[Sorry for not publishing lately. I recently spent 4 days in the hospital dealing with some ill-effects from my recent knee replacement surgery. And while the new knee is doing great, I still find myself very tired from an unexpected infection and early sepsis.]
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You know, it might be my recent illness. But these days I can’t listen to the news without sobbing. Really.
Just the terms genocide, Raffa, Zionists, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), settler colonialism, apartheid, 2000-pound bombs (supplied using my tax dollars), and unrestricted infanticide are enough to make me cry.
And let’s be clear. This is not a war. It’s a genocide. And our president Genocide Joe Biden is at the heart of it along with that butcher, Bibi Netanyahu.
No, it’s not a war. The only army with its air force, tanks, and sophisticated weapons (including a nuclear arsenal) is the IOF. Hamas is a rag tag group of Palestinian freedom fighters armed with Kalashnikovs and protected by an elaborate tunnel system that Zionist butchers find impossible to penetrate.
And their completely justified resistance did not begin on October 7th. It was a response to nearly 100 years of slaughter and mayhem at the bloody hands of Israeli Neo-Nazis.
I keep imagining my grandchildren and their mothers suffering the way little Gazans are. Can you imagine watching them undergo amputations without benefit of anesthesia? The Zionists evidently love it. They’re sadists.
Yes, they’re committing war crimes before our very eyes – using food and water as weapons, bombing hospitals and schools, administering collective punishment, executing hospital patients with their hands tied behind their backs, beheading some, and machine-gunning starving Palestinians waiting in line for food. When is all this going to stop?
Can you imagine the outcry if Russia performed such atrocities in Ukraine? We’d never hear the end of it. I mean the ICC without a moment’s hesitation issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for removing children from a war zone. Nothing of the sort for Netanyahu, much less for Genocide Joe. They both deserve to be hung the way Nazis were for the genocide they committed in those prison camps that were the precursors of Gaza, “the world’s largest open-air prison” – itself a concentration camp.
Thank God for student protestors at Colombia, Princeton, at the New School, and elsewhere. Shame on the administrators of those institutions for calling in the police to harass and arrest peaceful demonstrators. Such a disgrace to “higher education.”
And then there’s the Mainstream Media (MSM) normalizing it all. This morning’s New York Times published a lead article entitled “The Debate over Rafah.” In it they completely normalized genocide, presenting the dilemma facing Butcher Bibi and Genocide Joe. Here, they said, are the arguments on both sides of the question! There are good reasons for Israel to invade, and equally valid reasons not to. That is: there are good reasons for genocide and equally good reasons against.
Every word written in that vein should make anyone sick. We should all be in tears.
As a life-long academic, I’m still smarting from watching Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, being bullied during her nearly four-hour testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The House committee was convened to uncover anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses in the context of students protesting the genocide taking place before our eyes in Gaza and on the West Bank.
It was embarrassing to see President Minouche Shafik grovel before congress-members who evidently know nothing about higher education. Adopting her best baby fundie voice and attitude, she squirmed, smiled, and assured her interrogators that student “mobs” protesting Zionist genocide would be duly restricted and professors exposing students to Palestinian history and viewpoints would be fired.
Previously, the committee exuding full redolence of the McCarthy era, had been successful in forcing the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. The resignations resulted from the women’s alleged failures to restrict student demonstrations on their campuses against the slaughter taking place in Palestine over the past six months.
Evidently, the intention in grilling president Shafik was to add a third victim to their list of forced presidential resignations.
While my disappointment with the Colombia president was real, my heart went out to the poor woman. She seemed intimidated, anxious to please, fawning, and frankly fearful of losing her job.
Imagine having to answer questions like the one posed by Representative Lisa McClain (R Michigan). She demanded a “yes or no” answer to her question: “Are mobs shouting, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ or ‘long live the infanttada (sic)’ – are those antisemitic comments. Yes or no?
In response, poor Ms. Shafik was at a complete loss for words.
She shouldn’t have been.
As an academic, she should have had the wherewithal to say, “Ms. McClain, that’s not a yes or no question. It’s like the old saw, “’Yes or no, are you still beating your wife?’ Or like my asking you, ‘Tell me, yes or no, are you still accepting bribes from the military-industrial complex.’ I mean, it’s either a trick gotcha question or (with all due respect) an ignorant one. The answer is complicated.
“For example, Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed the slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ to define Israel’s ambitions in Palestine. Yes, he has. You can Google it. Was Netanyahu’s (as you put it) an anti-Semitic comment? Remember the Palestinians are Semites too. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten that.”
“Do you see the complications I’m talking about?’
And as for your questions about Intifada. . .. (And by the way, it’s pronounced ‘in-teh-fah-dah’ not ‘infant-tah-dah’) Do you know what the word means? Yes or no, do you?
“In case you don’t, let me tell you it refers to aggressive nonviolent resistance to illegal Zionist occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem by the apartheid Israeli government. You can Google that too.
“And even if such protests turned violent, are you familiar with Article 51of the UN Charter? Yes or no.
“I can see by your hesitation, that perhaps you don’t. So let me inform you that Article 51 gives the right to those in illegally occupied territories to use violence against their occupiers.”
It would have been fun to see Ms. McClain squirm a bit and to hear her comments.
Can’t be done, you say?
Yes, it can.
Left-wing member of the British Parliament George Galloway showed how. In 2005 he testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He had been accused of making a questionable oil deal on behalf of his campaign to end the Iraq war. Had the deal included a kick-back to the then villain of the hour, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein? Yes or no.
Here’s a shortened version of how he addressed his questioners. (It’s also worth reviewing his entire 48-minute statement):
Had President Shafik adopted George Galloway’s confidence and tone, she would have said something like this:
“Honorable congress-members, thank you for inviting me here today and offering me opportunity to defend the University of Colombia and its students from the slander, calumny, and outright lies endorsed by this committee. Let me assure you that Colombia University today under my leadership is the same institution of higher learning that its proud history has always shown it to be. In that tradition, we have a first-class faculty that has been vetted, constantly peer-reviewed, and evaluated, and held to the highest standards. Those standards require professors in every discipline to introduce students to all sides of every debate. There can no limits to topics addressed. Absolutely none. So, for you to summon me here under accusations that a topic or point of view forbidden by the state has been addressed, discussed, or expressed by members of our faculty is frankly insulting. It is also insulting for you to demand that I dismiss Columbia faculty members on the mere accusation of their engaging in speech forbidden by the state. We have rules and procedures at Colombia that restrict such precipitous termination without hearings and deliberation by faculty commissions. That is, your demands reveal a profound misunderstanding of the function and democratic procedures governing higher education. Similarly, your evident desire to prevent students from taking sides with the victims of genocide now unfolding in Gaza flies in the face of our university’s valued tradition of freedom of expression, and of our nation’s Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and the right of petition. In this committee, you seem unaware that more than 34,000 Gazans (fully half of them children and their mothers) have been slaughtered by the Zionists over the last six months before our very eyes. At Colombia, we are proud that our students can recognize such genocide and reject the very crimes that you, are aiding and abetting. I mean, everyone here who has voted to supply the Zionists with arms is guilty of genocide. Shame on you all! Your participation in that crime reveals this present reincarnation of McCarthyism for what it is. This hearing is nothing more than a smokescreen to divert public attention from your crimes and from those of Zionist apartheid settler-colonialists. Again, I thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight.”
Yes, Ms. Shafik could have responded just as George Galloway did. That she didn’t shows how not only our representatives and the mass media have become agents of state propaganda. So has higher education.
Just so you know, and as if you care, here’s why I haven’t been posting much lately. I’ve just had my second knee replacement (last Tuesday – 4 days ago).
Happily, the recovery process is going even better than the first which occurred five months ago. I’m already walking without a cane. And the pain is under control without use of opioids.
But, of course, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking about what’s happening in our world. Like you, I’m horrified by Gaza, the genocide unfolding there; Ukraine, what’s happening in the South China Sea; identification of Russia, China, and Iran as our mortal enemies; D.C.’s absence of any diplomacy whatsoever, and its complete reliance on force, regime change, and terrorism . . .. That’s just a short list of concerns.
And the hell of it is that the United States is ultimately responsible for all of it. ALL OF IT!! As Dr. King put it, the U.S. remains “the world’s greatest purveyor of violence.” If our country fell off the map tomorrow, the world would be so much better off.
Think about it . . .. We have 4.2% of the world’ population; China has 18.5%; India slightly more; Africa too. Then there’s Latin America, and South Asia. And yet despite being an extreme minority, “we” claim the right to rule the entire world, to fill it with weapons, and to maintain more than 800 military bases across the planet. It’s racism. It’s arrogance. It’s criminal.
Meanwhile I’ve heard that the rest of the world’s countries combined have 70 bases outside their national boundaries. China has like one! It hasn’t fired a bullet outside its national territory in the last 40 years. Yet, our “leaders” want us to believe the China is somehow our enemy and the aggressor.
It’s enough to make sick anyone with a pulse and functioning conscience.
And now they’re talking about winnable nuclear war! Are they completely crazy? Of course they are. They’ll kill us all. And lest there be any doubt, I’m talking about the ancient white men who are making catastrophic decisions about our grandchildren’s (lack of) future.
Do they have grandchildren? Do they love them at all? Are they completely nuts?
And I don’t see it getting any better. How can it? For instance, our choice next November is between Genocide Joe and Dumb Donald Trump. Dimwit incompetents! Neither of them and virtually none of our politicians are in the same intellectual and diplomatic league as Putin or Xi. Jinping.
The truth is that our system of government is completely outmoded. It just doesn’t work. It’s frozen. It can’t do anything about the real issues except make them worse. I’m talking about global warming, the threat of nuclear war, genocide unfolding before our eyes, and improving the lives of ordinary people.
They don’t care!
Instead, they focus on what in the large scheme of things are ultimately non-issues: immigration, abortion, appropriate bathrooms, the war in Ukraine (which they provoked). Billions and billions for war, while “Americans” live under bridges and are imprisoned at rates that dwarf those of China or Russia.
What, after all, is Ukraine to us? I don’t get the obsession.
Have you seen our subways? Have you seen theirs? China has more than 25,000 miles of high- speed rail in country and have built hundreds of thousands of railway miles elsewhere. We have virtually none.
Their economies are growing and prospering. Their leaders have approval ratings north of 80%. And we’re stuck with Genocide Joe and Dumb Donald whose plans for making America great are to exclude immigrants like our great grandparents. Yeah, that will fix it all, I’m sure!
And get over it; there’s no question here about democracy vs. authoritarianism. We have two parties. That’s just one more than one. And both are in the hip pockets of the 1%. It’s a “uniparty” completely dedicated to the welfare of the politicians’ donors. They care NOTHING about us. Don’t be fooled.
Vote accordingly! There’s no future in what we have.
Last week at least 137 Russians were killed at the Crocus rock concert outside of Moscow. Untold numbers were wounded, some remaining in critical condition. ISIS K has claimed responsibility.
However, do you know who’s truly responsible according to “Democracy Now” (DN)?
“Putin!”
That’s the takeaway the show’s audience was left with at the end of today’s program (3/25/24).
The presentation said little about the attack itself, much less about its impact on the Russian people. Nothing at all about how or by whom the attack was planned. Nothing but denials about Ukraine, and not even a mention of possible U.S. involvement.
Instead, it was all about “Putin” (never “President Putin” or “Mr. Putin,” only a disdainful “Putin.”)
Accordingly, DN centralized interviews with two anti-Kremlin guests whose evident intention it was to blame the whole tragedy on the Russian president. The guests were Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of international affairs at the New School, and Moscow correspondent of The New Yorker, Joshua Yaffa. According to both:
The attack represents a major failure of Putin and his security apparatus.
It was the result of longstanding Russian mistreatment of the country’s substantial Muslim population.
The United States had responsibly and generously warned the Kremlin about the impending attack.
However, its paranoid president chose to ignore the warnings referring to them as “blackmail.”
Moreover, with zero evidence, only the Russian president’s “paranoia” has made him accuse Ukraine of being involved.
Furthermore, It’s a mistake to jump to the conclusion that the perpetrators of the attack were attempting an escape to Ukraine, since their route was interrupted by Russian police 140 miles from that supposed destination.
After all, Putin’s interests are not in protecting the Russian people, but only his own authoritarian regime that has been responsible for the assassination of Alexi Navalny and has imprisoned more people than were incarcerated under previous Soviet leaders.
Shockingly, when they appeared in court, those arrested for the crime bore marks of torture.
And of course, Russia’s (already week’s long) attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure is an attempt to divert attention from Putin’s own failures.
I found all that extremely disappointing – especially since (to her credit) Amy Goodman’s coverage of world events does not usually follow the direction mandated by U.S. propaganda. However, in this case, it clearly did.
Instead of the usual denunciations of “Putin” it would have been much more informative to investigate the actual perpetrators of last week’s massacre. Ex-CIA personnel such as Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson could have helped with that. So could an interview with Scott Ritter (see below). Together or separately, they might have contextualized the horrific event by pointing out:
Victoria Nuland’s cryptic statement about “nasty surprises” in store for Russia in its near future.
The Russian president’s un-paranoid reasons for suspecting U.S. involvement in the attack given longstanding U.S connections with ISIS in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere to wage war specifically against Russia.
A long history of U.S. sponsorship of terrorist attacks on Russia including its recent destruction of the Nord Stream Pipeline.
John Kirby’s strange premature disavowal of Ukrainian responsibility for the massacre before allowing any time whatsoever for investigation. (This was like the immediate indictment of “Putin” for the death of Alexi Navalny and for that of Yevgeny Prigozhin before their corpses were even cold.)
The attack’s convenient (for the west) and distracting effect in the wake of Mr. Putin’s recent landslide victory in a presidential election that (according to non-Russian sources) witnessed a voter turnout of 70% and a vote 87% for Mr. Putin.
In any case, here’s what Russian expert and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had to say about the Crocus tragedy:
The attack indeed represents a puzzling failure on the part of President Putin’s security apparatus. It has much to answer for.
However, that’s far from the point that needs highlighting – viz., the event’s perpetrators and possible connections to Russia’s avowed enemies, Ukraine, and the United States.
The attack’s attribution to Muslim terrorists also provides reason to doubt such jihadist identification since the killers untypically accepted money for their crime and did not choose “martyrdom” rather than surrender in its aftermath.
On March 7th (well before the Russian elections) the United States did indeed issue a warning to U.S. residents in Russia about impending terrorist attacks and the advisability of staying away from large gatherings such as concerts.
The Russians “know everything” about the attack and the destination of its fleeing perpetrators.
Principal sources of official information are the captured cell phones of the fugitives.
Additionally, their phone conversations were intercepted in real time as they fled towards the Ukrainian border.
Both sources also contain incriminating information such as videos made while casing the crime site just before Russia’s presidential elections.
Such evidence suggests that the mass shooting was planned to disrupt that process, but that heavy security surrounding it forced postponement of the crime.
Phone information has also allowed authorities to track down the terrorist cell in Moscow that provided logistical support for their comrades.
All those arrested are currently divulging much more information that will soon come to light.
The lesson to be drawn from all this is one of extreme caution. Putin is not the issue here. Possible connection with Ukraine and the CIA is.
And regardless of what we might think of Scott Ritter’s analysis, it signals the complications of the questions at hand, the importance of not jumping to conclusions and of asking the right questions.
Propaganda, fake news, changing the subject, and gaslighting are everywhere. Even “Democracy Now,” even Amy Goodman are not immune from disseminating Russophobia. They too can be fooled by the Grand Wurlitzer of U.S. propaganda voiced by characters such as Khrushcheva, and Jaffa.
The lesson here (as always) is to focus on the heart of the matter, don’t allow misdirection of attention; retain constant suspicion of anything our government tells you. They’re all liars. Ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo put it best when he said as much.
Readings for Palm Sunday: John 12: 12-16; Isaiah 50: 4-7; Psalm 22: 17-24; Philippians 2: 6-11; Mark 14: 15-47
Today is Palm Sunday. For Christians, it begins “Holy Week” which recalls Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday), his Last Supper (Holy Thursday), his torture and execution (Good Friday), and his resurrection from the dead as the culmination of a long history that began with the liberation of Hebrew slaves from Egypt (Holy Saturday).
As just noted, the saga begins today by recalling what the Christian Testament remembers as the day when Jesus was greeted by chanting throngs as he entered the city seated on a donkey while the crowds waved palm branches and shouted “Hosanna.” They spread their cloaks before the animal that bore him to the temple precincts where he famously evicted money changers and vendors of sacrificial animals.
The event is full of political significance for those of us whose government has proudly inherited the mantle of the Roman Empire. That’s because the supposed events of Palm Sunday were probably part of a much larger general demonstration of faithful Jews including Jesus against the oppression that is part and parcel of all imperial systems including our own. As such, today’s narrative calls us to resistance of U.S. Empire as Rome’s contemporary successor.
To understand what I mean, consider (1) the significance of the Jerusalem demonstration itself and the role that palms played in its unfolding, (2) the demonstration’s chant “Hosanna, Son of David” and (3) the meaning of all this for our own lives.
Jerusalem Direct Action
For starters, think about what actually happened in Jerusalem during that first Demonstration of Palms.
Note at the outset that if the event wasn’t a whole-cloth invention of the early church, it’s highly unlikely that Jesus would have entered Jerusalem as a universally acclaimed figure. That’s because the gospels make it clear that all during his “public life,” Jesus confined his activities of healing and speaking to small villages where his audiences were poor illiterate peasants.
Given their small numbers, poverty and the expenses of travel and lodging, their massive presence in Jerusalem would have been highly unlikely. This meant that Jesus’ profile would have remained exceedingly low in larger cities and nearly non-existent in his nation’s capital city, Jerusalem. He would have been largely unknown there.
Again, if the event happened at all, it is more likely that the part Jesus and his disciples played in it was marginal and supportive of a larger parade and demonstration supported by well-organized revolutionaries such as Judah’s Zealot cadres whose raison d’etre was the expulsion of the occupying forces from Rome.
This also means that the demonstration’s climax with its “cleansing of the temple” would probably have represented a much larger assault on the sacred precincts where only large numbers of protestors would have stood any hope of impact rather than an individual construction worker supported by 12 fishermen.
(Remember, the residence of the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, was actually attached to the temple itself. So were the barracks of Jerusalem’s occupying force. The annex was called the Fortress Antonia. During the Passover holidays, everyone there would have been on high alert rendering any small demonstration – and probably any large one — virtually impossible. If the temple itself were not crawling with Roman soldiers, they would have been surveilling the whole scene.)
But even if Jesus were welcomed by the frantic crowds as depicted in the gospels, the event would have been precisely intended to be seen by the Romans as highly political and perhaps even decisive in defeating their hated occupation and bringing on in its place what Jesus described as the Kingdom of God.
(Jesus’ high hopes surrounding the incidents of this final week in his life are suggested by the words Mark records at the Last Supper in today’s gospel reading: “I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” In other words, Jesus evidently thought that the events of this first “holy week” would signify a political turning point for Jews in their struggle against Rome. Their uprising would finally bring in God’s kingdom.)
Jesus’ Anti-Imperialism
In any case and whatever its historical merits, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is presented as anti-imperial. The waving of palms, the chanting of the crowd, and Jesus’ mount all tell us that. In Jesus’ time, the waving palms on patriotic occasions (like Passover) was like waving a national or revolutionary flag. That had been the case ever since the successful rebellion led by the Jewish revolutionary Maccabee family against the Seleucid tyranny of Antiochus IV Epiphanes 150 years earlier.
So, crowds greeting Jesus with palms raised high while chanting “Hosanna, Son of David” (save us!) would have meant “Hail to the Son of David, who will lead us to regain our freedom from the Romans, the way the Maccabees led the revolution against the Seleucid tyrant!” Jesus’ choice of a traditionally royal donkey as his mount would only have underscored that message. Only kings rode donkeys in processions.
All of this means that the story of “Palm Sunday” as presented in today’s reading depicts an overt threat to the imperial system of Rome supported by Jerusalem’s Temple establishment.
Anti-Imperialism Today
So, what’s my point in emphasizing the political dimensions of Palm Sunday? Simply put, it’s to call attention to the fact that followers of Jesus must be anti-imperial too.
That’s because imperialism as such runs contrary to the Hebrew covenant that protected the poor and oppressed, the widows, orphans, and resident non-Jews from the depredations of local elites and outside military powers.
And that’s what empire represents in every case. It’s a system of robbery by which militarily powerful nations victimize the less powerful for purposes of resource transfer from the poor to the already wealthy.
Such upward redistribution of wealth runs absolutely contrary to the profound social reform promised in Jesus’ notion of the Kingdom of God. There, everything would be reversed downward. The first would be last; the last would be first (Matthew 20:16). The hungry would be fed and the rich would suffer famine (Luke 1: 53). The rich would become poor, and the poor would be rich. The joyful would be saddened and those in tears would laugh (Luke 6: 24-25).
Contradicting those grassroots aspirations is the very purpose of U.S. empire today with its endless wars, nuclear arms, bloated Pentagon budgets, and glorification of the military. All of that is about supporting the status quo and preventing Jesus’ Great Reversal.
That’s why American armed forces maintain more than 800 military bases throughout the world. All of them are engines of stability in a world of huge inequalities. (Btw, do you know how many foreign bases China maintains? One!!) Maintaining stability in a world crying out for change is why the U.S. is currently fighting seven wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Niger – and who knows where else) with no end in sight. (Today’s designated enemy, China, is fond of pointing out that it hasn’t dropped a single bomb on foreign soil for 40 years.)
Conclusion
Recently, a conservative church friend of mine told me that his primary identity is as a follower of Jesus. I found that wonderfully inspiring.
On second thought however, I wondered which Jesus he was referring to. Was it to the revolutionary Jesus of Palm Sunday? Or did his Jesus support U.S. empire? Did he promise individualized prosperity as the result of following him? Was his Jesus politically involved? Or did he simply ignore politics in favor of internal peace and a promised heaven after death?
The questions are crucial. There are so many Jesuses of faith. And, of course, we’re all free to choose our favorite. By the same token however, we have to explain how an “other-worldly” Jesus would have appealed to his impoverished audiences like those depicted in today’s gospel. My guess is that an other-worldly guru would have had zero appeal to them.
Why would such a Jesus have been seen as threatening to Rome? Again, he would not have been.
Yes, there are many Jesuses of faith. However, there was only one historical Jesus. And it seems logical to me that the historical Jesus must be the criterion for judging which Jesus of faith we accept — if any.
Today’s recollection of the parade down Jerusalem’s main street, with crowds waving revolutionary symbols, and its assault on the sacred temple precincts (including Roman barracks) remind us that the historical Jesus stood against empire. Like every good Jew of his time, Jesus not only hoped for empire’s overthrow, but worked to that end with its promised Great Reversal.
No wonder Jesus was so popular with his poor and oppressed neighbors. No wonder Rome executed him as an insurgent. No wonder that particular Jesus seems so foreign to us who now live in the belly of empire’s beast. No wonder he remains so despicable to our religious and political mainstream.
This is the 5th Sunday of Lent. I’ve read the liturgical selections as found on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website. Anticipating Easter in just two weeks, the first reading is about Ezekiel’s 6th century BCE promise of resurrection to a Jewish people in their Babylonian Exile. The day’s selection from the Gospel of John describes Jesus’ raising of his friend Lazarus from his moldering grave.
In in the face of what the odious Benjamin Netanyahu doing in Gaza (with 95% support from his constituents) it all nearly turns my stomach. It has shut down my ability (and desire) to write anything sympathetic to any tradition about “God’s People” returning home.
Think of the ironies contained in today’s readings!
In the selection from Ezekiel, the prophet writes about the sixth century BCE Babylonian Exile. Exile, he laments, has meant death for his people.
So, to encourage them, he writes of a future when graves will be opened, where the dead will rise, and return to Israel, their home. More than that, the prophet promises that the returnees will embody God’s own Holy Spirit.
Then the liturgical response drawn from Psalm 130 acknowledges God as the liberator of the oppressed. It sings of a God whose mercy responds to the prayers of captives by expressing forgiveness and kindness.
Who among us can read such sentiments without throwing up?
I mean, the Zionist Jews with their people’s lamentable history of exiles and occupations by foreigners and with their experience of pogroms, and Holocaust at the hands of Christians have suddenly been revealed as the monsters they’ve always been. Absolute monsters!
Yes, it’s true: the Jewish people have more than once risen from the dead and returned “home” just as Ezekiel promised. But this time since 1948 and especially since October 7th, 2023, contemporary Zionists have completely assumed the identity of their oppressors. They’ve become Nazis! Yes, Nazis!
And the hell of is: so have we Americans. With “Genocide Joe” Biden leading the way, virtually all the U.S. senators and members of Congress have enthusiastically supported Israel’s ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, infanticide, femicide, and starvation tactics. They (and we who fail to protest) are just as guilty of genocide as the Nazi apartheid Zionists.
And in the face of it all, where in the collective west are Christian voices united in protest and calling genocide what it is? Why is Pope Francis not unambiguously joining Jesus portrayed in today’s Gospel selection as railing against death and promising resurrection? Why are he and other Christian leaders not publicly weeping before the mountains of dead bodies who (unlike Jesus’ friend) can’t even claim the dignity of proper burial?
It’s all too much for me.
And so, I’m sorry. In the face of the Zionists’ current genocide against Palestine’s indigenous people, in the face of the apartheid Jews’ utter arrogance and cruelty, I find it impossible to write anything sympathetic to their religious tradition. I find it impossible to comment on “God’s word” that has been invoked so cynically to justify the sadistic slaughter of far more than 31,200 innocents, more than half of them children and their mothers.
My stomach is sickened. I can think of almost nothing else. My heart is broken. My faith is challenged. I can write no more.
Watching the news this morning on “Democracy Now” (DN) I couldn’t help feeling outraged, humiliated, and taken for a fool.
I mean, think about what’s happening in Haiti, Honduras, at our southern border, and in Gaza.
In each of those cases, the repeated refrain from Amy Goodman’s guests was that the U.S. is majorly responsible for the disasters in question. All of them are marked either by State Department regime changes, support of drug dealers, and/or by U.S.-backed slaughters that beggar description.
But to my point here: in each of the cases just mentioned, the Biden administration and its predecessors have shown complete contempt for our ability to remember, think, or exhibit any sense of morality. Our leaders are evidently convinced that we’re all like them complete idiots without a trace of humanity or moral compass.
And perhaps they’re right because of constant brainwashing by our ahistorical schooling and unrelenting mainstream media (MSM) propaganda. I mean, which of us really cares about the history behind U.S. interventions in Haiti, Honduras, Gaza, or at the border in Tijuana?
Which of us really cares about learning our own history?
Haiti
Begin with Haiti.
There we’re supposed to scratch our heads wondering why the country — the first in the world to be run by former slaves – is so out of control.
Why is it apparently run by “gangs?”
DN’s guest, Haitian American scholar Jemima Pierre, explains why.
It’s because in 2004, the Clinton administration regime-changed the country’s first elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide – a former Catholic priest and liberation theologian.
Since then, the State Department has assisted in the complete destruction of democracy in the country. According to Professor Pierre, the country had 7000 elected representatives in 2004. Thanks to U.S. interference in the name of “democracy,” it now has NONE (Zero, 0).
And right now, the United States gives its unquestioning support to Ariel Henry an unelected “president” who succeeded President Jovenel Moise who was assassinated in 2021.
You can’t understand any of that, Professor Pierre explained, if you don’t start your thinking with U.S. interference in Haitian politics in 2004 – and (I would add) since the Haitian revolution of 1791.
Bottom line: The U.S. is responsible for Haiti’s problems. We’re the main troublemakers there – and (I’ll add) virtually everywhere in the world.
Honduras
“We” did something similar in Honduras.
There, according to DN, “we” completely supported yet another regime change, under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The operation took place in 2014.
From then until two years ago Washington supported the presidency of Juan Orlando Hernandez who was well known as the head of a crime family of drug dealers. According to DN guest Dana Frank (professor of history emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz) the Hernandez family was “legitimated and celebrated” by multiple U.S. administrations. Meanwhile its corrupt narco-regime created widespread havoc in Honduras and misery for ordinary people there.
Now (over the objections of the Biden administration) the Southern District of New York has succeeded in bringing Juan Orlando Hernandez to justice. He was convicted of cocaine trafficking on Friday after a two-week trial. He now faces life imprisonment OVER THE OBJECTIONS OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION!
Bottom line: “Our” government supports drug dealers! They’ve been doing it for decades.
Border Problems
Do you think any of what I’ve just mentioned has something to do with “American” concern about migration problems?
You overthrow elected governments in “our backyard” by military coups or by application of sanctions aimed at making life miserable for ordinary people (to incentivize them to rebellion or revolution).
You replace duly elected bodies with corrupt criminals including drug dealers interested only in lining their own pockets and those of the country’s elite.
The latter flourish.
Meanwhile, the poor are miserable and seek exit from intolerable situations.
Then we’re left wondering why asylum seekers leave home and cross borders to where it’s safer and more promising.
Bottom line: All of this has characterized U.S. policy towards Venezuela, Nicaragua, and other countries in our hemisphere. That’s why Americans are prone to chant “Mr. Trump, put up that wall!”
Gaza
And finally, there’s the worst expression of contempt for our intelligence. It’s unfolding in Gaza.
Who can believe it?
We’re supposed to accept “policy” that on one hand continues to send 5000-pound bombs to Israel to genocide Gazan women and children.
Then on the other hand our resulting outrage is supposed to be mollified by a few pallets of rancid food dropped on the victims who survive the bombing.
In fact, Genocide Joe even promises to build some kind of pier (taking months to erect) where the same rancid products will accumulate only to be inspected and (not) delivered by the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces). It will be no better than the situation of the trucks of food that have been waiting for months on the Egyptian border.
What? How is that supposed to help? Do they think we’re completely stupid? Are we? You figure it out.
Bottom Line: Benjamin Netanyahu has more political power in the U.S. than senile, weak, and evidently insanely dumb Genocide Joe.
The ongoing genocide in Gaza at the hands of Apartheid Israel has brought the question of biblical interpretation from the margins to the center.
The impetus to do so has come from Benjamin Netanyahu. Think of his pronouncements about his Amalek strategy justifying his attacks in Gaza. Couple that with his IOF (Israel Occupation Force) song and dance celebrating the same. It has all raised the perennial question of the very nature of the God of the Jewish Testament.
And the question is simple. It was articulated by the ancient fathers of the Christian community – men like Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and the hereticated Marcion of Sinope. All of them wondered how anyone with a drop of humanity or possessed of the most elementary moral compass could believe in a God who commanded complete genocides directed specifically against women, children, infants, cattle, and sheep?
Of course, similar questions might be addressed today to Bibi Netanyahu or Genocide Joe Biden. Where’s your humanity? Have you completely lost your moral compass? What kind of God would justify your crimes?
So, let’s examine the question of Apartheid Israel’s genocidal God. Let’s think about divinity bereft of moral compass. Start with facing the fact that the Hebrew Bible might not be about God at all. Next look at the powerful beings who are presented there. And finally, consider Jesus’ attitude towards the so-called God of Israel.
No God in the Hebrew Bible
On this first and second points, I’m following the direction of scholars like the Australian Paul Wallis and the Italian biblical scholar Mauro Biglino. They question entirely the traditional interpretations of the biblical God.
According to Biglino and Wallis, the Hebrew Bible’s genocidal God is no God at all. In fact, the Hebrew Testament itself is not about God. Instead, close examination reveals that it is about “Elohim,” i.e., “Powerful Ones.”
These were Beings from Beyond who in the ancient world vied for control of our planet. Stories of such paleo-contacts with extraterrestrials (ETs) are found throughout revered texts across the planet from China to Egypt, and Babylon; from the Philippines to the Mayan Popol Vu. In fact, every ancient civilization holds that we came from above – from the sons of the stars.
Most often these foreign entities appear in reptilian forms or as fire-breathing dragons, Sometimes they possess wings. At others, the Powerful Ones appear in human form and are recognized as giants, witches, magicians, governors, lawgivers, as “Sons of God” or simply as kings whose specific names were forgotten, but who were remembered as divine. Still elsewhere the Powerful Ones take the form of “angels,” (messengers from beyond) or demons. Invariably, they possess super-human powers.
In biblical texts these “Powerful Ones” had names such as El, El Shaddai, Elion, Baal, Ruach, Ashera, and Yahweh. Together they comprised a family that included 70 sons of El. Among them Yahweh was an inferior subordinate of his father who apportioned to his offspring control of various geographical regions. Yahweh’s assignment was to protect the nation of Israel. (Note El’s name in the term Yisra-El itself.)
Only at the beginning of the first millennium BCE was El replaced by Yahweh as the supreme and only God. That is, Jewish polytheism and henotheism morphed into monotheism for the first time around 530 BCE – after the Babylonian exile. It was then that Judah’s elite in the persons of Ezra, Josiah (640-609 BCE), and Nehemiah reformulated the nation’s longstanding traditions. Their patriarchal work removed, downplayed, and/or reinterpreted all references acknowledging the existence and power of Gods from above other than Yahweh, Judah’s national deity.
Put otherwise, the Jewish biblical tradition was rewritten with the name Yahweh pasted over references to the Elohim as if Israel had always been monotheistic. This is how Yahweh became responsible for the genocides of El Shaddai and other “divinities” who lacked human feeling or moral compass.
The reformers took special pains to erase references to goddess worship. Against great resistance, Israel’s beloved goddess Ashera was consigned to the biblical memory hole.
Not God for Yeshua
The impoverished and imperialized prophet, Yeshua of Nazareth, had little to do with the Yahweh pasted over the traditions of the Elohim. Nowhere does he even refer to God using that name.
On the contrary, the prophet was highly critical of and even rejected any understandings of an exclusively national God, much less as one who commanded the slaughter of enemies.
Instead, Yeshua spoke of God as a Universal Father and as the One his disciple Paul of Tarsus described as the Source of the universe and everything in it – as the One in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).
For Yeshua and his disciples, God was international, universal, and unconcerned with Temple worship and sacrifice. This eventually led Yeshua’s followers to reject not only Judaism’s limited understandings of God, but Judaism and its law in general.
Still, the Christian tradition continued to embrace the Jewish Testament as part of the Holy Bible as though Jesus was a worshipper of Yahweh. It did so because Christians understood Jesus as fulfilling Jewish testament prophecies.
The resulting process of distortion was straight forward. Christianity started out as a sect of Judaism that followed the teachings of the Jewish prophet, Yeshua. After his execution around 30 CE, his followers inspired by his international and universal vision had grown geographically and numerically far beyond the Jewish community. Their movement had spread to all parts of the Roman Empire to become a largely gentile association that for various reasons even came to despise its Jewish origins.
These international characteristics led to the Bible’s becoming a world book by the 4th century CE. For it was then that the Roman Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan legalized Yeshua’s Jewish movement now called “The Way.”
The change was necessary because the Roman Empire’s unifying religion (also for various reasons associated with the increasing cultural diversity of its subjects) had lost credibility across its ever-expanding territories. It needed an international unifying religious ideology that would uphold the belief that the Emperor was supported by divine authority.
So, in the early 4th century and after long years of persecuting “Christians,” the Empire’s Office for Religious Affairs (under Constantine) decided to legalize the sect that had become more universal than what the Roman pantheon had come to represent. Eventually, by 380 CE Christianity became Rome’s official religion (under Theodosius).
Afterwards, widely diverse beliefs about the identity of Yeshua of Nazareth (and about the Bible and its tales) were streamlined into official doctrines, while alternative understandings were condemned and punished as heresies.
Thus Jesus became understood as a worshipper of the Elohim-become-Yahweh with all their contradictions, instead of as a prophet who rejected all but the Mosaic tradition as championed by Israel’s prophets and as universal father and spirit in whom we live and move and have our being.
Conclusion
To summarize: the Bible is not a world book written for humankind in general. Instead, it is a memoir of a small marginal and relatively insignificant group in the ancient Mideast called “Hebrews.” It was written for them, not for Christians.
Neither is the Bible about a universal “God.” Rather, it is about various kings and generals and Powerful Ones from the world above. In their various ancient pre-literate oral traditions Hebrews called them “Elohim,” “El,” “El Shaddai,” “Ruach,” “Baal,” “Ashera,” and “Yahweh.” The Powerful Ones included generals and kings who were often gradually elevated to divine status, just as happened with kings in other Mideastern cultures. Many of these Elohim were cruel and violent colonizers interested only in accumulating herds, gold, and virgin girls to improve their DNA.
“Yahweh” was the member of the Elohim to whose protection the Hebrew people were assigned, while (according to pre-literate traditions) other peoples were assigned other protectors drawn from the supra-human “Powerful Ones” who might even have been extra-terrestrials referenced in their own ways by virtually all ancient traditions across the planet.
In the 6th century BCE under Josiah, the Hebrew religion was streamlined and was rendered monotheistic. Biblical texts were rewritten as though Yahweh had always been the only God recognized by Israel.
In effect, what’s recorded in the Jewish Testament is a “Battle of the Gods,” i.e., contradictory, and incompatible understandings of powerful entities presented side-by-side with the inconsistencies ignored.
Today’s Palestinians in Gaza are the latest victims of the cruelest of the biblical Elohim.
I’ve given up on the United States. It’s irreformable. It’s a failed state.
Think about it. As things stand, the U.S. can do nothing but fight wars, close borders, impose sanctions, and fight meaningless culture wars. And even at that, despite the more than $2 billion it spends on “defense” each day, our country can’t win its forever wars. It lost in Vietnam, in Iraq, and Afghanistan. It’s in the process of losing in Ukraine. And yet, it’s planning a further foray into China.
Ukraine is the best illustration of the failed policy just mentioned. We’ve sent billions upon billions to support the war there, but the Russians are prevailing, nonetheless.
Meanwhile, our own infrastructure is in decay; millions are without healthcare, millions more are addicted to pain killers; there’s a mass shooting every day (literally); homelessness abounds, young people can’t afford college tuition; prisons are overflowing; our money-driven elections are a sham, and our government is complicit with the genocide unfolding in Gaza. At the same time, we end up blaming the poorest people in the world – the immigrants at our southern gates – for all our problems.
Yes, we need regime change.
And I’m not just talking about changing presidents or even the criminals now “serving” in the Congress.
No, I’m talking about REGIME CHANGE – a new order responsive to people like us, rather than to corporations, bankers, financiers, and Wall Street.
That means replacing all that with a system that would cut military spending by at least 75%, prioritize the issue of climate change, close foreign military bases, eliminate nuclear weapons, practice real diplomacy (which always means dialog and compromise) and derive its leadership from the working class, instead of from the bosses who control our work lives.
So, if we need regime change, why not apply to the U.S. the formula our bosses routinely use for that process — I mean the one it’s employed against the Soviet Union all during the Cold War, against Iran in 1953, Guatemala the following year, Cuba over the last 65 years, Chile in 1973, Nicaragua since 1979; Venezuela since Hugo Chavez instituted his Bolivarian Revolution. . .. The list goes on and on., but the formula’s always the same.
In every case, it’s: (1) make the life of working-class people as miserable as possible (2) by creating crisis. (I’m talking about military coups, sanctions, creation of food and fuel shortages, outright terrorism, and deprivation of human rights.) In fact, (3) make ordinary people so miserable that (4) the victims of such measures will rise and overthrow Stalin, Mossadegh, Arbenz, Castro, Allende, the Sandinistas, Maduro, etc. and (5) introduce a fascist American puppet like Resa Pahlavi or Augusto Pinochet.
Again, that’s the strategy: immiserate ordinary people and make them overthrow America’s official (usually socialist-leaning) enemies and replace those enemies with right-wing fascist pawns.
The problem is (for the U.S.) that such gambits rarely work for long. They often end up awakening the left who then replace American puppets with leftists like Lula in Brazil.
Well, I’m thinking, why not turn the tables on the bosses and run the same gambit here at home, but this time against the bosses themselves? In our current circumstances, this might entail:
Not voting in the next election.
Alternatively, voting for “uncommitted,” for Cornel West, RFK, or Marianne Williamson.
Thereby, allowing Donald Trump to be elected next November.
He’ll of course make our lives miserable over the short term.
But his policies will make clear the above-noted disfunctions of the system and awaken the currently dormant left.
This may eventually spark a progressive movement for the radical systemic change I’ve been referring to.
Which one way or another may eventually overthrow the corrupt system that even now immiserates our lives.
It’s worth a try. And when you think about it, what have we got to lose? As I said:
Our system is broken beyond repair.
It is incapable of addressing our real problems noted above.
We need something to awaken the left and force the required changes,
This means enduring at least four years of fascism under Donald Trump who might refuse to leave office after four years.
Sparking even wider discontent and rebellion.
And at the very least, giving us a taste of our own medicine.
In any case, it’s what “our” government has been doing all over the world at least since the end of the Second Inter-capitalist War. There’s no way of sugar-coating the required remedy.
Vladimir Putin has done it again. Just as he did with Yevgeny Prigozhin, he’s murdered another political adversary. This time it’s his “most prominent political opponent,” Alexy Navalny.
That’s the IMMEDIATE conclusion UNIVERSALLY drawn and promulgated by the political establishment and mainstream media in the collective west.
Such unanimity especially in the United States with its record of political assassinations and brutal political imprisonments raises suspicions that we might not be getting the full story.
That’s especially true when one contrasts western handwringing over Navalny’s fate with its indifference to the torture of imprisoned Australian citizen Julian Assange and to the State Department’s lack of concern about the behind bars death of American citizen Gonzalo Lira in Kiev.
So, before we join in premature conclusions, let’s look at the other side of Navalny’s death especially in the light of what we know about Assange and Lira.
Rush to Judgment
First, consider the immediate response to news that Navalny had died. Virtually EVERYONE from Genocide Joe Biden to Hillary Clinton and the Secretary General of Amnesty International claimed certainty that the man had been murdered “by Putin.”
This was even the general thrust of a “Democracy Now” interview with Russia expert Masha Gessen. The latter had authored an article in TheNew Yorker article entitled “The Death of Alexy Navalny Putin’s Most Formidable Political Opponent.” For Gessen there is “no doubt” Navalny was killed – again “by Putin.”
One wonders where such certainty can possibly come from simply on the report of Navalny’s death. After all, people die in U.S. prisons and migrant detention cells all the time. Such rush to judgment seems to fly in the face of the foundational legal principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Nevertheless, before ANY examination of evidence, before any autopsy, before any independent investigation, the case is already closed.
The message to Americans: we too should have “no doubt.” Just as we were getting to know a more humanized Vladimir Putin (thanks to Tucker Carlson’s recent interview) the cruel autocrat has struck again. Whatever “official” autopsies might conclude, Putin is surely guilty and can never be proven innocent. (After all, who could ever believe Russian investigators?)
Moreover, Alexy Navalny is universally portrayed as a heroic advocate of democracy who has always opposed the “autocracy” of Vladimir Putin. He was a “freedom fighter” in the face of anti-democratic oppression.
True, Gessen admits that Navalny had previously been an ultra-nationalist often photographed with Nazi paraphernalia. And yes, he had also been anti-immigrant and Islamophobic. He was a guns-right advocate too who at one point called for the execution of Muslims and for the extermination of “cockroaches” like Russians living in Georgia.
But according to Gessen all of that was in the distant past. Since his arrest and apparently while behind bars, he had undergone a conversion. In fact, like many jailhouse converts, the imprisoned Navalny had become a student of religions. He had even transformed into an advocate of Muslims and their right to access to The Holy Koran while serving their time.
However, even if we grant the man’s conversion, the question remains why would Putin do such a thing? Navalny was already in prison serving a 19- year sentence. He was out of the public eye. He represented no political threat to the Russian leader who by all accounts enjoys high popularity with Russians and will easily win next month’s presidential elections.
In other words, Navalny’s “murder” could do nothing but make Putin look bad, expose him to criticism from his opponents, and hurt him at the ballot box. As ex-CIA officer, Ray McGovern puts it: Navalny “was of no consequence in terms of Putin’s reelection prospects. He had no real following there (i.e. in Russia) except among a certain group of folks that didn’t amount to much.”
The Other Navalny
But who really was Alexy Navalny? According to Scott Ritter, Navalny was a CIA agent “straight up.” He came to political awareness during the Boris Yeltsin years (1991-1999) before Putin’s reforms when Russia was extremely corrupt. Like so many young Russians of that era, he shared a strong admiration of the West that even bordered on rejection of his own Russian identity.
As such, Navalny was recognized by the CIA as a “future leader.” They sent him to the World Fellows Program at Yale University whose connections to the CIA (according to Ritter) are well known. There they groomed the man as a CIA-funded political opponent of Vladimir Putin.
In other words, Navalny was a player in a process that routinely funds so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia and elsewhere for purposes of bringing about regime change. Put still otherwise, the NGOs in question were fronts for U.S. and British intelligence agencies who after the advent of Vladimir Putin took on the task of bringing down the Russian president.
This made Navalny in the eyes of Russian law a traitor guilty of treason. As everywhere else, there are laws in Russia against such things.
Assange & Lira
Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA analyst, goes further still. He contrasts the hand wringing about the Navalny affair with the lack of such distress over Julian Assange, the Australian founder and editor of Wikileaks. McGovern’s concern is relevant because this week, the 20th and 21st of February, a final hearing will be held in London to determine Assange’s fate.
Julian Assange, of course, faces extradition to the United States to face a 175-year prison sentence for releasing to the public evidence of U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. For five years, he has been held without charge in a 6’X12’ cell in London’s infamous Belmarsh Prison with Great Britain’s worst rapists, murderers, and terrorists. Before that he spent seven years as an asylum seeker in London’s Ecuadorian embassy.
And this despite appeals for his release by the Australian Parliament itself, and despite the CIA’s breach of basic client-lawyer privilege by listening in and recording confidential conferences between Assange and his legal representatives – a fact that alone should disqualify any further legal processes against this Australian citizen.
Where’s the outcry, McGovern says about Assange’s imprisonment and torture? And doesn’t that prominent foreign journalist’s mistreatment deprive the U.S. of any moral authority to criticize, let alone issue demands about the Navalny case?
And then there’s the issue of the apparent murder of American citizen Gonzalo Lira in one of Kiev’s prisons. Lira was charged with suspicion of expressing subversive opinions about Ukraine’s war with Russia. According to Tucker Carlson, “the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture. Several weeks ago, we spoke to his father, who predicted his son would be killed.”
I ask my readers: Have you even heard of Gonzalo Lira? If not, don’t worry, you’re in good company. Genocide Joe’s administration acts as if it never heard of him either.
Conclusion
The conclusion here is not that Vladimir Putin was not ultimately responsible for the death of Alexy Navalny. That remains to be seen. Instead, the proper conclusions include the following:
It is far too premature to conclude anything.
Such prejudice flies in the face of basic legal assumptions about innocence and guilt.
Alexy Navalny was probably not a freedom fighter.
In fact, there is clear indication that he was a white supremacist and anti-immigrant ultra-nationalist.
He also seems to have been an Islamophobe, an agent of the CIA, and a traitor to his country.
Like all countries, Russia has laws about such matters.
In the light of its treatment of Julian Assange and Gonzalo Lira, the United States has zero moral authority to posture as a champion of prisoners’ rights, freedom of speech, rule of law, prosecutorial rectitude, or extra-judicial assassinations.
O yes, and then there’s all that business about Jeffrey Epstein‘s death in prison . ..
About Things That Matter 