Category: Current Issues

The Carnival Cruise Ship Fiasco: A preview of what awaits us all

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Years ago, Warren Lambert, a history professor at Berea College, where I taught for nearly 40 years, wrote an essay on the Titanic. He saw it as an image of western culture at the turn of the 20th century. The great ship that could not be sunk seemed to embody the triumph of western culture traveling towards an unlimited horizon of power and prosperity.

In the 17th century, Newton and his laws of motion had explained the universe providing the keys for human manipulation of nature. In the 18th century, Adam Smith had done something similar for economics. His Utilitarian successors promised that unfettered application of Smith’s laws would inevitably maximize material good for the greatest possible number.

By the 19th century, engineers employing laws of both physics and economics had brought to our planet the steam engine, railroads, electricity, and other scientific wonders portending a future without limit to human achievement. Meanwhile Charles Darwin had unlocked the secrets of biology and of evolution promising a trajectory of species development without end. There was even talk of telephones, radios, television, airplanes and automobiles. Who could not believe that every day in every way the world was getting better and better? The unsinkable Titanic was an image of it all.

But then came the unforeseen icebergs. World War I with its millions slaughtered did its part to debunk the idea of constant human improvement. The Great Crash of ’29 undermined confidence in the inevitable triumph of Smith’s laws. World War II, the Jewish Holocaust (and Nazi “Social Darwinism”), Hiroshima and Nagasaki all ripped the Titanic hull of western optimism, hubris, and belief in inevitable progress. The 20th century, once so full of promise, turned out to be the bloodiest in the history of the world. And the west was responsible for it all; it was indeed eminently sinkable. Could it even hope to survive?

I was reminded of Dr. Lambert’s essay last week as I watched unfold the plight of the more than 4000 passengers on the Cruise ship, ironically named Triumph and floundering precisely at the time of pre-Lenten Carnival.

An engine fire had caused the ships systems to shut down, and travelers were left without power. As a result, everyone on the Triumph sweltered in their rooms as people were virtually forced to live on deck. Food became scarce. People started hording, looting, and going off on each other over trivial matters.

Perhaps worst of all, toilets stopped functioning. And passengers were reduced to urinating in showers and defecating in plastic bags which they then handed over to crew members for sequestration and disposal once the liner reached shore. “It was the most embarrassing thing I’ve had to do in my life,” one woman passenger complained.

People who just days earlier had been so delighted to be on the cruise of a lifetime, found themselves holding up SOS signs and shouting in vain for help to helicopter pilots bringing generators and food supplies. Everyone was talking about lawsuits.

In the light of Warren Lambert’s essay, the fate of the Triumph seemed as eerily prophetic of the 21st century as the Titanic’s did of the 20th. This time we can see what’s coming – not icebergs, but a complete breakdown of systems – providing food, shelter, law and order. I’m referring, of course, to the effects of climate change and the massive disruptions that promise to shut down entire eco-systems. Except to the willfully blind, the signs of approaching disaster are unmistakable – unprecedented drought, flooding, super-storms, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

As we saw with “Sandy” last fall, those “Acts of Man”(we can no longer blame them on God) cause massive loss of power and the associated problems related to sewage, food shortage, looting, hoarding, violence and loss of human dignity and fellow-feeling.
Yes, the impending breakdowns are apparent. Nonetheless, our insane captains keep shouting “full steam ahead” drawing us further and further into the deep where we will soon find ourselves stranded with no one to answer our desperate appeals for help.

Do you want to see where it’s all going – where our captains are leading us? Watch the news. Look at the pyrrhic Triumph of Carnival as it limped into port!

When the portended breakdown happens, there’ll be no harbor awaiting the stranded.

Some Interesting Comments on My Blog Postings

Friends have been so generous in not only reading what I post here, but in taking time to comment on the postings. In case you may have missed them, here are some comments of particular interest:

Jim Cashman sent me this video by way of comment on “Unconditional Support for Israel: Not even God would pass that test!”

Tzanchan 77 commented on “’Unconditional Support for Israel: Not even God would pass that test!”

Ah yes, Christians who butchered us for centuries now preaching to us about morality and how to defend ourselves. Perhaps you might do a review of the story of the town of Jedwabne in Poland during World War 2 when the good Catholics of that town brutalized their Jewish neighbours and then shoved them all into a barn and burned them alive. Not that long ago, Now, we have our tiny slice of land and you won’t even allow us that. My Mother and her family got quietly onto the cattlle cars. She survived if you can call it that, the rest of the family didn’t. Now we say, the hell with you, we will no longer go quietly.

BRS commented on “Lincoln:” A first-rate second-rate film”:

This seems like a pretty tough review of one of the best movies of
the year and an unfair critique an individual universally recognized
as one of the great presidents in American history. Who says it’s one
of the best movies of the year? The people who review movies. Who says
Abraham Lincoln is one of the best Presidents of all time? Anyone who
knows anything about American history.

You’re quite right that Lincoln’s priority was preserving the Union
and I think Spielberg was pretty explicit about communicating that in
his film. What was also clear, to me at least, was that Lincoln was a
really gifted and savvy politician who didn’t have to push for an end
to slavery but chose to when he saw an opportunity. Now, you’ve argued
that the main explanations for this were political and economic. That
northern industrialists to whom he was beholden figured out that
sweatshop labor was cheaper than owning slaves. That the future of the
economy was in low-wage labor and industrial production, railroads and
mining. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not. What I do know is that
Lincoln made the push to end slavery after being re-elected, which
suggests there was little to be had in terms of political gain. Did
ending slavery make economic sense too? It probably did. I don’t know
why any of that matters though. It didn’t change the result. The war
ended and so too did slavery. Now, if you were to read Doris
Kearns-Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, from which the movie Lincoln
was adapted, you’d learn that, for Lincoln, ending slavery was as much
about principle as politics and as much about morality as the economy.
Of course preserving the Union was his priority. And, of course,
ending slavery was a secondary consideration driven by moral, economic
and yes, political, imperatives. What’s news about that though? And
what movie did you watch in which that wasn’t clear?

Your argument then, seems to be, Okay, President Lincoln preserved the
Union and ended slavery in America for all time. But, because there
were not entirely noble political and economic considerations and
factors at work (in addition to moral and human ones which you don’t
address) that makes Lincoln a second rate president? I just don’t
follow that.

Second rate means mediocre or inferior in quality or value. It is not
a term to be used lightly and certainly not one you would expect to be
associated with a great –and very human– President like Abraham
Lincoln or an award winning film maker like Steven Spielberg.
Having said all of that, it was fun to read your review of this film. I do hope you will keep submitting topical movie reviews –in addition to your other entries– for all of your readers and followers to enjoy and discuss.

Bill Wilson commented on “The Trouble with Prophets”

There is an additional tragedy about prophets in addition to the fact that we either demonize or ignore them. We pervert their message with terrible consequences. The perversion of the original message Moses mediated to the Hebrews gave us the annihilation of whole communities, if the Torah and the Judges are to be believed. The perversion of Jesus’ message gave us the slaughter of Jews, Moors, native Americans and dissenting Christians, and a residual caste system that co-opts the Gospel and brooks no dissent. The perversion of Marx gave us Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Cousescou, et al. It’s almost as if the divine call to justice, mercy and compassion has a built-in self-destruct mechanism.

I think it was Peguy who said, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” Sometimes I think God is using mirror writing of a type that is ultimately indecipherable to us…Paul’s “mirror” on steroids, the reverse side of the tapestry, which will ultimately prove unintelligible on either side. Pardon the cynicism, but I was just rejoicing that Mahoney, however belatedly, has been barred from ministry only to learn from folks far less naive than I, that this move probably contains a major act of revenge by the Opus Dei gang against the cardinal’s liberal record on social issues.

Winston Leyland commented on “Marx and Jesus: The trouble with prophets”

Good article on prophets, Mike. To those mentioned can be added the names of Daniel Berrigan, Thomas Merton (especially in his anti war writings), Oscar Wilde, Harvey Milk and many others. And what a prophetic and catalytic young man was Aaron Swartz.

Name and Shame Republican Attempts at Voter Suppression

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It is interesting to watch the Republicans floundering about wondering how to deal with the rebuke of the last General Election and with the country’s changing demographics largely responsible for that rejection. Some in the party recognize the mistake of having surrendered so completely to the Tea Party faction and to the “Christianist” extremists who like their “Islamist” counterparts live in the distant past and refuse to address the post-modern world on its own terms.

For one, Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, has urged his party affiliates to stop being the Party of Stupid. He expressed dismay at candidates, for instance, who in the last election adopted the position that women using contraceptives are “whores,” and that female bodies automatically prevent pregnancies resulting from rape. He might have added that denying climate change and evolution is also part of the Republican image of Know-Nothing ignorance.

However, others Republicans want to double down on their party’s extremism, shift even further to the right, and seek election victories by changing the rules of the electoral game rather than responding to the game changes that are represented by the post-modern spirit of the 21st century. These others now want the battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, and Virginia to allocate Electoral College votes not on the traditional winner-take-all system, but according to victories in the congressional districts Republicans have so successfully gerrymandered in recent years.

Such reallocation would mean that Mitt Romney would have won the election last November despite being decisively beaten by more than 5 million votes. The changed way of apportioning electoral votes would allow the Christianist-dominated party to win elections the way they’ve won control of the House of Representatives – on procedural technicalities rather than by winning voter approval.

This choice of procedure over necessary political change mirrors and carries to even further extreme Republican attempts at voter suppression that backfired so disastrously last fall. There they chose misinformation, crooked machines, long waiting lines, and voter intimidation over meaningful response to the legitimate concerns of women, minorities, the unemployed, gays and immigrants. Such procedural choices culminating now in this Electoral College gambit project an image of elderly, out-of-touch, bitter and desperate white people who no longer believe in democracy.

Apart from being a sad display of cynicism, the Republican’s is a strategy that small “d” democrats cannot allow to succeed whatever their party tendencies might be.
Recently John Nichols has advanced three suggestions for thwarting the Christianist extreme’s clear assault on democracy (http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Three-Strategies-to-Block-by-John-Nichols-130126-217.html).

The first is to “Name and Shame,” i.e. to bring this issue out of the shadows and publicize its cynicism. The blog posting you are now reading is an attempt to lend my small voice to this process. The hope is that it may stimulate thought and debate among the readers of this blog and their friends and acquaintances.

According to Nichols, the second way to combat this latest form of voter suppression is to join the campaign to eliminate the Electoral College. This should have happened following the fiasco of the 2000 election. But inexplicably, Democrats did not push the issue. Of course, setting aside the Electoral College would require a Constitutional amendment. However the campaign is already underway and is advanced by FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy.

The third approach to Republican anti-democracy strategies is to make the gerrymandering of congressional districts a public issue. For a long time the courts have frowned upon the practice of drawing district lines to strengthen the hand of the majority party in Congress. However the judicial branch has been lax in giving legal implementation to its disapproval.

Granted, Congressional districts need to be redrawn on a regular basis. But redrawing should be accomplished with the goal of securing representation more reflective of the electorate’s make-up, and not in order to win elections for the majority party. To this end, the legal criterion of “compact and contiguous” should be reasserted as the fundamental guiding principle. All of this should be brought to the fore in public debate.

Now is the time to act on Nichols’ suggestions – while the memory of Republican voter-suppression tactics is still fresh in the minds of scandalized Americans. The electoral system needs reforming. There is no time like the present for beginning that process.

Mali for Dummies (Part Two: Mali)

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On Monday we saw that U.S. interest in the 3rd world (i.e. the former colonies) follows the pattern identified by J.W. Smith of the Institute for Economic Democracy. That pattern holds that:

1. Any former colony (or group within that entity) attempting to break for economic freedom
2. By establishing government representing the interests of its own people rather than those of the former Mother Country
3. Will be accused of terrorism or communism
4. And will be overthrown by military intervention
5. Or by right wing (often terrorist) elements from within the local population
6. To keep that country within the ex-mother country’s sphere of influence
7. So that the former colonists might continue to use the country’s resources for the invaders own enrichment,
8. And that of the local elite.

Following that sequence, U.S. and E.U. interest in Mali is driven by resource concerns, not by zeal for democracy or anti-terrorism. It is also motivated by competition with China for the resources in question (uranium, oil, and gold among others).

The indigenous Tuaregs represent an obstacle to the desired U.S. and E.U. access to those resources. The Tuaregs are secular Muslims – i.e. not fundamentalists desiring to impose Sharia Law. Since achieving independence from French colonialism in the early 1960s, the Tuaregs have been seeking independence from the artificially created Mali. Tuaregs want control of their own territory and its resources, presumably with the option of selling them to China. In fact, the Tuareg want their own country (Azawad). Presumably, Azawad would eventually be co-extensive with the Tuareg People who spill over into parts of neighboring Niger, Algeria and elsewhere in the region.

The Tauregs see Mali’s government as the puppet of France facilitating alienation of Azawad’s valuable resources from the Tuareg People to benefit France, the E.U. and U.S. To achieve liberation from such western control, the Tuaregs have organized a rebel army, the NMLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad).
In its drive for independence and control of its own resources, the NMLA was supported by Muammar Gaddafi. As a “Pan Africanist,” Gaddafi was a proponent of ‘Africa for Africans” and generally opposed continued control of the continent by the U.S. and Europe. (This was a principal reason for western demonization of the man.)

Many Tuaregs were part of Gaddafi’s army. And after its dissolution (with major intervention by the U.S. and E.U.), these Tuareg fighters returned to Northern Mali with many of Gaddafi’s sophisticated weapons. Their heavily armed participation in the Tuareg struggle enabled the NMLA to make strong headway against the government of Mali, thus causing concern to its European and American sponsors about unfettered access to the region’s uranium and other resources. In fact the NMLA gained complete control of Northern Mali, declared their rebellion successful and announced withdrawal of Azawad from Mali. As far as Azawadians were concerned, the rebellion was over.

It was not over however for the U.S. and France. In response, they facilitated a military coup to replace Mali’s president (seen as ineffective against the Tuaregs), substituting in his place a U.S.-trained military general. His new government [allied with the U.S. and E.U. (led by France)] encouraged Muslim jihadists (otherwise considered “terrorists” by the West) to rebel against the NMLA so as to weaken its hold on the country’s North. According to western sources, chief among the Muslim jihadists is AQIM (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb).

AQIM successes have created a cover for France (with support from the U.S.) to intervene directly in Mali under the claim of prosecuting its “war on terrorism” against the AQIM it had just used for its own purposes up north. However, the real intent of the intervention (as it has been for 500 years) is resource transfer to the E.U. and U.S.

And that’s where most of us dummies came in. The story never changes, and we’ll fall for it every time: We’ll also be expected to dumbly foot the resulting bill and eventually accept austerity measures to pay for it.

Mali for Dummies (Part One: General Background)

Are you confused by what’s happening in Mali? Welcome to the club. We’re probably all puzzled and feel like dummies overwhelmed by information pieces that provide a welter of names, dates, organizations and explanations that are complicated, contradictory and vague. As a result, we probably accept the “official story” behind France’s U.S. – supported intervention in Mali as promulgated by our own State Department, France, Algiers and others.

That story goes that “we” are fighting AQIM (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) which has suddenly materialized in Mali as part of a world-wide terrorist offensive that justifies the “Global War on Terrorism.” Well, if it’s a fight against al-Qaeda, we might reason, I guess I have to be for it.

I too felt drawn to just throwing up my hands and participating in the dummy syndrome of simply surrendering to government de-contextualized muddle and propaganda. But then I remembered what I’ve been reading in Oliver Stone’s and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the United States. I recalled what I studied in Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, and in Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. I drew on my recollections of Eduardo Galeano’s The Open Veins of Latin America.

All of those taught me that the real justifications for invading the former colonial world rarely coincide with the stated rationale. It’s virtually never about democracy or protecting national sovereignty (though it might be about “maintaining regional stability” in lands where the median income is less than $2.00 per day!) Instead developed-world intervention is invariably connected with continuing the process of transferring wealth and commodities from the resource-rich south to the “developed” north. It’s about keeping the rich south subservient and impoverished.

In fact, as pointed out by J.W. Smith of the Institute for Economic Democracy, there’s a pattern to all interventions like the one we’re witnessing in Mali. In its starkest form, the pattern runs like this:

1. Any country (or group within a country) attempting to break for economic freedom
2. By establishing government representing the interests of its own people rather than those of the former Mother Country
3. Will be accused of communism or terrorism
4. And will be overthrown by military intervention
5. Or by right wing (often terrorist) elements from within the local population
6. To keep that country within the ex-mother country’s sphere of influence
7. So that the former colonists might continue to use the country’s resources for the invaders own enrichment,
8. And that of the local elite.

To put a finer point on all of that, the sources I have mentioned have taught me that the West is not interested in democracy or in the freedom of its former colonies. That’s proven by examining a short list of dictators the West (particularly the United States) has supported. The list includes Bonzer (Bolivia), Mobutu (Zaire), the Duvaliers (Haiti), Rios Montt (Guatemala), the Somozas (Nicaragua), Resa Palavi (Iran), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Suharto (Indonesia), Pinochet (Chile), Fujimori (Peru), Diem (Vietnam), Marcos (Philippines), Noriega (Panama), Al Saud family (Saudi Arabia), Batista (Cuba).

All of these are robbers and thugs. In fact, colonialism is little more than a system of robbery intended to transfer raw materials and agricultural produce from the resource-rich colonies to the “Mother Countries.”

European and American colonists initially achieved control of the colonies by military power. The power was used indiscriminately, viciously and “necessarily” since the colonies were overwhelmingly inhabited by tribal peoples who typically did not share western values. You just couldn’t do business with most of them. After all, they usually believed that their land belonged to their God and cannot be treated simply as another commodity. So at least since 1492 the West has engaged in a world-wide genocidal process of eliminating and neutralizing tribal peoples. We’re witnessing the latest chapter of that process today in Mali.

Because of the business-averse tendencies of most tribal people, the colonial process also involved identification of individuals or groups within tribes who were willing to sell out their brothers and sisters. Alternatively it consisted in identifying and exploiting rivalries between tribes. In either case the point was to employ cooperative local elites (frequently, it turns out, Christian and lighter skinned) who were richly rewarded for controlling and using violence to oppress their own people or rival peoples on behalf of the colonists. In other words, the favored locals ended up being mercenary puppets of the colonists during the colonial era.

Following the end of formal colonialism (1950s and ‘60s), the departing colonists typically tried to keep their puppets in control by rigging “free” elections to elect “the willing” who would continue doing business with their former masters on favorable terms. Colonial powers also arbitrarily drew up gerrymandered borders delineating colonist-created “countries” that separated tribal peoples from fellow tribe members. This was done in order to segregate natural allies from one another and to set them against each other in competing states. The result was the creation of artificial “countries” like Mali and Niger whose boundaries have little meaning for the tribal families they separate, while the primary loyalties of those families remain to their tribes.

The processes and consequences of all this are being demonstrated in Mali today as the French, attempt to reassert control of rebels in their former resource-rich colony.

(On Wednesday we’ll review the particulars.)

Unconditional Support for Israel? Even God Couldn’t Pass that Test!

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In last week’s debate about Chuck Hegel’s nomination for Secretary of Defense, the phrase “unconditional support for Israel” surfaced as the expressed or implied criterion for Senate approval of nominee Hegel. Individuals like Elliot Abrams and organizations such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) implicitly used that criterion to criticize the nominee for failing to offer such support despite Mr. Hegel’s unblemished record of voting for Israel’s interests. In doing so the AIPAC and its allies were evidently hoping to find receptive ears in the conservative Christian community which typically constitutes Israel’s strongest support-group on the grounds that the Jews are God’s “Chosen People.”

However, even passing acquaintance with the Bible shows that God himself (sic) never offered “unconditional support” of Israel, nor did the prophets, or Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, the Bible’s stories are largely accounts of Israel’s infidelities, of prophetic criticism of those failures, of their severe punishment by God. (Prophets, of course, were routinely denounced, persecuted, and killed for not offering unconditional support to the Jewish state.)

Usually divine punishment came in response to neglect and mistreatment of those who arguably represent God’s real “chosen people,” viz. the poor and oppressed – the widows, orphans, and resident immigrants. In fact, it might be argued that the Jews were God’s chosen people only insofar as they made up a paradigm of the poor and oppressed when Jacob’s descendents were enslaved in Egypt and exiles in Babylon. Given that understanding, the Palestinians today far better fit the profile of “chosen people” than do Zionist Jews.

Imagine the changes that would take place in U.S. domestic and international politics if Christians adopted the understanding of chosen people as the country’s and world’s poor and oppressed. Imagine if they demanded that nominees for Secretary of Defense or of President (!) show evidence of unconditional support for inner city children, the homeless, LGBTQs, AIDS victims, and the billions on our planet living on less than $2 a day. Imagine if they recognized Mother Earth herself as oppressed by U.S. consumption patterns and demanded the reforms necessary for her unconditional support.

If Christians made such demands (as we should), our country, our world would be an immeasurably better place. Because we do not, but concentrate instead on a nationalistic understanding of chosen people, Christians end up aggravating the world’s problems rather than pointing the way to solutions.

It’s time to change, read the Bible through the eyes of the poor and oppressed, and make demands accordingly.

Shame on NPR: Elliot Abrams Is Not a Trustworthy Authority

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Have you noticed the rightward drift of National Public Radio? I think it’s unmistakable. That hasn’t caused me to adopt Mitt Romney’s position on the station’s defunding. However NPR’s validation of spurious right wing commentators has led me to petition my local station (WEKU) to replace “All Things Considered” with Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” After all, the right has enough air space with its nearly absolute domination of AM radio.

Case in point: On yesterdays “All Things Considered,” Melissa Block interviewed Elliot Abrams about the pending appointment of Chuck Hegel, the former senator from Nebraska, as Secretary of Defense. Though a Republican, Hegel has been tapped by President Obama for this important cabinet post. His Republican credentials however have not prevented him from being opposed by neo-conservatives like Abrams who see him as “anti-Semitic.”

Abrams’ charge is based on Hegel’s criticism of “the Jewish lobby.” Apparently, the ex-senator is suspect not only for his use of that somehow objectionable phrase, but for pointing out that he had been elected a senator from Nebraska, not from Israel.
Additionally Abrams contests Hegel’s appointment because of the former Vietnam veteran’s seeming reluctance to endorse possible military action against Iran over its alleged nuclear ambitions. Hegel is suspect because he sees diplomacy and dialog as less destructive and more productive than yet another war in the Middle East.

Before voicing such opinions, Abrams was introduced as a former advisor to Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, and as Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. What the NPR interviewer didn’t say was that Abrams himself is part of “the Jewish lobby.” He is also a convicted felon. Abrams, you’ll recall, was found guilty of criminal activity for his role in the Iran-Contra affair and was later pardoned by George W. Bush.

Also unmentioned was Abrams’ role as point-man in Reagan’s wider illegal U.S. policy in Nicaragua costing the lives of nearly 100,000 Nicaraguan peasants at the hands of U.S.-supported terrorists. I remember quite well his interviews during the 1980s when he endorsed Reagan’s ridiculous characterization of the vicious Contras as “the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers.” He also repeatedly (and falsely) described the Sandinistas as “totalitarian, Communist dictators.”

Despite such discredits, Block treated Abrams as a trustworthy objective authority from just another Washington think-tank. In reality, she might just as well have been interviewing Oliver North, G. Gordon Liddy or Rush Limbaugh.

That NPR should validate Abrams’ commentary without reminding its audience of such important elements of Abrams’ biography is inexcusable. Similarly unpardonable is Ms. Block’s failure to ask the obvious: (1) Is there a “Jewish lobby” or not? (2) Might Abrams be considered part of that lobby? (3) Was Hegel wrong in identifying himself as primarily responsible to his Nebraskan constituents rather than to Israel? (4) Why has Israel (unlike Iran) not signed onto the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? (5) If Iran should be sanctioned and threatened for its alleged nuclear ambitions, why not Israel for its de facto possession of hundreds of nuclear weapons?

NPR habitually ignores such obvious questions. “Democracy Now!” never does. That’s why I tune in more often to the latter than the former.

STOP THE WARS:Thoughts on Afghanistan

Lately I’ve been reading Oliver Stone’s and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold Story of U.S. History. It’s a terrific read.  In fact, I gave hardback copies to all the members of my family for Christmas. The book’s final chapter on the Obama administration devotes lots of space to Afghanistan. In brief, here’s what it says:

There is no way the U.S. can “win” in Afghanistan. In fact, no one knows what “winning” might mean. That’s because the exact purpose of continued presence in Afghanistan is unclear. Originally, it was to dislodge the al Qaeda brain trust and fighters from the country. Now, we’re told, fewer than 100 such “terrorists” remain there. Most al Qaedans are now based in Pakistan. So the mission has morphed into preventing the Taliban from regaining control of the country. Most likely, the real reason for hostilities is Afghanistan’s vast mineral resources which are of supreme interest to multinational mining corporations.

In any case, the U.S. continues its military operations that impoverish not only the Afghan people, but our own country.  In other words, the United States is pouring vast sums of money down a rat hole – money that could be better used to address problems at home. It’s amazing that Republicans and Democrats alike are calling for austerity measures here while wasting trillions (!) there on a hopeless cause. If they truly want to balance the budget, STOP THE WARS!

For its part, the Karzai government is hopelessly corrupt. The would-be president was “elected” by a massively fraudulent process recognized as such by practically all observers. Graft constitutes the very purpose of seeking office in Afghanistan. Bribery is a way of life. Banking scandals involving Karzai’s relatives have rocked the country and enriched his family.  At one point, Karzai even threatened to join the Taliban.

Meanwhile, President Obama has lacked the courage and integrity to own his position as Commander in Chief and stop the war. Virtually everyone outside his hawkish Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, and Generals Petraeus and McChrystal has advised him to do so. Yet Obama’s obsequiously deferred to the military brass at every turn, and has doubled down on a losing cause with troop surges and waffling on withdrawal deadlines.

All of this reveals the genius and success of Osama bin Laden’s strategy to repay the United States for its crimes against the Muslim world. The day after 9/11 bin Laden enumerated those transgressions quite clearly. They had nothing to do with “hating our freedom.” Instead he pointed to more than eight decades of the West’s exploiting the political economy of the former Ottoman Empire, to unqualified U.S. support of Israel in its oppression of the Palestinians, and to its desecration of Muslim holy places of Mecca and Medina by stationing foreign troops there following the First Gulf War.

Bin Laden wreaked his havoc in New York and in Washington’s Pentagon for a reported cost of $50,000. That’s what preparation and implementation cost to hijack those airplanes and fly them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In response, the United States has fought two illegal wars at the cost of more than $4 trillion, bankrupting itself in the process. It has disgraced itself by violating international law in its refusal to prosecute the war criminals responsible for such atrocities.

The U.S. has also shredded its own Constitution by suspending habeas corpus, routinely violating the 4th Amendment’s protections against unlawful search and seizure, and claiming the right to execute even its own citizens without trial. Additionally, the United States has also lost any claim to its alleged “exceptionalism” by its practices of torture and rendition and by routinely employing brutal death squads in Iraq and Afghanistan and their remotely controlled counterparts in its programs of drone assassinations in at least five countries. In the meantime, bin Laden’s strategy has American soldiers killing themselves more efficiently than their al-Qaeda enemies.

In other words, on an investment of $50,000 bin Laden has brought the U.S. economy to its knees, undermined its self-confidence, defeated the U.S. military, and has ruined the reputation of a country once widely admired throughout the world. And the bleeding continues; the returns are still coming in. So much for the protection of “defense” budgets currently shelling out more than a billion dollars each day!

What to do about such suicidal madness? It’s as simple as one, two three: (1) STOP THE WARS.  (2) Reinvest in U.S. infrastructure and job programs the millions wasted each day fighting Afghanistan’s heroic people who polls show want the U.S. out of their country. (What we call “terrorists” are defending their own borders from foreign invaders and brutal occupiers. They are the very people our government organized and funded as “freedom fighters” when they were terrorizing the Russians with the same tactics now being used against U.S. troops.) (3) Reconfigure U.S. military policy, cutting the Pentagon’s budget by at least 50% so that its purpose becomes defending our borders rather than the interests of multinational corporations which couldn’t care less about the United States or its people.

What Really Happens after Death? (Conclusion of a two-part series)

Last week I raised the question of what really happens after death. My jumping off point was last Easter’s Time Magazine article by Jon Meacham called “Rethinking Heaven.” There the author contrasted what he called a “Blue Sky” approach to heaven (a kind of Disneyland up above) with a “God’s Space” understanding (bringing God’s Kingdom to earth). I remarked that the “God’s Space” approach seemed more believable and adult than the “Disneyland” heaven. However, the alternative to Disneyland didn’t really help us understand what happens after we breathe our last.

Tony Equale’s blog (http://tonyequale.wordpress.com/) does help. For Equale (a Roman Catholic ex-priest) heaven has little to do with the pearly gates. At the same time he explains more starkly what entering God’s space after death might really entail.

To begin with, Equale says, we must admit our ignorance. We have little idea about heaven or what happens after death. It’s all speculation. Even Jesus himself said precious little about the afterlife, much less about the specifics of a heaven. In any case, anything the Bible might have to say about the afterlife is expressed in religious language which is of necessity highly metaphorical.  It gestures towards something else.

What we do know about Jesus is that his own understanding of death was shaped by his belief in God’s universal love. He had absolute trust in God as a loving Father. Jesus believed that God’s unfailing trustworthiness took away the “sting” of death, so that dying became irrelevant; whatever was to happen could be trusted as the best outcome possible. As a result, death had no dominion over him.

Moreover the heroism of Jesus’ witness was to actually “prove” his claims about God by staking everything on them. Here we’re not talking about a rationalistic proof, but about something existential. In effect Jesus said, “Do you want me to prove I’m right? O.K. then, I will.” So he courted death by doing the things God’s love demands (siding with the poor and oppressed) – a choice that usually brings assassination to any prophet. That was his proof. “You see,” he insisted, “God can be trusted; death is irrelevant in the face of God’s love.” A way of putting that metaphorically is to say that Jesus rose from the dead.

According to Equale, belief in resurrection in those terms — in terms of real flesh and blood people choosing to risk their lives because they trust God’s love – mostly unraveled within a few generations of Jesus’ execution.  Its place was taken by a mixture of Roman and Egyptian ideas about disembodied souls in a “Blue Sky” heaven familiar to three year olds, to Dante, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

According to Equale, where does that leave us? With one choice only, he says – either to trust or not to trust the source of our existence, which Jesus claimed is absolutely loving.  However, even if we make the choice to trust, the reality of God’s love might not be as we want it to be. Tony writes:

“But what if the reality is …that at death we are dissolved back into the elements from which we were formed, to be reused over and over until the whole meets … another implosion to singularity and another big bang — a new universe. What if our little heads and our little hearts are not equal to the unfathomable magnanimity of a “Father” who, more like a “Mother,” wishes to share, and share, and share Herself (and us as part of Herself) endlessly, … we might even add, purposelessly … for the sheer joy of it … to share being-here with ever new things and new “people” with a generosity and self-donation beyond our capacity to imagine … or endure? . . . Do we want to go to that heaven? Are we really as convinced that “God is Love” if it would mean that much love? . . . Do we love our existential source and the universe it has made, as it is — or only as we want it to be?”

These words are reminiscent of the insights of Eckhart Tolle. Tolle says there is no doubt that life continues after death. One has only to enter an untended forest to see that live trees are surrounded by dead leaves, branches, and fallen and decaying trees.  However, closer examination of the dead matter reveals that in every case, the distinction between “dead” and “alive” is misleading. The fallen leaves, branches, and trees are teeming with life. In biblical terms, their lives have been changed not taken away. Of course, it will be the same with our bodies as they decay and molder in their graves. Life will continue in our bodies too. And who knows where that life will end up – in what communities or “people?” Death is always followed by rebirth – and perhaps by rebirth in the cosmic sense of passing again through an entire evolutionary process.

As for our consciousness . . .  That too will persist – insofar as it achieved unity with the source of the profound intelligence that pervades the universe. (The reference here is, for example, to the intelligence manifest in a single human cell. The information contained in that unit is enough to fill one hundred books of six hundred pages each.) That such Source Consciousness is present is evident from the fact of our own awareness. Ours comes from somewhere. As scholastic philosophers put it “nihil ex nilhilo fit” (nothing comes from nothing).  In as much as we have achieved unity with the Consciousness that pervades the universe, “our” consciousness will surely continue. All other consciousness passes away – most of it, experience shows, even before we die.

So the ultimate question about heaven is not whether it is up in the blue sky or in “God’s space” here on earth. It’s not even a question of our attitudes towards climate change, HIV/AIDS or world hunger.  Rather, it’s a question of death and surrender.

In confronting death, in explaining it to our children, are we willing to admit our absolute ignorance?  And if we claim Christian commitment, are we prepared to think of Jesus’ resurrection as a call to complete trust in God come what may? Are we disposed to surrender our very lives, as Jesus did despite threats from those who routinely kill prophets, because of our conviction that death is irrelevant in the face of God’s love and promise? And are we ready to do that even if God’s love is so great that we find it incomprehensible, purposeless, confusing, and even disappointing to the ideas of a three year old like Eva?

Finally, are we willing to make our own the prayer of the medieval mystic, Rabia al-Basri [a woman and Muslim (717-801)]?

“Lord, if I love you because I desire the joys of heaven,

Close its gates to me.

And if I love you, because I fear the pains of hell,

Bury me in its depths.

But if I love you for the sake of loving you,

Hide not your face from me.”