Keyvan Minoukadeh

Reported in The Local…

Swedish police have asked the military for assistance as peace activists from across Europe head to Swedish Lapland to demonstrate against a NATO aerial exercise.

NATO’s Response Force (NRF) will be in the northern reaches of Sweden on June 8th to begin an eight day exercise involving over 50 fighter jets and 1,000 soldiers from ten countries.

Sweden is not a member of NATO and peace activists from Germany, Finland and the UK are expected to descend on the country for demonstrations to protest against the exercise which has been given the name “Loyal Arrow.”

… While Swedish forces are not participating in Loyal Arrow the country is a designated host country and is providing logistical support including air space, airports and areas to bomb.

To get involved in the protest actions, or find out more, visit Ofog’s info page: Royal Error

From JNV:

The British Government is holding an Armed Forces Day on 27 June.

Peace News is calling on peace groups and individual activists around
the country to celebrate Unarmed Forces Day instead!

Unarmed Forces Day is a celebration of the power of nonviolence, and a
protest against an attempt by the British government to shore up
support for its unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by rallying the
British public around the armed forces.

Men work together. Thousands Stream into the industrial plants and offices—they come in cars, and subways, in buses, in trains—they work together, according to a rhythm measured by the experts, with methods worked out by experts, not too fast, not too slow, but together; each a part of the whole…. Produce, consume, enjoy together, in step, without asking questions. That is the rhythm of their lives.

What kind of men, then, does our society need? What is the “social character” suited to twentieth-century Capitalism?

It needs men who co-operate smoothly in large groups; want to consume more and more, and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated.

It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority, or principle, or conscience—yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected, to fit into the social machine without friction. How can man be guided without force, led without leaders, be prompted without any aim—except the one to be on the move, to function, to go ahead…?

Erich Fromm, writing about different views on maturity and mental health in his book The Sane Society, has this to say about the popular view in the West:

The concept of “maturity” and “mental health” in this view, corresponds to the desirable attitude of a worker or employee in industry or business. To give one example for this adjustment concept, I take a definition by Dr. Strecker, on emotional maturity. “I define maturity,” he says, “as the ability to stick to a job, the capacity to give more on any job than is asked for, reliability, persistence to carry out a plan regardless of the difficulties, the ability to work with other people under organization and authority, the ability to make decisions, a will to life, flexibility, independence, and tolerance.” It is quite clear that what Strecker here describes as maturity are the virtues of a good worker, employee or soldier in the big social organisations of our time; they are qualities which are usually mentioned in advertisements for a junior executive. To him and many others who think like him, maturity is the same as adjustment to our society, without ever raising the question whether this adjustment is to a healthy or a pathological way of conducting one’s life.

The Pixelache team in Helsinki, Finland have posted up videos from this year’s event. ZNet’s Michael Albert was there talking about Participatory Economics (Parecon):

Despite the cold outside, it was a nice, interesting event. I spent a few minutes presenting the Five Filters project in the open forum, but best of all, I got to catch up with the lovely Susanna again.