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Artificial Consciousness/Neural Correlates/Synaptic Models

 Synaptic Models

When Hebb wanted to research the nature of the Nerve, he had a problem, Ideally he wanted to explain human nerves, but that was impractical, so he made a decision to try to explain the nerves of Giant Squids instead. What this allowed him to do was to place relatively large by today's standards contacts into the nerve to discover what was happening electrically to the nerve. What he found was a tenuous connection between nerves, that indicated that there was interconnections between the nerves, that was dependent on the signal strength of the source nerve in the response strength of the receiving nerve.

In order to explain this connection, he postulated the existence of something called a "Synapse" His simple mathematical model of synapse function, made the nervous system seem less mysterious, and is the basis for much of our current understanding of how neurons function. The basic Hebb Synapse is expressed mathematically as follows:

$$(I * W)$$ Where I is the output value from the source neuron and W is a Weight determined by the activity of the Synapse

Scientists have since determined that most synapses are chemical in transmission, and electrical in effect. This has been traced down to specific mechanisms in the cell membrane of the Nerve Cell. Exceptions have been found, where direct electrical connection is made across the synapse but these short circuit the synapse and are much less useful, since they can't learn by adjusting the weights, as the chemical/electric synapses can.

Of interest to any synaptic model of the future, will be the new science that is working down into the neurochemistry of the cell, to find out how and why the synapses work the way they do, and what connection there is between the synapse and the growth of neural fibrils such as dendrites and axons. The following models are transient expressions of today's understanding of synapse function

 * Synaptogenesis or how synapses are formed
 * Pre-Synaptic Bud Model
 * Post-Synaptic (Sensitive Patch) Model
 * Ion Channel Model of Synaptic Function
 * Membrane Replacement Model
 * Synaptic Gap Model
 * Pre-Synaptic Rule for Weight Adjustment
 * Post-Synaptic Rule for Weight Adjustment
 * Complex Ion Channel Model
 * Chemical Cascade Model
 * The link between Synaptic Function and Fibril Growth
 * A Tentative Comprehensive Model


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User:Babakathy

I am here

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Babakathy


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User talk:Babakathy

I am not often here. If you want to send me a message I will reply much faster here.

title: User talk:Babakathy


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The Crafting Freedom Project/Henry Box Brown

Henry "Box" Brown was a 19th century Virginia slave who escaped to freedom by arranging to have himself mailed to Philadelphia abolitionists in a dry goods container.


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User:Lord Shivan

=User=

News
View on main page for news about this user.

Interests
I am interested in the areas of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, English (Literature) and Mathematics.

Wikimedia Foundation
These are user pages on other sister projects under a unified account, Lord Shivan:
 * Wikipedia — ( main >)
 * Commons
 * Wikinews
 * Wiktionary
 * Wikiquote
 * Wikibooks
 * Wikisource
 * Wikispecies
 * Wikiversity >
 * Meta-Wiki

title: User:Lord Shivan


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Talk:ATP mentor training/Mentoring for the 22nd century

Trivia
The Prime Directive says that "there can be no [ opposite ] interference with the internal development of pre-"warp" civilizations (which basically appears to translate to "mentoring is a moral obligation").


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Talk:Evolutionary Synthesis/Future Evolutionary Synthesis

Comments on 29 January draft
Evolution is too useful a paradigm to be left in the hands of biologists.
 * Give this sentence a more positive phrasing. --AFriedman 01:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... I think the word only should have made it into that statement... otherwise I will have to think...--Graeme E. Smith 20:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

From the perspective of Engineering, it is a blind prototyping system, a search mechanism, an aid to self-organization, and a key to self-programming robots.
 * To me it seems to be a property of systems rather than a system per se. How is it an aid to self-organization, and how does it relate to self programming robots?  --AFriedman 01:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

It really depends on how you use it. Blind Prototyping using the Evolution algorythm to recombine your prototypes creates a population of prototypes that gradually trends towards meeting the needs of the engineering project. This must be a system of prototyping, since it doesn't end up with a single prototype but a population of them.

Evolution in its most abstract form, (meaning the principle behind the algorythm) is an aid to self-organization because it imposes order on chaotic systems. I think this is because it is a gradient climbing effect. If the gradient is entropy as I suggest, then lower positions on the gradient indicate lower energy states as entropy cools the system. Because of the test, if the gradient climbing results in an even lower position on the gradient, say, if there is an oscillation in the gradient, then the test will fail, and that lower position will not become part of the recorded population. This is why I think there are gaps in the periodic table.

The key sometimes to self programming is to come up with a solution to the question of "What do I do next, when I don't know enough to do anything?

Evolution, through the process of genetic programming, can experiment with a population of answers to that question, and choose the best answers over time, since the computer made the decision, it is not programmed by a human per se.--Graeme E. Smith 20:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

From the perspective of physics, it is an indication that the second law of thermodynamics is incorrect
 * how? --AFriedman 01:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The main answer to this, is that there is no place in the second law as currently written for a system to exist that climbs against the entropy gradient.--Graeme E. Smith 20:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

and a possible connecting link to Complexity theory.
 * how? --AFriedman 01:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

If we understand that the entropy gradient is not linear as it was suggested in the second law of thermodynamics, then we can see how a system like evolution might be able to bridge the gaps between entropy gradient reversals, and create a self-organizing system that builds complexity over time. If we understand as I know you commented in the base discussion that entropy gradients are a local phenomena, then we can see how complexity could depend on the base dimensinoality of space in the local situation, and that systems of differing complexities over time, could combine to form aggregates locally. I don't want to get too deep into this because it borders on my religion.--Graeme E. Smith 20:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

From the perspective of Neuroscience, it may be the only explanation for non-genetic recombination and self-organization of Neural Networks into sensory maps.
 * What are neural networks and sensory maps? IMO I think you should explain any highly technical phrasing.  Perhaps it is a mechanistic explanation, but what could other explanations be?  --AFriedman 01:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Like I said, I was planning on populating this sub-page with links they should help with definition of the highly technical terms, what I was hoping the base document would do was act as a survey to indicate the breadth of the technical applications associated with evolution.--Graeme E. Smith 20:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

In Computing Science, it is just one more heuristic algorythm, and the key to an Adaptive Macro Language.
 * What is an adaptive macro language and why is evolution the key? --AFriedman 01:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

As you may know from your Computer Science Background, there was a movement in the past to study a programming language called FORTH, which was touted as probably having something to do with the way the brain worked. Forth is a Macro Language, in that it builds a language to do an application by creating macros of its base language and other macros already created. Research on FORTH stopped when it was realized that if you have one forth, you have one forth, there was no cross over, no self-organizing principle that could possibly arrive at a common language because each langauge became too individualized. What I am saying by mentioning evolution as the key to an adaptive Macro Language is that self-organization using an evolution-like process, can converge to a common language in much the same way that populations converge towards a common genome.--Graeme E. Smith 20:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

At heart, evolution is a very simple system, so simple that it may have an impact at a much earlier stage in our universe than biologists would ever think to look. The Evolution Algorythm has only three parts, and may apply as easily to the formation of elements during the big bounce, as it does to the complex structure of biological genetics. Where the future synthesis of Evolution ends, is not something we can predict today

Although Darwin made some predictions in his later works, that went so far as to connect Evolution to even social development, but didn't actually predict the linkage his theory would turn out to have to Meddelan Genetics, it may turn out that there are literally millions of Evolutionary Mechanisms involved in the development of the Universe, and the current Evolutionary Synthesis, is blind to them, because of its dependence on Biology and Genetics.

 * Interesting idea that evolution is not restricted to biological systems, and the appearance and evolution of life is only one of many aspects of evolution. --AFriedman 01:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

 * Re: non-biologists studying evolution, in my experience many evolution papers by non-biologists lack a strong fundamental understanding of evolutionary concepts, as biologists typically have. It's taken me years to try to understand evolution and I still don't understand it as well as I would like.  What often happens is that there is collaboration between a biologist and, say, a physicist.  If these people in disparate fields can understand each other, more power to them.  Some people also have a background in more than one area.   Just a few thoughts.--AFriedman 01:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I think that understanding of Evolution is a hard thing, in a culture that almost worships the second law of thermodynamics in its original manifestation. Some have said that people who have a mixed domination such as people who are ambidextrous or ambisinestral have an edge in understanding it, because evolution requires that you recognize the rules, and also recognize that they may not always apply, and this means you have to both hold the rules, in your mind, and analyze the exceptions at the same time. In Biology evolution is the rule, now, although some people notably those who are attracted to calvinism, find it more difficult to accept, but in Physics evolution flies in the face of the accepted rules, and so often only those who are open to fringe science are also open to the potential of the evolution concept to be applied outside the biological realm. In my case I am a generalist, in that I generalize across the rules of many disciplines looking for a more basic set of rules. In fact I note a distinct trend for you to demand that I become more specific in my statements, and support them more strongly in the base text. I would rather populate the statements with links that support them and leave them more general, because in my mind, the general case is the more accurate reflection of reality.--Graeme E. Smith 20:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

 * I don't claim to know everything about Biology and Computer Science, and I certainly don't know about FORTH. Interesting.

It is a mid-level language and not usually taught except to programmers that might want to debug at the assembly langauge level.

 * My understanding of entropy is that the existence of biological systems does not contradict the second law of thermodynamics. Biological systems are open systems, i.e. they exchange energy with their surroundings.  An increase in order in a biological system is more than counterbalanced by an increase in entropy in its surroundings.  I don't know very much about physics, but so far you haven't explained why you have a problem with conventional thermodynamics in a way that is clear to me.

Believe me, it's not MY problem with thermodynamics the problem lies in the minds of the scientists working in Quantum Gravity, who because of recent research have information that the normal state of the Universe is not an equilibrium, and that therefore putting that limitation on the law, means that it doesn't apply to most situations. Evolution is merely an illustration of a place where it doesn't really properly apply. Your open system exception means that the second law, is not properly a law at all. It is when you apply evolution outside biology that you begin to see that in fact, evolution does not require an open system, it is biology that does.

 * Re: your text, I think you misunderstand my criticisms. I like to see writing that takes people through the background information for the statements you make, so others can follow your arguments better.  IMO any statement you make should be be well supported by clearly written arguments and appropriate, reputable references.  Please, by all means, put as many good links as possible into the sections you write, but I don't think it's realistic to expect the reader to filter through them in search of the salient points.  Better to put those points into the article in addition to providing the links.

How big of an article do you want? I am willing to take some time to break the ideas up into a tree of articles, but each one of these applications deserves at least a page on its own. Frankly I am not sure I can afford the connection time, I just upgraded to highspeed light, and I have a 10 gig limit on Downloads that might include page content in the web browser.I won't know for sure until I get past this next months bill and see if they complain about my usage. --Graeme E. Smith 01:46, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I really don't have an answer to that question. You seem to have a lot of ideas and basically, my answer is as big an article as you would like.  I understand if your time and money are limited, though.  By the way, I saw you've made some very good changes on the Artificial Consciousness page.  --AFriedman 21:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

 * By the way, do you have any peer reviewed publications in any academic field? --AFriedman 23:02, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

You do tend to cut right to the essence of a problem.

The short answer is NO, it is only recently that I have been interested in publishing in peer reviewed journals, and it is also true that because I have no Formal Accreditation in any academic field getting permission to publish in peer reviewed journals may be problematic. For instance ASSC seems to have put a limit on their publications that requires a degree in a related field. (My health broke when I tried to take an apprenticeship in Heavy Duty Mechanics, it broke again when I tried to take Computer Science and I lost my Faculty, And it broke a third time when I tried to take a Computer Engineering Technologist diploma.) In short as I have said calling me academic is .... academic.

Frankly I have been unemployable for almost a decade and am getting a little long in the tooth to consider getting a degree. On the other hand, my health is still questionable, so I would undoubtedly fail if I tried. On the positive side, I have written a series of books, and if I can ever afford to edit them into a publishable format, I might have actually at some future date the right to claim authorship on them. Right now I am still trying to find someone who can read and critique them. No one locally seems to want to claim the position, and I do not have access to the academic symposiums and seminars that would let me find someone in my own field that has the background to get past my limitations in writing quality before I do manage to edit them. I am very definitely an Amateur Scientist and a freelance intellectual but nothing more. By the way, I did look at the link you suggested, and I might qualify as an associate in the Freelance academics group if they didn't want a publication list.--Graeme E. Smith 01:46, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry about your health.  I wonder if you could/would be willing to convert your work (or some of it) into computer Files and upload them here?  I am not qualified to read and critique your work but if it is online, you might be able to find someone who knows more.  Wikipedia also has people who are working on "projects" about various subjects, who are more likely to be experts in those fields.  There might even be a Wikipedia Project Artificial Consciousness.--AFriedman 21:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

They keep saying in the literature about wiki to be bold, so when I didn't get an answer from Greg Maxwell about whether it would be a good idea, I just started building a Portal you can access it at GreySmith Institute I've been thinking about this, and I think the answer might not be in expanding the page here, so much as in creating some courseware, and linking to it, instead of this page. Since non-genetic Darwinism has a role in Artificial Consciousness it might despite its research nature be a course that would be of value to the Institute as well as WikiVersity as a whole.

Once I can figure out how to implement a Forum and a repository, I will be putting out a request for content, and a call for papers, and putting a few of my preliminary papers into the repository at the institute. One of the ideas is that when I go to publish my papers, having an institute on WikiVersity as my affiliation will either be a good thing or bad thing, so taking the chance, is just increasing the odds slightly that my work might pass through the BS filters at the journals.
 * OK. --AFriedman 23:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


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Artificial Consciousness/Neural Correlates/Neural Models

 Neural Models

When Hebb first proposed a Mathematical Model of the Neuron, he had a problem, it wasn't practical to study human neurons, so he was forced to study Giant Squid Neurons and hope that his experiments indicated something about human neurons as well. The nice thing about giant squid neurons, is that they were large enough to insert the electrical contacts of his day, and so he was able to at least get a sense of how neurons interrelate to each other.

After he had proposed the mathematical model of the Synapse he needed to define a formula for the neuron itself. He suggested a simple aggregate of synapses adjusted for the basic neural logrithmic function.

Marvin Minsky in his book Perceptron however, noted that this model was not accurate because there was a second order response factor not taken into account in the basic Hebb formula. Other Models were suggested, but each could be challenged relatively easily, if only because the models were too simplistic. To this day we still do not have a definitive neuron model, that captures mammalian neurons, let alone human neurons, but we are getting closer to understanding them especially now that we are beginning to learn about the cellular neuroscience at the micro-biological level.

Of recent interest, is the research being done on the connection between the synapse and the DNA which is involved in the growth of synapses and fibrils. While the biochemistry is still somewhat vague, the use of genetic KO techniques has opened up new vistas for understanding the complexity of long-term memory at the cellular level.

The following Models are a transitory look at our current understanding of neural function, undoubtedly future discoveries will change these models and skew them in directions we cannot predict at this time.

 * The Biochemistry Model
 * The Biological Model
 * The Dendrite Model
 * The Axon Model
 * The Activation Potential Model
 * Depolarization vs Partial Depolarization

Neural Network Models of the Neuron

 * The Hebb Neuron
 * The Hopfield Neuron
 * The Weightless Neuron
 * The HH Neuron
 * The Multi-Layer Network Model
 * A Tentative Neural Model


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Propulsion

Propulsion means to add speed or acceleration to an object, by an engine or other similar device. The word 'propulsion' can be used with many other words (such as jet, rocket, spacecraft) to become-'jet propulsion', 'rocket propulsion', or 'space craft propulsion' etc.

Spacecraft propulsion is used to change the velocity of spacecraft and artificial satellites. There are many different methods. Each method has drawbacks and advantages, and spacecraft propulsion is an active area of research. Most spacecraft today are propelled by heating a reaction mass to high temperatures and exhausting it from the back/rear of the vehicle at very high speed. This sort of engine is called a rocket engine.

All current spacecraft use chemical rockets (bipropellant or solid-fuel) for launch, though some (such as the Pegasus rocket and SpaceShipOne) have used air-breathing engines on their first stage. Most satellites have simple reliable chemical rockets (often monopropellant rockets) or resistojet rockets to keep their station, although some use momentum wheels for attitude control. Newer geo-orbiting spacecraft are starting to use electric propulsion for north-south stationkeeping. Interplanetary vehicles mostly use chemical rockets as well, although a few have experimentally used ion thrusters (a form of electric propulsion) with some success.

Necessity
Artificial satellites must be launched into orbit, and once there they must be placed in their nominal orbit. Once in the desired orbit, they often need some form of attitude control so that they are correctly pointed with respect to the Earth, the Sun, and possibly some astronomical object of interest. They are also subject to drag from the thin atmosphere, so that to stay in orbit for a long period of time some form of propulsion is occasionally necessary to make small corrections (orbital stationkeeping). Many satellites need to be moved from one orbit to another from time to time, and this also requires propulsion. When a satellite has exhausted its ability to adjust its orbit, its useful life is over.

Spacecraft designed to travel further also need propulsion methods. They need to be launched out of the Earth's atmosphere just as satellites do. Once there, they need to leave orbit and move around.

For interplanetary travel, a spacecraft must use its engines to leave Earth orbit. Once it has done so, it must somehow make its way to its destination. Current interplanetary spacecraft do this with a series of short-term orbital adjustments. In between these adjustments, the spacecraft simply falls freely along its orbit. The simplest fuel-efficient means to move from one circular orbit to another is with a Hohmann transfer orbit: the spacecraft begins in a roughly circular orbit around the Sun. A short period of thrust in the direction of motion accelerates or decelerates the spacecraft into an elliptical orbit around the Sun which is tangential to its previous orbit and also to the orbit of its destination. The spacecraft falls freely along this elliptical orbit until it reaches its destination, where another short period of thrust accelerates or decelerates it to match the orbit of its destination. Special methods such as aerobraking are sometimes used for this final orbital adjustment.

Spacecraft for interstellar travel also need propulsion methods. No such spacecraft has yet been built, but many designs have been discussed. Since interstellar distances are very great, a tremendous velocity is needed to get a spacecraft to its destination in a reasonable amount of time. Acquiring such a velocity on launch and getting rid of it on arrival will be a formidable challenge for spacecraft designers.

Coursework
In relation to aerospace engineering the study of propulsion is usually undertaken in the following listed avenues:

 * 1) The basics of Newtonian mechanics which are essential for the understanding of any objects which move.
 * 2) A historical overview of the various propulsion systems which were used in various times and their beginnings and consequent applications.
 * 3) The basic theory of gas turbines, which usually describes the physics behind the propulsion system.
 * 4) A general introduction to the components of gas turbines, which include the compressor, combustor, turbines.
 * 5) A detailed study on the basic cycles which are the basics of the gas turbine namely the Brayton cycle and some other supplemantary cycles like the Rankine cycle. This portion also contains material on intercooling and reheat processes. A study of the effeciency of various cycles and ways to enhance the effeciency are studied.
 * 6) A detailed study on compressors, the physics , types, performance characteristics, effeciencies, steady - state relations , and design
 * 7) A detailed study on turbines.
 * 8) A detailed study of the combustor.
 * 9) A study of thrust augmentation methods.
 * 10) Performance calculation of turbojets, turbofans, and turboprops.
 * 11) A study of rocket propulsion, unconventional methods of propulsion,specific impulse calculation for various thrusters.

Standard Text Books

 * 1) "Gas Turbine Technology" - HIH Saravanmuttoo, Cohen & Rogers
 * 2) "Gas Turbine Engineering Handbook" - P Boyce
 * 3) "Elements of Aircraft Propulsion" - Jack D Mattingly
 * 4) "Gas Turbine Performance" - Philip Walsh and Paul Fletcher
 * 5) "Mechanics and Thermodynamics of Propulsion " - Philip G. Hill and C.R.Peterson
 * 6) "Rocket Propulsion Elements" - George P. Sutton and Oscar Biblarz

title: Propulsion


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Artificial Consciousness/Neural Correlates/Neural Network Models

 Neural Network Models

Neural Networks is the study of how neurons form networks and how the networks function.What scientists have found is that the storage within the network is intrinsic to the network, in a way that makes it a phenomenon of the network as a whole. Worse, network storage locations are sensitive to timing and other factors around the storage, and so even equivalent networks are often unique in their storage arrangements.

Neural Networks were popularized by the Connectionist school who thought they could derive some data about the way that networks connected, and figure out what the mathematical equivalence of each connection would be. However this was not to be. There was simply too much individuality between networks for there to be a commonality in connections.

The Selectionists took over from the connectionists, and were able to show that despite individualized connections, neurons in networks tended to self-select if the neurons were mutually inhibitive. The result was the recognition that neurons competed for attention.

The following models give a look at current network models, however it should be noted that as new discoveries are made these models might shift or skew in ways we cannot predict at the moment

 * The Instar Model
 * The Outstar Model
 * The Delay Line Model
 * The Neural Computation Model
 * The Input Layer
 * The Hidden Layer/s
 * The Output Layer
 * Learning new connections
 * Pruning Obsolete Connections


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User talk:Tommytom

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User talk:Gregaudette

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User talk:Madhero88

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Talk:Ethics/Nonkilling/Biology

references section
It is difficult to relate the references section to the main text of the page. Is the original text available in a format that included inline citations to the references? --JWSchmidt 15:52, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

You are right. This article will be edited in the next couple of months in book format (also under GFDL). At that point we will revise all courses at the School of Nonkilling Studies. If you wish, I can send you the original MsWord file to work with it. Please let me know.--Cgnk

If you need robotic or regex help, just shout. Hillgentleman | //\\ |Talk 16:42, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Evolution of human societies
Very relevant topic. The behavioral traits selfishness and altruism are two faces of the same coin [the species] that help the survival of the species.Huamns are probably evolving towards altruistic societies. Evolution of altruistic societies if true must have biological basis. Peaceful coexistence and cooperative living apparently are probable directions for the existence and evolution of human societies. dmrsekhar@yahoo.com. 117.199.112.201 03:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

What about killing?
I find this section unsatisfying. There needs to be at least some acknowledgement of the arguments presented in Azar Gat's War or indeed Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, that intra-species conflict (and killing) in humans extends in an unbroken line back into the mists of time. After all, if we accept that humans have always been omnivorous, and therefore hunters, it is not such a great leap of the imagination to imagine clubs, axes and spears turned to the service of intra- and inter-group oppression. IIRC, Gat claims that ~1 in 25 neolithic humans died of intra-species violence, and that in fact modern warfare, with its spectacular mediatized elements, represents a reduction in intra-species violence.

title: Talk:Ethics/Nonkilling/Biology


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User:Pbfred~enwikiversity

--Pbfred 16:45, 30 January 2009 (UTC)#REDIRECT *Insert text

title: User:Pbfred~enwikiversity


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LaTeX/Two-lined-subscripts

If you want to write a large sum like$$\sum_{i<j ; m\in\mathbf{Z} ; d\in\mathcal{N}}$$ you may want to break the summand into two lines. The problem with \\ or \newline is that they work only in the paragraph mode.

In latex, we can do that by $$ \mathop{\sum_{i<j ; m\in\mathbf{Z}}}_{d\in\mathcal{N}} $$

Or, to do this in-line instead of displayed,

$\displaystyle \mathop{\sum_{i<j ; m\in\mathbf{Z}}}_{d\in\mathcal{N}} $

Here is another solution.

title: LaTeX/Two-lined-subscripts


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Ethics/Nonkilling/Regional/Thailand

 * This Course is based mainly on Professor Chaiwat Satha-Anand (Thammasat University, Thailand) paper Advising Leaders on Nonkilling Politics: Lessons from inside the National Security Community, Thailand prepared for the First Global Nonkilling Leadership Forum, Mu Ryang Sa Buddhist Temple, Honolulu, Hawai‛i, November 1-4, 2007. The Course is part of the Program on Nonkilling Leadership Development at the School of Nonkilling Studies.

Almost a decade ago, I wrote an article explaining why it has been necessary to teach nonviolence to states (Satha-Anand, 1999). There I discussed my experiences with the Thai state when it began to show interest in nonviolence as seen from a number of workshops the National Security Council organized on nonviolence, trainings offered to government officials around the country, and the establishment of a most unique committee, perhaps the only one in the world, the Strategic Nonviolence Committee (SNC), within the National Security Council of Thailand, with the Prime Minister as the Council chairman. The SNC, chaired by a former deputy secretary general of the Thai Na-tional Security Council, is a group of people comprising academics, senior NGOs, and some security officials. Among other things, its task is to come up with nonviolent alterna-tives to cope with rising conflicts for the Thai state, through advising the Prime Ministers. In 2003, the SNC advised the Thai Prime Minister to mobilize government sectors with nonviolence in preparation for the impending violent conflicts between the Thai state and the people. The result was the historic Prime Ministerial Order 187/2546 on “Managing Conflict with Nonviolence Policy.” This brief paper begins with a description of this order, followed by outlining lessons learned from advising the government on nonviolence. It concludes with a discussion of how promoting nonviolence from within the security community crystallizes the notion of nonviolence as nonkilling politics.

Prime Ministerial Order 187/2546
On August 14, 2001, the then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinnawat approved a proposal: “Mobilizing Effective Nonviolence in Thai Society,” put forward by the Strategic Non-violence Committee, National Security Council. The proposal consisted of two compo-nents: an official declaration of adopting nonviolence as a national strategy and a Prime Ministerial Order aiming to implement the strategy. The Grand Strategy aims at na-tional security construed as attempt to prevent conflict from turning violent and to nonviolently transform conflicts. Its objective is to enhance trust between the state and the citizens and to reduce prejudices that have adversely affected relationships among different peoples in the country.

On September 1, 2003, the now deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinnawat signed the Prime Ministerial Order 187/2546 called: “Managing Conflict with Nonviolence Policy.” Reading the future of the country as ridden with various types of conflict es-pecially between the state and the people, it argues that there is a need to reevaluate the ways in which conflicts in Thai society have been dealt with since they have not pro-duced a peaceful and just society where everyone is happy. To continue to use violence would bring about hatred and disunity among the people. The use of violence by the state to deal with conflicts, therefore, would engender extremely high social costs, which would in effect, jeopardize national security.

PM Order 187/2546 maintains that it is the way(s) of life of different peoples who are citizens of the Thai state that needs to be protected; and that protecting and strengthening the ties that bind them together through nonviolence is a national secu-rity innovation needed for a new world facing various types of conflict. It categorically states that “government agencies must give priority to implementing this ‘Managing Conflict with Nonviolence Policy.’ But most importantly, perhaps, are its three main principles which serve as the Order’s theoretical grounds. They are:

 * In coping with conflicts, nonviolence is the only way that is just and would en-gender sustainable peace. It begins with the state and government officials.
 * The attitude which forms the basis of nonviolence is to reduce prejudices and no hatred to peoples who are different. They must not be seen as ene-mies, but instead as friends in a shared life of suffering. The end of nonvio-lent means must be just. The state must accept some burdens for the sake of national security and sustainable peace of the people.
 * The atmosphere and theatre conducive to creativity in order that learning and developing appropriate approaches to conflict in Thai society, informed by pools of local wisdom, must be based on the idea that “cultural diversity and differences of ideas are Thai society’s sources of power.” This will, in turn, increase nonviolent alternatives in dealing with conflicts.

These three principles hide three elements extremely important for the constitution of non-violence policy. They are: inherited nonviolence legacy; local cultural treasures; and political will. Principle no.2 of PM Order 187/2546 has three components: no hatred of anyone; the use of nonviolent actions must be in service of justice; and Thai government officials who follow this Order must be willing to accept self suffering instead of inflicting pain and vio-lence on those who oppose the state. As a matter of fact, this principle is based on a thinly hidden Gandhian legacy of nonviolence. Gandhi once explained that there are four condi-tions necessary for the success of Satyagraha. They are no hatred, just cause, accept self suf-fering, and prayers (Gandhi, 1948:61). Principle 2 embodies three of these four conditions.

In proposing nonviolent actions and to make global nonviolence work, I have al-ways found it important to look for local elements conducive to the specific context I have to work within. Contrary to mainstream security discourse where differences are often times seen as security threats to a country, principle 3 of the PM Order maintains that cultural diversity is a source of national strength and that there exists sufficient lo-cal wisdom conducive to nonviolence policy and practices on Thai cultural soil. If the Gandhian heritage is the ground on which the PM Order 187/2546 stands, and if Thai cultural realities are the local potentials necessary to make this Order work, then Principle no. 1 embodies the political will which maintains that nonviolence is the direction this country must take for a sustainable national security. I would argue that the uncompromising nature of the statement in Principle no. 1, “In coping with con-flicts, ‘nonviolence’ is the only way that is just,” is at once unprecedented and extremely challenging to both those who are against the use of nonviolence and those who have worked hard to nonviolently transform the world, especially in terms of national policy.

Lessons
One of the first few questions often raised about this unusual episode of nonviolence security policy of a country is: why did the Prime Minister who is known for his accep-tance of the use of violence accept the proposal by the SNC in the first place and, more importantly, sign this historic PM Order? I would say that nonviolence security policy in Thailand has come this far not because the leaders understand and accept it, but be-cause they either don’t understand it or don’t believe that it could pose a threat to tradi-tional security, both in terms of its theoretical grounds and effectiveness. Moreover, in my experiences, the work for nonviolence policy from within the security is extremely difficult because of two reasons, among others. First, the degree of resistance to non-violence policy options depends on changing political contexts. In a democratic setting, if the politicians believe that violent options will be more acceptable to the majority, they will not be hesitant in toeing the voters’ line. Second, the idea of nonviolence secu-rity policy is radically different from conventional security discourse. Officials working on security would either try to accommodate nonviolence as a form of their more fa-miliar discourse such as psychological warfare or public relations efforts or to relegate it to marginal importance within the security community. There is therefore a constant need to educate them on nonviolence.

But in recent years, I have found that nonviolence security policy that seems to be ac-ceptable for the state has been primarily based on nonkilling. This is perhaps a result of the dynamics of a contemporary working state, understood as the embodiment of physical vio-lence—epitomized by its monopolization of the use of killing, in the context of increasing democratization and the globalized gaze. By arguing that killing its own people will com-promise the legitimacy of the state in a situation where conflicts are on the rise, the space for accepting the proposal on nonviolence security policy understood more and more by the state as nonkilling within the security community has been critically expanded.

title: Ethics/Nonkilling/Regional/Thailand


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Ethics/Nonkilling/Leadership/Ron Mallone

 * This Course is based mainly on Professor Glenn D. Paige (University of Hawaiʻi) paper Ron Mallone and the Fellowship Party prepared for the First Global Nonkilling Leadership Forum, Mu Ryang Sa Buddhist Temple, Honolulu, Hawai‛i, November 1-4, 2007. The Course is part of the Program on Nonkilling Leadership Development at the School of Nonkilling Studies.

Introduction
In the process of political evolution in which competition among electoral parties seeks to replace armed combat among contenders for power, the appearance of leaders to create a party dedicated to nonkilling principles and programs merits special attention. The experience of Christian pacifist socialist Ronald Stephen Mallone—co-founder on June 11, 1955 of the Fellowship Party, Britain’s only pacifist political party, offers lessons for future nonkilling political party leadership. Principal co-founders of the Fellowship Party with Ron Mallone were Eric Fenner (agnostic anti-war socialist), and John Loverseed (a veteran Battle of Britain fighter pilot who had earlier fought fascism in Spain and subse-quently became a pacifist Methodist). About 40-50 pacifists were present at the founding.

The immediate impetus for mobilizing peace activists to form the Fellowship Party in 1955 was opposition to NATO nuclear war-fighting policies that included deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe. Britain’s traditional parties—Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Democrat—had acquiesced in those policies. Prayers, petitions and protests had been in-effective in opposing them. Thus it was decided that a new party was needed to elect paci-fists to Parliament and other institutions of democratic decision-making power.

The Fellowship Party, whose title was later extended to add “Peacemaking, Social Justice, and Environmentalist,” proclaims “Eight Objects and Principles” to guide party work. They serve as the basis of annual policy-making conferences.

 * Through direct constituency action to work for a government which will act on the principles of nonviolence and social justice.
 * To place loyalty to moral standard above sectional and personal interest and to try to spread these standards everywhere.
 * To work to abolish war by (a) renouncing armed force as an instrument of na-tional policy, (b) by refusing to make, possess or use all weapons of war, (c) re-fusing to let British territory be used by the armed forces of any country, (d) opposing military conscription, (e) refusing to take human life in war and other armed conflicts, and (f) educating our children for peace and against war.
 * To try to persuade all religious organizations and governments to renounce war.
 * To reunite people of all nations irrespective of race, colour, or creed in a nonviolent movement to end war and tyranny and to establish equal rights and opportunities for all beings.
 * To replace power politics by a system of international cooperation based on negotiation, arbitration and conciliation.
 * To work with other countries to end poverty, pollution, ignorance and dis-seases around the world.
 * To remove barriers to freedom of travel and exchange of ideas among nations.

Ron’s long record of nonviolent leadership, continuing courageously at age 91 in 2007, offers lessons to inspire and instruct future nonkilling leaders. Five are noted here.

Lesson 1. The powerful inspiration of nonkilling faith
Ron Mallone became a pacifist at age 15 in 1931 after reading the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6, 7). Henceforth nonkilling Christian faith, inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus has consistently served as source and guide for all efforts to bring about a demilitarized, free, and economically just society in Britain and the world. Ron became a conscientious objector to conscription in WWII, and was deprived of teach-ing employment in public schools. He was a staunch campaigner for the Independence of India and supporter of the Gandhian movement.

Lesson 2. The importance of persistent effort
Since first standing for Parliament in 1959, Mallone as General Secretary of the Fellowship Party has campaigned “unsuccessfully” thirty times for parliamentary and local council seats in London, Woolwich, Kidbrooke, Blackheath, and Greenwich. His highest vote was 1,189 and lowest under 300. Yet he has continued to dialogue personally at 3,000, 30,000, and 60,000 doorsteps over three to six weeks until recently prevented by health limitations. For the long-term task of nonkilling social change, he provides an example of indispensable “at-tempted leadership” that will eventually bring “successful” occupation and “effective” per-formance of nonkilling transformational decision-making roles.

Lesson 3. The importance of communication skills
Ron Mallone demonstrates the importance of diverse communication skills from door-step dialogues, to lay sermons in pacifist-sympathetic churches, to letters to editors, and to producing Day By Day, the extraordinary voice of the Fellowship Party, published every month for 45 years. Written largely by Ron, Day By Day in about 20 stenciled pages presents a critique of selected stories from the British press and world events from the perspective of Fellowship Party principles and pacifist faith. It has a Review of the Arts (books, theater, films) and a Cricket section written by Ron, an avid erudite fan. The more than 500 issues of Day By Day constitute a treasure for nonkilling leader-ship research and training. Ron’s editorship of Day By Day may be compared with Gandhi’s editorship of Indian Opinion in South Africa and later publications in India such as Young India and Harijan (B. R. Nanda et al., The Editor Gandhi and Indian Opinion, Seminar Papers, New Delhi: National Gandhi Museum, 2007).

Lesson 4. The importance of a companion co-worker
Ron’s leadership would be impossible without the unfailing work of his wife Ursula Mal-lone who serves as National Agent of the Fellowship Party. She has accompanied him on every campaign. To produce Day By Day every month she has cranked the old cyclostyle machine some 70,000 times and has stapled and mailed typewritten copies to subscribers in the U.K. and abroad (the Mallones do not have a computer or copy machine). This sug-gests the importance of engaging companion co-workers in nonkilling leadership training.

Lesson 5. The importance of successor(s)
At the 51st annual conference of the Fellowship Party in 2005, nine men and three women were present, none younger than 52 years old. Thirty absentee messages were received. The WWII generation of veterans and pensioners is passing. At age 91 in 2007 there is no clear successor to Ron Mallone whose life and legacy of Day By Day continues to inspire faithful members and readers. This condition can be compared with other nonviolent leaders whose advanced thought and action amidst contrary violent conditions create a gap to be closed by nurturance or spontaneous emergence of youthful successors. Youthful po-tential successors should be engaged in education and training for nonkilling leadership.


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Ethics/Nonkilling/Leadership/Petra Kelly

 * This Course is based mainly on papers presented by Eva Quistorp (Former Member of the European Parliament) and Professor Nancie Caraway (University of Hawaiʻi) at the First Global Nonkilling Leadership Forum, Mu Ryang Sa Buddhist Temple, Honolulu, Hawai‛i, November 1-4, 2007. The Course is part of the Program on Nonkilling Leadership Development at the School of Nonkilling Studies.

PART I
Petra Karin Kelly (1947-1992). An outstanding peace and women’s activist, consumer lobbyist, writer, speaker, since 1968 a visionary, co-founder and a queen of the Greens 1978-1992, a German-American woman talking truth to power and truth to the so-called powerless, an eloquent and passionate speaker to grassroots people as well as to parliaments and presidents, against all mass destruction weapons especially nuclear weapons and its twin nuclear energy as well as against the arms race, a leader for a non-violent world society and a passionate eco-feminist with women for peace in East and West, a winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize, admiring others like Vandana Shiva or the Dalai Lama, a media star for a while and a suffering person, one of the rare women in the memory of public international life, giving inspi-ration to younger activists, criticizing corporate and information-disinformation technology speed-driven globalization and greedy life styles, creating alternatives with politics of hope [Petra Kelly Archive, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Berlin (www.boell.de) and Petra Kelly Foundation, Munich.]

Petra Kelly became my personal and political friend in Dublin during the Festival of the Holy Spirit in 1978. It was at an anti-nuclear energy conference organized by the Trade Union for Transport and the Housewives Association of Ireland. Maybe this was leadership of the holy mother earth spirit. In 1979, I worked with her, Joseph Beuys, her friend Ro-land Vogt, and women from regional citizen groups to build up the Greens in our first European electoral campaign. From 1980 on we worked to build a new kind of party. Petra and I introduced a quota for women and we worked for other measures such as ro-tation in office and limitation of income to distinguish Greens from ordinary politicians.

The last time I talked to her was sometime before her death in 1992 at an interna-tional conference for victims of low-level radiation and uranium mining in Berlin. We saw a film about the children of Chernobyl and went to the first European Buddhist conference with the leitmotiv “Unity in Diversity.” It was also the founding slogan of the Greens, often quoted by Petra and me. We thought about what it meant to live it—in personal relationships, in traditional and alternative institutions, and in the Greens which she wanted to be an “anti-party Party.”

In October 1992 it was only a few hours after I received the news of her death and that of her friend Gert Bastian, who was suspected as her murderer, that I received a tele-phone call from Glenn Paige in Hawai‛i who asked, “Eva, did you receive the package with Petra’s speeches in the book we published Nonviolence Speaks to Power?” This is a won-derful book which reached me at the right moment. I recommend it to you all. (Text online at www.globalnonviolence.org.) The book is not only about Petra but about the thinking and actions of the nonviolent social movements and thousands of creative non-violent actions in Germany and Europe, Australia, the USA, and India where Petra trav-eled. There are speeches which touch upon current debates such as the ongoing scandal of millions of children dying of hunger and HIV while budgets of the military, arms indus-tries, and security research rise in millions. (See Stockholm International Peace Re-search Institute, www.sipri.org; and International Peace Bureau, www.ipb.org.)

Historical Context
Petra Kelly’s life and death by being killed, her writings, talks, and political actions can only be understood in the context of 20th century history—the role of German militarism and different counter forces, strong trade unions, left parties, and the strong forgotten former women’s peace movement with Bertha von Suttner, Lydia Gustava Heymann, Anita Augsburg, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Petra learned her political lessons in the Civil Rights Movement and election cam-paigns of Hubert Humphrey and Robert Kennedy in the USA. Like many of her gen-eration she had the chance to admire Martin Luther King, Gandhi, the Berrigan broth-ers, the women’s liberation movement, the Boston health collective, Bella Abzug, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Nelson Mandela and Miriam Makeba, Rachel Carson, and the nonviolent United Farm Workers led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Heurta.

The historical context at the end of the 1970s when Petra stepped forward to provide nonviolent leadership to bring different milieus, groups, and personalities together was ex-tremely violent. There were heavy debates and internal struggles about the use of violence among left and anti-nuke movements, anti-imperialist and anti-militarist groups and sects, and about the Soviet Union and guerrilla wars in Latin America. 1977 saw left terrorist vio-lence of the Red Army Fraktion (RAF), partly state overreaction, and the start of terrorist violence in Palestine with invitations to young fanatics to join terrorist training camps.

To be engaged and lead within social movements amidst such burdens, internal strug-gles, and media hysteria was difficult. Are you on the side of the state or with left vio-lence? Only small groups in Germany such as members of the War Resisters International (WRI) were fully convinced believers in nonviolence. Most people had no knowledge of the nonviolent actions of Gandhi, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, Solidarity in Poland, or Gene Sharp’s history of the power of nonviolence (The Politics of Nonviolent Action, 1973). The thinking of Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, or Vaclav Havel was not known to the broader public or even to the academic community before the 1990s. The thinking of Erich Fromm (“To have or to be—the art of love”) had come up in the 1960s but had been forgotten. Many did not like the violence of the left but had no clear spiritual and political leaders for nonviolent alternatives. Rudi Dutschke, the German student movement leader, a friend of mine who supported the Greens in 1979, had been nearly killed when he spoke out clearly against terror in the history of the left and against so-called counter-violence against violence of the state and imperialist powers.

Many Germans did not know about nonviolent resistance at various times in their own history. For example, parts of the Protestant Reformation can be seen as a wave of nonviolent change before the outbreak of the Thirty Years War. The democratic strug-gles in Europe around 1848 can also be viewed as part of a nonviolent tradition of so-cial and democratic change which provided the context for Petra, the Greens, and the people’s movement of the 1980s.

Lessons
Given this context what are some important lessons from Petra’s leadership experience?

 * 1. Petra Kelly was open and talented to learn critically about the history of her birth country Germany and to learn in the United States, a more free country at that time, how to empower herself as an academic woman and how to get in-volved in public debates and election campaigns for the sake of peace and dis-armament, for defense of the climate, environment, and consumer interests. She prepared herself well to be ready to take a public role, speaking different languages and collecting professional experiences in the European Commis-sion, reading about international security politics and knowing its institutions.

 * 2. Petra was very much motivated to be almost overactive and courageous be-cause she saw herself first as a representative of her little sister Grace who died young from leukemia which she attributed to nuclear radiation. Petra followed her suffering in the hospital. Then she came to see improving the dignity of ill and dying persons in hospitals as a global issue. Thjs led her to fight against nuclear radiation from uranium mining, testing of weapons, and building and deploying nuclear weapons. She vowed that war crimes such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as using indigenous people as “guinea pigs” for testing should never happen again. Petra was very sensitive to the suffer-ing of people both near to her and far away. She sought to give them voice and to organize help and recognition of their dignity. She did not fear to show emotions and sometimes to express them directly. She had high moral standards and worked to change the situation of suffering people, including verbally attacking those who caused their pain.

 * 3. Petra wanted daily violence against women and girls to be taken as seriously as academic debates about new weapons systems. She brought a lawsuit against the magazine Stern because they portrayed her in a sexist way, some-thing that males and even gay politicians nowadays do not need to suffer. She was aware that nonviolent leadership for women faced more tasks and chal-lenges in view of centuries of violence against women in different cultures and religions, renewed in the modern media age by commercialization of nearly every value and sensibility.

Leadership of women is an especially complicated challenge when they are not imitating the rules of competition, authority structures, quotation circles, and power games—but wish to have children, care for their parents or grandparents, and want to be independent of narrow role models. Women leaders face daunting tasks when they stand against sexism, subtle forms of discrimination, disrespect of good mothers, while expressing emotional and spiritual qualities and carrying on the unseen and mostly unpaid work of inte-grating and empowering groups and democratic movements.

 * 4. Petra wanted and could relate directly and indirectly to democratic traditions and nonviolent traditions of resistance in European, American, and German history. She related directly to Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, to Pastors Niemoller and Bonhoeffer of the confessing Church, to the many women who helped Jews to survive, and to those who fought against propaganda of the Nazi regime even in 1933. Many of them were murdered like those who tried to kill the tyrant Hitler and Goebbels as did George Elser in Munich in 1939. One of her heroes was Rosa Luxembourg who believed that the international work-ers’ movement could stop the First World War. Another was the less men-tioned but important role model for peace activists and journalists, Bertha von Suttner, who founded the German Peace Society, and organized women against the First World War. Bertha von Suttner inspired many in the anti-war move-ment with her book Die Waffen Nieder (Lay Down Your Arms, 1889) and encour-aged her friend Alfred Nobel to establish the Nobel Peace Prize.

 * 5. Petra’s leadership emerged amidst the pregnant momentum and birth giving of the new anti-nuclear and ecology movements of the 1960s and 1980s when creative actions were possible and new thinking and forms of organiz-ing started all over Europe and in parts of Latin America, the United States, and Asia. It was a time of reforestation and tree planting by Wanghaari Mathai in Africa, of food cooperatives, first solar cookers, of houses for bat-tered women, of new rural and urban projects in community family living. It was at a time of struggle between community living projects, critical scien-tists, and trade unions against Reagan superpower Cold War policies involv-ing NATO. Then Petra Kelly and the German Greens got their moment in history in cooperation with dissident groups in Eastern Europe.

They grasped the moment and started to build new democratic institutions, created a broad critical public and electorate, new forms of democratic politi-cal participation, alternative media, and new peace and ecological research in-stitutions. It was our chance and we used it with fresh enthusiasm for a lively democracy and more participation of citizens in global issues to defend our common goods. We should not forget that Charter 77 started at the same time in Czechoslovakia and that Solidarity in Poland started in 1980 one year after the Greens were founded.

 * 6. Petra Kelly, like some other founding personalities of the Greens and coor-dinators of the national peace movement, knew how to use the moment of global awakening in the fields of ecology and women’s rights. They built upon growing citizen groups and knew how to use the very good postwar German Constitution for a democratic experiment to institutionalize new al-liances of eco-women, peace movements, and projects. They used the spirit of Willy Brandt, his new Ostpolitik and the North South Commission. Not to forget! “Demokratie wagen!” Take courage for democracy!

 * 7. One of Petra’s talents for nonviolent leadership was always to be well in-formed about different views in the country in which she was traveling and acting. She sought to support democratic tendencies wherever she went through nonviolent interventions. Like many women activists of the 1970s and since, she linked the rights of women and girls with issues of peace and a just world economy. She stood against the politics of hunger and poverty by big business, global banks, financial speculations, unjust terms of trade, industrial agriculture, and structural adjustment programmes of the International Mone-tary Fund (IMF). Beyond protest, however, all the speeches and writings of Petra Kelly are marked by enthusiastic search for nonviolent alternatives.

 * 8. Petra was open to learning from and cooperating with personalities and groups in different fields who were struggling for new thinking. Among them, Mikhail Gorbachev, whom we both met in Moscow in 1987; writers like Nobel Literature laureate Heinrich Böll in Germany and Lew and Olga Kopelew in Russia; Ralph Nader, consumer lobbyist against big multinational corporations; common friends like Daniel Ellsberg, Randall Forsberg, and Joan Baez in the USA; Vandana Shiva in India; Solange Fernex in France; Helen Caldicott in Australia; Freda Meissner Blau in Austria; Emma Bonino in Italy; and not least the Dalai Lama whom she loved a lot and to whom she introduced me in 1987. She also was writing letters to Pope John Paul II.

 * 9. Like many leaders for active nonviolence, justice, and disarmament, Petra could not continue her work and life as she hoped. She could not finish the work and plans she had in mind. She died too early at age 47, probably murdered by her friend, Gert Bastian, whom she called “soul mate,” with whom she had been living for many years and who suffered from some kind of depression.

How this tragedy happened and under what conditions are heavy questions which perhaps we cannot answer. But we have to pose them with sensitivity and clarity. This is because we cannot make too simple heroes and angels out of leaders for strategies for nonviolent change in international politics, not even Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nel-son Mandela, or the Dalai Lama who did not have the difficulty of being a woman in that role. Maybe some secret services were involved in her murder as in other political cases. But human weaknesses always have an influence in victories and defeats of social movements and in implementation of visions. Among them envy, jealousy, fear, lust for power or fame, sexism, anti-Semitism, racism, lack of patience, procrastination, lack of a sense of reality and of the historic or social moment, incapacity for good compromise, maximalism, opportunism, and illusions.

Petra Kelly Today
What would Petra Kelly say or do if she were active today? How would she see her own party and movement in different countries? What would she have learned about herself?

This is what I think as a longtime political friend and partner in the global women’s peace movement and in the European and global Greens. I think she would relate to lady leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma and to journalist Anna Politowskaya in Russia. She would have invited both of them to the German parliament. Especially at a time when the politics of the empire of fear are not only weakening democracy and reason in the USA but also in Russia, China, Iran and other areas. She would join human rights and women’s rights activists to develop multiple critics of power in the globalized world economy faced with the challenges of climate change and the nuclear arms race in Asia and the Middle East. Petra immediately would have flown to Guantanamo and put questions to Parliament on if and where secret services are using torture.

She would have criticized Al Gore and Bill Clinton for not signing the Kyoto Pro-tocol or the Treaty for the International Criminal Court. She would have participated in the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre and Mumbai together with Arundhati Roy. She would support the Climate Alliance of Cities and Mayors for Peace. She would visit Shirin Ebadi in Teheran and little Greepeace groups and students in prison there. She would miss Anna Lindh, the murdered foreign minister of Sweden. She would deeply miss her Grandmother. But maybe Petra would take more time to listen to music, to go to the grave of her sister Grace, and to buy local food or cook with products from fair trade—boycotting products of Monsanto, Nestle, and Coca Cola and all the structural killing done by bio-pirates of multinational companies and their legions of scientists. Maybe she would learn to walk without fear along the river Rhine and choose men more luckily who would support her. She would think about her own carbon emissions by flying and try to reduce them or compensate.

She would love to be with everyone in the First Global Nonkilling Leadership Fo-rum in Honolulu and to join the work in progress for creating a Center for Global Nonkilling and a Global Nonkilling Leadership Academy.

I close by quoting her: “Peace has a wide meaning, I believe, for all of us here; it means far more than the absence of weapons of mass destruction and the absence of the thinking of military blocs. Peace is also the positive external and internal condition in which people are free, are not exploited and are living so that they can grow to their full potential.”

Context and Personality
Nancie Caraway, Ph.D Writer "Soulmates: the Passion of Petra Kelly"

The reductionist description required by the publicist of my play Soulmates, The Passion of Petra Kelly, which was performed at the National Women’s Museum in Washington, DC in 1992, cannot begin to capture the spirit and gravitas and courage of the historical Petra Kelly. Although the inspired sweep of Kelly’s rambunctious life evokes high drama, lofty ideals, and the tragic mood of grand opera, Kelly’s worldview and political originality are deeply grounded in modernity’s most audacious experiment in radical social change.

It was here in this sacred space, the Mu Ryang Sa Korean Buddhist Temple in Honolulu, that I first met Kelly in the mid-1980s. I feel her presence in this nurturing space. Kelly would have been 60 years old at the end of this month (November 29, 2007)—and to honor the materiality of this connection, I have brought mementos (books, photographs, Tibetan prayer flags, Die Grünen posters, and the silk scarf given to me by The Dalai Lama in Kelly’s memory) to symbolize her life and works. In addi-tion, I wanted to add nuance and texture to an academic talk because, inarguably, Petra Kelly was unlike any other of the male nonviolent leaders discussed here today.

She was a modern, high-spirited, playful woman—“larger than life” would not be an exaggerated description of her personality. Kelly’s political theory was influenced by the very European leftist theorists and activists about whom I was devoting my gradu-ate research at that first meeting back then: Rosa Luxembourg, Emma Goldman, and the revolutionary German Social Democrats. Her life embodied their teachings—defused of male aggression and the residual patriarchy common to all social theory at which the Greens directed their critiques. Like Luxembourg and Goldman, Kelly pos-sessed riveting rhetorical brilliance, humanity and compassion. Her fierce commitment to a nonviolent politics and world remains her most powerful teaching.

Overblown clichés like “tireless” and “selfless” hover over Kelly’s image, but it must be said that her commitment and dedication to the most vital causes of the end of the last century—world peace, nonviolence, human rights, environmental protection and feminism—astound in their intensity. She wisely eschewed the corruptions of hero worship and moralism, but displayed considerable residues of determination. The world of political expediency, compromise and greed—the “old, top-down politics from above” as the Greens defined the status-quo political zeitgeist—would more than once exert a wounding personal toll on Kelly.

Kelly’s ideas—and those of her daring, albeit bellicose, colleagues in the Greens, sparked a burning global movement to change politics as usual and to link leadership to the grass-roots as Green principles avowed. The Greens’ ideology was based on the fol-lowing major “pillars”:

 * Ecology
 * Social responsibility
 * Grassroots, people’s democracy
 * Nonviolence

The eclectic Greens’ triumphant march into the German Bundestag in March of 1983, ushered an epochal moment into global reformist politics. The bold German ex-periment quickly swept to Western Europe, the US, Australia, Canada, Japan and the metropoles of Latin America. The sight of the long-haired, casually-dressed Green par-liamentarians—Kelly herself wore blue jeans, high boots, and carried a tree seedling—in their parade to the Parliament—became iconic images to the world media. Kelly said of these exhilarating times, “When we entered the Bundestag, we offered a splash of ir-reverence to those somber chambers.”

By virtue of Kelly’s charisma and her fluency in English (she had attended school and university in the US), Kelly became the spokesperson for the Greens. Masters of creating daring symbolic politics and slogans, Green ideas quickly spread to other fledgling Green initiatives around the world. The “new paradigm” for authentic politics taught:

 * Think globally - act locally.
 * Greens are neither left nor right, but in front.
 * Greens are the anti-party party.

Lessons, Pedagogy and Petra Kelly’s Legacy
Given the combative, verbal mode of German political debate, the Greens were not immune to jealousies and criticism. Kelly, possessed of a healthy ego herself, became the lightening rod for much of the internal Green dysfunction. Coupled with a largely un-treated tendency toward panic attacks, Kelly was often hospitalized for “exhaus-tion.” She often spoke of feelings of anguish and loneliness to her close confidants. In this her life illustrates the existential implications of political life—and a lack of com-mitment among the Greens to acknowledge the need for nurturing antidotes (retreats, exercise, meditation, conflict-resolution skills). The structural demands of working with hostile “mainstream” attributes of German public life, contributed to breakdowns be-tween principles and realpolitik:

 * The dichotomy between the personal and the political
 * The savage interpersonal dynamics within the Greens—ideological battles among the “red” (Marxist) and “green” (spiritual/feminist) factions
 * The difficulty of transforming a grassroots social/citizen’s movement into an electoral, parliamentary system.

Moving into the electoral system placed enormous stress on the Greens and Kelly in particular. The demands of campaigning and the constant critical scrutiny of the media, always ready to highlight fights among Greens and ridiculing their “hippie” dress, etc.—intensified negative interpersonal relations. The Greens were expected to spit out fully-developed positions on scores of issues almost as soon as they were elected. And because “true” Green politics demanded nothing less than “a transformation of the self,” their own efforts at achieving a “peaceful” politics failed. Kelly wrote in her 1994 collection of speeches and essays Thinking Green:

Kelly felt this existential challenge perhaps more acutely than the dominant male Green leaders, surely to her disadvantage. Her isolation intensified when she suffered a humiliating loss in her bid to join the national executive board of the Greens in 1991, re-ceiving only a few votes. The story of Kelly’s alienation from the party for whom she had been the leading candidate for European elections in 1979, is a complicated spiral of be-trayal and disappointment, and beyond the scope of this paper (See Sara Parkin’s biogra-phy The Life and Death of Petra Kelly). A nuanced understanding of her life as a path break-ing feminist public figure, is indeed a cautionary tale about the personal toll that can be exacted on highly-visible women public figures. Buffeted by jealousies and the loss of a public platform as a Green leader, Kelly’s sense of abandonment was intense. Friends re-port positive steps in her struggle to rebuild her public life at the time of her brutal murder at the hands of her fellow Green, Gert Bastian, in 1992. The cruel irony that the life of one of the world’s most visible nonviolent advocates ended by the ultimate violent human action, murder, echos back to the motivating impulse for a nonkilling politics itself.

Kelly’s legacy is rich in inspiration. Her life warns us to avoid the urge toward self-righteousness. Kelly’s uniquely tragic life doesn’t offer a vision of sainthood—she sub-scribed much too deeply to a modern consciousness of pessimistic optimism which condemns us to live together in a constant challenge of co-existence. I think that Kelly would say to us in our own moment of global vulnerability—a world more threatened than the one she left in 1992—we may not succeed in transforming our deepest selves, but that we may revisit our losses with less regret.

As with the lessons learned from the tumultuous history and anguished wisdom of President Abraham Lincoln, Petra Kelly now “belongs to the ages” (Adam Gopkin, “Ängels and Ages: Lincoln’s Language and its Legacy,” The New Yorker, May 28, 2007). She lived in the skin of our times and tried to embody the peacemaker’s maxim: “Peace begins here with me.” In Fighting for Hope (1984), Kelly’s meditation on nonviolence, she evokes Martin Luther King’s struggle: “We are not armed and we make an easy target, but we will not cut ourselves off from life. We have gentleness, force of numbers, free-dom from domination on our side, and the solidarity to overcome all divisions. Our motto is: ‘Be gentle and subversive’” (p. 32; italics mine).

If this motto—to be both gentle and subversive—animated Kelly’s life, it most cer-tainly reveals her contradictions as well. In the end, her life as a nonviolent peacemaker is worthy of the highest celebration and the most passionate observance.


text:
Ethics/Nonkilling/Leadership/Martin Luther King, Jr.

 * This Course is based mainly on Professor Bernard LaFayette, Jr.(University of Rhode Island) paper Lessons from the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. prepared for the First Global Nonkilling Leadership Forum, Mu Ryang Sa Buddhist Temple, Honolulu, Hawai‛i, November 1-4, 2007. The Course is part of the Program on Nonkilling Leadership Development at the School of Nonkilling Studies.

The life and philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. provides a text for learning how to understand and live in a world of conflict and change without creating conflict or be-coming a passive victim of the negative conflict and violence. He was able to create a psychological framework, philosophical understanding and a theological position to es-tablish an effective strategy to respond to the surrounding violence in a way that trans-formed the violence rather than conform to it.

He taught that refusal to retaliate to violence was not an act of cowardness, but could be an act of strength or even courage. King insisted that to practice his philoso-phy courage was required. Courage in the face of violence is a form of resistance. He was a non-conformist. The strength that King acquired from taking courageous stands against injustice came as a result of his vision of a “Beloved Community.” He was act-ing in a way to show others his vision of a new kind of community, a new way of life, a new relationship that was possible with one another as people in the global society. For him the “Beloved Community” was a destination that required a pilgrimage, which in-volved change. First, it requires change of ourselves. How we see ourselves influences how we see others. How we see others impacts our behavior towards others. King calls upon us not only to see others in a different light but also to try to see ourselves and the world through the eyes of others (especially our opponents). By seeing the world and ourselves through the eyes of the opponent, we can pinpoint the change we want to make to create that “Beloved Community.”

Nonviolence is not only standing against what is wrong, but also standing for what is right. For King the “Beloved Community” is not a distant geography in the sky, but rather a day to day existence of revolving relationships with loved ones and ones to be loved. Love is the basic ethic that informs the methodology and strategy for achieving the goal. The means cannot be justified by the ends. In order to achieve a “Beloved Community” the process must be consistent with the end. Unjust means cannot be used to achieve a just end. Agape is the love force employed in the nonviolent process.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was recognized as an American philosopher by the Ameri-can Philosophical Association. Most philosophers have an ideal society or utopia. For King the “Beloved Community” was his utopia.

However, his utopia is found in micro-communities as well as the global commu-nity. Interpersonal relations are equally important in King’s view. The King approach denied one’s emotions to take the lead when responding to a conflict. The response has to be based on an understanding of the conditions that surround the conflict or issue. To attack the person or persons involved is not a solution to the problem but rather a temporary halt to a pending onslaught.

In most cases violence or injustice is couched in a condition that victimizes the perpetrators as well as their intended victims. While the behavior of the individual(s) must discontinue, the policies, political and economic structures that support the condi-tions must also be addressed, otherwise no permanent change will occur.

While examining the conditions that host the conflict, violence or injustice, it is es-sential to study the history of those conditions. Most often the conditions are influ-enced by a set of values. These values have to be taken into consideration. For some people values are relative, interchangeable and caught rather than taught. Some people operate on a set of values based on the environment at a given time. Some people have personal values that are different in group settings.

Dr. King focused on systemic change rather than replacing individuals and leaving the conditions in place. In the process of changing the conditions, it was important for King to identify to what extent those who stand by in silence support the system. In many cases those who suffer from the system help to perpetuate the condition by co-operating with it. Therefore, one of the first steps in changing an unjust condition is to persuade the victims to withdraw their participation from the unjust system. It may mean accepting suffering. This type of suffering is voluntary and is for a good cause that leads to change. Non-cooperation requires that the individual take many things into consideration. Among them would be the relationship of individual non-cooperation compared to group non-cooperation. The larger community may not be directly af-fected by the condition, but may support such as by sympathetic strikes.

King’s approach was to raise awareness of the conditions by dramatizing the injus-tices. By dramatizing the injustices he was fully aware that the opposition power struc-ture would react in a way to reinforce the conditions using a greater amount of physical force. This direct action served to bring to the surface the inhuman conditions that support the system, thus creating a power base of sympathy that served to counter-balance the power of the opponent and weighed in on creating a just solution.

This approach was seen as a strategy in addition to taking a personal stand against an unjust condition. When one takes a stand against an unjust condition, it does not re-quire one to have a mean spirit or negative attitude against the person or persons. In fact, it is necessary to move against the injustice or violence with the force of love. One must avoid doing violence to one’s own spirit or the spirit of the opponent. It is not ef-fective to make decisions based on anger and negative emotions.

Our goal in nonviolence reconciliation is to win the opponent over by showing a better side of ourselves as human beings. Our example must be one that should be rep-licated by others. Therefore, we must be at our best by showing our better side.

Leadership is critical in any campaign, especially in a nonviolent campaign. The leadership sets the tone. When attacks are being made against the group, whether verbal or physical, the leader cannot retaliate in kind. In such circumstances the leader must be strong, courageous and resistant by taking the high ground. In the words of a popular freedom song, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round.”

King as a strategist knew that an important factor in mounting a campaign was to carefully select the focus of the campaign. Problems usually have many components. These components are like spirals that connect to a central base. To focus on one or two spirals would be futile because the others would continue to grow. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the points of connection and identify the problem as a whole with its many facets. However, when selecting a specific issue, one should select a goal that is within range, one that can be reached in a short period of time.

It is important that the main action be local but the problem be identified in a much broader arena. It is necessary to show the relation of the local condition to global condi-tions. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” teaches M.L .King, Jr. It is nec-essary to continue to relate the local issue to a change of perception and a change of behav-ior. Local action is controllable and can be continued and sustained over a period of time.

Escalation of action should be in proportion to the reaction of the opponent. The concept of negotiation/direct action according to King’s teachings is that one must al-ways be willing to negotiate. However, it is not necessary to stop action while talking. In fact it is thought that action helps to keep the talks more sincere. It was King’s view that one must always give his opponent a way to save face and that any outcome that is considered a victory must be a collaborative victory to be celebrated.

King also aimed at a solution that was over-arching and embraced a number of is-sues. An example would be the Selma Movement that addressed voter registration problems and voting practices in a number of states in both the North and the South. The poll tax in Texas, election procedures in Illinois and literacy tests in New York, as well as in a number of other states were eliminated as a result of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Act locally, aim globally.

A critical stage of any movement is when the opponent’s acts of violence have overwhelmed the proponents for change and the spirit is down. The question is how does one maintain the momentum and confidence that the campaign can succeed? Dr. King was faced with many such moments in the course of his movements.

One of the most important lessons King taught us was to never lose faith in the cause. The first step is to keep on pushing even when you are not strong. Never lose faith in yourself and do not be overcome. The inspiration to continue comes from those who have given their lives to the cause and for the cause. The inspiration comes from the writ-ings of those who have faced more difficult struggles in the times of their lives.

Finally there is the music, which is the blood in the life of the movement. As long as we can sing, we will always be free.