Amy Goodman – About Things That Matter

Even for “Democracy Now” Putin’s To Blame for the Rock Concert Massacre

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 7^th (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.

Do They Think We’re Stupid? Maybe We Are. . .

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?

Do you think?

It’s a pattern:

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.

Christmas Cancelled in Bethlehem

Last week, Christian church leaders in the city of Bethlehem announced the cancellation of traditional Christmas festivities in the place traditionally associated with the Jesus’ birth.

And this for at least two obvious reasons. For one, the genocidal killings by colonial settlers in Palestine’s occupied West Bank have made it impossible for tourists to come to Bethlehem.

For another, Palestinian residents of Bethlehem have themselves cancelled festivities in an act of solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Gaza victimized by Apartheid Zionists and their partners in genocide, the United States of America.

But there’s a third reason as well – a theological one that needs highlighting this Christmas weekend.

The motive was explained last Friday on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now.” Ms. Goodman began with a clip of the Reverend Isaac Munther, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem.

Standing before a nativity scene with the figure of Jesus in a keffiyeh surrounded by rubble, Rev. Munther said:

“Christmas is a ray of light and hope from the heart of pain and suffering. Christmas is the radiance of life from the heart of destruction and death. In Gaza, God is under the rubble. He is in the operating room. If Christ were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble. I invite you to see the image of Jesus in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble, in every child struggling for life in destroyed hospitals, in every child in incubators. Christmas celebrations are canceled this year, but Christmas itself is not and will not be canceled, for our hope cannot be canceled.”

Elaborating on that theme, Reverend Mitri Raheb, the president of Bethlehem’s Dar al-Kalima University, offered an explanation that echoed the liberation theology perspective on Palestine that my wife and I encountered in the summer of 2006, when we visited the Sabeel Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.

Dr. Raheb is the author of a book with a revealing title, Decolonizing Palestine: the Land, the People, the Bible. Here’s what he said:

“The Christmas story actually is a Palestinian story, par excellence. It talks about a family in Nazareth, in the north of Palestine, that is ordered by an imperial decree of the Romans to evacuate to Bethlehem, to go there and register. And this is exactly what our people in Gaza has been experiencing these 75 days. It talks about Mary, the pregnant woman, on the run, exactly like 50,000 women in Gaza who are actually displaced. Jesus was born actually as a refugee. There was no place at the inn for him to be born, so he was put in a manger. And this is exactly what also the kids that are coming to life these days in Gaza are experiencing. You know, most of the hospitals are damaged, out of service, and so there is no delivery places for all of these pregnant women in Gaza. And then you have the bloodthirsty Herod that ordered to kill the kids in Bethlehem to stay in power. And in Gaza, over 8,000 kids, they have been murdered for Netanyahu to stay in power.

And you have this message that the angels declared here, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on Earth,” which was actually a critique of the empire, because glory belongs to the Almighty and not to the mighty. And the peace that Jesus came to proclaim is not the peace, the Pax Romana, the peace that is based on subjugation and military operation, but on human dignity, equality and justice. And this is actually what we call for. And I have to say I find it really a shame that in this season, where every church hears these words, “peace on Earth,” that the United States is vetoing even a ceasefire. It’s a shame.”

Yes, shame on all of us taxpayers and voters.

So much for “Merry Christmas!” this 2023.

International Women’s Day: The U.S. Role in Repressing Afghan Women

This is International Women’s Day. And what was once my favorite news program, Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now” (DN) was full of relevant coverage. One of the featured pieces was entitled “Stand up for Afghan Women”: U.N. Calls Afghanistan World’s Most Repressive Country for Women, Girls.” The piece lamented the sad situation plaguing Afghanistan’s female population.

By now the story has become familiar: women required to wear hijabs, girls excluded from schools, and both forbidden to drive cars, work outside the home, or to travel without male accompaniment.

And all of this decried by the United States government which is, we’re told, the champion of women’s rights not only in Afghanistan but throughout the Muslim world.

The problem however with that picture is that the last part is false. That is, far from being the champion of women’s rights in Afghanistan, the United States is the one ultimately responsible for their oppression in that sad country and elsewhere.

In effect, the U.S. is the creator of the Taliban which in 1992 overthrew the Russian-sponsored socialist government that beginning in 1973 freed Afghan women from the repressive restrictions just referenced.

More specifically, supported by the Soviet Union, the so-called “Saur Revolution” improved immeasurably the lives of Afghan women. It introduced progressive policies including land reform and mass literacy projects that benefitted both genders. Child marriage was abolished. Female dress codes were eliminated, freeing women to wear western clothing if desired.

Under socialism, formerly closed employment opportunities for women were opened in both the public and private sectors. Women were allowed to enter schools at all levels. They became university professors, government officials, doctors, nurses, lawyers, judges, parliamentarians and more. In record time, women comprised 50% of the government’s bureaucracy, 70% of the country’s teachers, and 40% of its doctors. Sixty percent of the faculty at Kabul University (KU) were females. For the first time in Afghanistan’s history, women comprised most of the KU student body.

All of that was reversed by United States now familiar divide-and-conquer regime change strategies – this time in Afghanistan. Alarmed by socialism’s advance, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski saw that Saur progressive reforms though popular in urban centers were not well-received in rural tribal areas. So, he decided to support the landlords, warlords, and religious mullahs there to work regime change in Kabul.

The assistance included the Carter administration’s arming and training Islamic fundamentalists (the Mujahidin) beginning in 1979.

That movement eventually drove from power Afghanistan’s progressive socialists (along with their Russian supporters) with their women-friendly policies. Eventually too, the Mujahidin morphed into the Taliban.

We know the rest of the story:

20 years of U.S. occupation and bombing of Afghanistan
With the expressed intent of preventing the Taliban from returning to power
But leading directly to the deaths of more than 250,000 Afghans
With the same number of deaths caused indirectly
Including (between 2015 and 2019 alone) more than 26,000 Afghan children
Along with the creation of over 2.2 million refugees.

We also know about:

Last year’s chaotic U.S. departure from the country
The immediate return of the Taliban to power
And the subsequent application of U.S. sanctions
That are currently causing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis that affects women and their children much more than the Taliban officials.

Everybody knows, of course, that all of this is intentional. The real target of U.S. sanctions is not the Taliban government. No, it’s all part of our government’s familiar regime change strategy aimed at making the lives of ordinary people (including women and children) so miserable that they will arise and overthrow their government.

We shouldn’t be fooled by any of it. Instead, (especially on this International Women’s Day), we should face up to the fact that the United States government doesn’t give a damn about women’s rights either abroad or at home.

At home, its Christian Taliban wing led by its SCOTUS Catholics, Donald Trumps, Ron DeSantises, and Marjorie Taylor Greenes would entirely control women’s bodies and their reproductive rights from the exclusion of sex education to the outlawing of contraception and abortion. Remember that for more than 50 years, “America” has found itself unable to officially recognize that under the Constitution, women have the same rights as men.

In summary, while portraying Muslim-majority countries as inherently misogynistic, U.S. government propaganda and even news sources like “Democracy Now” ignore the fact that the United States was responsible for overthrowing Afghanistan’s progressive governments attempting to improve the lives of its women.

In other words, history shows that our government is as misogynistic as the forces it sponsors.

Cuba Develops and Will Share Its Five Vaccines

Yesterday, on “Democracy Now,” Amy Goodman reported good news for the poor countries of the Global South. In the news headline portion of her show , she said, “Cuba has pledged to donate 200 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to low-income countries in the Global South. The move was announced at talks hosted by the Progressive International and was heralded as a possible ‘historic turning point’ in the pandemic.”

You’d think that the announcement would be welcomed and celebrated everywhere and be given at least as much press coverage as the one-day protests in Cuba reported so breathlessly last November 15^th. However, no such general celebration occurred. Even on “Democracy Now,” the story went undeveloped beyond the just-quoted headline. Meanwhile, in contrast to its hysteria over Cuban protests last fall, the U.S. government itself has been totally silent about this potentially game changing development.

Nevertheless, according to international health experts, Cuba’s achievement could make vaccinations much more available for example to 1.3 billion Africans whose continent has seen only 7% of its population receive even a single vaccination dose. (And this in contrast to 70% vaccination rates in richer countries.)

According to reports even on CNBC’s online source, the five Cuban vaccines in question:

Are a uniquely Cuban development among the former colonies
Have been administered in three doses to a higher percentage (86%) of Cuba’s 11 million people than in most of the world’s richest countries
Are not dependent on expensive mRNA technology using instead a “subunit protein” variety – like the Novavax vaccine
Are cheap to produce
Require no special refrigeration
Enjoy 90% effectiveness against all strains of COVID 19
Will have no patent restrictions on their recipes shared with low-income countries
Will be made available to them virtually at cost
Are a tribute to Cuba’s legendarily efficient health care system

Currently, Cuba’s prestigious biotech industry is awaiting approval for its vaccine developments from the World Health Organization. That approval is expected early this year. According to Helen Yaffee of the University of Glasgow, “. . . many countries and populations in the global south see the Cuban vaccine as their best hope for getting vaccinated by 2025.”

As for cost and distribution issues, John Kirk, professor of Latin American Studies at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia added, “The objective of Cuba is not to make a fast buck, unlike the multinational drug corporations, but rather to keep the planet healthy.”

But in news cycles dominated by pharmaceutical corporations that refuse to waive intellectual property rights to their largely publicly funded products, such contrasting humanitarian consciousness goes mostly underpublicized and by such silence, denied.

Denial like that prevails despite the appeals for sharing vaccine recipes by the World Health Organization itself supported by civil society groups, trade unions, former world leaders, international medical charities, Nobel laureates and human rights organizations.

Part of the reparations due Cuba for 60 years of economic embargo and for silence about its achievements is to at last recognize its socialism as a force for global humanitarianism much more beneficial to the world than international capitalism.

Episode 11, Lesson 3: I Do Not Understand Anything at All about COP 26 or Climate Change

Welcome to Episode 11 of “A Course in Miracles for Social Justice Activists.” I’m your host, Mike Rivage-Seul. And today we’ll examine together Part I, Lesson 3 of The Course’s Workbook for Students.

In the first part of the Workbook, we’ve been deconstructing our illusory understandings of the world. We’ve been imagining ourselves as residents in Plato’s Cave completely deceived by our culture, its educational system, by its advertising, its politicians, priests, and publicists. It’s all illusion.

In line with that insight, today’s lesson reads: “I do not understand anything I see in this room, [on this street, from this window, in this place].”

For purposes of this podcast and its concern with social justice, the lesson’s central idea might better be phrased, “As a captive in my culture’s version of Plato’s Cave, I do not understand anything I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place.]”

Or: as a beneficiary of a system that is white supremacist, capitalist, imperialist, and patriarchal, I understand nothing at all about the world.

The truth of this last phrasing was especially illustrated this morning on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now” and its coverage of the 26^th meeting of COP (Congress of Parties) on climate change. The meeting began today in Glasgow, Scotland.

Global South guests on this morning’s “Democracy Now” described it in scathing terms invisible to most of us who are even taking the trouble to notice that COP 26 is taking place. “Democracy Now’s” guests spoke of:

White Supremacy: They described the Glasgow gathering as “the whitest and the most privileged climate summit ever, with thousands from the Global South unable to attend because of lack of access to COVID vaccines and visa issues.”
Dysfunctional Capitalism: They added that the exclusion of participants from the Global South was intentional to silence their voices highly critical of specifically capitalist schemes such as carbon trading and “Net Zero Carbon Emissions” that will permit the world’s biggest “free market” polluters (mainly the United States) to continue business as usual. As a result the Paris Climate Accord goal of keeping global temperatures below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, will not only be missed, but global temperatures will reach the catastrophic level of 3 degrees above those pre-industrial measures.
Neo-Colonial Imperialism: The capitalist world’s business as usual includes ongoing subsidization of the fossil fuel industry and unabated plans for expanded oil drilling and pipelines across lands belonging to indigenous peoples. Unchanged business plans means that Africa’s 1.5 billion people who are responsible for about 3% of global warming will continue bear a vastly disproportionate share of climate change’s ravages. Those consequences will predictably turn the continent’s largely agrarian populations into impoverished climate refugees. The refugees will in turn be xenophobically excluded from seeking asylum in countries like our own.
Patriarchal Rule: Even though 60-80% of the non-industrialized world’s farmers are women, the ones making the decisions that will adversely affect their livelihoods are men like Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, and the predominantly male CEOs of fossil fuel corporations.

In the light of all of this, Lesson 3 might well read, “I do not understand anything at all.” I don’t even know how white supremacy works because (as a white person) it works for me. I do not how capitalism works, because (as an American) it benefits me. For the same reason, I do not know how imperialism or patriarchy work.

In Plato’s Cave, I know nothing about climate change.

But guess who does know about climate change and how the world works for whites, capitalists, imperialists, and men. It’s those would-be delegates excluded from the Glasgow conference. It’s those spokespersons from the Global South who know the ins and outs of the real effects of carbon trading and “Net Zero” policies. It’s those poor women farmers made to bear the brunt of climate chaos.

It’s the poor who according to Christian faith (and Jesus’ voice in A Course in Miracles) constitute the site of God’s revelation of what’s wrong with the world and what to do about it. Indirectly, A Course in Miracles is asking us to listen to them – to the voices of the excluded who resonate with the voice of Jesus. The historical Jesus was one of them.

Think about those people from the Global South today as you repeat (almost as a mantram) the central expression of Lesson 3. As you focus randomly on whatever your eyes light upon, say “I do not understand anything I see in this room, [on this street, from this window, in this place].”

As you watch television, or read the paper say, “As a beneficiary of a system that is white supremacist, capitalist, imperialist, and patriarchal, I understand nothing at all about the world.”

To access previous postings in this series on A Course in Miracles, please go to my podcast site.

Under the Radar and at Warp Speed Cuba Leads Latin America Towards Affordable Covid-19 Vaccines

Recently Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now” explored “The Case for People’s Vaccines.”

While those interviewed by Ms. Goodman called for early and affordable access to inoculations in the Global South, no mention was made of perhaps the most promising source of such therapies. The neglected source was not only promising, but implicitly revealed the swindle represented by Big Pharma’s anticipated exorbitant prices for Covid-19 vaccines.

It may surprise readers to know that the source in question is Cuba.

Cuba’s Achievement

In fact, Cuba is the first nation in Latin America to receive authorization from the World Health Organization (WHO) to perform officially sanctioned tests of the four vaccines it now has under development. Those trials have already completed their clinical stages. Promising results so far have Cubans looking forward to completing the (cost free) inoculation of its entire population of 12 million by the end of March 2021.

The vaccines under trial are named Soberana 01, Soberana 02, Abdala (CIGB66) and Mambisa (CIGB669). None of them is dependent for its preservation on super-cold temperatures.

Mambisa is worthy of special note, since as a nasal spray, it requires no needles, but responds locally to the specifically respiratory nature of Covid-19.

Failure to report such developments even on “Democracy Now” illustrates the complicity of our mainstream media in shunning any news from socialist nations like Cuba that might possibly illustrate the superior ability of their economies to deliver high quality, no-cost healthcare to citizens even during a worldwide pandemic. Moreover, absent the profit motive, Cuba will predictably deliver its vaccines to its neighbors at vastly cheaper prices than its capitalist counterparts.

Cuba’s Vaccine History

This prediction is based on the fact that Cuba has long been a supplier of vaccines and doctors not only to the Global South, but to countries such as Italy during the height of Covid-19’s first wave. Additionally, with its unequaled ratio of doctors to citizens, the island nation’s response to the pandemic has effectively limited documented coronavirus infections despite supply problems caused by the continued U.S. embargo of the island.

All four developments (the superabundance of doctors, the relative control of Covid-19, Cuba’s research capacities, and the export of medical care to other countries) result from the foresight and vision of Fidel Castro, the revered father of his country. In the early 1980s he sparked initiation of a vigorous homegrown biotech sector – largely to cope with the U.S. embargo’s persistent attempts to deprive the island of medical supplies.

The result was the emergence of 20 research centers and 32 companies employing 20,000 people under the umbrella of the state-run BioCubaFarma Corporation. Recently, spokespersons connected with the corporation tweeted, “The #CubanVaccineCOVID19 is dedicated to the sower of dreams: Fidel. Our tribute to the one who believed in the strength and future of #CubanScience.”

BioCubaFarma produces 8 of the 12 vaccines Cuba uses to immunize its own population against diseases such as measles and polio. Cuba has also exported hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to more than 40 countries (e.g. to deal with meningitis and hepatitis B).

Conclusion

All of this represents just one more illustration of socialism’s comparative efficiency in the face of crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Even a poor blockaded country like Cuba can respond to an unprecedented crisis such as the coronavirus without holding sick people hostage to the confiscatory demands of privatized natural monopolies like Big Pharma. The latter’s claims to mammoth profits based upon (largely government-funded) costly research are simply ideological cover for overweening corporate greed that none of us should stand for.

People’s vaccines can be produced at warp speed and at low cost – despite news blackouts even on “Democracy Now.”

Give Up Devil-Worship for Lent: Work and Pray for the Defeat of U.S. Empire

Readings for First Sunday of Lent: Dt. 26: 4-10; Ps. 91: 1-2; 10-15; Rom. 10: 8-13; Lk. 4: 1-13.

Last Tuesday’s edition of “Democracy Now” had Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interviewing Daniel Immerwahr, and associate professor of history at the University of Chicago. Dr. Immerwahr has just published a book called How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. For me, it was an eye-opening conversation, because it described the actual extent of U.S. empire that remains hidden even, as Dr. Immerwahr noted, from PhD historians.

Yet more importantly, for today’s reflections on this first Sunday of Lent, the interview revealed how the hidden U.S. empire actually involves our country in devil worship as defined by this Sunday’s Gospel episode.

Actually, that’s been the case for Christians in general ever since the 4^th century of our era, when their predecessors threw in their lot with Constantine’s Roman army. Since then, they’ve (we’ve!) been worshipping Satan while calling him “God.” Today’s Gospel calls attention to that contradiction. It implies that Christians should no more support their country’s foreign policy (or what pretends to be the Christian Church) than if it were run by Hitler or the devil himself.

Let me explain.

Begin with Dr. Immerwahr’s description of the hidden U.S. Empire. He traces its inauguration to the period immediately after our country’s founding. It was then that settlers incorporated territories seized (in clear violation of treaties) from Native Americans. Then in 1845, the U.S. absorbed nearly half of Mexico – Texas first and then [after the Mexican-American War (1846-’48)], what became Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. By the end of the 19^th century, the U.S. had added Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, and Wake Island.

If we add to this the implications and actual invocation of the Monroe Doctrine (1823) in order to control the politics of Latin America, we can see forms of U.S. colonialism extending throughout the western hemisphere.

Coups in Africa [e.g. Congo (1961), Ghana (1965), Angola (1970s), Chad (1982)] established U.S. hegemony there. Similar interventions in the Middle East (e.g. Iran in 1953) along with the establishment of Israel and Saudi Arabia as a U.S. proxies controlling political-economy throughout the region established United States control there.

Factor in the 800 U.S. military bases peppered across the world and one’s understanding of our empire’s extent expands exponentially. (Russia, by contrast has 9 such bases; the rest of the world has virtually 0). To understand the sheer numbers involved, think of our continued military presence in South Korea (35,000 troops) Japan (40,000), and Germany (32,000). Besides this, of course, there are the active troops who daily kill civilians and destroy property in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and elsewhere. In total we’re told that there are about 165,000 troops deployed in 150 countries throughout the world – though, in the light of what I’ve just recounted, even that number seems vastly understated.

In any case, all of that describes an extensive, highly oppressive, and extremely violent American Empire.

And we’re proud of it. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson thought of colonialism as marvelous. However, by the first decade of the 20^th century, politicians became increasingly uncomfortable with “the ‘C’ word,” and exchanged references to colonies for the gentler euphemism, “territories.”

But whatever name we give it, the reality of U.S. empire stands in sharp contrast to today’s Gospel reading and its description of Jesus basic proclamation with its negative judgment on empire and colonialism.

As a prophet and actual victim of empire, Jesus made his fundamental proclamation not about himself or about a new religion. Much less was it about the after-life or “going to heaven.” Instead, Jesus proclaimed the “Kingdom of God.” That phrase referred to what the world would be like without empire – if Yahweh were king instead of Rome’s Caesar. In other words, “Kingdom of God” was a political image among a people unable and unwilling to distinguish between politics and religion.

According to Jesus, everything would be reversed in God’s Kingdom. The world’s guiding principles would be changed. The first would be last; the last would be first. The rich would weep, and the poor would laugh. Prostitutes and tax collectors would enter the Kingdom, while the priests and “holy people” – all of them collaborators with Rome – would find themselves excluded. The world would belong not to the powerful, but to the “meek,” i.e. to the gentle, humble and non-violent. It would be governed not by force and “power over” but by compassion and gift (i.e. sharing).

That basic message becomes apparent in Luke’s version of Jesus’ second temptation described in today’s Gospel episode. From a high vantage point, the devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth. Then he says,

“I shall give to you all this power and glory;
for it has been handed over to me,
and I may give it to whomever I wish.
All this will be yours, if you worship me.”

Notice what’s happening here. The devil shows Jesus an empire infinitely larger than Rome’s – “all the kingdoms of the world.” Such empire, the devil claims, belongs to him: “It has been handed over to me.” This means that those who exercise imperial power do so because an evil spirit has chosen to share his possession with them: “I may give it to whomever I wish.” The implication here is that Rome (and whoever exercises empire) is the devil’s agent. Finally, the tempter underlines what all of this means: devil-worship is the single prerequisite for empire’s possession and exercise: “All this will be yours, if you worship me.”

However, Jesus responds,

“It is written:
You shall worship the Lord, your God,
and him alone shall you serve.”

Here Jesus quotes the Mosaic tradition summarized in Deuteronomy 26 (today’s first reading) to insist that empire and worship of Yahweh are incompatible. Put otherwise, at the beginning of his public life, Jesus declares his anti-imperial position in the strongest possible (i.e. scriptural) terms.

Now fast forward to the 4th century – 381 CE to be exact. In 313 Constantine’s Edict of Milan had removed from Christianity the stigma of being a forbidden cult. From 313 on, it was legal. By 325 Constantine had become so involved in the life of the Christian church that he himself convoked the Council of Nicaea to determine the identity of Jesus. Who was Jesus after all – merely a man, or was he a God pretending to be a man, or perhaps a man who became a God? Was he equal to Yahweh or subordinate to him? If he was God, did he have to defecate and urinate? Seriously, these were the questions!

However, my point is that by the early 4th century the emperor had a strong hand in determining the content of Christian theology. And as time passed, the imperial hand grew more influential by the day. In fact, by 381 under the emperor Theodosius Christianity had become not just legal, but the official religion of the Roman Empire. As such its job was to attest that God (not the devil) had given empire to Rome in exchange for worshipping him (not the devil)!

Do you get my point here? It’s the claim that in the 4th century, Rome presented church fathers with the same temptation that Jesus experienced in the desert. But whereas Jesus had refused empire as diabolical, the prevailing faction of 4th century church leadership embraced it as a gift from God. In so doing they also said “yes” to the devil worship as the necessary prerequisite to aspirations to control “all the kingdoms of the world.” Christians have been worshipping the devil ever since, while calling him “God.”

No, today’s readings insist: all the kingdoms of the world belong only to God. They are God’s Kingdom to be governed not by “power over,” not by dominion and taking, but by love and gift. Or in the words of Jesus, the earth is meant to belong to those “meek” I mentioned – the gentle, humble, and non-violent.

Yet, as Dr. Immerwahr attests, those very people living in the West’s former colonies in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia are the very ones ceaselessly victimized by the empire historians have so well-hidden from our consciousness.

As described in Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire, colonialism and neo-colonialism are diabolic abominations in the eyes of Jesus’ God. They represent nothing less than a system or robbery currently bent on confiscating the rich resources of the Global South. Authentic followers of Christ can never support such depredations.

On this First Sunday of Lent, we should pray sincerely and work tirelessly for the defeat of such abominable practices.

(Sunday Homily) Amy Goodman Shows Us How to “Pray Always”

dog-standing-rock

Readings for 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time: EX 17: 8-13; PS 121: 1-8; 2 TM 3:14-4:2; LK 18: 1-8;

Amy Goodman is in trouble. She’s the television journalist my wife and I had dinner with last summer. She’s the host of “Democracy Now: the War and Peace Report” – a daily news hour on the Pacifica Radio and Television network.

In the face of mainstream media’s refusal to cover significant grassroots events and issues, Ms. Goodman’s program has been called “probably the most significant progressive news institution that has come around in some time” (by professor and media critic Robert McChesney.) In addition to sources such as OpEdNews, Information Clearing House, and Alternet, “Democracy Now” is an invaluable fountain of information about issues that touch all of our lives. Amy’s program is an example of what can be accomplished for peace and social justice in the face of overwhelming odds.

Anyway, Amy is in trouble. Or should I say that judges in the North Dakota legal system are in trouble. I mean the court’s black robes there are about to tangle with a woman who is stronger and more committed than all of them put together.

The issue at hand is a charge of criminal trespassing against Ms. Goodman. It stems from her coverage of Native American protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline – a nearly 2000 mile, multi-billion dollar construction stretching through North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois. The pipeline cuts across Sioux Tribe sacred sites and burial grounds at their Standing Rock Reservation. Defense of those holy grounds has brought together thousands of Native Americans from across the country and Latin America, as well as indigenous peoples from around the world.

On Labor Day weekend this year, while Amy was covering that resistance, security forces of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the pipeline’s builders, set dogs on the Standing Rock “Protectors” (they refuse the name ” protestors”). She filmed a dog whose mouth was dripping with Protectors’ blood.

Amy’s honest reporting (protected by our Constitution’s First Amendment) proved offensive to ETP, their security forces, and to the local police. Hence the charges.

_____

Please keep all of that in mind as we attempt to understand today’s liturgy of the word. In the context of an unjust legal system, our readings raise the question of what it means to “pray always.” Jesus says it means persistently demanding justice. Amy embodies that meaning.

Actually, the readings compare what might be termed men’s intermittent way of praying with women’s unrelenting persistence. For instance, in today’s readings, men shockingly pray that God might intervene to slaughter their enemies.

In contrast, the woman in today’s gospel is in it for the long haul. She indefatigably confronts the power structure of her day as her way of “praying always.” That is, like Amy Goodman, she persistently works to bring her world into harmony with God’s justice. According to Jesus, that’s what prayer means.

Take that first reading from Exodus. . . Did it make you raise your eyebrows? It should have. It’s about God facilitating mass slaughter. It tells the story of Moses praying during a battle against the King of Amalek. It’s a classic etiology evidently meant to explain a chair-like rock formation near a site remembered as an early Hebrew battleground.

“What means this formation?” would have been the question inspiring this explanatory folk tale. “Well,” came the answer, “Long ago when our enemy Amelek attacked our people, Moses told Joshua to raise an elite corps of fighters. During the course of the ensuing battle, Moses watched from this very place where we are standing accompanied by his brother Aaron and another assistant called Hur.

Moses raised his hands in prayer during the day-long battle. And as long as he did so, Joshua’s troops got the better of Amalek’s. But Moses would get tired from time to time; so he’d lower his hands. When he did so, Amalek’s troops got the better of Joshua’s.

“To solve the problem, Aaron and Hur sat Moses down on this stone you see before us. They held up his arms during the entire battle. That strategy saved the day. Joshua won his battle “mowing down Amelek and his people.”

So here we have a God who responds to ad hoc prayers and reverses history so that one group of his children might “mow down” another group of people he supposedly loves. That’s a pretty primitive concept of prayer (and of God), don’t you agree?

In today’s gospel, Jesus has another approach to prayer. For him, prayer is not an ad hoc affair – about changing God’s mind. Rather, “praying always” represents the adoption of an attitude — a way of life — that consistently seeks justice for the oppressed. Praying always means living from a place that won’t let go of justice concerns like those that drive Amy Goodman.

To illustrate that point for his own time, Jesus tells a comic parable about a persistent woman. (Remember, he’s speaking to people who have no power in a legal system, which, like ours favors the wealthy and powerful.)

“Imagine a judge,” Jesus said. “He’s like most of the judges we know. He doesn’t give a damn about the God of the poor, and he doesn’t care what people like us think of him.” (Already Jesus’ audience is smiling seeing a funny story coming.)

“But then along comes this widow-woman. Like all of us, she’s poor, and as usual, the judge pays no attention to her.” (Jesus’ audience recognizes the syndrome; they nod to each other.)

“But this woman’s a nagger,” Jesus says. (Now his audience is snickering and chuckling.)

“She just won’t let go. And she’s strong and aggressive besides. She comes back day after day insisting that she get justice against her adversary. And as the days go by, she gets more and more insistent – and threatening. So much so that the judge starts getting worried about his own safety.

(Laughter from the crowd . . .)

“’While it is true,’ the judge says to himself, ‘that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.’”

In other words, this macho judge is afraid of this poor widow; he’s afraid she’ll come and beat him up!

Can you imagine Jesus saying that without smiling broadly – and without the crowd roaring in laughter?

Anyway, here’s Jesus point: “If an unjust judge responds to the prayer of the poor like that, how do you suppose the All-Parent will respond when we ask for justice? The All-Parent will respond swiftly, Jesus says, because that’s who God is – the one who (as Martin Luther King put it) has established an arc of history that bends towards justice.

Prayer, then, is about reminding ourselves of that fact, trusting and having faith that in the long run justice and truth will prevail. Taking that position and acting upon it in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, takes great faith that’s harder and harder to find.

So Jesus ends his parable with the rhetorical question, “When the Son of Man returns, do you think he’ll find that kind of faith anywhere?”

What I’m suggesting here is that today we’re more likely to find that kind of faith, that kind of prayer, that kind of persistence in women rather than men. The example of Amy Goodman and her “War and Peace Report” inspires us to renounce ideas of a God who calls us to “mow our enemies down.” It inspires us to view prayer not as a now-and-then petition, but as a lifestyle based on a struggle for justice.

In any case, Amy Goodman seems even more determined than the widow in Jesus’ parable. In prosecuting her, the pro-ETP justice system has bitten off more than it can chew.

Thank God for persistent women! We men have so much to learn from them. A good start towards doing so would be to watch “Democracy Now” every day. It’s on line. Check it out.

Our Dinner with Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman

A week ago today, Peggy and I had dinner with Amy Goodman, the host of “Democracy Now: the War and Peace Report” (DN). The program airs each Monday through Friday on radio and TV stations across the country. I watch it every morning in its podcast version that can be accessed at any hour at http://www.democracynow.org/

The dinner was a Christmas present from my daughter, Maggie who (with her husband, Kerry) had given DN a substantial contribution.

[The gift came with a black Democracy Now tee shirt (which I wore to our dinner) and two coffee cups showing the program’s logo. The meal portion of the gift was for me and a companion of my choice. Naturally, it was Peggy. Still another of the gift’s components was attendance at one of the show’s morning productions (which we’ll take advantage of sometime in the future).]

There were four of us in Thursday’s dinner party. Amy brought along her factotum, Edith Penty, whose presence was absolutely delightful. We ate at the Hangawi Korean restaurant on 32^nd street between Fifth and Madison Avenue. There we shared “The Emperor’s Tasting Menu” that featured starters, appetizers, entrees and dessert – acorn noodle salad with avocado fritters, dumplings in pine nut and pineapple sauce, tofu with sesame leaves and seaweed sauce, and dessert.

As the meal unfolded we all shared our biographies.

Amy is a New Yorker raised in Bay Shore. She is the daughter of an ophthalmologist father and a mother who taught literature and Women’s Studies. Her family is Jewish Orthodox. Her maternal grandfather was an Orthodox Rabbi. She studied Hebrew and Torah from kindergarten through high school. Amy graduated from Radcliffe College in 1984, with a degree in anthropology.

From her stories about participation in demonstrations, vigils, and campaigns, it’s clear that Amy Goodman has always been an activist. For some years she worked in an organic bakery that eventually supplied buns for Arby’s restaurants. Journalism has always been in her family’s blood. (Her brother published a family newspaper before reaching his teenage years.) She founded Democracy Now in 1996; this is its 20^th anniversary year. Throughout Amy’s account of her life, there wasn’t a trace of self-promotion. On the contrary, both Peggy and I were impressed with her interest in our stories, and with her unassuming presence.

In all the four of us spent about two hours together. And of course conversation went far beyond autobiographies. Inevitably we discussed Trump, Bernie and Hillary.

The most interesting insight came when Amy shared the fact that the Obamas and Clintons can’t stand one another. Obama made Hillary his Secretary of State following the principle: Stay close to your friends, and even closer to your enemies. One of the first questions asked in any Obama or Clinton vetting process is: “What do you think about Hillary?” “What do you think about Barrack?” Hiring decisions are made accordingly.

Towards the end of our time together, Amy left the table for a moment. Soon afterwards waiters came to our table with ice cream and small cakes and a candle. Amy had informed them that Peggy and I are celebrating our 40^th wedding anniversary. That’s the kind of thoughtful person Amy Goodman is.

As we left Hangwai, a young African American man caught sight of my Democracy Now tee shirt. He said to me: “Love your tee shirt. I watch that program every day. Love that too!” I pointed ahead of us to Amy who was deep in conversation with Peggy. I said, “That’s Amy Goodman right there.” He couldn’t believe it. Soon we were all taking pictures with the celebrity. It was a moment that topped the evening off just perfectly.

If Democracy Now isn’t part of your daily news-gathering routine, it should be. Unlike other newscasts, it centralizes stories from the grassroots. So it often interviews victims of police violence, representatives of NGOs (non-governmental organizations), political dissidents, and community organizers. Noam Chomsky, Glen Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Medea Benjamin, Cornel West, Lori Wallach, Richard Wolff, Tariq Ali, and many other thought-leaders and journalists are among the program’s frequent guests.

“Democracy Now” covers the Black Lives Matter Movement along with the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction campaign against the Israeli apartheid system – whose proponents are almost never interviewed in the mainstream media.

If you watch Democracy Now, you know details of the recent coup in Brazil, its predecessor in Honduras, and current attempts at still another in Venezuela. You know about Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice. But you also are familiar with police killings of Sandra Bland, Tanisha Anderson, and Miriam Cary.

None of the stories is reduced to sound bites. Interviewees like Noam Chomsky are sometimes given an entire hour (without commercial interruption) to analyze a whole host of world and national issues. An hour-long broadcast was devoted recently to Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit peace activist who died last month.

Peggy and I are so grateful to Maggie and Kerry for making possible such a memorable evening — and of course, to Amy Goodman for spending so much time with us and for being the huge inspiration she is