Tag: Julian Assange

So Far, The World Is Better Off with Trump!

I never thought I would find myself writing these words. But I think the world is far better off with Trump as our president than with Genocide Joe Biden.

There I said it. I do so under the threat of great personal detriment. I mean, I can hardly voice such opinion in polite progressive company.  I can’t even say so in my own family.

So, at the risk of complete isolation, let me try to explain myself.

I think the world’s better off with Trump because a head of state should at least be sui compos mentis. Clearly, Joe Biden was not. By most accounts, Jake Sullivan has been running the country for the last four years. Secondly, Trump is better because he’s backing us off from nuclear war with the Russians. Joe wouldn’t even talk with them.  Thirdly, whatever we might think of his words about real estate in Gaza, the Donald has introduced a cease fire there. It seems to be holding. Fourthly, President Trump shows promise of dismantling the CIA and FBI. That has no downside as far as I can see. And finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, he’s unifying the country around the issue of truth-telling. I mean it. Let me explain.

Trump’s Not Senile

I can hardly believe the Democrats knew Joe Biden was mentally over the hill from the first day of his administration. And yet after four years, they were willing to run him out there for a second term, when everybody knew he could scarcely tell up from down.

How cynical is that? How disrespectful to voters! How anti-democratic!

Thank God for the first presidential debate that showed the old man mired in an advanced condition of senility.

As such, his defining issues became:

  • Billions and billions and billions for Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. (Trump stopped that right quick.)
  • His inability to do anything about a ceasefire in Gaza. (Trump turned that around even before he was sworn in.)
  • Unstinting cooperation in the genocide of Palestinians. (We have yet to see Trump’s final policy here, though his words and supply of 2000 pound bombs are not promising.)
  • Maintaining U.S. hegemony at all costs.

Those are the issues that obsessed and defined Genocide Joe – Ukraine, Gaza, genocide itself, and refusal to recognize that we live in a multipolar world. Little else he did really counts.   

Trump Talks Russian

In sharp contrast to Biden’s foolishness, Donald Trump has agreed to peace talks with our proxy adversary in Ukraine. That war could have been entirely avoided had Biden even acknowledged reading and had he responded to Mr. Putin’s peace proposal in December of 2021. However, preferring war to diplomacy, he chose not to.

Shortly afterwards, the war could have been stopped in its tracks had Biden not (through Boris Johnson’s nefarious graces) effectively voided the peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine initialed by both belligerents in March of 2022. Instead, the old man again chose war that so far has exacted more than a million casualties.

In other words, Biden’s version of diplomacy was refusal to even talk with Putin.

Donald Trump has reversed all of that. Simple man that he is, Trump evidently realizes what all of us teach our children – make up with those you’ve been fighting with. Talk with your “enemies.”  Try to see things from their point of view. No good parent would instruct them otherwise.

Diplomacy is as simple as that. Its exercise under Donald Trump has made the world a safer place.

Ceasefire in Gaza

So far, Trump’s policy in Gaza has made Palestinians safer as well.

The whole sequence of events since Trump’s diplomatic intervention illustrates the point. Since then, the whole world has witnessed:

  • Thousands upon thousands of Palestinians returning “home.”
  • The Zionist-caused rubble of their homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, mosques, and churches.
  • The uncovering of untold numbers of friends, relatives, doctors, nurses, and teachers buried and uncounted under the rubble raising the number of Palestinians indiscriminately killed to well over 100.000 – more than half women, children, and the elderly.
  • The survival of Hamas fighters still proud, well-armed, and undefeated by Israel’s genocidal attacks.
  • The testimony of Hamas prisoners about humane treatment on the part of their captors.
  • The contrasting emaciated and evidently tortured bodies of Zionist prisoners released by the Zionists.

None of this has been good for Israel’s image in the world. Instead, it’s made the world aware of the justice of the Palestinian cause.

To repeat, all of that makes Palestinians safer. It has also shown President Trump’s policy in Israel to be better than Mr. Biden’s, at least so far.

Today, Palestinians are better off under Trump.

Dismantling the CIA

And then there’s Mr. Trump’s appointment of Tulsi Gabbard to oversee the country’s 18 spy organizations. Those agencies spy on us! They engage in regime change operations. According to ex-CIA director, Mike Pompeo, they lie, they cheat, they steal all the time. They take entire courses on how to do so. Pompeo was proud of that. He thought it was a big joke.

But ask Julian Assange. Ask Chelsea Manning. Ask Edward Snowden. It’s not a joke.

Tulsi Gabbard realizes all of that. In Senate testimony, she refused to identify Snowden as a traitor.

Clearly, she has the “intelligence” establishment quaking in their boots.

That makes all of us better off.

Conclusion Bringing Us All Together

Recently, I saw a YouTube discussion between leftist comedian Jimmy Dore and progressive journalist Matt Taibbi. Dore raised a question about climate change. He confessed that in view of all the lies that have infected the scientific community (and American public life in general) he was for the first time having doubts about climate change. Was its threat being overblown?

In response, Taibbi admitted that the exposure of so many lies conveyed by politicians, clergymen, journalists, and university researchers had him wondering too. “I’m ashamed to say so,” he said in effect, “but all of that has me wondering about beliefs I’ve taken for granted over the last 30 years of my life.”

The exchange between Dore and Taibbi made me realize that even the falsehoods conveyed by the Liar in Chief currently manning the White House has important benefits.

On all segments of the political spectrum, it has us wondering about truth. We no longer trust those claiming to be truth tellers. We no longer trust the “fact checkers.” They’ve all been shown to be liars.

Regardless of where we stand on politics or climate change, that’s a hugely important point for Americans to realize and agree to. Thank you for bringing us together, Mr. Trump.

Alexy Navalny Vs. Julian Assange, and Gonzalo Lira

Vladimir Putin has done it again. Just as he did with Yevgeny Prigozhin, he’s murdered another political adversary. This time it’s his “most prominent political opponent,” Alexy Navalny.

That’s the IMMEDIATE conclusion UNIVERSALLY drawn and promulgated by the political establishment and mainstream media in the collective west.

Such unanimity especially in the United States with its record of political assassinations and brutal political imprisonments raises suspicions that we might not be getting the full story.

That’s especially true when one contrasts western handwringing over Navalny’s fate with its indifference to the torture of imprisoned Australian citizen Julian Assange and to the State Department’s lack of concern about the behind bars death of American citizen Gonzalo Lira in Kiev.

So, before we join in premature conclusions, let’s look at the other side of Navalny’s death especially in the light of what we know about Assange and Lira.

Rush to Judgment

First, consider the immediate response to news that Navalny had died. Virtually EVERYONE from Genocide Joe Biden to Hillary Clinton and the Secretary General of Amnesty International claimed certainty that the man had been murdered “by Putin.”

This was even the general thrust of a “Democracy Now” interview with Russia expert Masha Gessen. The latter had authored an article in The New Yorker article entitled “The Death of Alexy Navalny Putin’s Most Formidable Political Opponent.” For Gessen there is “no doubt” Navalny was killed – again “by Putin.”

One wonders where such certainty can possibly come from simply on the report of Navalny’s death. After all, people die in U.S. prisons and migrant detention cells all the time.  Such rush to judgment seems to fly in the face of the foundational legal principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.  Nevertheless, before ANY examination of evidence, before any autopsy, before any independent investigation, the case is already closed.

The message to Americans: we too should have “no doubt.” Just as we were getting to know a more humanized Vladimir Putin (thanks to Tucker Carlson’s recent interview) the cruel autocrat has struck again. Whatever “official” autopsies might conclude, Putin is surely guilty and can never be proven innocent. (After all, who could ever believe Russian investigators?)

Moreover, Alexy Navalny is universally portrayed as a heroic advocate of democracy who has always opposed the “autocracy” of Vladimir Putin. He was a “freedom fighter” in the face of anti-democratic oppression.

True, Gessen admits that Navalny had previously been an ultra-nationalist often photographed with Nazi paraphernalia. And yes, he had also been anti-immigrant and Islamophobic. He was a guns-right advocate too who at one point called for the execution of Muslims and for the extermination of “cockroaches” like Russians living in Georgia.

But according to Gessen all of that was in the distant past. Since his arrest and apparently while behind bars, he had undergone a conversion. In fact, like many jailhouse converts, the imprisoned Navalny had become a student of religions. He had even transformed into an advocate of Muslims and their right to access to The Holy Koran while serving their time.

However, even if we grant the man’s conversion, the question remains why would Putin do such a thing? Navalny was already in prison serving a 19- year sentence. He was out of the public eye. He represented no political threat to the Russian leader who by all accounts enjoys high popularity with Russians and will easily win next month’s presidential elections.

In other words, Navalny’s “murder” could do nothing but make Putin look bad, expose him to criticism from his opponents, and hurt him at the ballot box. As ex-CIA officer, Ray McGovern puts it: Navalny “was of no consequence in terms of Putin’s reelection prospects. He had no real following there (i.e. in Russia) except among a certain group of folks that didn’t amount to much.”

The Other Navalny

But who really was Alexy Navalny? According to Scott Ritter, Navalny was a CIA agent “straight up.” He came to political awareness during the Boris Yeltsin years (1991-1999) before Putin’s reforms when Russia was extremely corrupt. Like so many young Russians of that era, he shared a strong admiration of the West that even bordered on rejection of his own Russian identity.

As such, Navalny was recognized by the CIA as a “future leader.” They sent him to the World Fellows Program at Yale University whose connections to the CIA (according to Ritter) are well known. There they groomed the man as a CIA-funded political opponent of Vladimir Putin.

In other words, Navalny was a player in a process that routinely funds so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia and elsewhere for purposes of bringing about regime change. Put still otherwise, the NGOs in question were fronts for U.S. and British intelligence agencies who after the advent of Vladimir Putin took on the task of bringing down the Russian president.

This made Navalny in the eyes of Russian law a traitor guilty of treason. As everywhere else, there are laws in Russia against such things.

Assange & Lira

Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA analyst, goes further still. He contrasts the hand wringing about the Navalny affair with the lack of such distress over Julian Assange, the Australian founder and editor of Wikileaks.  McGovern’s concern is relevant because this week, the 20th and 21st of February, a final hearing will be held in London to determine Assange’s fate.

Julian Assange, of course, faces extradition to the United States to face a 175-year prison sentence for releasing to the public evidence of U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. For five years, he has been held without charge in a 6’X12’ cell in London’s infamous Belmarsh Prison with Great Britain’s worst rapists, murderers, and terrorists. Before that he spent seven years as an asylum seeker in London’s Ecuadorian embassy.

And this despite appeals for his release by the Australian Parliament itself, and despite the CIA’s breach of basic client-lawyer privilege by listening in and recording confidential conferences between Assange and his legal representatives – a fact that alone should disqualify any further legal processes against this Australian citizen.

Where’s the outcry, McGovern says about Assange’s imprisonment and torture? And doesn’t that prominent foreign journalist’s mistreatment deprive the U.S. of any moral authority to criticize, let alone issue demands about the Navalny case?

And then there’s the issue of the apparent murder of American citizen Gonzalo Lira in one of Kiev’s prisons. Lira was charged with suspicion of expressing subversive opinions about Ukraine’s war with Russia. According to Tucker Carlson, “the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture. Several weeks ago, we spoke to his father, who predicted his son would be killed.”

I ask my readers: Have you even heard of Gonzalo Lira? If not, don’t worry, you’re in good company. Genocide Joe’s administration acts as if it never heard of him either.

Conclusion  

The conclusion here is not that Vladimir Putin was not ultimately responsible for the death of Alexy Navalny. That remains to be seen. Instead, the proper conclusions include the following:

  • It is far too premature to conclude anything.
  • Such prejudice flies in the face of basic legal assumptions about innocence and guilt.
  • Alexy Navalny was probably not a freedom fighter.
  • In fact, there is clear indication that he was a white supremacist and anti-immigrant ultra-nationalist.
  • He also seems to have been an Islamophobe, an agent of the CIA, and a traitor to his country.
  • Like all countries, Russia has laws about such matters.
  • In the light of its treatment of Julian Assange and Gonzalo Lira, the United States has zero moral authority to posture as a champion of prisoners’ rights, freedom of speech, rule of law, prosecutorial rectitude, or extra-judicial assassinations.

O yes, and then there’s all that business about Jeffrey Epstein‘s death in prison . ..

Jimmy Lai vs. Julian Assange: Prophets without Honor (A July 4th Sunday Reflection)

Readings for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Ezekiel 2: 2-5; Psalm 123: 1-4; 2nd Corinthians 12: 7-10; Luke 4: 18; Mark 6: 1-6

I can’t believe that we’re still expected to believe that the United States and Great Britain are concerned about human rights or press freedom or that either has any leg to stand on in such posturing.

I mean, how can any of us still believe after the lies about Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the refusal to punish Saudi Arabia for the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the imprisonment of Julian Assange, the demonization of Wikileaks, and the cooperation of the mainstream media (MSM) with all of it.

You’re telling me that either London or Washington has the right to pronounce on press freedom? On human rights? Please!

Demonization of China

Nonetheless, they’re at it again in relation to China and the desperate campaign of both Great Britain and America to demonize Beijing and its implied invocation of an Asian version of The Monroe Doctrine in relation to Hong Kong [which, by the way, (unlike the U.S. relationship to Nicaragua, Honduras, Cuba, or Venezuela) is actually part of China.]

More specifically, we’re supposed to join the MSM and “our” government as well as England’s in worrying about the recent shutdown of the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong – a publication that sounds a lot like The National Inquirer.

Judge for yourself. A recent cover story in The Guardian describes the paper as a tabloid-style publication that has “a chequered history including cheque-book journalism, muckraking and sometimes unethical reporting alongside fearless investigation into government corruption and police brutality.”

What? Chequered history? Paying sources for information (probably with money from the CIA or the National Endowment for Democracy) and unethical reporting?

Oh, and the paper is owned by billionaire Jimmy Lai who has been imprisoned (according to The Guardian) “on protest-related convictions and national security charges.”

So, now it’s “Hands across the Planet” for poor Jimmy and his yellow journalism.

Meanwhile Julian Assange wastes away precisely in a British prison for publishing government secrets exactly about U.S. war crimes in Wikileaks – a source that publishes the Washington’s own unquestionably true confessions of the criminal acts it desperately wants kept secret from the rest of us.

So let me get this straight: Jimmy Lai’s a hero. And we’re all supposed to get misty-eyed about the Hong Inquirer’s brave reporters. But Julian Assange is a criminal. And Wikileaks doesn’t even qualify as journalism.

And, by the way, we’re supposed to forget that there was absolutely no press freedom all those years the Brits controlled Hong Kong.

Does anyone else sense the irony?

Today’s Readings

Such considerations are especially relevant this July 4th as we celebrate our supposed “freedoms” and the tarnished ideals of the United States. Significantly, this month marks as well the 100th anniversary of the founding of China’s Communist Party (CCP) whose good example (in drastically reducing world poverty and extending foreign aid) our country so fears.  

Besides being July 4th, today also happens to be Sunday, time for a weekly “Homily for Progressives” where the theme of the day is prophecy in the sense of social criticism in the name of all that’s holy.

The first reading from the prophet Ezekiel implicitly reminds us that there were two kinds of prophets among the ancient Hebrews. Both are still with us today.

One type was a “court prophet” telling the king and power structure what they wanted to hear – justifying their oppression of the poor. (On this Independence Day you’ll hear a lot of their drivel as they praise “America” as though it were not – as Martin King put it – “the world’s greatest purveyor of violence.”) Think about The Apple Daily, Jimmy Lai and our MSM as court prophets.

The other type of prophet spoke for the Truth that was commonly referred to as “God.” The words of such men and women were routinely dismissed by the powers that happened to be. Some prophets (as is the case with Jesus in today’s final reading) were even rejected by the very oppressed people they were trying to champion. Their words were thought too dangerous and, in some cases, too good to be true. Think about Julian Assange as a prophet in the mold of Ezekiel or the Nazareth construction worker many of us claim to follow.

In any case, here are my “translations” of today’s selections. You should really check them out here to see if I got them right. As you read, think of Julian Assange.

Ezekiel 2: 2-5

I was startled
When God’s Spirit
Demanded that
I criticize my own people
As ungodly and stubborn
Telling me 
To make them uncomfortably
Aware
That a fearless prophet
Was at work
Among them.

Psalm 123: 1-4

Great and holy Parent
We invoke your compassion
On your prophetic
Servants and handmaids
So eager to serve you
Despite contemptuous mistreatment
At the hands 
Of our so-called “leaders”
With their pride and arrogance
Directed 
Against your beloved poor.

2 Corinthians 12: 7-10

Neither do prophets 
Have to be perfect.
Even Paul of Tarsus
Despite his many gifts
Suffered under
“An angel of Satan”
And “a thorn in the flesh"
To keep him humble
Lest he take credit
For the work
Of the Holy Spirit
Within him.

Mark 6: 1-6

But like Ezekiel
Jesus was rejected 
By his own townsfolk
Who complained that
He had gotten “above his raisin’s”
They didn’t even
Call him by  
His father’s name
(Implying he was a bastard)
While dismissing
His brothers and sisters
As quite unremarkable.
There’d be
No mighty deeds
For such whiners.
Only cures for
A few ailing beggars.

Conclusion

In a recent New York Times editorial, another court prophet, Yi-Zheng Lian, the former chief editor of The Hong Kong Economic Journal, joined the chorus of warnings about China’s grave threat to the West.

To an audience acquainted with the revelations of Edward Snowden Lian decried China’s surveillance system. To those whose country has bombed and killed Muslims by the scores and thousands every day over the last 20 years, he complained about treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. To Americans who have lived through a Trump presidency, he criticized Chinese governance by lies. (His example? President Xi Jinping actually claimed that China seeks an international image that is “trustworthy,” “respectable” and “lovable.”) The horror of it all!   

Nonetheless, Lian also pointed out the fact that the Chinese Communist Party retains high popularity among a vast majority of its people. In fact, the party has grown by 20% annually since its foundation 100 years ago. There are no refugees from China. Travelers and students come and go at will and usually return home.

For Lian, the bottom line is that China is showing no evident signs of decline. This means that it will remain a formidable force continuing to threaten the United States and Western allies for years to come. This will be true, he said, not just militarily and ideologically, but also technologically and economically.

So, the West, Lian concludes, had better get used to the CCP’s threatening presence “at its front door.”

Of course, all this talk of threat and menace from a country that (unlike the United States and Great Britain) has bombed no one in the last 40 years – all this imperial identification of a country more than 7000 miles away as at “our front door” is nonsense.

So is any continued posturing about “our” championing of human rights and press freedom. July 4th in the context of faith reflection is a good time for reminders of such home truths.  

For Decades the U.S. Hated Nelson Mandela

NelsonMandela_Terrorist

Nelson Mandela was buried yesterday. The entire world is in mourning. President Obama joined others in eulogizing the 95 year old hero with words of deep admiration and praise.

All the adulation was richly deserved.

However, in our present context of anti-terrorist hysteria, it is important to note that Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC) party were on the U.S. terrorist Watch List until quite recently. In fact, after spending more than a quarter century in South Africa’s Robben Island, and despite Mandela’s stature as President of South Africa, it wasn’t until 2008 that Mandela and his ANC were removed from that role of infamy.

That fact coupled with Mandela’s now-heroic status shows how the term “terrorist” can be misapplied for decades to genuine freedom fighters while the U.S. opposes them in its de facto support of oppression. Martin Luther King teaches the same lesson.

The Reagan administration was largely responsible for attempting to ruin Mandela’s reputation. It called him “subversive” and “communist” all during the 1980s. Mr. Reagan insisted that Mandela and the ANC were Cuban backed enemies of the United States and its interests in South Africa. Such charges were behind the administration’s refusal to support UN and international trade sanctions and an arms embargo against the racist South African apartheid system.

Even after “Madiba” (his affectionate tribal name) received the Nobel Peace Prize (1993), the U.S. continued to treat Mandela as a pariah. However, after 9/11, it changed its reason for doing so. The State Department then stopped referring to him as a communist and called him a “terrorist” instead. In fact as late as 2005, he was required to get a special State Department waiver in order to enter the U.S. in order to visit George W. Bush.

Finally in 2008, with a big prod from the Congressional Black Caucus, Congress at last voted to remove the by then 90 year old Mandela and ANC from the U.S. government’s official list of terrorists.

All of this has been consigned to George Orwell’s Memory Hole in the upsurge of universal acclaim for South Africa’s safely dead Madiba.

The same thing happened, of course, to Martin Luther King whom the State Department, CIA, and others had labeled “communist” and “subversive” before finally honoring the martyr’s memory with a national holiday and with innumerable “Martin Luther King Boulevards” throughout the country.

In the light of such history, can our grandchildren look forward to misty eyes, holidays and street renamings after the passing of Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Aaron Swartz, and Assata Shakur?

Stay tuned.

Going to the Movies in Bangalore: “Elysium,” Snowden, Manning and Assange

Elysium

“Elysium,” the film starring Matt Damon and Jody Foster showed up in India this past weekend. My wife, Peggy, and I happened to be in Bangalore to celebrate her birthday. So we went to see the film – our first time at the movies since arriving in India about three weeks ago. (We intend to stay here another three months as Peggy’s Fulbright at Mysore University takes its course.)

“Elysium” has been panned by some as convoluted in plot, over-the-top in its acting, and filled with typically Hollywood violence as indestructible and robotic adversaries clash in hackneyed, interminable and highly unlikely fight scenes.

I however found “Elysium” strangely intriguing when viewed from our setting in India and in the context of our government’s furor over information leaks. From that perspective, “Elysium” was evocative of the Bhagavad Gita in pitting its protagonist against overwhelming odds in a fight to the finish for human liberation.

More specifically, “Elysium” played out in comic book fashion the battle of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and other information “criminals” against the overpowering state apparatus of a militarized, out-of-control and venal federal government.

To begin with, take the film’s setting – Los Angeles in 2054. The streets of Bangalore were a good prep for the film. Like L.A. in the film, they are polluted, over-crowded, and dirty. However, unlike the imagined L.A. of the future, Bangalore finds itself going in two directions at once, not simply downhill.

Bangalore is situated somewhere between decay and an undisciplined version of globalized commercialization. It features “branded stores” like The Gap, Nike, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Dominos alongside stalls and shops overflowing with goods of all description. The treatment of workers on this sub-continent (as exemplified in the recent factory collapse in Bangladesh), is not unlike workers take-it-or-leave-it dilemma in the film.

Then consider the film’s plot. It’s about Max, a factory employee (played by Matt Damon) who is injured on the job as he’s exposed to a fatal dose of radiation. With five days to live, he must find his way to “Elysium,” a human-fabricated planet floating above the earth. There the rich live in idyllic conditions, where life-saving medical care is readily available. “Elysium’s” story is about Max’s quest to reach for that star. Damon does so by stealing government secrets.

Meanwhile the government responds with extreme violence. It pursues Max in ways reminiscent of the U.S. pursuit of Snowden, Manning and Assange. Its security apparatus hunts him down relentlessly. He is pursued by an implacable, incredibly powerful mercenary agency. He is threatened by drones. Finally, he sacrifices his life so that the information he divulged might set others free.

All of this happens in an oppressive culture characterized by:

• Dominance of the military-industrial complex that completely subordinates politicians to business moguls.
• A high unemployment rate that makes it a privilege for workers to be exploited in the workplace as opposed to remaining jobless.
• A medical system that provides healthcare only to those who can pay for it.
• Total surveillance of everyone involved.
• Fail-safe border patrol that entirely eliminates refugees by killing those attempting to cross borders illegally.
• A highly brutal police force that acts with robot brutality, absolute lack of compassion, and over-all impunity.
• The use of drones to hunt down and eliminate dissenters.
• Women (personified in the Jodie Foster secretary of defense) who despite finally holding high office prove to be more heartless than their male counterparts.

So in the end, “Elysium” is about the fate of a low-level corporate employee like Edward Snowden. The secrets Max reveals show the Department of Defense violating Elysium’s own constitution that supposedly governs a highly polarized society and keeps the reins of power in the hands of a rich minority. While protecting and empowering the minority, the rules in place deprive the majority of the rights of citizenship.

The disclosure of the planet’s governing secrets not only exposes abuse of power, but ends up dethroning the elite, while enabling ordinary people to claim the rights that belong to them in virtue of their humanity. “Elysium” is about information as the key to revolution.

Very little of this is perceived by movie critics. A movie review in The Indian Times saw “Elysium” as just another Hollywood action flick. Without explanation, it remarked that “conspiracy theorists” might find it interesting, and that the film said something about immigration and health care.

I’m suggesting that “Elysium” says much more than that. It perfectly describes the direction in which our culture is traveling. It represents a story of hope. It’s about the triumph of the working class against overwhelming odds. “Elysium” is about the power of information and the heroism of people like Snowden, Manning, and Assange. As a cautionary tale, the film is a call to support whistle-blowers against our own corrupt “leadership.”

Too bad all that de rigueur Hollywood overlay of violence, chases and predictability obscures “Elysium’s” valuable message.

Fire from Heaven: “Collateral Murder,” Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden (Sunday Homily)

Readings for 13th Sunday in ordinary time: I Kg. 19:16B, 19-21; Ps. 16: 1-2, 5, 7-11; Gal. 5:1, 13-19; Lk. 9: 51-62. http://usccb.org/bible/readings/063013.cfm

The film clip you have just seen has been dubbed “Collateral Murder.” It chronicles a series of attacks by the U.S. Army in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. The attacks directed 30 mm cannon fire at a group of nine to eleven mostly unarmed men – apart from one who carried an AK-47 and another who was holding a grenade launcher. Two in the group were war correspondents for Reuters News Service. Their cameras were mistaken for weapons. After the attack took place, Iraqi civilians arrived on the scene and attempted to aid the wounded. They too were killed. Children in the van which their father stopped to help were also shot. The film was taken by a camera mounted on the gun sights of two AH-64 Apache helicopters.

In 2007, Reuters requested the footage of the airstrikes under the Freedom of Information Act. Their request was denied. Instead the military reported that the shooters in the film had come under attack and were following strict Rules of Engagement.

However in April of 2010, U.S. Army Private, Bradley Manning, released the footage (along with other revealing documents) to the internet whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks. Manning said he wanted to expose crimes whose details routinely crossed his desk as a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. His intention was to bring those specifics to the attention of the American people, and stimulate debate about U.S. military policy and tactics. He judged that policy and its implementation to be largely immoral and contrary to international law. This was true, he said, especially in the criminal war in Iraq which the U.S. entered on false pretenses against a nation that represented no threat to its well-being. Manning found especially shocking the cavalier chatter of those he saw as murderers. Manning’s action also implied that Iraqi citizens had the right to arm themselves against such aggressors brutally invading their sovereign country without provocation.

For his trouble, Private Manning was arrested in July 2010 and held in solitary confinement for more than a year in the Marine Corps Brig in Quantico, Virginia. His treatment there was described as “torture” by more than one international human rights agency. In February of 2013, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges against him. He is currently being tried for alleged crimes that could bring a sentence of life imprisonment and even the death penalty.

I bring those details up this morning because inflicting death from the skies seems particularly relevant to our readings about Elijah and Jesus. There the concept of “fire from heaven” is associated with Elijah, invoked by James and John, and rejected by the non-violent Jesus. The readings raise questions about Christians’ routine support for wars – especially illegal ones – and about our attitudes towards prophetic disturbers of our peace such as Bradley Manning and (most recently) Edward Snowden. Snowden, of course, is the CIA employee who recently leaked details of mass surveillance programs directed against ordinary citizens like you and me. The programs appear to violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

You see, all of them – Elijah, Jesus, Manning, and Snowden have been judged by the State to be trouble-makers. In fact, Elijah was specifically called “the troubler of Israel” by King Ahab (I Kg. 18:17). In retort Elijah replied as perhaps Pvt. Manning would to President Obama. The prophet said in effect, “Now there’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black. You, dear King (or Mr. President), are the real trouble-maker. I am merely pointing that out.”

It was later on, when Ahab’s successor, his son Ahaziah, sent soldiers to arrest Elijah, that the prophet called down fire from heaven to kill the fifty arresting officers. Elijah was a fierce man.

That’s the way James and John wanted Jesus to be. It was the way they imagined God to be – fierce, vengeful, and blood-thirsty. It’s the way unquestioning supporters of “our troops” appear to picture God today. But Jesus refused to reprise Elijah’s vengeance. He rejected the prophet’s violent conception of God.

Instead, the divine as embodied in and described by Jesus is more reminiscent of the Yahweh who appears in today’s responsorial Psalm 16. There God is described as the protective refuge of the afflicted, the one who holds human destiny in his loving hands, the God who shows the way to fullness of life and lasting joy. Jesus’ God was not a war God. Instead, the divine for Jesus evoked self-sacrifice in the face of attack.

All of this means that the cost of discipleship for the followers of Jesus is high – especially when speaking truth to political power as both Elijah and Jesus made a habit of doing.

Jesus says as much in this morning’s gospel. Discipleship, he insists, requires adopting Jesus’ own posture of non-violent resistance which rejected the “fire from heaven” approach of Elijah, James and John. It entails being decisive, leaving home and family, crossing borders, and in the end not having anywhere to rest one’s head. Once we put our hands to that plow, Jesus says, there must be no turning back.

Regardless of their spiritual motivation, that in fact is the price being paid today by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden as they oppose tyranny in the spirit of Elijah, but especially of the non-violent Jesus.

To put it in terms of Paul’s Letter to Galatia, both Manning and Snowden are living “according to the Spirit.” They are engaged in non-violent resistance to acts of deceit and murder. They are serving Truth and opposing “the father of lies.”

God is truth. Or as Gandhi put it, “Truth is God.” Living according to God’s truth means resisting “flesh,” which was Paul’s term for the way of the world that Jesus found so offensive. To repeat, that is what Pvt. Manning and Edward Snowden are doing. And they are paying the price Jesus said was inevitable in this morning’s gospel. They are homeless and hunted by the same kind of arrogant powers that were mobilized against Elijah and Jesus.

Few of us have the courage of a Manning or Snowden. At the very least, however, they deserve our support against those who would turn our world into the Surveillance State so presciently described in George Orwell’s 1984. Manning and Snowden have put their hand to the plow, and for them there is no turning back.

Recently in my travels I saw a sign in the airport reading, “If you see something, say something.” I thought, “Yeah, unless the one you’re reporting is your boss, the President or the head of the CIA, or other officials engaged in mayhem like that portrayed in ‘Collateral Murder’.” Then if you “say something” you’ll be called a terrorist, traitor and thief.

Tellers of truth like Elijah, Jesus, Bradley Manning and Ed Snowden saw what is true, reported it, and suffered the consequences which are always the lot of prophets. They opposed fire from the sky. They all live(d) according to the Spirit and rejected business as usual (“flesh”).

Thank God for all of them! My God give us the courage to support them and follow their examples!