And then we come to the United States. And so I was recently asked to describe myself in six words, and it is, worried optimist, problem-solver, and grateful American. And I think those are my identities and I'm grateful to be an American, but I'm also grateful for the background that I've had in terms of trying to understand how other people see themselves. I do think identity is important. I think we all want to know who we are. We may get surprised, but it's worth it knowing. What I don't like, and this is what troubles me and I wrote about this in my previous book on fascism is when my identity hates your identity, because that then is obviously very divisive. And it's one thing to be proud of your identity, it's another, hyper nationalism, which we're seeing that is undercutting everything. And we know that the virus knows no borders. So there are an awful lot of paradoxes that are going on now in terms of wanting to know who you are, but not thinking that you're better than everybody else. And my, as I describe, authoritarian leaders and fascists, I begin with Mussolini. It's a matter of the leader identifying himself. And by the way, they're all his, with one group at the expense of another and makes them scapegoats. And that's why I'm very troubled by the divisions that are being exacerbated now. DM: There's individual identity and there's national identity. And the national identity, as you say, that's most pernicious is an exclusive identity, rather than an inclusive identity, which is what we're all about. We're all about an inclusive identity. We're all treated equally. And these authoritarians are about identifying those exclusive identities, us and them, that tear countries apart and create the instability and insecurity that results. So this is a key part of what we do, I think absolutely. During the writing process, we you able to identify the moment in your life when you knew what your life purpose was? At what point did you know what Mark you wanted to leave in this world? SA: And it's a hard question to answer, because I do think that one of the things that was a motivating factor for me growing up was that I was, and am, a grateful American, and wanted to give back in some form. I also ... My father had, obviously, a great influence on me. So did my mother, and my father kept saying that Americans are taking democracy for granted. We had just left the country of our birth twice. Once because of the Nazis and then because of the communists. And the fragility of democracy. And so I looked at trying to figure out, in looking back, what were the different methods that I thought I could use to give back to America? By the way, it never occurred to me that I would be secretary of state. There's some people who think I planned that. Never. But I do think that I wanted to have some kind of a role where I was able to talk about the necessity of supporting democracy. And I got fascinated by the UN because that's what brought us to America. And so kind of looking at institutional structures, but it never, never occurred to me. Nor did it occur to me, frankly, that I would be able to have a post secretary of state life, where I was able to put together the various things that I was interested in. What I tried to do always is to make whatever I was doing next more interesting than what I'd done before. Not easy if you've been secretary of state, but the reason I wanted to write this book was to show how the various things that I got involved in related to each other and how I learned from one thing to another. My greatest talent, frankly, is dot connection, of trying to figure out how one thing relates to another. I do want to talk about one specific moment that's so stands out. My favorite thing to do is to give naturalization certificates at the ceremonies. And so the first time I did it was July 4th, 2000 at Monticello, and I'm handing out a certificate and I hear this man. He goes away and he says, "Can you believe I'm a refugee, and I just got my naturalization certificate from the secretary of state?" And I go up to him and I say, "Can you believe that a refugee is secretary of state?" And I so believe in what America stands for and what we can do to be helpful to others, which is why I say that at this moment, the statue of Liberty is weeping. DM: Our research in Ukraine has uncovered historical memory as a significant target of Russian information attacks. Ukrainians appear to be vulnerable to attacks that speak to evoke nostalgia for the economic stability of the Soviet period. These attacks exploit an actual democratic challenge for Ukraine, which is an economy that is not working for all citizens. In the US, what vulnerabilities do you worry similar information attacks could seek to exploit. SA: I do think that I have been ... I love history. When I teach at Georgetown, I always try to put everything into historical context. And I have to say what I was just doing before we started this discussion was watching a program about a project in the United States about slavery. And there's ... The New York Times was doing something called 16 19, and there were some very strong arguments on Morning Joe this morning about this, between those who recollect history differently, or are trying to use it in particular ways for political movement, which we do. And I think people do that in terms of understanding what their history means. And then one of the people there said, "History is to be argued about," which I find interesting because you kind of think, "Okay, well, we know what history is." But it goes back to your first question, Derek, about writing memoirs. Because people have different ideas of their history. I think the question is, do you have a society where you can dispute the history? And the Ukrainian one is clearly unbelievably complicated, in terms of that a modern Russia comes out of Ukraine, and that that relationship and Ukraine itself is a complicated country in terms of East and West and religion, and the aspect of communism that gave people a certain sense of understanding what the system was. They might not have gotten the kinds of things ... Not everybody just wants the freedom to talk. Some of them want to be able to what their history is about. Are they going to have retirement? What group do they belong to? Can they send their kids to school? And I found this in a lot of research that I did about central and Eastern Europe at the time, right after the fall of the wall. What is it that the people thought that they ... What was communism and what were the possibilities of democracy? And I do think that Ukraine is one of the more complex countries, and the fact that it has been invaded, and the fact that the economic situation is something that is being pushed by the Russian hacking and the way that they operate, and their way of trying to divide us and divide Ukrainians from each other. DM: Rebuilding a United Europe was one of the success stories of the second part of the 20th century. The last few years have seen the foundations of Europe shake with Brexit and the rise of authoritarian populace. How do we ensure that the European project continues as a liberal democratic one? SA: I think that it is something that I ... I keep going back, trying to figure out what went wrong. Why did this happen? And I think partially we didn't appreciate enough the problems of societies that had been under communism for 50 years, and that it was much ... We spent a lot of time, I think, with a lot of the wonderful dissidents and intellectuals, and didn't think enough about how it affected the people that had had jobs. I mentioned that a little bit. And I think that also there are the issues now of this identity and the hyper nationalism, and that has been created to some extent in Europe, by the differences in the economic lives of, initially, Northern and Southern Europe, and trying to figure out why some were doing better than others, which then did lead to the fact that there were some leaders like Orban and the Poles that started blaming the other. And that was the most evident in many ways in why Brexit happened. So these are big trends. I happen to believe in a European Union, but I think that as a structure, it also needs some fixing in terms of how it works with the different economic situations in the central and eastern European countries. DM: In your book, you speak about how you dealt with misogyny as you progressed in your career. Can you share what helped to keep you steadfast in fighting this prejudice? SA: I think that what is interesting ... And I often say that I went to college sometime between the invention of the iPad and the discovery of fire, but here it was a women's college. And basically we were told by our commencement speaker to get married and raise children. And I think that what I've been trying to do is to understand why women, why we're so hard on ... Tough on each other in terms of being very judgmental or finding our own inadequacies and other women. And so I have been very much for having ... Creating groups of women that can support each other. And that is why I think it is so important, the kind of things that NDI is doing, in terms of working with women, to make sure that they are participants in society, run for office, and are respected. And I'd love talking about the fact now that the countries that are doing best on dealing with the coronavirus are ones that are run by women. New Zealand, Taiwan, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Iceland. And I think trying to make clear what the characteristics are of women that make that possible in terms of multitasking, of caring, not setting their children against each other, but you have to keep ... I do think that what is important is for women to support each other, and so that you're not the only woman in the room. DM: Sometimes moments of crisis and trial like this pandemic lead to better things. What are your hopes in that regard? And also what is the significance of today's pin? SA: My hope, this is where my optimism comes from, our young people. I love learning from my students, and students that are particularly interested in foreign policy and diplomacy. Many of whom have traveled and they speak different languages and they certainly are tech literate. And I think that they question ... I think the important part for all of us as a democracy organization is to make sure that they participate, that they do vote, that they are interested in the institutional structures in the countries where they are. But that is definitely what gives me hope. And not ... And I think it's very important, and I say this wherever I can, that democracy is not a spectator sport. It is something that the people need to be involved in. They need to be informed. They need to be respected. And I think the other part that I often talk about, and this is so true of NDI activities, is to spend time with people with whom you disagree and try to figure out where they're coming from, and understand what their needs are, and have a dialogue with civil society, and then understand the various institutions that are important. But definitely what makes me hopeful, our young people. DM: On this issue of hopes of how moments of crisis and trial can lead to better things, I do think that's a very important question. I really hope that moments of trial by fire are sometimes very important, to set priorities to remember what's important, and to tell you how precarious things always are. I think we can get kind of complacent about things, as we are as a country, or we as individuals, that everything is going to be simply easy. I'm sure it's not easy for any of us. I'm sure many people have gone through lots of trials in their lives, as we all have. But crises can be moments where we focus on how ... Okay, we take stock of where our priorities are, and what kind of choices we want to make, which is what Madame Secretary said. Not just ... Crisis don't just happen to you, you also have a choice in how you respond to that crisis, both individually and as a collective, as a country, as a unit. So I do think it's an opportunity and I'm certainly seeing that NDI of having better communication and doing more to force change, even potentially in culture because of this moment that's quite different than we've ever experienced. So we should be thinking in those terms. What are the things that we can do to take advantage of this moment, even when there's a lot of stress and anxiety? To take advantage of the opportunity as well. And that's my hope for all of us at NDI, again, as an organization and individually, that we can do that. And I think we can come out better on the back end if we go through it together on those terms. SA: One of my heroes was Harry Truman. He was my first American president. We came to the United States, November 11th, 1948. He is the one that understood, to a great extent, America's role in the world, a democracy. And understand linking domestic to foreign policy. But I think there's so many other people that I have admired. I admire the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Masaryk, who married an American. And the first Czechoslovak constitution was modeled on the American one with one difference. It had a women's rights in it in 1918. And so I think that one can have more than one hero, and I think it's important to point them out and to understand that people have gone through very difficult periods before. And I do think that what is important is to really be proud of things that we can do, and the thing that I personally am proudest of, because it put things together and how I used representing the United States was what we were able to do to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. And going there with President Clinton made a big difference cause they kept saying, "We were just there. We are so grateful to the United States." DM: Well Madam Secretary, let me just close the book conversation with a quote from the book that I saw that I just want to share with everybody that you say at the end. I think it's in the acknowledgements at the end. The central theme of this book is about how people of all descriptions can work together for common goals against the background of accelerating history. It is about trying to make sense of the world we have while attempting to contribute to something better. Madam Secretary and everybody out there, stay safe, be well. Thank you all. Have a good day, and we'll talk again soon. SA: Thank you so much for everything that you do. Thank you. DM: Please visit our website at www.ndi.org. Thanks very much.
NDI Board Chairman Secretary Madeleine Albright
Derek Mitchell & Secretary Madeleine Albright on her past and democracy's future
Democracy (General), Podcast Listen Secretary Albright Madeleine AlbrightCountries: All Regions
¨The actions taken by the Armed Forces are not a mere overthrow of a government but rather the final closing of a historical cycle and the opening of a new one in which respect for human rights is not only borne out by the rule of law and of international declarations, but is also the result of our profound and Christian belief in the preeminent dignity of man as a fundamental value.¨ (…) ¨It will be the objectives of the Armed Forces to restore the validity of the values of Christian morality, of national tradition and of the dignity to be an Argentinean; (…) a final solution to subversion in order to firmly found a reorganized Argentina on the values of Western and Christian civilization by eradicating, once and for all, the vices which afflict the nation. This immense task will require trust and sacrifice but has only one beneficiary the Argentinean people¨ (1). With these words the military junta addressed the Argentines after taking over the government through a coup d'état the 24th of March 1976. Already in this first official communication it is possible to find the strong messianic discourse where the armed forces were fulfilling their holy mission to protect the Christian-national identity of the country.For the first time in the history of Argentina catholic-nationalism, as a nationalist ideology, had an absolute control of the State and was backed by the entrepreneurship and by important sectors of the middle class.(2) The military junta, leaded by Jorge Rafael Videla, was the perfect embodiment of a permanent alliance between religion and fatherland. The armed forces were compelled, being the institution that gave birth to the nation, to fulfill a decisive role in the "holy mission" to morally regenerate the country. This would have allowed Argentina, and therefore all of the Western-Christian civilization, to not just vanquish communism but, also, all of its roots like liberalism, democracy and agnosticism. The military, alongside the Argentinean Catholic Church and its supporters, were convinced that the final battle of the "third world war" was taking place in Argentina. Generals Ramon Camps and Menéndez would even call the "Argentinean theater of operations" as third world war, where they thought the international subversive movements were playing a pivotal role (3). This extremely eschatological feeling was completely different from other similar Cold War scenarios in other developing countries. In Argentina the "final showdown against international communism" syndrome was exacerbated by this alliance between the sword and the cross that would fight communism in order to make a "healthy" society possible, which would lead the way to the regeneration of the "atheist infected" western world. This expectation was the pillar of messianic spirit that justified the extermination plan.But the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (National Reorganization Process), as the military junta denominated the period that begun with the coup d'état, was more than an extermination plan; it aimed at a total "restoration" of society. The speech given by Lieutenant Jorge Eduardo Goleri at a book burning gathering in Córdoba in April 1976 clearly shows what the Junta was aiming for: "God's will requires that the military preserves the natural order manifest in the Western and Christian civilization to which Argentina is integral, but the East had organized a massive international conspiracy to subvert that civilization by restructuring society in accordance with the seditious and atheistic doctrine of communism. We are facing the imminent doom of our way of being Christian under the assault of subversion"(4).The Junta regarded itself as the creative agent of historical destiny(5). In their eschatological mindset they were analogous to the Messiah. They saw themselves as the mythological/biblical Hero that defended the most sacred/holy interests and appeared when a series of afflictions required his abilities of salvation. The Hero needed a nemesis in order to act and what better foe than international communism. But the latter was constructed in a Manichean, epical and apocalyptical manner. The myth of the Hero was opposite to the myth of a "Metaphysical Enemy". The former would engage in a Mythological/Holy War against an invisible but encompassing "Evil". Violent acts from left-wing guerrilla groups, which the Junta labeled as terrorism, perfectly ascribed that ontological description. Communism, with its terrorist offspring, was foreign, atheist and ideological. The military, then, had to combat it not just in the streets or countryside; but in the people's minds, and souls, as well. Guerrilla fighters were just the armed side; the roots of communism, meaning of terrorism and anti-Catholicism, were to be found in individuals that had ideas contrary to the Juntas' weltanschauung. They were ideas that opposed the catholic foundations of the nation and the society that it embodied.The Junta's adversary was an essentially ideological foe as General Videla stated to a British journalist: "A terrorist (read communist or atheist) is not just someone with a gun or a bomb, but also someone who spreads ideas which are contrary to Western and Christian civilization" and he continued, "…Subversion is all action that seeks the alteration or the destruction of the people's moral criteria and form of life, with the end of seizing power and imposing a new form based upon a different scale of values"(6). The guerrilla was not the most dangerous enemy; because in military terms it was already defeated before the Junta took power. The nemeses were communism, liberalism and democracy, ideologies that advocated an "Anti-Christian Revolution" that subverted the catholic foundations of the country(7). Accordingly, the subversive was guilty of the most serious crime against the Augustinian concept of "Common Good". In this latter sense, the battle against that invisible, but spiritual, Evil was a conflict inside each one of us. Like Massera said: "…the Third World War is not only fought in battlefields but, more importantly, in the believer's soul" (8). This Holy War mobilized the Junta as a "warrior-savior", as a modern crusader fighting for God and freedom from foreign atheist ideologies. This, in part, self-perceived holy mission strengthened the Junta's self-image as Christ's vicar, as crusading defender of Christianity and its Natural Order from the "pagan agents and antinational beings of the Antichrist"(9). Not surprisingly, the military profession was defined by Monsignor Bonamín as a profession of religiosity. Consequently, it is no wander that before the armed forces toppled Isabel Peron's government, they asked for the Catholic Church benediction the night before the coup(10). The Argentinean Catholic Church was as deeply as it could possibly be involved in this crusade. The Crusade's sanctification by the ChurchAfter Videla and Massera were blessed by the heads of the Argentinean Episcopate the night before the coup, Parana's Archbishop and military Bishop Adolfo Tortolo announced that the Catholic Church would positively cooperate with the new government (11). The Church was actively supporting and legitimizing the imminent armed forces' putsch. This probably did not surprise the future Junta's leaders. In December 1975, just three months before the coup d'état, Tortolo had called for the military to inaugurate a "purification process" and his subordinate Bonamín had stated, during the mass in front of future Junta leader General Viola, that Christ wanted the armed forces to be beyond their function in the future (12). The vicars of Christ on Earth were actually telling the military what were their Lord's orders. This symbiosis between the sword and the cross continued even after the first accusations of human rights violations against the Junta. On October 1976, Tortolo declared that he did not know of any evidence that proved that human rights were being violated or abused. In 1977 he went even further by affirming that the Church thought that the armed forces were acting accordingly to the special demands of the present juncture; meaning that the military was fulfilling its duty (13). The same with Bonamín's declarations regarding the role of the armed forces: "…it was written, it was in God's plan that Argentina did not have to lose its greatness and it was saved by its natural custodian: the army"; "…Providence has given the army the duty to govern, from the Presidency to the intervention in a trade union"; and finally "…the anti-guerrilla fight is a battle for the Republic of Argentina, for its integrity, but also for its altars (…) This fight is a fight in morality's defense, of men's dignity, ultimately a fight in God's defense (…) That is why I ask for the divine protection in this dirty war to which we are committed to." (14)The vast majority of the Argentinean Catholic Church favored and strongly supported the military junta's government and repression. Only four of the eighty-four clerical members of the Argentinean Episcopate publicly denounced the regime's repression (15). However, the Church was not just backing the Junta because it legitimized its sacred duty to defend the fatherland or because it identified itself in the Junta's messianic mission; but because Church also had to deal with its own internal enemies. The Argentinean Catholic Church was, perhaps, the most conservative Latin-American national Church. It was strongly in disagreement with the three most important progressive movements inside the Catholic Church: the Second Vatican Council, the Third World Priesthood Movement and the Latin-American Episcopal Council of Medellin. The Theological Liberation Movement that spread through Latin America during the 60s and 70s was extremely popular among young Argentineans. Several priests identified themselves with the Movement and tried to bring change to the Argentinean Church through their communal and pastoral actions among poor sectors. Additionally, several Montoneros' members were former catholic school's students that had radicalized, in part, because of their experience with the Theological Liberation Movement. The Catholic Church, then, supported, or did not protest too much against, the "internal cleansing" done by the military; like the killing of Father Mujica, Angelleli and four Palotines clerics among other cases (16).Lastly, the Catholic Church was involved in a much sinister way with the Junta's actions. The heads of the Argentinean Church knew about the repressive methods being used by the security and armed forces and chose not to condemn them. They considered them as necessary sacrifices for the Common Good. Nevertheless, several clerics went further by assisting and taking an active part in the implementation of torture and other repressive mechanisms used by the Junta. More than two hundred prelates participated in four different ways: offering confession/absolution to the victims before being executed or thrown into the sea; assisting the torturers by playing the "good cop" role; being themselves the torturers; and, by confessing and spiritually assisting the torturers and other victimizers (17). The priest Christian von Wernich is, maybe, one of the best examples of the fusion between the cross and the sword. Not only he assisted the torturers in their tasks, he even was involved in the kidnapping and torture of several desaparecidos and in the infiltration of exiled groups in New York (18). He, among others like Archbishop Plaza, Fathers Astigueta, Castillo and Perlanda López that also assisted torture sessions, justified the repressive methods, not considering them sins, by legitimizing their, and the military, behavior under the Augustinian and De Vitorian doctrines of "just war". The support of the Catholic Church for the fight against subversion and its blessing was a pivotal element in the implementation of the plan of extermination and its suppressive mechanisms. The repressive methods, chosen by the Junta, were not void themselves of a messianic and divine nature. Divine and Redemptory Violence The three main types of violent acts that reflected the Junta's Messianic crusade, which were an integral part of their repressive methods, were: torture, thevictim's throwing into the sea and the appropriation of the victims' children by families deemed proper by the military. These violent means, chosen by the perpetrators to perpetually annihilate the ideas that were subverting the Argentinean Catholic traditions, were constructed under the discourse of "love" in two different ways: firstly, the kind of love upheld by Thomas Aquinas where the authority could legitimately kill evil-doers when the formers were motivated by charity. The crusading Junta envisaged that the repressive methods it used had a transcendental value. That type of violence was constructive rather than destructive, insofar as it was able to eradicate evil in order to create good (19). Love was considered the reason for an act of violence, for a punishment that redeemed the sinner, disregarding whether the latter survived the penitence. General Ramón Camps, commenting of how the detention centers perfected the victims through torture, said: "It is love that prioritizes and legitimates the actions of soldiers. The use of force to put an end to violence does not imply hate since it is nothing other than the difficult search for the restoration of love. In the war we are fighting, love of social body that we want to protect is what comes first in all of our actions" (20). Massera and Videla also referred to the dictatorship's repression as an "act of love" or "work that began with love"(21). All these statements reflected how the just war's discourse of Christian charity was in their minds by giving love a pivotal place.Secondly, there was another, and more complex, kind of love in the Junta's Christian-inspired crusade, which contrasted with the former metaphysical type and appeared exclusively in the torture tables of the detention centers, and should be labeled as sexual love. The torture sessions were filled of sexual symbolisms and discourse. The eroticism present in the torments was the exteriorization of the torturer's sexual -religiously repressed- desires into the body -the sexual surrogate totem- of the tortured. Consequently, the act of torture symbolized the act of sex(22). Like Jacobo Timerman perfectly put it, the Junta's violence was the emotional and erotic expression of a militarized nation (23).An expression orchestrated by the use of the picana. The latter was the preferred torture instrument used by the torturers for many reasons. Historically, it was first used by the nationalists during Uriburu's dictatorship and it was extremely effective in administering the desired amount of pain. However, symbolically, thepicana represented, better than other torments, the rawest manifestation of the Junta's conception of power related to "love's twofold sense". Considering torture as a Christian act of love, the picana was the necessary instrument to get a confession from the torturer that would eventually get him redemption. But thepicana had to fill a "void space". According to the perpetrators the victims were atheists (then they were not Argentines), which meant that in order to get any kind of absolution they had to, somehow, recognize and accept the Word of Christ. The Word would fill the empty victims; but first the picana would have to fill them with the will to "repent" and "convert". Once the tortured had received several electric shocks, they would receive and recite the Word by being ordered by the torturers to deliver Catholic prayers (24). Through these confessions the Junta's self perceived role of being the vicars of Christ on Earth was realized every time. They had defeated the atheist enemy but, employing Christian charity, they also had won the battle for the subversives' souls. Redemption was offered to anyone, even the irrecoverable cases. Even if their bodies were deprived of life their souls were saved. One of the ways that the ones not redeemed during confession were granted spiritual salvation was by the purifying power of water. By throwing them into the sea alive they were bestowing them a new, or first, "baptism" (25). It was the perpetrators' holy mission to redeem the victims' souls in life or in death. The picana, when considering torture as a sexual act, was also a phallic symbol. The torturer would make use of the picana-phallus to inflict pain and, at the same time, through the victim's screams and spasms satisfy his own repressed sexual desires. The perpetrator would systematically use the picana-phallus in the erogenous parts of the body. The body of the tortured would then transform into the sexual object of the repressor's desires. A sinful object that had to be purified with repent or conversion but only after the torturer's sexual desire had been satisfied (26). Symbols of divine violence can be found in other examples of torture sessions during the Junta's dictatorship. The torturers would yell at the captives, and would also made them say, "Viva Cristo Rey" and would make them thank God for another day by make them recite prayers before sleep. The picana was sometimes referred as "giving holy communion" as well as water-boarding was named "baptism". Among the many names that the torture chambers were given by the perpetrators there were: "the confessionary" and "the altar" (27). The latter clearly reflects the idea of sacrifice embedded in the repressors' minds. Regarding the victims' religious creeds the torturers would make a distinction between the recoverable and irrecoverable cases. Among the former ones there would be victims that had a catholic background because they had gone to catholic schools or because they knew how to recite prayers (28). Nevertheless, being catholic was not synonym of survival. The irrecoverable Catholics would only have their souls saved, but not their lives. Amid the desaparecidos there were an important proportion of Jews. About 1% of the Argentine population was of Jewish origin, but 20% of desaparecidos shared the same religious background (29). The Junta believed in an international communist conspiracy that, like the Nazis before, was leaded by the Jewry. Being Jewish meant being a Bolshevik. Additionally, the Junta's Messianic trope further propelled the kidnapping and execution of the community that, according to them, was responsible for Christ's crucifixion (30). Lastly, the appropriation of the desaparecidos children by the military was, perhaps, the most sinister of the Messianic-inspired repressive acts done by the military., The kidnapped pregnant women that gave birth in captivity, after being tortured regardless of their condition, were deprived of their children. The newborns were appropriated by families that would rise according to Catholic tradition. Motivated by Christian charity and its doctrine, these children would avoid the atheism, Judaism or wrongly conceived Catholicism that their parents would have offered them. These newborns were, according to the Junta, truly "innocent" and deserved to have the chance to live a proper life in genuine catholic families. Concluding RemarksThe Messianic ideology during the dictatorship was present not only in the Junta's ideology, but also in its discourse and repressive methods. Even if not everything that happened during the military regime can be explained through the catholic-nationalist ideology, the latter provides the essential motivation for the government. It is difficult to imagine that the magnitude, and chosen methods, of the repression would have been the same without the Messianic trope. By comparing the level of Argentinean repression to other military regimes of the Southern Cone in the same period, the distinction is remarkable. Not only the repressive mechanisms used by the Argentinean dictatorship were distinct, and more sadist and cruel, than the Chilean, Uruguayan and Brazilian cases, but the amount of Argentina's desaparecidos dwarfs those cases.Additionally, the Argentinean Catholic Church was the only one to completely back the regime and its repressive methods. In Chile, for example, the heads of the Church were divided in supporting Pinochet. Ultimately, the majority of the Church would condemn the Chilean regime. Regarding the political leadership, there are no religious discourses that serve as justification for the regimes in the other Southern Cone's dictatorships. The military juntas of those countries never legitimized their governments or their respective coup d'états in God's will or the salvation of Christian-Western civilization. National security and the fear of communism were their justification. Even if the regimes were ideologically justified, these were never of a religious nature like in the Argentinean case. It is probably the catholic-nationalist ideology, matured in the 30s, augmented by the international communist conspiracy typical of the Cold War that prompted the Junta in Argentina to completely wipeout what they perceived as atheist and foreign elements in society. Without a Messianic military that was ready to fight a crusade in order to restore order to the nation and without the blessing and active support from the Church, the repression would not have had the size and the horror that it had. The armed forces were fighting what they thought was the last crusade of the 20th century against the atheist forces of communism. The "Third World War" was already happening to them. Winning it was more than strategic, it was a holy mission. (1) Excerpts from a radio announcement made by the Junta after taking control of the State. Cited in Loveman, David and Davies, M. Thomas; The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America; University of Nebraska Press; Lincoln; 1978; pp. 177. (2) See Novaro, Marcos and Palermo, Vicente; La Dictadura Militar; Paidos; Buenos Aires; 2003. (3) See Clarin, June the 26th 1976. Cited in Novaro, Marcos and Palermo, Vicente; La Dictadura Militar; Paidos; Buenos Aires; 2003; pp. 93. (4) Cited in Frontalini, Daniel and Caiati, Maria C.; El mito de la guerra sucia; CELS; Buenos Aires; 1984; pp. 90. Note how the East is viewed as the geopolitical source of "evil" similar to the Nazis' fear of the East. (5) See Graziano, Frank; Divine Violence. Spectacle, Psychosexuality, & Radical Christianity in the Argentine "Dirty War"; Westview Press; Boulder; 1992; pp. 120.(6) See CONADEP; Nunca Más; Eudeba; Buenos Aires; 1984; pp. 342. (7) See Castro Castillo, Marcial; Fuerzas armadas: Ética y represión; Nuevo Orden; Buenos Aires; 1979; pp.120. (8) Massera, Emilio; El país que queremos; FEPA; Buenos Aires; 1981; pp. 44. This concept of an internal and spiritual struggle is common to all religious fanatic ideologies. For example the original significance of Jihad was that of the soul's struggle against temptation. The concept would later evolve to holy war. (9) As subversives were defined by Ramon Agosti. Cited in Verbitsky, Horacio; La última batalla de la tercera guerra mundial; Legasa; Buenos Aires; 1984; pp.16. (10) La Nación, March the 25th 1976; cited in Mignone, Emilio; Iglesia y Dictadura; Colihue; Buenos Aires; 1986; pp.25. (11) See Mignone, Emilio; Iglesia y Dictadura; Colihue; Buenos Aires; 1986; pp.25. Additionally, Tortolo was Videla's private confessor. (12) Ibid; pp. 25(13) Ibid; pp. 26-28. (14) Ibid; pp. 30-31. (15) See Novaro, Marcos and Palermo, Vicente; La Dictadura Militar; Paidos; Buenos Aires; 2003; pp. 99 (16) Ibid; pp. 97(17) See Mignone, Emilio; Iglesia y Dictadura; Colihue; Buenos Aires; 1986; and CONADEP;Nunca Más; Eudeba; Buenos Aires; 1984; pp. 342-360. (18) See Mignone, Emilio; Iglesia y Dictadura; Colihue; Buenos Aires; 1986pp.179-188. (19) Graziano, Frank; Divine Violence. Spectacle, Psychosexuality, & Radical Christianity in the Argentine "Dirty War"; Westview Press; Boulder; 1992; pp.152(20) See Camps, Ramón; Caso Timerman: punto final; Tribuna Abierta; Buenos Aires; 1982; pp. 21. (21) CONADEP; Nunca Más; Eudeba; Buenos Aires; 1984; pp. 348. Additionaly, it is interesting to notice how Carl Schimitt's political theology theory is translated into the Junta's discourse. In this sense, the Junta's actions would be a Schimittian case of politics not being able to be dettached from religion. This, in turn, would contradict several secularization theories. See, Schimitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignity, Chicago Univertisty Press, Chica, 2006.(22) Interestingly, Saint Augustine described copulation in such a dreadful way that it seemed like an act of torture. See Foucault, Michel; Historia de la Sexualidad: Vol. 1, La voluntada del saber; Siglo XXI; Buenos Aires; 2008; pp. 37. (23) See Timerman Jacobo; Preso sin nombre, celda sin número; De la Flor; Buenos Aires; 2002; pp. 17. (24) See CONADEP; Nunca Más; Eudeba; Buenos Aires; 1984; pp. 347-360; and Graziano, Frank; Divine Violence. Spectacle, Psychosexuality, & Radical Christianity in the Argentine "Dirty War"; Westview Press; Boulder; 1992; pp. 166. (25) It is rather interesting to note that throwing victims alive into the sea or rivers was a common killing method used by other strongly catholic Messianic inspired authoritarian regimes or groups. The falangistas would throw communists, anarchists and socialists (and whoever they thought was not catholic enough) to the rivers during the Spanish Civil War. The Algerian French and later the OAS would throw FLN suspects to the Mediterranean during the Algerian War of Independence. Even in Argentina, during the 1930s, the nationalists were talking about pushing the communists into the sea. A more detailed research should be conducted on this issue. Probably the Spanish Inquisition's torture methods, involving boiled water or a pool where the suspected heretics would drown, clearly influenced all of these cases into using natural sources of water to purify their sacred lands from the nonbelievers. (26) For more on torture as a sexual act and the picana as phallus see Graziano, Frank; Divine Violence. Spectacle, Psychosexuality, & Radical Christianity in the Argentine "Dirty War"; Westview Press; Boulder; 1992; pp. 158-190. (27) CONADEP; Nunca Más; Eudeba; Buenos Aires; 1984; pp. 26-50. (28) Many tortured victims remember how the torturers were clearly surprised to see the formers wearing crosses after making them take out their clothes. In some of these cases the torturers would say to the victims that their life would be saved because they were Christians but had lost their way and it would be the repressors' task to show them the right path. (29) See Novaro, Marcos and Palermo, Vicente; La Dictadura Militar; Paidos; Buenos Aires; 2003; pp. 115. (30) During the trial of torturer known as Jorge "El Tigre" Acosta a witness remembered him saying, after killing a captive while torturing him, that he was happy that he had died because he was going to be freed but he did not want a Jew to walk freely in Argentina; all Jews were guilty because they had killed Christ. See Diario Perfil; "Juicio al Tigre Acosta por el asesinato de Hugo Tarnopolsky"; May the 12th 2007. *Estudiante de Doctorado, New School for Social Research, New YorkMaestría en Estudios Internacionales, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos AiresÁrea de Especialización: Procesos de formación del Estado moderno, sociología de la guerra, terrorismo, genocidio, conflictos étnicos, nacionalismos y minorías.E-mail: guere469@newschool.edu
The Silesian-born urban-planning architect Lotte Stam-Beese became famous not only in the Netherlands, but also in CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) circles, for her designs for modern post-war housing districts in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. The path she travelled to get there was a fascinating one, and shows how the course of her life was determined by her training, work, love affairs and relationships during the 1920s and 1930s. This article takes a closer look at her career, with special emphasis on her work at Bohuslav Fuchs's architectural firm in Brno from 1930 to 1932 and her other activities in Czechoslovakia. It will attempt to show how this period and these circumstances helped shape her personal development and the choices she made in her life. This paper is based on various sources consulted in archives in the Czech Republic, Germany, Ukraine, the United States and the Netherlands, as well as literature research. Lotte Beese – her maiden name – grew up in the countryside near what was then the German city of Breslau (now Wrocław in Poland) in a lower-middle-class Protestant family. In those days few girls from such a background received a secondary education. After doing several minor jobs, she persuaded her parents that a course at the Bauhaus in Dessau was the right choice for her. When she began studying there in the 1926-1927 academic year she was already 23, making her one of the older students. In 1928 the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer had been asked to set up an architecture course at the Bauhaus, entitled die neue baulehre ('the new way of building'). Inspired by Functionalist design and Marxist thinking, Meyer saw architecture and building as an elementary process, in which people's biological, mental and physical needs were crucial to the design of housing, and hence of living. Lotte Beese was keen to take the new architecture course. Meyer, who not only set up the course but a year later also succeeded Gropius as director of the Bauhaus, was less prejudiced than his predecessor about the idea of women studying subjects previously reserved for men. Lotte Beese was allowed to take the die neue baulehre course, thus becoming its first female student. Meyer considered her a good student; but he was less encouraging about her future prospects. She could become an architect – provided she married a male architect and worked for his firm. His advice was soon followed almost to the letter – for the two fell in love. Although the Bauhaus was known for its free-thinking attitudes, a conspicuous affair between a female student and the director, who was not only fourteen years older but also married with two children, was simply not acceptable. When their relationship became public knowledge, Meyer told her to quit the course. He found architectural jobs for her, first at his firm in Berlin, later on at architect Hugo Häring's firm in Berlin and finally in Czechoslovakia, where she began work in 1930 as an Entwurfsarchitektin ('design architect') at Bohuslav Fuchs's firm in Brno – the very bastion of Czechoslovakian Modernism with Bohuslav Fuchs as a leading architect. Here she would continue to work for almost two years. A surviving certificate that Lotte Beese received from Bohuslav Fuchs shows that she had worked on six projects during 1930: completion of the Vesna industrial school for girls in Brno, the savings banks in Třebíč and Tišnov, the Moravian Bank in Brno, the Morava sanatorium in Tatranská Lomnica, and drawings for steel structures in low-rise dwellings in Italy. In summer 1930 Hannes Meyer was suddenly dismissed from the Bauhaus, for he was considered awkward and too 'political'. He moved to Moscow where he was appointed professor at the State College of Building and Architecture and chief architect at the Institute for the Construction of Higher and Technical Schools, both based in Moscow. He asked Lotte Beese to live and work with him there. She gladly agreed, and left for the USSR. But their life together was not a success, and after a few months she returned to Brno where she was able to resume work at Fuchs's firm. By now Lotte Beese was pregnant, and she gave birth to a son whose father was Hannes Meyer. Although Fuchs had granted her three months' maternity leave, correspondence with a lawyer reveals that he refused to pay the necessary allowance. Beese took him to court, and appears to have won the case. This did not improve relations between them, and she could no longer return to her job at his firm. Indeed, as an unmarried mother, she was no longer able to find any kind of work in Brno, especially at a time of deepening economic crisis. Now unemployed, she had more time to take part in Brno's left-wing political and cultural life. She was a member of the Czechoslovakian communist party KSČ (Komunistická Strana Československa) and the cultural organisation Levá Fronta. She attended Levá Fronta meetings and she went to discussion evenings on modern literature and lectures by left-wing writers and thinkers. As a member of the KSČ, Lotte Beese helped to organise 'proletarian evenings' and campaigns. By now the city council had banned KSČ assemblies, demonstrations and public meetings. On 30 October 1931, to mark the fourteenth anniversary of the USSR, the party organised a pro-Russian demonstration followed by a public meeting at the Workers' House in a district of Brno called Tuřany. Beese gave a speech at the meeting, and was reported to the police. No longer feeling safe in Brno, she told Meyer she wanted to join him with their child; but he was no longer interested. Now Lotte Beese needed an alternative. With the rise of national socialism in Germany, returning there was hardly an option. Working and living in Russia seemed a better idea. In April 1932, probably with help from her friends in Prague, the left-wing architecture critic, publicist and graphic designer Karel Teige and the Modernist architect Jaromír Krejcar, she set off for the Ukrainian city of Kharkov to work as an architect. She left her son Peter with Krejcar and his then wife, the journalist Milena Jesenská. Lotte Beese worked in Kharkov for Giprograd, the Ukrainian section of the State Institute of Town Planning, and made ground-plan drawings for the sotsgorod ('socialist town') KhTZ – a large, linear housing district on a railway line ten kilometres from the city centre of Kharkov. Built from the late 1920s onwards, the district was intended for employees of the nearby, newly-built Kharkov Tractor Factory. In September 1932 she went to collect her son from Prague and take him to Kharkov. The relationship with Hannes Meyer gradually came to an end. In spring 1933 Lotte Beese ran into her former Bauhaus teacher, the Dutch Functionalist architect Mart Stam. Stam had a responsible position in the 'May Brigade' (led by Frankfurt's former city architect Ernst May), as project manager for the construction of the industrial city of Magnitogorsk in the Urals. Their encounter turned into a love affair. Lotte Beese joined Mart Stam and worked on various urban planning projects, including the renovation of the town of Orsk. Following Mart Stam's refusal on principle to build a new city in an inhospitable area near Lake Balkash that was polluted with copper ore, they had to quit the USSR. After marrying in Moscow, they left for the Netherlands, where they lived and worked in Amsterdam. But their marriage eventually broke down. By then, aged 37, Lotte Stam-Beese – she kept the name 'Stam' after her divorce – was taking a course in advanced and higher architectural teaching in Amsterdam, and she graduated in 1945. She realised that as a qualified architect she had more chance of finding a job in her favourite profession – and she succeeded. In 1946 she was appointed as an urban-planning architect in Rotterdam, which had been devastated in a German bombing raid on 14 May 1940. In 1955 she was promoted to chief architect, and was given the assignment of designing new, modern housing for the whole city. Her designs included three large housing districts developed in a Functionalist style. While working at Bohuslav Fuchs's architectural firm in Brno, Lotte Beese became well acquainted with Modernist architecture. There she also met like-minded people, made friends and was politically active. All this encouraged her to go and work in the new Soviet state and it sharpened her political consciousness. It was not the architecture of individual buildings – the main focus of her work in Czechoslovakia – but social housing in an urban environment that truly appealed to her and would become her specialist field. She designed large estates in green surroundings, where she hoped people would assist and cooperate with their neighbours. In her lectures she regularly used the following quote about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's posthumous book Citadelle: 'car je suis d'abord celui qui habite', which she interpreted as 'you can only be a human being if you truly have a home.'
The Silesian-born urban-planning architect Lotte Stam-Beese became famous not only in the Netherlands, but also in CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) circles, for her designs for modern post-war housing districts in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. The path she travelled to get there was a fascinating one, and shows how the course of her life was determined by her training, work, love affairs and relationships during the 1920s and 1930s. This article takes a closer look at her career, with special emphasis on her work at Bohuslav Fuchs's architectural firm in Brno from 1930 to 1932 and her other activities in Czechoslovakia. It will attempt to show how this period and these circumstances helped shape her personal development and the choices she made in her life. This paper is based on various sources consulted in archives in the Czech Republic, Germany, Ukraine, the United States and the Netherlands, as well as literature research. Lotte Beese – her maiden name – grew up in the countryside near what was then the German city of Breslau (now Wrocław in Poland) in a lower-middle-class Protestant family. In those days few girls from such a background received a secondary education. After doing several minor jobs, she persuaded her parents that a course at the Bauhaus in Dessau was the right choice for her. When she began studying there in the 1926-1927 academic year she was already 23, making her one of the older students. In 1928 the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer had been asked to set up an architecture course at the Bauhaus, entitled die neue baulehre ('the new way of building'). Inspired by Functionalist design and Marxist thinking, Meyer saw architecture and building as an elementary process, in which people's biological, mental and physical needs were crucial to the design of housing, and hence of living. Lotte Beese was keen to take the new architecture course. Meyer, who not only set up the course but a year later also succeeded Gropius as director of the Bauhaus, was less prejudiced than his predecessor about the idea of women studying subjects previously reserved for men. Lotte Beese was allowed to take the die neue baulehre course, thus becoming its first female student. Meyer considered her a good student; but he was less encouraging about her future prospects. She could become an architect – provided she married a male architect and worked for his firm. His advice was soon followed almost to the letter – for the two fell in love. Although the Bauhaus was known for its free-thinking attitudes, a conspicuous affair between a female student and the director, who was not only fourteen years older but also married with two children, was simply not acceptable. When their relationship became public knowledge, Meyer told her to quit the course. He found architectural jobs for her, first at his firm in Berlin, later on at architect Hugo Häring's firm in Berlin and finally in Czechoslovakia, where she began work in 1930 as an Entwurfsarchitektin ('design architect') at Bohuslav Fuchs's firm in Brno – the very bastion of Czechoslovakian Modernism with Bohuslav Fuchs as a leading architect. Here she would continue to work for almost two years. A surviving certificate that Lotte Beese received from Bohuslav Fuchs shows that she had worked on six projects during 1930: completion of the Vesna industrial school for girls in Brno, the savings banks in Třebíč and Tišnov, the Moravian Bank in Brno, the Morava sanatorium in Tatranská Lomnica, and drawings for steel structures in low-rise dwellings in Italy. In summer 1930 Hannes Meyer was suddenly dismissed from the Bauhaus, for he was considered awkward and too 'political'. He moved to Moscow where he was appointed professor at the State College of Building and Architecture and chief architect at the Institute for the Construction of Higher and Technical Schools, both based in Moscow. He asked Lotte Beese to live and work with him there. She gladly agreed, and left for the USSR. But their life together was not a success, and after a few months she returned to Brno where she was able to resume work at Fuchs's firm. By now Lotte Beese was pregnant, and she gave birth to a son whose father was Hannes Meyer. Although Fuchs had granted her three months' maternity leave, correspondence with a lawyer reveals that he refused to pay the necessary allowance. Beese took him to court, and appears to have won the case. This did not improve relations between them, and she could no longer return to her job at his firm. Indeed, as an unmarried mother, she was no longer able to find any kind of work in Brno, especially at a time of deepening economic crisis. Now unemployed, she had more time to take part in Brno's left-wing political and cultural life. She was a member of the Czechoslovakian communist party KSČ (Komunistická Strana Československa) and the cultural organisation Levá Fronta. She attended Levá Fronta meetings and she went to discussion evenings on modern literature and lectures by left-wing writers and thinkers. As a member of the KSČ, Lotte Beese helped to organise 'proletarian evenings' and campaigns. By now the city council had banned KSČ assemblies, demonstrations and public meetings. On 30 October 1931, to mark the fourteenth anniversary of the USSR, the party organised a pro-Russian demonstration followed by a public meeting at the Workers' House in a district of Brno called Tuřany. Beese gave a speech at the meeting, and was reported to the police. No longer feeling safe in Brno, she told Meyer she wanted to join him with their child; but he was no longer interested. Now Lotte Beese needed an alternative. With the rise of national socialism in Germany, returning there was hardly an option. Working and living in Russia seemed a better idea. In April 1932, probably with help from her friends in Prague, the left-wing architecture critic, publicist and graphic designer Karel Teige and the Modernist architect Jaromír Krejcar, she set off for the Ukrainian city of Kharkov to work as an architect. She left her son Peter with Krejcar and his then wife, the journalist Milena Jesenská. Lotte Beese worked in Kharkov for Giprograd, the Ukrainian section of the State Institute of Town Planning, and made ground-plan drawings for the sotsgorod ('socialist town') KhTZ – a large, linear housing district on a railway line ten kilometres from the city centre of Kharkov. Built from the late 1920s onwards, the district was intended for employees of the nearby, newly-built Kharkov Tractor Factory. In September 1932 she went to collect her son from Prague and take him to Kharkov. The relationship with Hannes Meyer gradually came to an end. In spring 1933 Lotte Beese ran into her former Bauhaus teacher, the Dutch Functionalist architect Mart Stam. Stam had a responsible position in the 'May Brigade' (led by Frankfurt's former city architect Ernst May), as project manager for the construction of the industrial city of Magnitogorsk in the Urals. Their encounter turned into a love affair. Lotte Beese joined Mart Stam and worked on various urban planning projects, including the renovation of the town of Orsk. Following Mart Stam's refusal on principle to build a new city in an inhospitable area near Lake Balkash that was polluted with copper ore, they had to quit the USSR. After marrying in Moscow, they left for the Netherlands, where they lived and worked in Amsterdam. But their marriage eventually broke down. By then, aged 37, Lotte Stam-Beese – she kept the name 'Stam' after her divorce – was taking a course in advanced and higher architectural teaching in Amsterdam, and she graduated in 1945. She realised that as a qualified architect she had more chance of finding a job in her favourite profession – and she succeeded. In 1946 she was appointed as an urban-planning architect in Rotterdam, which had been devastated in a German bombing raid on 14 May 1940. In 1955 she was promoted to chief architect, and was given the assignment of designing new, modern housing for the whole city. Her designs included three large housing districts developed in a Functionalist style. While working at Bohuslav Fuchs's architectural firm in Brno, Lotte Beese became well acquainted with Modernist architecture. There she also met like-minded people, made friends and was politically active. All this encouraged her to go and work in the new Soviet state and it sharpened her political consciousness. It was not the architecture of individual buildings – the main focus of her work in Czechoslovakia – but social housing in an urban environment that truly appealed to her and would become her specialist field. She designed large estates in green surroundings, where she hoped people would assist and cooperate with their neighbours. In her lectures she regularly used the following quote about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's posthumous book Citadelle: 'car je suis d'abord celui qui habite', which she interpreted as 'you can only be a human being if you truly have a home.'