Tranquil Evolution - A Silent Non-Violent Transformation of Power

- By Bahram Maskanian

Much remarkable and enlightening research has been done regarding humankind’s mental and emotional volatility.  Our emotional and mental state fluctuates in reaction to our surrounding environment, events and circumstances, on some of which we may have no control.  Our emotional and mental states ranges from happy, or intense euphoria, to sad, or extreme sorrow, and excessive madness, to aggression and violent behavior.   When we are under stress, even the most sane, rational and psychologically stable people react and behave with aggression and violent outburst due to the feelings of fear and insecurity in any given threatening condition. 

The crowd-control guards, security forces, police and military personnel are no exception to the rule, they are people too.  And if they feel threatened by the protesting crowd, even in a non-violent act of civil disobedience, it would be very difficult for them to adjust their preconditioned mindset of fearing disobedient crowds, and not to react.  The security forces are trained to perceive any rebellious groups of people disruptive and a threat to themselves and the society.  But if the security forces are invited to join in, and made feel at ease and part of the crowd, and reminded that their duty is to protect and defend the people, their fellow citizens, the protester’s safety, security, civil and human rights, not the oppressive elites, then the behavior will change to guard and protect the people.

We all know very well that power is addictive.  Power bestowed by the state upon the security forces separates the members of the public, from the members of security forces, thus creating a wall of distrust between the public and the security force’s personnel that is supposed to protect the public.  To remove this wall of distrust, we, the people must use non-threatening, kind and respectful behavior, a non-violent means of bringing the public and the security force’s personnel to work together as one, towards a common cause, a peaceful prosperous change for the entire nation.

"Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely".

One very important fact should never be forgotten, that even the best-trained and civilized security forces are the employees of the very same government, which protesters are rising up against to overthrow. The security forces job training is focused on protecting the system. The security forces are representatives and protectors of the system that trained them and pays their salary. Any attack on the said government is perceived as an attack on the security forces as well. When and where the security forces feeling threatened, will react violently with force to protect itself and its commanding system. Try to imagine for a moment if you are standing guard while crowds of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of protesters are approaching towards you, or are walking / marching right by you.

The protesting crowd’s intense energy, mixed with fear generated by its size and potential danger it represents, would be best understood and observed as a non-threatening, non-violent and all-inclusive act of civil disobedience, a positive force and energy, if the protesters kept a safe distance from the security forces while marching, silently, with their printed banners, or singing / chanting calmly, their messages of hope, peace, prosperity and a better future for all, making friendly eye contact, smiling and waving to their fellow citizens: the security forces. The only way to neutralize the security forces fear is by presenting positive constructive behavior and messages.

A Non-Violent Tranquil Evolution could take place where people are engaged in social and political protests demanding peaceful political change, free from violence, destructive commotion, or disturbance, composed of all inclusive messages of hope, peace, prosperity and better future for all; presented in a calm, free from any negative messages, anxiety, tension, or threat.  A Non-Violent Tranquil Evolution spirit will transform the crowd-control security forces attitude from the adversary and opponent of the uprising protesters, into a concerned and sympathetic compatriot.

A Non-Violent Tranquil Evolution requires a meticulous and careful planning, to first and foremost protect the protesting public from any harm.  It must be organized very well to prevent any social unrest and also must employ effective means to expose and remove the plant disruptive hoodlums.  The security forces personal can easily decipher between the isolated anti-people goons, and the rest of the peaceful protesting crowds. 

The Silent Majority:
For every one person participating in a massive public uprising, there are thousands who are silently watching and carefully examining the cause, before taking any actions themselves. The silent majority needs the activists help to stay focused and understand clearly what types of messages of hope, reconciliation and change are being exhibited.   The protesting public should exhibit a unifying, coherent, unambiguous, positive, constructive, all-inclusive messages and demands, and must stay put with their demands in a non-violent and uncompromising spirit, until achieving complete evolutionary success.

The only way any non-violent and evolutionary social uprising can gather momentum, popularity and trust among large segment of the public; the silent majority, is through their hopeful, cooperative, positive and promising messages, plus the determination and the behavior of the protesters and the political activists involved.  Those in the predicament similar to the Iranian / Persian people will not take a chance of supporting another monster government, in the hope of a quick metamorphosis to a gentle one after the bloodshed is over and regime is toppled.

Must Stay Away From:
A Non-Violent Tranquil Evolution activists and movements must absolutely stay away from any and all damaging and destructive messages such as, but not limited to: DEATH TO THIS, OR DEATH TO THAT, or any other negative slogans. Instead we must focus on our positive messages of hope, cooperation, tranquility, prosperity, reconciliation and in general a better, secure and flourishing future for all of the Iranian / Persian people.

We must allow ourselves the freedom from fear, anger and revenge, to become a proud, confident and forgiving nation, who can vote our hopes and inspirations, not our fears and anger.

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Definition of Evolution:
Evolution is a gradual process in which something changes and evolves into a different, more complex and better than the original form. Evolution is the means of progressive development, growth and change into a further enhanced, multifaceted and improved biological existence.

Evolution is the process in which biological organisms change with passage of time, mainly as a result of natural adaptation and natural selection, so that descendants differ morphologically and physiologically from their ancestors. Evolution is a historical development, a natural movement that is part of a set of ordered of natural arrangements.

Evolution in political, social and economic sense is no different that the biological one. After all, we are complex biological form and destined to evolve, a process that cannot be stopped, even by us, the human beings: the most ignorant, short sighted, blood thirsty, destructive and savage of all other creatures on Earth.

No other creature, large, or small has ever try so hard in so many different ways to annihilate itself and its habitat with such determination, as we do. We must learn to grow up and stop, to continue to evolve.

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Benefits of Silence:
Silence creates an environment conducive to rational thinking and reasoning.  Silence prevents the usual attacks and disruption brought upon the protesters who wish to share their peaceful message with others.  Silence encourages and increases the level of concentration and the absorption of messages for peaceful change by the bystanders and the security forces.  Power of Silence enforces and galvanizes peaceful assembly and demonstration.

Silent mass public demonstration elevates the respectability level of the marching crowds, to higher than that of the crowd-control police or guards. The spirit of calm mass uprising automatically generates respect and elevates the crowd to a higher position of importance, over and above the security forces. Calm mass uprising will encourage the crowd-control police not to act with force but rather with respect towards the protesting calm crowds.

Massive Non-Violence, Complete Calm and Absolute Silent Uprising is the remedy for the liberation of the Iranian / Persian people from the shackles of the Islamic regime.  It would shake the mullah’s regime to its core. It would destroy the crumbling foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran and pulverize the mullahs’ tyrannical rule. The overwhelming and powerful sight of a Massive Non-Violence, Complete Calm and Absolute Silent Uprising would put the fear of judgment in the heartless mullahs.

Failure or success of any massive uprising for peaceful change rests upon the behavior and presentation of the message of change. The message and its delivery system must be unambiguous and clear.  The opposing forces of any such change will do whatever they can to disrupt and derail such uprising.  The only way that a righteous uprising can succeed in a tyrannical ruling system is by silently communicating their messages of hope, peace and prosperity for all.

Try to imagine the captivating powerful sight and silent energy of hundreds of thousands of people, shoulder-to-shoulder, determined and silently marching to communicate their messages of change and hope for better life for all.  As far as the eye can see, people are carrying signs full of messages of peace and tranquility.  The demonstrators are walking silently while communicating their message.  All you can hear is the quiet hum of arms brushing against each other, the whistling of the wind blowing through the signs, the rustling of the demonstrators’ bodies, the rumbling sounds of footsteps of hundreds of thousands of people, cutting through the utter silence. The silent determination and its energy, underlying messages of love and hope would put the fear of supreme power of truth and judgment in the hearts of the misguided, and shall places love and hope of a better life for all in the hearts of the righteous.

Massive Non-Violence, Complete Calm and Absolute Silent Uprising, is a non-threatening and yet silently powerful means of delivering messages of peace and hope.  It does not agitate and it does not give the enemy ammunition to attack and violate people’s rights. Subconsciously it generates enormous amount of respect and a natural reaction of backing off and stepping down by the security forces and the regime itself. 

Any other form of protest may cause disruption and acts of violence due to the nature of communication. The messages of traditional forms of political, social protest are usually carried out by loud chanting, political rhetoric, symbolic slogans, arm waving and other bodily gestures, all of which may be perceived as violent moves on behalf of the protesters. Those who witness such demonstrations can easily become distracted and lose track of what the nature of messages are due to the noise and physical activity. The message becomes muddled, misunderstood and is eventually lost to the public.

Consequently, in addition to the loss of message, the protest would turn into a disorderly conduct and be perceived by the public as violent civil disorder. Those in charge of peacekeeping are easily agitated by the noise and provoked into using force against the protesters. As a result, the protest turns into a riot, a criminal activity and thus the cause and the message is lost.

There are two different kinds of violence, one is unintended and the other is intentional, caused by individual hoodlums whose job is to provoke and cause violent behavior within the protesting crowds. While demonstrating in a Massive Non-Violence, Complete Calm and Absolute Silent Uprising environment it would be easy to root out the agitating individuals planted by the criminal elites. When amongst calmly marching people, any person or persons shouting propaganda, causing disturbance, breaking shop windows and burning people’s cars, thus providing the necessary excuse for the authorities to crackdown and attack the demonstrating public.  The protesting public should peacefully identify and root out the criminal elite’s elements, and quickly create a circle around the hoodlums and keep a safe distance from them and the commotion.  

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The Next Step, How Can We Achieve Absolute Silent Uprising?

One should not have any fear while in pursuit of a noble cause, making it possible for millions of our fellow Persians / Iranians and others to live their lives free from fear and intimidation.  To be free is to imagine, free from fear and coercion, to love, learn, laugh and live without fear in one’s heart.

Revolutionary chaotic violent changes; bought and paid for by the criminal foreign and domestic elites, promising democracy, founded by fire, bullets, murder, bloodshed and destruction, could just as easily be toppled and destroyed by bloodshed and bullets.  We, the people should not forget that those who live by a sword; will be killed by a sword.

I firmly believe democracies, which are truly founded by the people, for the people shall not parish as so long as the soul of the public is the driving force behind it.  True and stable democracy can only be achieved through a calm non-violent and respectful popular uprising.  That is what I would like to promote and encourage.

I am absolutely positive that there are thousands, or even millions of Persians / Iranians in Iran and the rest of the world who are willing to give up their fortune and lives to abolish the Islamic Republic of Mullahs’ tyrannical dictatorship.  That is exactly what the mullahs would want to happen.  They would love an endless opportunity to shoot and kill the opposing progressive thinkers, labeling them “terrorists”, or “enemies of God”, or “enemies of Islam” and under the banner of law enforcement and social stability, put an end to the whole idea of true democracy.  This does not propagate democracy.  It will kill it.

The ruling brutal and criminal dictators and their cronies will not surrender their power and control of Iran’s vast natural wealth, through elections.  Persian / Iranian people can easily initiate and undertake the necessary democratic changes through a non-violent referendum in Iran, so long as the United States of Nation-Less Corporations, and the Europe Union of Nation-Less Corporations stop interfering and stop supporting the terrorist mullahs’ regime in Iran. 

We must ask of our fellow freedom loving Americans and Europeans to join us, and demand for an immediate halt of all governmental and corporate support to the Islamic Republic of Mullahs’ tyrannical regime in Iran, and freeze of all of the Iranian criminal elites assets and bank accounts.

The next objective is to organize, organize and organize.  It takes a relatively small group of talented, committed and caring individuals to organize millions.   Progressive thinking Persians / Iranians are a fragmented but patriotic groups with lots of good ideas but sadly, with no organization that is cohesive and far reaching enough to bring them around a round table for a true democratic exchange and discussion.  I believe it is our duty to create such a think tank organization dedicated to this task.

We must create our own Bill of Rights and Deceleration of Independence for our fellow Iranians / Persians to support and rally around, as our center of gravity, a common unifying initiative, and offer a new alternative form of government to the current criminal regime in Iran.  I have taken the liberty of writing a model Constitution and Bill of Rights, for our fellow Iranians / Persians citizens to review, make suggestions and vote upon to ratify. 

We need to raise funds for massive advertising campaigns in Europe and the U.S. to capture the Iranian / Persian, American and European public’s attention in order to invite them to get involved and contribute financially, intellectually and or otherwise.

Massive Non-Violence, Complete Calm and Absolute Silent Uprising must be tested and demonstrated in the United States and Europe.  I am positive that our fellow peace-loving Americans, Europeans and Persians in a show of solidarity with the shackled people of Iran would demonstrate with us in the Absolute Silent Uprising manner in the streets of United States and Europe, illustrating the overwhelming power and effectiveness of the idea to the world and to the ruling criminal mullahs.

We must also finalize and print a model Constitution in Persian and English, which essentially would be a platform based on which we can all agree to organize a temporary government.  Once we have a large assembly of people approving and signing the model Constitution and Bill of Rights we can all gather around it and form a strong, unified, one voice opposition to the current mullah’s regime. 

This opposition shall have the legitimacy, strength and enough signatures to provide the ability to negotiate with good faith with foreign dignitaries and governments to stop the flow of help to the mullahs and facilitate a free, democratic and non-interventionist referendum by the Iranians. 

The long-reaching arm of Internet is a wonderful tool for the dissemination of information.  But forming an organization requires face-to-face discussion and planning.  Once we can manage to successfully create one such organizational entity in the United States, we can replicate and duplicate the same concept in all other major cities to be used as a unifying center of gravity for all people particularly Persians / Iranians.

Since the inception of the criminal regime in Iran, I have researched a variety of different ideas, political, social, and economical.  History proves that one cannot set up any system of government based on past traditions and customs.  Government should be established based on present social, economic and political conditions. 

Government must match the criteria and spirit of the society, which it rules, therefore, obviously any regime that relies upon a one-man system as a king or Prime Minister or President is a recipe for disaster.  I think I have dealt with the issue in the model Constitution.

The era of religious, tribal wars and any other kind of silly territorial war is over.  We have pushed the envelope deep and far enough to know that it is stupid and wrong.  We have made marvelous advancements in killing each other in mass quantities.  Now it’s time to turn our brilliant ingenuity and creativity into repairing our damaged living environment, Planet Earth.  We must invent new ways, customs and traditions that fit in today’s social, economic and political conditions to govern ourselves and heal the wounds of past behavior.

Please do not hesitate to write us with your comments and suggestions, declare your readiness and join us to participate in the next plan of action.

Defiance Without Violence - Energize, Organize And Mobilize

"Things that will destroy humanity are:
Politics without principle;
Pleasure without conscience;
Wealth without work;
Knowledge without character;
Business without morality;
Science without humanity;
And worship without sacrifice." - Mahatma Gandhi - (1869-1948)

Price Of Liberty Is The Everlasting Eternal Vigilance Of The Citizens.

Dangerous and Deadly School Buses

- By Bahram Maskanian

Ralph Nader's 1965 book, “Unsafe at Any Speed”, captured the world’s attention to fix a few deadly problems such as: lack of seat belts in every day ordinary cars. Seat belts were available at the time, but for rich folks only, in exotic auto parts stores, where they were expensive and customers needed to hire a mechanic to bolt them to the car's floorboards.

Fact is that even at low speed of 15 miles an hour, a car wreck could propel passengers into the metal dashboard, or snap the driver's neck on the metal steering wheel. At mid-speed car wrecks, 25 miles an hour, passengers could be thrown into the windshield, which was made of "safety glass" that could chisel and cut a passenger's face and body.

Car doors were not attached to the car's body firmly enough to withstand collision forces, and would often pop open, or blow off in an accident, which would instantly make the car's frame and the passengers inside much more likely to be crumpled by the crash.

Thanks to Ralph Nader’s hard work and efforts the hazards of cars and driving has been modestly reduced. 

But what I do not understand is how could the bus manufacturers not learn anything from the above lessons, and over look the very same dangerous settings that existed in the 1965 cars, allowing the same dangerous conditions to still exist in today’s school buses, endangering the lives of our children, our little angels.

All school buses cross the U.S. are not equipped with seat belts, no air conditioner, and many of them with no heat.  There are so many rules and regulations regarding child safety seats within passenger cars to protect one child, shouldn’t we also mandate to make rules and regulations for protecting a bus load of our little angels, our children; 20, or 30 of them traveling in the most dangerous, badly designed and built bus in the history? 

Buses with no safety of any kind, no seat belts, and at low speed of 10, or 15 miles an hour bus wreck, children are thrown all over the place, bouncing off the hard metal seats edge, hard glass windows and the metal body of the bus, getting badly hurt and or killed.

Three point retractable, lap and shoulder safety seat-belt with push button release buckle, come with matching contoured sleeve, buckle, tongue cover, with two-inch guide loop, sold for quantity of 10, or more for $30 each, plus half an hour $15 installation charges per seat belt, as shown in the image below. I am sure we can all agree that if we were to buy thousands of these belts the price would be whole lot cheaper that $30 a piece.  

To retrofit a 30 seats school bus it would take 2 installers and 7.5 hours time, at the cost of $1,350 for the whole school bus, parts and labor included.

Adding the typical bribes, kickbacks, and inflated fraudulent prices U.S. Government officials pay for purchasing products, such as $900 toilet seat, the price of a seat belt would come to $3,500 each, plus $1,500 installation charges per seat belt, thus the total for retrofitting a 30 seats school bus would come to $150,000.

Contact Department of Transportation in Washington DC, your congress representatives, and discuss this issue with them, demanding an immediate and safe solution. 

U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Ave, SE
Washington, DC 20590
Main Switchboard: 1-202-366-4000
Tool Free: 1-866-377-8642
http://www.dot.gov/

When Culture, Power and Sex Collide

LINDA MARTíN ALCOFF - June 8, 2011, 9:15 pm - The New York Times

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

The recent events swirling about the ex-next-president of France, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, have revived old tropes about how culture affects sex, including sexual violence. Before this scandal, many continued to believe that Americans are still infected by their Puritan past in matters sexuel, while the French are just chauds lapins: hot rabbits. The supposed difference consisted of not only a heightened sexual activity but an altered set of conventions about where to draw the line between benign sexual interaction and harassment. The French, many believed, drew that line differently.

The number of women speaking out in France post-scandal calls into question this easy embrace of relativism. French women, it appears, don't appreciate groping any more than anyone else, at least not unwanted groping. A French journalist, Tristane Banon, who alleged that she was assaulted by Strauss-Kahn in 2002, described him as a "chimpanzee in rut," which draws a much less sympathetic picture than anything to do with rabbits. Still, some continue to hold that the French have a higher level of tolerance for extramarital affairs and a greater respect for a politician's right to privacy. But neither of these factors provide an excuse for harassment and rape.

Conventions of workplace interaction do vary by culture. In Latin America and parts of Europe, kissing is the normal mode of greeting, and to refuse a kiss may well appear cold. Kissing co-workers in New York, however, can elicit mixed signals, at least outside of the fashion district. One does need to know the relevant cultural conventions to be able to communicate with effective ease. In other words, one needs to be a cultural relativist to know when one is being hit upon.

The more thorny question is whether relativism is relevant to those domains we generally want to put in the non-benign category: harassment, sexual coercion, even sexual violence. Could it be that offensiveness is relative to the perspective of the recipient, based on her own cultural sensibilities? More troubling, could it be that our very experience of an encounter might be significantly affected by our background, upbringing, culture, ethnicity, in short, by what Michel Foucault called our discourse?

Violent and brutal encounters, even for sado-masochists, are unlikely candidates as culturally relative experiences. But much harassment and even rape is cloudier than this: date rapes, statutory rapes, and many instances of harassment can be subject to multiple interpretations, which has given rise to the new term popular on college campuses — "gray" rape. The writer Mary Gaitskill famously argued some years back that the binary categories of rape/not-rape were simply insufficient to classify the thick complexity of her own experience. In this netherworld of ambiguous experiences, can understanding cultural relativism be useful?

Feminist theory, some might be surprised to learn, has been exploring this possibility for some years. There is a great deal of work on the realm of fantasy, and desires approached through fantasy, as a means to understand the different ways women can experience varied sexual practices. Women's sexual responsiveness varies, and feminism has endeavored to honor the variation rather than move too quickly toward moral and political hierarchies of legitimate practice.

Fantasies can vary by culture and context, and they operate to create an overlay of meaningfulness on top of actual experience. The result is that fantasies provide projections of meanings that seem to control the determination of events, affecting the way we narrate and name our experience, and even the sensations we feel. This suggests a picture of an idea-body encountering another idea-body, with the fantasy projections rather than any physical characteristics of the encounter, controlling the production of experience.

Such an approach, however, can lead one to discount experience altogether. Whether workplace pornography is experienced as threatening or a reminder of the sexual power of women is simply relative to one's expectations and prior predilections, some might say. Those who take offense are simply operating with the "wrong paradigm." This has the danger of returning us to pre-feminist days when women's own first person reports and interpretations of their experiences were routinely set aside in favor of more "objective" analyses given by doctors, psychiatrists, and social scientists, inevitably male.

The slide toward a complete relativism on these matters can be halted on two counts. First, there is the question of the physical body. Sex, as Lenin correctly argued, is not akin to having a glass of water. It involves uniquely sensitive parts of the body around which every culture has devised elaborate meanings, from adulation to abomination. The genitals are simply unique in the role they play for reproduction and physical ecstasy, and no discourse can operate as if this is not true. A light touch on the shoulder and a light touch on the genitals elicit distinct sensations. The body is not infinitely alterable by discourse.

Second, there is the question of power. Differences in status and the capacity for economic self-sufficiency — not to mention the capacity for self-regard — compromise the integrity of consent, no matter the culture. Status differences can occur along the lines of age, class, race, nationality, citizenship and gender (all of which apply to the alleged attempted rape by Strauss-Kahn of an immigrant housekeeper). Power differences alone cannot determine whether something is benign or harmful, but they do signal danger. It cannot be the case that cultural context can render power differences completely meaningless. Obvious power differences in sexual relations should raise a red flag, no matter which color one's culture uses to signal danger.

While cultural conventions on power and sex may vary, the impact of sexual violence does not. Sexual violations should be universally defined, and universally enforced.

Linda Martín Alcoff is a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York. She has written and edited several books, including “Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self ” (Oxford University Press, 2006). More of her work can be found at her Web site.