Suzanne Ross
Co-founder of the Raven Foundation
Website URL: www.ravenfoundation.org E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Responding to BP: The Dark Side of Justice
Suzanne discusses the impact protests are having on independently owned BP service stations.
Link to story on NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127747890
Warmongers for Peace
I welcomed the op-ed piece by Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist and journalist, in the New York Times, Israeli Force, Adrift on the Sea (June 2, 2010). He makes the case that the violent outcome of the Monday, May 31, Israeli military interception of a flotilla trying to break the blockade of the Gaza strip in which 9 civilians were killed was the result of Israel’s increasing reliance on methods of violence to maintain security. Oz writes that “since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has been fixated on military force” so much so that their mantra has become “what can’t be done by force can be done with even greater force.” While conceding the “efficacy of force” for a nation’s survival, Oz nevertheless pleads with Israel to understand the limits of violence.
Up to this point, I found myself in full agreement with his argument. As an American citizen who critiques her own government’s reliance on force to achieve peace and security, I felt a spiritual kinship with Oz as he performed the same role for his country. But in his conclusions, the kinship I felt frayed as he asserted that “force is effective only as a preventative – to prevent the destruction and conquest of Israel, to protect our lives and freedom. Every attempt to use force not as a preventative measure, not in self-defense, but instead as a means of smashing problems and squashing ideas, will lead to more disasters.” I offer this lengthy quote because it gives evidence of an all too common detour away from the truth about violence.
The detour is the claim of self-defense. In the blockade of Gaza, Israel’s December 2008 invasion of Gaza, and Monday’s raid on the flotilla, Israel claims to be acting in self-defense. Every rocket launch and every violent action taken by Hamas is also in the name of self-defense. The claim of self-defense is the number one justification of violence and it is always proffered in the name of peace. Combatants always claim to have had no other choice but to violently defend themselves against aggression and so, as René Girard writes so insightfully in Battling to the End, we become “warmongers out of pacificism” (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010, 181).
The conclusion I wish Oz and every government would arrive at is that every attempt to use force, regardless of the reason, will lead to more disasters and more violence. That is the simple truth about violence. Peace will become a possibility only when we stop detouring around it.
Demystifying the Myth of the Terrorist Revenge Attack
This article in The Atlantic is about the "myth" of terrorist revenge but the writer Jeffrey Goldberg fails to see how he is a victim of the myth of good violence as well. Because that's what revenge is after all, responding to the bad violence of my enemy with my good violence. Goldberg plays the "he started it" game, a classic kindergarten tactic to avoid responsibility for your own violence and then ends up with "but hey, they are wrong and we're right" gambit to claim the mantle of goodness for his violence. When will we see the symmetry between us and our enemies when we both claim the right to use violence for ourselves and condemn it in each other? The only moral claim here would be to reject the use of violence as a means to achieve any end, because any end, no matter how good, cannot survive as good if it requires the death of others to achieve it. That is the truth behind the myth that Goldberg and his enemies both need to see.
The Culprit and the Scapegoat in Political Scandals
Suzanne discusses political scandals and scapegoating.
Be A Lucky One
My friends Michael McLean and John Batdorf wrote a musical video that John performs for an organization in L.A. called “Urban Compass working to stop youth violence.” The music video begins with an unsettling lyric: “There are refugees among us who are not from foreign shores” who are not making the headlines, who suffer unseen and untended to within our midst. Then statistics appear: Violence is the leading cause of death for young people in every major city and 80% of violence victims are between the ages of 18 and 24.
Part 1: Hey, That's My Onion
For Dostoevsky, broken human relationships have their origin in broken God relationships.
What do you think is the meaning of the onion parable?
Part 2: Dostoevsky's Politics
How did Dostoevsky's social world influence his thinking? Let us know what you think.
Part 3: Notes from the Underground
Interdividuality - for Dostoevsky, there is no one - two is the minimum number for existence.
Part 4: Dialogic Truth
Are we independent and autonomous, or are we dependent and interdividual?
Part 5: The Old Buffoon
Papa Karamazov demonstrates the anatomy of an insult.
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