Tag: Ukraine War

Western Neocons Quake as Trump Threatens Peace in Ukraine

Donald Trump’s landslide victory last month and his repeated promise to end war in Ukraine has Washington neocons quaking in their boots. How can they save their beloved Project Ukraine and prevent peace from breaking out on Russia’s border?

That’s the question Foreign Affairs (FA) tackled this week in an article by Elie Tenenbaum and Leo Litra. It’s entitled “Ukraine’s Security Now Depends on Europe.” The piece was marked by significant departure from the familiar “official story” on Ukraine. Yet it retained enough of that story’s elements to virtually render impossible reasoned discussion about ending the Ukrainian debacle.

The Official Story

To begin with, the FA article tells the story that aficionados of Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, and Washington Post have been programmed to accept. Taking its cue from the White House, the story holds that Putin is the aggressor in Ukraine. He cannot be trusted, lies habitually, routinely breaks promises, and remains unconstrained by international law.

Accordingly, everyone knows that his attack on Ukraine was unprovoked, and that Russia had been raining missiles on terrorized Ukrainian armed forces in the Donbas since 2014. It was Putin who backed out of the Minsk Accords as well as voiding the Istanbul peace framework in March of 2022. Putin also obstinately refuses to consider peace negotiations even though his army has suffered casualties by the hundreds of thousands – far more than his Ukrainian opponents. Moreover, Russia’s economy is crumbling while its citizens generally do not support the war effort.

That’s the Official Story. It’s the one largely repeated by Tenenbaum and Litra.

A Competing Narrative   

However, the story’s elements are contradicted point by point by highly credible scholars, diplomats, ex-military and CIA officials and independent journalists. A short list of the latter includes John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Colonel Douglass MacGregor, Scott Ritter, Ray McGovern, Alexander Mercouris, Brian Berletic, and Chris Hedges.

All these maintain that a U.S.-led NATO provoked the war in Ukraine after completely ignoring Vladimir Putin’s peace proposal advanced in December of 2021. Moreover, Russia’s invasion mirrors what the United States would do – in fact what it has done – in similar circumstances. Recall the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Remember America’s many violent invocations of the Monroe Doctrine to protect its interests in its Latin American “backyard” by direct invasion, proxy wars, and bloody regime changes.

According to the analysts just mentioned, it is the U.S. and NATO that lie habitually and cannot be trusted. In fact, the whole Ukrainian conflict is based on a broken promise by U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. It said that NATO would not expand even “one inch” towards Russia.

Then (as admitted by German ex-prime minister Angela Merkel) NATO further tricked Russia into signing the Minsk Accords to provide time for Ukraine to build up its military for confrontation with its neighbor. According to Merkel, NATO had no intention of observing either Minsk I or Minsk II.  

Additionally, in December of 2021, when Russia offered NATO those terms to prevent the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. refused to even consider the proposal. Two months later, after only one month of Russia’s “Special Military Operation,” and after Ukraine and Russia had initialed accords to ensure the former’s territorial integrity in exchange for neutrality on Ukraine’s part, NATO persuaded its protégé to fight on rather than finalize the accord.

The result of such deceptions has been complete catastrophe for Ukraine. Russia’s strategy of attrition has claimed more than 600,000 lives and seriously wounded 100,000 more. As a result, Ukraine is running out of men, its economy is in freefall, and Russian troops are moving relentlessly westward by kilometers every day. Meanwhile, Russia’s economy is flourishing despite the war generally supported by its citizens. There is no way Ukraine can bring Project Ukraine to a successful conclusion.

Cracks in the Official Story

Up until recently, NATO’s official story held unmovable sway. However, the FA article considered here exhibits important concessions to the unofficial account. For instance, Tenenbaum and Litra admit that: by all accounts Ukraine is losing the war as Russian troops rapidly move towards Kyiv. In fact, it seems nearly impossible to reverse this desperate situation since Ukraine and its allies have not only run short of weapons but also, of soldiers who are getting killed and wounded at unsustainable rates. Additionally, the Russian air force and air defense mechanisms are unmatched by Ukraine. Kremlin’s troops also far outnumber the Ukrainians while using and replacing their weapons at a scale Ukrainian allies cannot match.

In this dire situation, it is time for negotiations on terms NATO (not Russia) must dictate to possibly include: (1) vastly increased and decades-long economic and military aid to Ukraine, (2) a ceasefire that temporarily freezes current positions of both the Russian and Ukrainian front lines, (3) granting Ukraine NATO membership before hostilities cease or postponing the country’s entry into NATO for 10 to 20 years, (4) the deployment of a NATO peacekeeping force to ensure the frozen hostilities, and/or (5) more extensive intervention by multinational NATO land, sea, and air forces to act as a Security Shield or Guarantor Force against future Russian threats.    

The problem is however (even for Tanenbaum and Litra) that absent a “significant military defeat or internal political change,” Moscow will never accept such terms, but is likely to insist instead on settling the war on the battlefield.

Nonetheless the authors hold that the Russian president may come to the negotiation table because: his Special Military Operation is unpopular at home. His army has suffered tremendous battlefield losses. His stockpile of Soviet Era weapons is rapidly diminishing. The Russian economy is overheating while public spending, inflation, and interest rates are exploding.

Conclusion

Do you see how the Official Story is weakening and now finds itself on the shakiest of grounds? It has finally made important concessions to its unofficial counterpart. It admits that Ukraine is losing the war, that it is getting weaker, and Russia is getting stronger.  

On the other hand, FA’s insistence on the remnants of the Official Story render virtually impossible intelligent discussion of Ukraine’s future. Depending on one’s source of information – mainstream or alternative – it becomes a kind of “he said, she said” debate over details that are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Practically speaking, it matters little now who started the war, who backed out of agreements first, who’s lying, and who’s telling the truth. What matters now are facts on the ground. And all of them favor Russia.

So, given new agreement on the conflict’s inevitable direction, and given the promises of Mr. Trump, it remains unclear why Ukraine would continue sacrificing its soldiers for no good end.

After all, Ukraine lacks leverage in any negotiations that include proposals for Ukrainian inclusion in NATO. Membership now or ten years from now is a non-starter as far as the more powerful Russians are concerned. Russians are in the driver’s seat now and it must be remembered that a major purpose of their SMO was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

Also, it is unclear why Tanenbaum and Litra think that a NATO peacekeeping force would be acceptable to Mr. Putin. Why not China and North Korea?

The Fundamental Difference between the U.S. and China

Why is the United States so anti-Chinese? Why all this Sinophobia?   

It’s because of the basic difference between China and the U.S. that virtually none of our basically ignorant “leaders” — much less the mainstream media — seems to understand. Let me explain.

On the one hand, you have the United States. It’s leading a coalition of overwhelmingly white European colonialists who with less than 25% of the world’s population think they somehow have the right to control the entire world. In this context, the U.S. with 4.2% of the population considers itself the leader that can dictate terms to the other 95.8% of the world, including those Europeans whom it has successfully and surprisingly reduced to the status of obedient and subservient vassals.

In its position as world hegemon that alone emerged unscathed from the ravages of World War II (aka the second Intercapitalist war) the U.S. has decided to maintain control the world militarily. As a result, it annually invests more of its national treasure in war and preparation for war than the next nine countries combined (including China and Russia). A huge proportion of that treasure is spent on maintaining more than 750 military bases in more than 80 countries across the planet.

U.S. bases represent a key element in our country’s neo-colonial strategy aimed at controlling the Global Majority (i.e. former colonies) by regime-change interventions. These interventions have the United States removing from office any governments seeking to directly improve the lives of their citizens by redistributing income, or by providing healthcare, education, or other benefits and laws directly benefitting working classes rather than the wealthy and corporate interests. Since the 1950s, the world has witnessed such interventions in Iran, Guatemala, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, and other locations too numerous to list here.

Yes, regime changes benefit the rich and powerful. However, in terms of directly benefitting you and me, those operations and the bases that support them contribute virtually nothing. Yes, they keep millions of military personnel off the streets as well as providing jobs for those working in weapons manufacturing plants. However, the bases and forever wars they stimulate are otherwise completely counterproductive.

For instance, over the past two years, Washington has spent $175 billion on its proxy war in Ukraine which according to Lloyd Austin is aimed at regime change in Russia. That means $175 billion not spent on universal healthcare, not funding college tuition, not providing improvements in infrastructure, not spent on highspeed rail or on mitigating the effects of climate change. All of us can see the results in our decaying urban centers with homeless beggars sleeping on sidewalks and in tents under our bridges.

In other words, overseas military bases are completely parasitic. They live off the rest of us devouring the nutrients that would otherwise sustain and improve our quality of life. Internationally, their purpose is to maintain “stability” in a world where power and wealth have since WWII been concentrated in the U.S. and Europe – the imperial countries that have controlled the world for the past half-millennium. It’s a world of billionaires on the one hand and grinding poverty on the other – especially in the former colonies.

Contrast this U.S. parasitism with the policies of China. As indicated above, China spends far less than the United States on its military. China maintains but a single military base outside its borders. It hasn’t fired a bullet beyond those confines over the last 40 years.

Instead of investing in bloodsucking military bases, China maintains what might be described as development nodes across the planet. Over the past decade and more, its “Belt and Road Initiative” has constructed highways, ports, electrical grids, and highspeed rail systems across Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America from Beijing to Tierra del Fuego. And those installations have vastly improved the lives of ordinary people wherever they appear – including those of the Chinese people themselves. As everyone knows, China was recently recognized by the United Nations as successfully raising more than 800,000 of its own citizens from extreme poverty.

What I’m describing here is the rebalancing of the world. Led by China, the planet’s majority is asserting the power that belongs to it in terms of population, which by the way is not white. China has about 18.5% of the world’s population; Africa has about the same; India has slightly more. All those non-white people are rebelling against the humiliation of control by the whites who have drawn completely arbitrary borders. That’s legendary in Africa and the Mid-East where colonizers in their tents drew lines on maps arbitrarily cutting up Africa and all that Mid-East desert land floating on a sea of oil. And they did so with virtually no knowledge of the countries, cultures, and populations they were dividing.

Accordingly, the non-white victims of such ignorance are currently refusing to honor such geographical restrictions. Under pressures from climate change (induced by the colonizers) and by the absolute decimation of western regime-change wars, the victims of such policies are relocating massively. And they won’t be stopped by walls, laws, or border patrols – and much less by ignorant nativist arguments. Yes, people of color are here to stay. Get used to it. Trump or no Trump, they will not be denied.

 It’s a new multi-polar world. It’s time has come. It is long overdue. My only fear is that the “leaders” of the collective west might find the loss of hegemony so threatening that they’ll decide to end the world by initiating a nuclear war. They’ve thought about this before. Remember “It’s better to be dead than red?”

Their new line seems to be: “It’s better to be dead than not in complete control.”

God help us!

Are We Meeting the Risen Christ in Russia and China?

Here’s a video I made fully 9 months ago — at the end of July — about the Ukraine War. It elaborates the argument that I centralize in the homily below.

Readings for the 3rd Sunday of Easter: ACTS 2, 14, 22-33; PSALM 16:1-11; 1 PETER 1: 17-21; LUKE 24: 13-25

Our celebration of the resurrection myth, and of Life’s unlimited powers and possibilities continues for a third week. It invites thoughtful people to scan the list of contemporary events to identify where resurrection might be happening – where death is being defeated by Life’s overwhelming force.

With that in mind, today’s readings for this Third Sunday of the Resurrection suggest that we embrace resurrection as an unexpected new world order arising unperceived before our very eyes.

Could it be that it is surfacing at the hands of Russia, China., and other BRICS Plus nations?  

That emerging order can remind attentive truth seekers that movement towards the entirely new and seemingly “impossible” arrangement that Yeshua referred to as the Kingdom of God is not only possible, but necessary. It’s required to draw our species back from the brink of annihilation habitually fostered by a necrophilic United States with its cult of bombing, sanctions, and threats of total annihilation.

Though it might be hard to endure, please let me show you what I mean.

U.S. As Enemy of Humankind

To begin with, resurrection calls us to face death. And in the context, I’m suggesting, we must face the fact that the entity most responsible for plunging the world towards omnicide is our own country.

The Sandinista hymn of the 1980s expressed that clearly when it denounced Yankee imperialism as the “enemy of humankind.”

With that shocking phrase, the Sandinistas were only echoing what in 1967 Martin Luther King had said about the U.S. when he identified it (not the Russians or the Chinese) as the world’s “greatest purveyor of violence.”

Even closer to our own time is Vijay Prashad’s description of NATO (of course headed by the United States) as the “machine that destroys humanity.”

Careful thought makes it difficult to deny the truth of such denunciations:

  • “We” are the most belligerent country in the world maintaining about 750 military bases across the planet – about 3 times as many as all other countries combined.
  • “Our” war budget is similarly unprecedented, outlandish, and grossly inflated to more than $2 billion per day.
  • “We” are the ones responsible for wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Ukraine, and who know where else?
  • Besides all of that and on an unprecedented scale, “we” have intervened militarily and wantonly changed regimes across the planet for more than a century, especially where the regimes in question have tried to improve the lives of ordinary people rather than the bottom lines of American corporations.
  • “Our” country is the only one that has ever actually used nuclear weapons and has repeatedly and unilaterally opted out of arms control agreements.
  • With just 4.6% of the world’s population, the United States aspires to control countries like Russia, China, India, and the whole continent of Africa whose populations (not counting the rest of the Global South) total more than half the world’s inhabitants.
  • “America” is historically the world’s greatest polluter and is even responsible in large measure for environmental degradation in the Global South (including China), where U.S. corporations have largely relocated for the last forty years.
  • In summary, the U.S. has worked hard to ensure that it possesses the same control of the world that Hitler coveted for capitalist Germany.

Accordingly, it is easy to see how victims of such policies might well see the U.S. as the greatest purveyor of violence, as the enemy of humankind, and as heading a belligerent organization well characterized as the machine that destroys humanity.

Today’s Readings

Such stark realizations no doubt weigh heavy on the minds of once-proud “Americans” – if they even let them in. We might be like the two disciples in today’s Gospel reading. Like Americans with the historical consciousness just rehearsed, the two were sad and discouraged. For them, all seemed lost. They could think and talk of nothing else but their disappointment about Yeshua’s crucifixion and their frustrated hopes and convictions that he was the messiah their people had hoped would liberate them from Rome’s oppression.

But then amid their sad commiserations, the risen Yeshua somehow joins them. Improbably, the two men don’t recognize him. So, they recount the tale of their dashed hopes for the stranger’s benefit.

But then by breaking bread with them, Yeshua gets his friends to see the truth of what I said earlier – that death must precede resurrection. The old must die, he says, before the ultimately new can arise. Death and resurrection manifested in bread sharing are part of Life’s process – part of the divine “prophetic script.”

For us, and according to that blueprint, death of “America’s” preeminence must precede the New Life our world absolutely requires.

Hope from Russia & China

Still, prophetic script or not, if you’re like me, you remain discouraged by the awful realization of what our country has become. But where’s the resurrection hope to be found?

Strange to say, I see it in two great movements taking place before our eyes – one that’s violent with Russia as its protagonist, the other that’s non-violent and headed by China.

“What?” you might object. How can Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have anything to do with resurrection? The same might be asked about China and its authoritarianism we’ve heard so much about.

Though we might not be able to see the Ukraine War as “resurrectional” (Let me coin that word!) – as changing the world for the better, our brothers and sisters in the Global South can. That’s especially true if they adopt liberation theology’s understanding of “violence.”

You see, according to Global South church leaders like archbishops Dom Helder Camara and El Salvador’s St. Oscar Romero, all violence is not the same. Much of it isn’t even recognized as such. And a great deal of what we do denounce as violence is justified self-defense. For instance, most don’t even recognize international sanctions as violent. But they are. They kill hundreds of thousands.

Neither do mainstream commentators see regime change policies and coups as violence. But they are, especially when regimes that would prevent starvation are replaced by business-friendly governments concerned only with corporate profits.

According to this kind of analysis, Russia’s action in Ukraine is justified self-defense. It’s defense against a U.S.-led NATO’s attempts (since 1990) to reduce Russia to the vassal-like status of the west’s traditional colonies.  

It’s no stretch to say that Russia’s resounding “NO” to NATO represents what most Global South countries would choose to shout at NATO if they had Russia’s military might. Arguably, that’s why so many from what we used to call the Third World refuse to condemn Putin or Moscow.

As for China’s non-violent movement towards the “other world” required by our times. . .. It’s enough to point out that China hasn’t bombed anyone in more than 40 years. Instead of dropping bombs on the poor, in effect its Belt and Road Initiative drops schools, roads, ports, high speed railroads, and other infrastructure on them. Like the risen Christ, it “breaks bread” as a sign of God’s presence. It has eliminated extreme poverty for almost one billion of the world’s starving. No wonder Latin America, Africa, and South Asia embrace Beijing and reject DC.  

Conclusion

Let me hasten to conclude that I’d be among the first to admit that any war, self-defensive or not, can only be justified as a last resort. And it should justifiably shock anyone to find an alleged follower of the risen Christ lending anything like approval to armed conflict.

But then, it’s also true that most would-be Christians (me included) are emphatically not pacifists. Are you? They (we) fight wars against fellow Christians all the time – as exemplified in Ukraine itself.

However, in attempting to justify violence, one must ask several crucial questions as explained in today’s Sunday reflection. We must ask what kind of violence are we talking about?

  1. Is it largely unperceived structural violence like that embodied in NATO, the machine that destroys humanity?
  2. Is it the violence of self-defense as seems the case in Russia’s refusal (on behalf of the world habitually bullied by the U.S.) to submit to humiliating and suicidal surrender to the 4% attempting to impose its will on everyone else?
  3. Is it the reactionary violence of that 4% to the second level of violence (expressed e.g., by the U.S. arming and advising Ukrainian proxies) to punish Russia’s “NO”?
  4. Or is it the violence of state terrorism represented by all those wars and policies of regime change implemented on weaker (mostly non-white) nations over decades upon decades by the United States?

Of these, only the second level of violence can (reluctantly) be justified in any way.

Ironically, however, the other three are routinely accepted (even by people of faith). Meanwhile, the second level is usually vilified as somehow violating imperialism’s sacrosanct “rules-based order.”

The suggestion here has been that recognizing and accepting the distinctions just explained have something basic to do with resurrection. So does “breaking bread” with the hungry as a sign of resurrection and God’s presence. It’s all about the experience of death to old necrophilic practices and beliefs while recognizing newness of life and new world orders as unlikely manifestations of the risen Christ.   

Marianne Williamson Should Go for Broke As The Peace Candidate

Readings for the Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 12: 1-4A; Psalms 33: 4-5, 18-22; 2nd Timothy 1: 8b-10; Matthew 17: 1-9

On this Second Sunday of Lent and in the context of the Ukraine conflict, I want to return to the topic I addressed in last week’s homily – Marianne Williamson’s apparent sell-out to western warmongers in her position paper called “The Tragic Conundrum of Ukraine.”

Since then, Ms. Williamson has become the first Democrat to declare her candidacy to unseat Joe Biden as President of the United States. Yes, it’s official; she’s running again for president.

My point in what follows is this: For Williamson to have even the least chance of achieving her goal, she must go for broke. She must reverse her position on the Ukraine war and declare herself in no uncertain terms THE PEACE CANDIDATE.

Doing so would not only separate Williamson from Biden and the others who will eventually enter the 2024 race. More importantly, it would align her more securely with the principles of her own spiritual guidebook, A Course in Miracles (ACIM). As well, it would embody the example of Yeshua (the voice ACIM claims to channel) as reflected in today’s Gospel reading. There following what we’ve come to see as his “transfiguration,” Yeshua too decides to go for broke in his opposition to imperialism.

My point here is that to garner any meaningful notice as a candidate, Williamson needs to spiritually transfigure as well.

To show what I mean, let me (1) address Williamson’s candidacy as it relates to the war in Ukraine on the one hand and to ACIM on the other, (2) recall Yeshua’s adoption of a “go for broke” strategy in opposing Roman imperialism, and (3) recommend a similar strategy for Williamson if she truly wants to be a player in 2024.

Williamson & ACIM

First, recall who Marianne Williamson is and how easily she will be dismissed if she continues endorsing business as usual by adopting “the official story” and conventional wisdom about Ukraine as expressed in her “Conundrum” statement: She’s the one:

  • Dismissed by many as a “vanity candidate” intent only on selling books.
  • Characterized as “new agey, soft, and unrealistic.”
  • Portrayed by SNL’s Kate McKinnon as “woo-woo,”
  • And as one who would address political problems by burning sage and manipulating crystals.
  • Ridiculed for alleging that “a dark psychic force” has made us all victims of collectivized hatred advanced by Donald Trump.

This time around, the same accusations will inevitably surface again unless Williamson does something authentic to distinguish her from Biden and the neocons and their bellicosity on Ukraine.

Instead, however, her statement on the war aligns itself with the largely white “West” (13% of the world’s population) as if it rather than the world’s mostly non-white majority “knows better.” She says, for instance,

“I believe there is legitimate justification for military support for Ukraine from Western allies, including the United States.” And “. . . Vladimir Putin’s actions today are a threat to which the Western world must now respond.” (Emphasis added).

One wonders why this emphasis on the largely white west. Again, does it somehow know better than mostly non-white cultures (e.g., in China and India) that have developed insights, wisdom, and spiritualities based on experiences thousands of years older than our own?

Does this western centrism represent an unconscious hangover from the colonial past that has enriched “the west” and impoverished the rest?

But more especially, how explain Williamson’s apparent rejection of the most obvious teachings of A Course in Miracles, which she has championed for decades?

Here’s what I mean. According to A Course in Miracles:

  1. Its teachings are basically Christian mysticism that finds the root of all problems in a skewed relationship with God – or Source, the Ground of Being, the Great Spirit, the Tao, Brahmin, Allah, Life, Cosmic Consciousness, etc.
  2. That mysticism also reveals that “America” is not an exceptional nation. (Or as Ms. Williamson is fond of putting it “No one is special, and everyone is special.”)
  3. Instead, all of us are living in a pseudo-reality reminiscent of Plato’s Cave, where prisoners mistake shadows manipulated by their keepers for reality far removed from the real world.
  4. Consequently, what the dominant culture accepts as “reality” is actually 180 degrees opposite the Truth.
  5. Its upside-down “reality” is rooted in fear, greed, dishonesty, and violence.
  6. This means that while the prevailing culture would blame our problems on others (like Russia), the Truth is that we (the United States) are 100% responsible for our own “conundrums.”
  7. Facing and correcting our own behavior are necessary first steps in solving any dilemma or conflict.
  8. Such inventory and rectification reveal that no one is attacking us. Instead, we are the attackers.
  9. Recognizing all of this is the key to peace.  
  10. It embodies the miraculous in the ACIM sense of “a radical transformation of consciousness.”

Now, imagine if Marianne Williamson’ presidential campaign emphasized those ten points. It certainly would get attention. It would separate Williamson from the homogenized gaggle of candidates. It would raise the essential questions that no one dares raise. It would mark Ms. Williamson as a true leader worth following.

What I’m saying here is that unless Williamson finds the courage to go for broke by embracing the principles that she has taught for so many years and by identifying as The Peace Candidate, she’ll be lost in the shuffle. She’ll be ridiculed and dismissed once again.

Yeshua Goes for Broke

Today’s Gospel reading presents Jesus as setting an example Marianne Williamson would do well to follow. By resolving to take a leading part in a Passover demonstration against Jewish cooperation with imperial Rome, Yeshua risks it all.

Think about it.   

Today’s reading finds the young construction worker from Nazareth on his way to Jerusalem, where he knows something extremely risky is about to happen. Yet he’s determined to be part of it. The risky action has to do with the temple and opposing the collaboration of its leaders with the Roman Empire.

The temple has become worse than irrelevant to the situation of Yeshua’s people living under Roman oppression. What happens there not only ignores Jewish political reality. The temple leadership has become the most important Jewish ally of the oppressing power. And Jesus has decided to address that intolerable situation despite inevitable risks of failure.

Everyone knows that a big demonstration against the Romans is planned in Jerusalem for the weekend of Passover. There’ll be chanting mobs. The slogans are already set. “Hosanna, hosanna, in the highest” will be one chant. Another will be “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Hosanna” is the key word here. It means “save us!” (The Romans won’t notice that the real meaning is “Save us from the Romans.” “Restore an independent Israel – like David’s kingdom!”) It was all very political.

Yeshua has heard that one of the main organizers of the demonstration is the guerrilla Zealot called Barabbas. Barabbas doesn’t call what’s planned a “demonstration.” He prefers the term “The Uprising” or “the Insurrection” (Mk. 15:6-8).

Barabbas has a following as enthusiastic as that of Yeshua. After all, Barabbas is a “sicarius” – a guerrilla whose solemn mission is to assassinate Roman soldiers and their Jewish collaborators. His courage has made him a hero to the crowds. (Scripture scholar, John Dominic Crossan compares him to the Mel Gibson character in “The Patriot.”)

Yeshua’s assigned part in the demonstration will be to attack the Temple and symbolically destroy it. He plans to enter the building with his friends and disrupt business as usual. They’ll all loudly denounce the moneychangers whose business exploits the poor. They’ll turn over their tables.

As a proponent of nonviolence, Yeshua and his band are thinking not in Barabbas’ terms of “uprising,” but of forcing God’s hand to bring in the Lord’s “Kingdom” to replace Roman domination. Passover, the Jewish holiday of national independence could not be a more appropriate time for the planned demonstration. Yeshua is thinking in terms of “Exodus,” Israel’s founding act of rebellion.

And yet, this peasant from Galilee is troubled by it all. What if the plan doesn’t work and God’s Kingdom doesn’t dawn this Passover? What if the Romans succeed in doing what they’ve always done in response to uprisings and demonstrations? Pilate’s standing order to deal with lower class disturbances is simply to arrest everyone involved and crucify them all as terrorists. Why would it be different this time?

So before setting out for Jerusalem, Yeshua takes his three closest friends and ascends a mountain for a long night of prayer. He’s seeking reassurance before the single most important act of his life. As usual, Peter, James and John soon fall fast asleep. True to form they are uncomprehending and dull.

However, while the lazy fall into unconsciousness, the ever alert and thoughtful Yeshua has a vision. Moses appears to him, and so does Elijah. (Together they represent the entire Jewish scriptural testament – the law and the prophets.) This means that on this mountain of prayer, Yeshua considers his contemplated path in the light of his people’s entire tradition.

According to the Jews’ credal summary in Deuteronomy 26, their whole national story centered on the Exodus. Fittingly then, Yeshua, Moses, and Elijah “discuss” what is about to take place in Jerusalem. Or as Luke puts it, “And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.” Yeshua’s Exodus!!

It is easy to imagine Moses’ part in the conversation. That would be to remind Yeshua of the chances Moses took when he led the original Exodus from Egypt. That might have failed too. Nevertheless . . .

Elijah’s part was likely to recall for Yeshua the “prophetic script” that all prophets must follow. That script has God’s spokespersons speaking truth to power and suffering the inevitable consequences.

Elijah reminds Yeshua: So what if Barabbas and those following the path of violence are defeated again? So what if Yeshua’s nonviolent direct action in the temple fails to bring in the Kingdom? So what if Yeshua is arrested and crucified? That’s just the cost of doing prophetic business. Despite appearances to the contrary, Yeshua’s faithful God will somehow triumph in the end.

Conclusion

Is there a message in today’s reading for Marianne Williamson, who is undoubtedly the best equipped public figure to take on the essentially spiritual role of Peace Candidate?

I think there is.

The readings call her to:

  • Insist that we’ve indeed all be grasped by a “dark psychic force” that ignores shared humanity and sees war as a first option rather than as a last resort.  
  • Be transfigured into 2024’s Peace Candidate by heeding Moses, Elijah, and Yeshua, the champions of her native Jewish faith.
  • Be transformed as well by listening to the world’s non-western, mostly non-white majority and their reluctance or downright refusal to endorse U.S. insistence on controlling the world far from its own shores.
  • Recognize that in line with the teachings of A Course in Miracles, the U.S. and NATO are 100% responsible for the Ukraine crisis.
  • Call for an immediate ceasefire and diplomatic negotiations to end the war.
  • Go for broke by ignoring those who will characterize her opposition to the war as naïve and unrealistic – as if risking nuclear annihilation were more sophisticated and mature.
  • Truly embrace the teachings of A Course in Miracles that identifies the source of peace in its refusal to be frightened by non-existent threats and attacks.
  • Or as The Course puts it: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the PEACE of God.” (Emphasis added)

The Ukraine War, Serenity & the Dawn of Hope

Readings for 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: MAL 3: 19-20A; PS 98: 509; 2 THES 3: 7-12; LK 21: 28; Lk 21: 5-19

As I read the news each day, I find myself wondering if we’re living in the “end times” described in biblical “apocalyptic” literature like we find in today’s liturgy of the word. I hope we are.

That’s because in the Bible, “apocalypse” isn’t a threat of doom, but a promise of hope. It’s not about the end of the world, but the end of the corrupt (imperial) order in which believers so often found themselves. The Book of Revelation (Unveiling), for example, pulls back the curtain covering first century Roman corruption and promises that it will all soon end.

In that sense, something similar seems to be happening today. (That’s what I try to point out in the video above.) Something new and hopeful is dawning worldwide.

For example, in Ukraine and on behalf of the Global South, Vladimir Putin is digging in the heels of those traditionally oppressed by U.S. imperialism and European colonialism and shouting a firm “NO!” to the bullies involved.

And then last week, I could hardly believe it when China’s President, Xi Jinping quoted Reinhold Niebuhr‘s “Serenity Prayer” at German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz. In effect Xi told Scholz that a new multipolar world has dawned and there’s nothing he or NATO can do about it.

I bring all of that up because this Sunday’s liturgy of the word addresses the promise of God’s new order (aka the Kingdom of God). It promises a reordering of the political, economic, and spiritual status quo that turns everything upside down. The promised purge features the definitive downfall of those now governing the planet. It promises justice, peace, and happiness for the rest of us. That’s the real meaning of the Jesus’ proclamation. It describes what the world would be like if the GREAT SOURCE (not Rome or the United States) were in charge of the world. 

However, the liturgy also affirms the uncomfortable fact that before that Great Reversal, true followers of Jesus must endure severe persecution — very troubled times like our own. According to the Master, great trials must precede the Kingdom’s institution. Jesus promised arrests, judicial silencings, jailings, and general persecution for those with the courage to follow his example as an opponent of empire and injustice.

See that theme for yourself by reviewing today’s readings here. In any case, what follows are my “translations” of those selections. They describe the new order (or what scripture scholar, John Dominic Crossan calls “God’s Great World Clean-up”) as advocated by the Jewish prophetic tradition and by Jesus himself. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus outlines the inevitable consequences for any who act to hasten the Kingdom’s eventual arrival:

MAL 3: 19-20A

 Scorching times are coming
 For the rulers
 Of this world!
 Root and branch
 They will be destroyed
 In purging fire
 When God’s Great Clean-up
 Finally sets things right.

PS 98: 5-9
  
 The Great Purge
 Will at last establish
 God’s justice
 On earth
 Including environmental rectification
 For the entire planet,
 With its seas and mountains.
 Above all,
 It will mean
 Equity and justice
 For the whole human race.
 Everyone should be
 Happy about that.
  
 2 THES 3: 7-12
  
But don’t relax.
Long ago,
 Some in Paul’s community
 Thought the Purge
 Would take place
 “Any day now.”
 So, they stopped working.
 “Don’t do that,”
 Said Paul.
 “Your faith
 Shouldn’t make you 
 A burden to others.”
  
 LK 21:28
  
 However,
 Just because
 The Great Purgation
 Has yet to occur,
 Don’t lose faith.
 Know that it is
 Still somehow
 At hand
  
 LK 21: 5-19
  
So, you’re wondering,
Are you,
When exactly
The Great Clean-up
Will take place?
It will happen in three stages
 
First, there’ll be
Wars, terror and insurrections
Along with natural disasters
That will leave
Religion in a shamble.

Secondly, all kinds of charlatans
Will show up
Claiming to speak for Jesus.

Thirdly, even family members
And religious authorities
Will blame believers for all of it.
They will hate, persecute, and arrest them 
For simply following the Master,
Handing them over
To civil authorities
Deeply fearful
Of the wisdom 
Of their unassailable defenses.

 Jesus’ recommendations?
 1.     Reject false Christs.
 2.     Trust the Holy Spirit within.
 3.     Endure imprisonment.
 4.     Persevere!

All of that represents an extremely high bar, don’t you agree? Following the martyr, Jesus – the tortured one, the one imprisoned on death row, the victim of capital punishment – is never easy.

But does that mean that those of us living beneath the lofty bar set by Jesus are lost? Can we not be part of God’s Great World Clean-up?

Let’s hope that we can.

At the very least however, here’s what we can do in line with today’s final reading:

  • Reject false Christs by realizing that the meek and mild Jesus of mainstream Christianity is a distortion of the one recognized as subversive by the Roman Empire and by the compromised Judaism of his day. Jesus meek and mild represents the false Christ the Master himself warns against in today’s Gospel reading.
  • Instead, embrace Jesus’ rebel Spirit as much as possible by for example refusing to patriotically accept “official stories” about either Russia or China. Despite their very evident limitations, both are resisting imperialism and neo-colonialism.
  • Pray for the Spirit of civil disobedience that inspired great people of faith like the prophet from Nazareth.
  • Don’t be discouraged by delays in the Kingdom’s arrival or by the apparent victories of its enemies. Persevere!

Russia in Ukraine: Champion & Proxy for the World’s Oppressed

I never thought I’d live to see something like the biblical battle of Armageddon unfold before my eyes. But it’s happening, I’m convinced, as we speak.

However, in this case, the field of battle is not the fabled Plain of Esdraelon. In this case, it is the entire country of Ukraine.

I put it that way because the war in Ukraine is far more than a conflict between Russia and NATO. It’s far more than a proxy war between the U.S. and its former Cold War foe. No, the Ukrainian conflict represents at the very least an opening salvo in the long-awaited definitive showdown between the world’s oppressed and those who have subjugated them for half a millennium and more.

In other words, (as even U.S. officials have agreed) the war in Ukraine is surely a proxy affair. But in this case, I’m arguing, Russia is a stand-in for the world’s oppressed. NATO on the other hand is an umbrella organization whose core comprises Europe’s and the New World’s traditional colonizers. It represents the oppressors. (Grasping that fact, as the poorer countries evidently have, explains why virtually the entire Global South has refused to get on board with NATO’s proxy war.)

I realize that no one is saying what I’ve just written. I realize too that at first glance saying so might seem outrageous. After all, the dominant and simplistic narrative, “Russia bad, NATO good” is carrying the day.

So, let me explain by first presenting my reasons for identifying Russia as the champion of the world’s oppressed. Then, I’ll describe NATO as a desperate union of former colonial powers losing its larcenous grip on the world. Finally, I’ll try to show how Armageddon in Ukraine holds the possibility of producing a new and better world order.

Russia as Champion of the Oppressed

But you might object, surely, you’re not saying that Russia can be classed with the oppressed Global South.

However, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And I’ll tell you why.

After its rise from its Czarist ashes in 1917, Russia used its version of socialism to become in record time a kind of superpower. As phoenix, it quickly transformed from Europe’s most backward nation into a worthy opponent of the United States and its European allies. The development of the USSR’s nuclear capabilities insured a level of invulnerability against direct attacks from the colonial powers in Europe and America.

Despite the revolution’s many mistakes, Russia’s example frightened beyond description the capitalist nations. Its success inspired revolutions throughout the latter’s vast colonial holdings in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.

Capitalist panic increased exponentially when China’s socialist revolution colored red its 20% of the world’s population in 1949. The fear rose higher still in 1959 when socialism entered the sphere the United States claimed as its backyard in the form of Cuba’s successful revolt against U.S. hegemony – and even higher in 1979 when Nicaragua attempted to establish a socialist system within driving distance of U.S. borders.

Opposing all of this involved a 70-year Cold War intended to thwart the possibility of any other former colonies imitating Russia’s and China’s socialist triumphs which removed them so rapidly from the list of the world’s underdeveloped countries.

Thwarting worldwide socialist aspirations involved a familiar four-step pattern invariably implemented by the U.S. and its allies relative to their former colonial possessions: (1) install a puppet government by hook or crook, (2) equip that regime with police and military hardware to eliminate from society all communist and socialist elements, (3) rob the country blind of its valued assets and (4) repeat steps one and two as necessary should the proxy puppet decide to disobey imperial orders.

Well, long story short, here comes Russia’s reduction to Third World status for fully a quarter century.

That is, when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, the U.S. and other colonial powers quickly followed the above pattern. They (1) installed a puppet government – this time under the “leadership” of Boris Yeltsin. (2) They used Yeltsin to largely neutralize Russian communists already drastically weakened and discredited by the widely perceived failure of all things Marxist. (3) Yeltsin obediently did the puppeteers bidding reducing his country to Third World status by selling off Russia’s publicly owned assets at fire sale prices to invading capitalist opportunists. He thus left the Russian people with nothing while creating a whole new class of billionaire mafia oligarchs. Then, after Yeltsin drank himself out of his job, the west endorsed Vladimir Putin as a worthy replacement marionette. (So far, so good.) (4) However, when Putin unexpectedly proved less than reliable (like other puppets such as Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein) it became necessary to discredit and replace him. After all, he tried to tame the oligarch class and objected to NATO threats to the Russian independence he unacceptably sought to restore. So, the imperialists embarked on their tried-and-true regime change gambit.

That’s where the Ukraine War fits in. As Joe Biden admitted, NATO wants Putin out of office. And as Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin put it, “We want to see Russia weakened” (i.e., returned to its third world status as “a gas station masquerading as a country.”) And as John Bolton recently admitted, regime change is for the United States its standard outlaw operating procedure.

But unlike Third World victims of similar imperial thuggery, Putin would have none of it. Unlike those others, Russia had managed to retain credible means of defending itself. Its well-trained and expertly led military was still intact and it possessed the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. Moreover, all of Europe was dependent on that Russian gas station – as well as on its supply of grain and fertilizer. Putin had those aces up his sleeve. They distinguished him from his less advantaged Global South counterparts. So, he found himself willing and able to take on the oppressive west either directly or by proxy.

Additionally, even though he presents himself as an enemy of socialism, the clever leader of the largest country in the world allied himself with the planet’s most populous country which happens to be socialist. Of course, I’m referring to China. It too is a nuclear power and is armed to the teeth. After what it calls its “century of humiliation” by the west (1839-1949) China has vowed never again to experience such imperial subjugation, come what may.

According to Russia’s and China Declaration of a NEW WORLD ORDER (Feb. 4, 2022) the friendship between the two countries “knows no limit.” That means that capitalist Russia (with its socialist history and large communist party) has allied itself with its ally’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Together they have pledged to establish a new era of sustainable development. In its service, they have specifically expressed their refusal to submit to U.S. hegemony. (I’ll return to this point later.)

NATO’s Union of Oppressors

Of course, the U.S. led NATO has been slow to understand the changed circumstances I’ve just described. Having performed their four-step tango in Ukraine, they’ve made the mistake of underestimating their Russian opponent. They’ve continued to treat it like some banana republic.

Explicitly attempting to throttle the Russian economy (to “make it scream” as Kissinger described the dance in Allende’s Chile) the western colonial powers have failed miserably.

Instead of making Putin’s economy shriek, their own economies are the ones suffering from the “mother of all sanction regimes” vaunted by Biden and company.

The sanctions have backfired in Europe and the United States with the recoil taking the form of general inflation and unacceptable price tags on fuel and food. It’s as if NATO members have sanctioned themselves.

Meanwhile, Russia’s economy remains relatively unaffected. As a result, NATO leaders are facing angry electorates in Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and America, while Putin’s popularity in Russia soars. Watch the political heads roll. Bojo has just resigned from Downing Street, hasn’t he? Macron has lost his majority. Italy’s Draghi will likely fall next. Then it will be Biden’s turn.

Who’s gloating now? Is that a satisfied smile I see crossing Mr. Putin’s face? Is that cheering sound in the background coming from the Global South as it finally witnesses their imperial oppressors getting their just deserts from their new champion?

The Emerging New World Order

Where all of this will likely lead is no mystery. The destination has already been envisioned in detail. It is an order that incorporates the west’s former colonies as respected partners rather than as objects of exploitation.

Towards that end, on February 4, less than three weeks before the onset of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russia and China issued a 12-page declaration with the mouthful title “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development.” (The declaration was largely ignored in western media.)

There, the combined superpower alliance (calling itself “the Sides”) directly challenged the United States. The statement’s parties minced no words in criticizing the expansion of NATO and similar military alliances (specifically, the one between the U.S., Australia, and Great Britain called AUKUS). The sides rejected such unions as remnants of the long-ended Cold War concealed under deceptive rhetoric about the spread of democracy.

The joint statement also proclaimed the strength of the two powers and their refusal to submit to U.S. hegemony. Towards defending themselves against that now defunct unipolar arrangement, they announced a new Russia-India-China East Asian Cooperation Association. It will include, they stated, mutual trade and defense provisions whose purpose is “peaceful and gradual development” across the planet without arms races or nuclear proliferation.

According to the Side’s declaration, such alliance should be seen by everyone as mutually beneficial. Therefore, the new Asian trade partnership and China’s Belt and Road Initiative should be encouraged and joined (not opposed) by the rest of the world. Their purpose after all is to help developing countries catch up with the developed world by prioritizing sustainable transport and fighting climate change.

As for democracy, the Russia-China joint declaration recognized that no one system fits every context. The validity of various systems (based on specific national and cultural contexts, histories, and traditions) should be recognized by all. According to the Sides, it is up to the people of individual countries (not outsiders) to judge whether their country is democratic. They further affirmed that outside interference in the name of foreign concepts of democracy and human rights only incites divisions within given countries and undermines local systems.

Finally, the Sides called for world peace founded on true multilateralism, mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win/win cooperation. The new order, they said, should be based on international solidarity rather than on artificial divisions, confrontation, and the law of the strongest. This means the end, they asserted, of international bullying, idiosyncratic “rules,” and arbitrary sanctions.

Instead, the Sides called for international relations governed by the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. Only under such predictable international governance, they said, can regionally balanced powers have a chance of being respected.

It should be no surprise then if the Global South welcomes the proposed new order and suspects that the war in Ukraine has its interests at heart.

Conclusion

In the light of what I’ve just shared, is it an exaggeration to describe the war in Ukraine as an Armageddon showdown? Perhaps. However, at the very least (and by the accounts of many) the war portends a shift in global power from unipolarity to multipolarity. And that can only be good.

Moreover, in Ukraine, we’re dealing with an agent of that shift that enjoys vital links not only with the Third World, but with world history and culture. All of us are hugely indebted to Russia which should be seen as an ally whose record identifies it as an irreplaceable beneficiary of humankind instead of a one-dimensional axis of evil.

Think of what Russia has conferred on us all by way of art, music, and politics. Think Chagall, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pasternak, Stravinsky, Nureyev, and Pavlova. Think of Russia’s political accomplishments as the first nation in the world courageous enough to experiment with socialism as an alternative to capitalist exploitation. Despite its numerous inevitable, and lamentable errors, the new system demonstrated its power to lift an entire people out of misery in an extremely short time. Think of how its Great Patriotic War played the key role in the defeat of Nazism, though at the cost of 22 million deaths of its heroic people.

Though we might not be witnessing in Ukraine Armageddon’s final confrontation between good and evil, we’ve got to go beyond the official narrative of “Russia bad, NATO good.” It’s simply not true. The reality is much more complicated. NATO, I’m arguing is closer to bad, and Russia to good.

And we shouldn’t be surprised if the poorer nations see it that way.

Russia & China Vs. NATO (aka “The Machine That Destroys Humanity”)

Here’s a little experiment on my part — me sharing some thoughts about the world without writing them down. Just reflecting on life. Let me know if you think this is a good medium. More importantly, let me know your own thoughts on the topic I’m addressing. Thanks.

Americans Should Be Dying in Ukraine: Random Notes from the Resistance Underground

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqFiF8Dqz7I

Let’s face it. The United States is the world’s classic bully – a synonym for “coward.” It’s like the playground tough who fearful of a bloody nose has others do the dirty work for him. “Let’s you and him fight,” is the bully’s refrain.

When you think about it, that’s exactly what the United States and the gang of thugs called NATO are doing in Ukraine. They admit it’s a proxy war. But our cowardly “leaders” know that a direct battlefield confrontation with Russia would be monumentally unpopular at home. (Imagine having to explain to American wives, children, parents, and grandparents why it’s worth their loved one’s death or maiming to bring “freedom” to a country more than 7000 miles away and which most would have difficulty locating on a map! It would be worse than Vietnam.)

Instead, it’s better to have Ukrainian husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers die rather than Americans. Yes: Let’s you and him fight. Few of us would have it any other way.

What I’m saying is that in the final analysis, it’s our permission, apathetic disinterest, and empty virtue signaling that has transformed the “land of the free and the home of the brave” into the land of cowardly and powerless bullies. I’m talking about you and me.

In other words, if we really believe that we’re the ones at war in Ukraine and (as Joe Biden said) “Putin must go,” then we should be willing to send our brothers, husbands, fathers, and uncles to die there, not Ukrainians. If we’re young enough, we should be willing to enlist and put our own heads into the Russian meat grinder.

But would any of us do that? Why should we dirty our hands? Why should Americans die in the war planned for decades?

No: Let’s you and him fight.

***

In the prolonged conflict in Ukraine, I’ve found that virtually the only completely informed, honest and balanced analysis derives from interviews involving Scott Ritter – the former Marine intelligence officer, Russia expert, and U.N. weapons inspector. Most others (i.e., all the mainstream media) are nothing but U.S., NATO, and Ukraine cheerleaders. Even the few who dare to speak out against “our” country’s belligerent policies miss the big picture that Ritter sees. 

***

Here’s what he’s saying now:

  • Despite its undeniable battlefield successes, Russia is not winning in Ukraine.
  • Russia had three clear objectives in initiating its special operation: (1) Free Ukraine’s Russian-speaking populations in the country’s southeastern region from attacks by the Ukrainian army which over the last six years have cost the Donbass more than 14,000 lives. (2) De-Nazify Ukraine which has incorporated card carrying, swastika-tattooed Nazis into its government and military forces. (3) Force the Kyiv government to drop its ambitions to join NATO – instead adopting a position of neutrality like Sweden once did
  • Russia will surely achieve the first objective. Its forces have surrounded Ukrainian troops in the Donbass in ever-tightening pincers. There, Ukrainians will be compelled to surrender or be annihilated. They have no other options.
  • Russia success in Mariupol (a major Neo-Nazi center) has also removed from action many extreme right-wing cadres. It has achieved the same result in the Donbass where the Ukrainian army had been spearheaded by openly white supremacist, fascist troops. As already indicated, the latter are surrounded and trapped in what Russian military theory describes as an inescapable “cauldron.” In other words, Ukraine has been or will be significantly (though by no means completely) de-nazified.
  • However, the massive and unforeseen influx of U.S. funding and ordnance into Ukraine has rendered virtually impossible the achievement of Russia’s goal of demilitarizing the country and forcing it into political neutrality. (The $40 billion just authorized by Washington means that in just two months, Ukraine will have received dollar amounts exceeding Russian defense budgeting for an entire year!)
  • This unexpected development means that even if Russia declares “mission accomplished,” withdraws, and ends up controlling Donbass, Odessa, Crimea, and a few other cities and regions, it will always have to deal with a massively armed and NATO trained adversary threatening those gains.
  • Russia’s President Putin can counter such moves only by securing his Duma’s permission to move from special military operation to all-out war against Ukraine. That’s because his countermove would necessarily entail national mobilization including a military draft to increase Russian forces in Ukraine far beyond the 200,000 now deployed there.
  • In Ritter’s eyes, there’s no way anything short of the latter change in strategy might be called “victory.”
  • In other words, Russia will have won its battles but lost the war.

***

As he himself admits, Ritter makes the above analysis while wearing only his military glasses that allow him to perceive nothing but highly predictable battlefield realities. Such limited vision, he concedes, blinkers out crucial political factors whose effects are less foreseeable. For instance, how long will it take Ukraine’s mothers and wives to demand that Kyiv stop sending their sons, husbands, brothers, and uncles to certain death in that Russian meat grinder? How long will it take electorates in Europe and the States to rebel against food, petrol, home heating and cooling prices inflated by sanctions interdicting Russia’s supply of oil and natural gas? In other words, rebellion at the ballot box and/or in the streets could pressure NATO representatives to the negotiating table despite their desire to prolong the conflict. Ritter chooses not to highlight such factors.

***

Of course, the same holds true for Moscow. Though Russian casualties are fewer and though (contrary to the intentions of the sanctions) the ruble is now stronger than ever and even though Russia’s producers are successfully locating markets (in China, India, Iran, and by import substitution) and even though Putin’s approval ratings are over 80%, Russian wives and mothers find body bags just as repellant as their Ukrainian counterparts.  

***

I do too. So let’s change the subject.

***

They say that about a thousand Ukrainian Neo-Nazi soldiers have finally surrendered after months of de facto imprisonment in the bowels of Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant. But our deceitful MSM has called the capitulation an “evacuation” (Where? To Siberia?). They’ve called it a “leaving,” a “withdrawal,” a recognition of “mission accomplished.”

***

Can you imagine the MSM reaction if the situation were reversed – if the Russians were the ones virtually imprisoned for weeks in that steel plant? That, after all, is the way they would have been described – helplessly imprisoned rather than heroically resisting. And their “evacuation” from their underground holes waving their underwear as white flags would have been described as a humiliating surrender.

***

Where’s the peace movement in all of this? Why are the most prominent voices for peace in Ukraine coming from the right — from Trumpists for God’s sake? Can’t figure that one out.

***

And where are the followers of the one who said “Put away your sword. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword” (MT 26:2) and “Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you” (MT 5:44) and “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (LK 23:34)? Catholic Joe Biden’s not saying that — even though Pope Francis lays much of the blame for Ukraine’s war at his feet.

***

Are you saying any of those things?

***

Can anyone say “Bully for you?”

Ukraine: Scott Ritter Exposes Six Mainstream Media Lies

There  is no need to recall the familiar memes: Insane, evil, Hitler-like Vladimir Putin! His total war! Russian war crimes! The massacre at Boucha! Mass graves in Mariupol! Russian military ineptitude! Their failure to conquer Kiev! Their stalled campaign in Donbass! Moderate and heroic (reformed) Nazi patriots!

Like most Americans, when this Ukrainian crisis began, it seemed almost irresistible to accept such unanimous mainstream media (MSM) “of course” characterizations.

Most became persuaded that Vladimir Putin expected a quick victory in Ukraine. It also seemed simply given that the madman’s goal was to completely overrun, conquer, and occupy his neighbor to the west. His failure to simply roll over the country in two or three days revealed his miscalculations and the ineptitude of the Russian army. Putin’s calling the invasion a “special military operation” was a cynical renaming of a blatantly illegal incursion. The Ukrainians seemed to have a chance of winning.

Now, however, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe any of that – largely because of analysis offered by critically thinking sources  – especially that of Scott Ritter, whose explanations of military strategy seem far more detailed, coherent, logical, and informed than what’s presented on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, or even on “Democracy Now.”

Let me show you what I mean.   

Critical Analysis

The trustworthy sources I’m referring to include Robert Merschiemer, Noam Chomsky, Stephen F. Cohen,  Chris Hedges, Vijay Prashad, George Galloway, Max Blumenthal, Yanis Varoufakis, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Mate, Ben Norton, and  even Jimmy Dore.

Yes, most of them admit that there was grave miscalculation on Putin’s part. For instance, they point out that he was clearly erroneous in expecting Ukrainian Russian-speakers to rally to his side. His intelligence staffs got that terribly wrong (and heads rolled as a result).

Moreover, according to almost everyone, the Russian president’s operation is rendered unquestionably illegal by international law. Wars of aggression are forbidden, they point out, by post- World War II Nuremberg Laws and the  Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. All those rulings (and more) prohibit wars like Putin’s (and the one, for instance, initiated by President George W. Bush against Iraq in 2003).

However, analysts outside the MSM also agree that the United States and NATO purposely provoked the Russian president to take the action he did. They also concur that the MSM has become simply a mouthpiece for the State Department with no mainstream dissent allowed. They are completely untrustworthy.

Moreover, even apart from the critical sources just mentioned, a close reading of Putin’s speeches delivered just prior to Russia’s entry into Ukraine show him to be much more thoughtful, and rational than most U.S. leaders who typically speak in slogans. By contrast, Putin has a firm grasp of history and an impressive ability to martial persuasive argument including historical and legal justifications for his actions. He respects his audience by treating them like adults. By all accounts, he doesn’t bluff.

Scott Ritter   

Beyond all that, however, Scott Ritter has distinguished himself as the non-MSM commentator offering the most help towards understanding what’s actually happening on Ukraine’s field of battle. It’s not what you think.

A former Marine major, Ritter was a longtime U.S. intelligence expert. He also reached prominence as the U.S. weapons inspector. Before the Iraq War he was charged with investigating U.S. convictions that Saddam Hussein was concealing in his country weapons of mass destruction. Ritter’s team found no evidence of such concealment. They were relieved of their duties when they reported their findings.

Ritter also turns out to be highly literate and knowledgeable about military strategy. That’s where his analysis turns out to be most helpful.     

Consider the following six points contradicting the memes just listed. They represent Ritter’s main points about what’s happening on the battlefield.

  1. Putin’s war is indeed a “special military operation“: It was never the Russian president’s intention to conquer all of Ukraine. Instead, as he stated on the day beginning his Ukrainian foray: “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation. It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force.”

In other words, Putin’s purpose in Ukraine is threefold:

a) To protect Donetsk and Luhansk from what he sees as genocide perpetrated there by the Ukrainian Nazi Azov regiment largely responsible for Kiev’s aggression in Donbass since 2014

b) To bring to justice those who directed the massacres  

c) And denazify and destroy the Ukrainian army in the process.

Those goals are clearly limited. The Russian president completely denies an intention or ability to occupy Ukraine.  

2. The operation has been run with scrupulous respect for rules of war: According to Ritter, the Russian army “came in soft” to Ukraine. As distinguished from U.S. tactics in Iraq, there was no “Shock and Awe” – no preliminary levelling of entire cities such as Mosul and Fallujah.  Instead, in the words of U.S. Colonel Doug Macgregor, “The first five days, I think frankly, the Russian forces were too gentle. They’ve since corrected that.” Moreover, on Ritter’s analysis, civilian targets have been carefully avoided. However, he points out that if Ukrainians use civilians as shields by, for instance, locating tanks next to hospitals or schools, those buildings become military targets. As for “mass graves,” bodies have been identified and given separate temporary marked graves near established cemeteries. In summary, according to Ritter, the rules of war have in general been followed scrupulously by the Russian army which is run by “highly professional” officers.

3. Accounts of the Boucha massacre are questionable: Here, Ritter uses his experience as a weapons inspector to underline the inconsistencies in the widespread mainstream accounts of the execution-style killings in Boucha. According to the MSM, Russian forces were shockingly brutal in leaving behind many Boucha civilians shot in the back of their heads with their hands tied behind their backs. Such accounts, Ritter contends, are suspicious. Questions are raised, he notes, by the fact that the executed civilians often had white or green ribbons displayed around their arms. White, he says, was an indication of neutrality in the war; green showed support of the Russians. As well, in some photos, empty green boxes appeared near the victims. Such boxes were used by Russian soldiers to supply food to civilians in occupied neighborhoods. Ritter’s conclusion: the victims in Boucha were likely executed as collaborators by the Ukrainian police force.

4. Russia’s early attack on Kiev was highly successful. According to Ritter, the early assault on Kiev and other western cities were “feints” – deceptive military maneuvers that are standard parts of what military textbooks call “shaping the battlefield.” The deception’s intention was to fix in place Ukrainian defenders, so that they would be rendered unable to come to the aid of eastern comrades in Mariupol and the Donbass – Russia’s real targets as havens for the Nazi Azov Battalion. No responsible military leadership (and the Russian generals, he says, are consummate professionals) would ever attack any city (much less a huge one like Kiev) with less than a ratio of 3 attackers for every 1 defender. In Kiev, the Russians attacked with far less — only 40,00 troops in total. They therefore had no intention of taking Kiev early on. They were shaping the battlefield. The marvel is that they succeeded in getting Ukrainian defenders to buy their feints.

5. The campaign in Donbass is unfolding according to plan. Putin’s words are that the battle in Donbass is very “literate.” He means it’s being waged by the book – intentionally slowly and deliberately according to classic military strategy in order to lessen Russian casualties. Two pincers (one from the north and one from the south) have about 60,000-100,000 Ukrainian troops trapped in a military “cauldron.” Gradually (not allowing themselves to be hurried by outside expectations, criticism, and misinterpretation), the Russians are moving sector by sector towards their surrounded prey that has nowhere to go. Ukrainian options are to surrender, be killed, or attempt a breakout that will cost them at least 20,000-30,000 dead.  

6. The Ukrainian army is a Nazi organization: Ritter supports this position as follows: He asks, would you say that the U.S. Army is racist? Of course not, he answers. But what if there were in the U.S. south a highly organized KKK regiment? And what if the U.S. Army incorporated that regiment as such into its ranks and distributed its officers throughout the army hierarchy? And what if it used that regiment as the leading edge of its military operations? Would you then consider the army racist? Yes, Ritter concludes. But, he says, (mutatis mutandis) that’s precisely what’s happened in the Ukrainian armed forces. A large Nazi regiment has been incorporated as such into its ranks with Nazi officer distributed throughout. And the Ukrainian government has those forces leading the attack on the Donbass region – which has taken 14,000 lives since 2014. That renders, he concludes, the Ukrainian army and its sponsoring government Nazi.

Conclusion  

Recently, The Economist ran a story based on the memes initially named here. The article’s title was “How Rotten is Russia’s Army?” It contended that:

“The invasion of Ukraine has been a disaster for Russia’s armed forces. About 15,000 troops have been killed in two months of fighting, according to the British government. At least 1,600 armoured vehicles have been destroyed. The assault on the capital, Kyiv, was a chaotic failure. For Mr. Putin this is a crushing setback, because the use of military force is central to his strategy for making Russia count in the world. Russia may be vast, but it is a medium-sized polity that still yearns to be a superpower. To fill the gap between its capacities and its aspirations, Mr. Putin has repeatedly turned to the only sphere where Russia can still purport to worldclass: military force. It is a welcome fact that the failure of Russia’s rotten army in Ukraine weakens this claim. Unfortunately, this also leaves the world facing a nuclear-armed power with a point to prove.”

As noted earlier, conclusions like The Economist’s are par for the course in the mainstream media. Their propagandistic nature is shown by the fact that they would never have been drawn about the U.S. army after its repeated and obvious failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam. In their light, can anyone imagine an MSM outlet posing the question “How Rotten is America’s Army?”

Neither would The Economist or any other mainstream outlet perceive the obvious psychological projection and irony of describing Russia in terms entirely applicable to the United States which has “repeatedly turned to the only sphere where (it) can still purport to be world class: military force.”

Be that as it may, the common sense of Scott Ritter’s analysis seems far more evident than the The Economist’s or anyone else’s self-serving and misleading memes.

The conclusion here is that the MSM should be ignored as propaganda pure and simple. Instead, analysts like Scott Ritter and the other critical reporters mentioned above should be sought out and heeded.

What Yemen Tells U.S. Christians Blinded by Ukraine

Readings for the Third Sunday in Lent: Exodus 3: 1-8a, 13-15; Psalm 103: 1-11; 1st Corinthians 10: 1-6, 10-12; Matthew 4: 17 ; Luke 13: 1-9

Because the readings for this Third Sunday of Lent celebrate the identity of the biblical God as the champion of the poor and oppressed, they should offer encouragement to war victims in Ukraine but especially in Yemen where the United States is acting far more brutally than Putin.

Today’s selections should therefore give pause to American followers of Moses and Yeshua. Typically, we have no trouble lamenting what’s happening in Ukraine’s “white people’s war” involving middle class people who “look and live like us.”

Generally, however, we are less perceptive about the immeasurably greater slaughter of black and brown Muslims taking place at the hands of our own government in Yemen.

Ironically, in Ukraine our politicians and the media would have us believe we’re on principle against invasion of a sovereign state and indiscriminate slaughter by a cruel tyrant. In Ukraine, we present ourselves as champions of democracy and peace.

However, in Yemen the U.S. is supporting a vastly more deadly and indiscriminate invasion of a sovereign state by an ally (Saudi Arabia) that is specifically anti-democratic and led by a head of state more openly barbaric even than Vladimir Putin.

To get what I mean and its implications for adherents of the Judeo-Christian tradition as presented in this Sunday’s readings, please consider our day’s historical context in the light of today’s liturgy of the word. Then consider what people of faith should do about all of it.

Our Context

Of course, there is no need to rehearse the horrific scenes from Kiev and Mariupol. For the past four weeks they’ve assaulted our eyes and have broken our hearts on behalf of the victims of Russia’s merciless assaults.

Ironically, however, virtually no one in the mainstream media (MSM) connects those atrocities with what our own government has done and continues to sponsor in Yemen.

There, “we” have been supporting the country’s invasion by neighboring Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). He, of course, is a royal prince who (as I said) is specifically against democracy.

For instance, just last week, he had 81 men beheaded in just 12 hours. The executed had no legal representation. Many of the charges against them amounted to thought crimes.  

Additionally, a couple of years ago, MBS had his hitmen butcher with surgical bone saws the Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

More to my point here: for the past seven years, MBS, perhaps the richest man in the Middle East, has waged a genocidal war on Yemen, making it the poorest country in the world. In the process, (with full American support) he has created what the UN’s World Food Program has identified as genocide and the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis. — far greater than Ukraine.

Over those seven years, MBS has come to the aid of Yemeni oligarchs who have kept the country’s rich oil wealth for themselves. The Saudi crown prince thinks that’s a good idea. So, supplied and guided by the U.S., he’s been bombing, blockading, and starving the children of Yemen and their parents. The brutal process has claimed more than 100,000 lives. An additional 85,000 Yemenis are dead as the result of the famine and cholera epidemic produced by our war.

And what is it that the opponents of MBS and the United States are seeking? According to a Newsweek report, rebel groups (the Houthis) are fighting  “for things that all Yemenis crave: government accountability, the end to corruption, regular utilities, fair fuel prices, job opportunities for ordinary Yemenis and the end of Western influence.”  

Today’s Readings

As I mentioned at the outset, today’s liturgy of the word focuses on the character of Israel’s and Yeshua’s God as the protector of the poor and oppressed – the champion of those like the people in Ukraine and especially in Yemen.

In fact, as you’ll see below, the first reading recounts the vocation story of Israel’s great rebel leader, the prophet Moses. When Moses asks God’s name, the Source of Everything says, She is the liberator of the poor and oppressed. The second reading from St. Paul’s letter to a Christian community in Greece expands on that theme.

Then today’s final selection from the Christian Testament presents Yeshua as doing exactly what I’m attempting in this homily. He raises two “current events” connected with the hegemonic force of his own day, the Roman Empire. Of course, it was the invader of Yeshua’s homeland Israel.

In one event the infamous Pontius Pilate, the brutal Roman procurator in charge of Palestine had just slaughtered several Jewish insurgents in the act of offering sacrifice in Jerusalem’s temple. They were honoring the liberating God of Moses.

Meanwhile, another group of insurgents tunneling under a Roman armory (it seems with a plan to steal its arms cache) had caused the tower’s weak foundations crumble and fall not only on top of the tunnellers but people in nearby houses as well. According to Maria Lopez Vigil and her brother, Jose Ignacio, the armory was located in the Tower of Siloam.

In response, Yeshua expresses sympathy for its resisters. “They’re no more sinners than the rest of us,” he says. “All of us are ‘guilty’ of wanting to be rid of the Roman invaders. But actions like Pilate’s and the fate of those undermining the Tower of Siloam foreshadow a more general slaughter that will inevitably take place in response to such “direct action.”  

In effect, Yeshua says, “Those who resist the hated Romans by resorting to arms are (understandably) bloodthirsty too. And if we follow their example, we’ll all drown in a bloody deluge.” Or as Yeshua put it, “I tell you, if you do not change your minds, you will all perish as they did!”

And time is running short, he adds with today’s parable about a fig tree. The bloody deluge has been building for at least three years, he says. We have maybe another twelve months before the chickens of the deadly cycle of violence come home to roost. Without replacing violent resistance to Roman butchery with non-violent tactics, we’ll all be cut down like a barren fig tree.

(Jesus’ prediction of bloodbath, of course, eventually came true, but not as soon as he thought. The Romans would defeat the Zealot uprising in the year 70, and definitively squash all Jewish rebellion in 132. Jesus was right however about the extent of the slaughter. It was horrific resulting in the deaths of more than a million Jews. Such disaster is inevitable, Jesus teaches for all who “live by the sword.”)

His words, of course, have implications for our nation which like none other has lived by the sword ever since its foundation.

The Readings Translated

With all of that in mind, here are my “translations” of today’s powerful readings. Please check out the originals here to see if I got them right.

Exodus 3: 1-8a, 13-15
 
A stuttering shepherd 
Tending his father-in-law’s beasts 
In the barren desert 
Encounters a bush 
On fire 
But unconsumed. 
Fantastically, 
The stammering one 
Hears a voice 
From the raging flames 
Frightening him 
Out of his wits, 
Crumbling the man 
To the desert floor 
But calling on Moses 
In the name of 
The Great “I Am” 
To lead A motley horde 
Of slaves 
To freedom, prosperity 
And abundance. 

“This,” says the voice 
“Remains the unchanging 
Will and identity 
Of your people's God – 
The Liberator Of the poor 
And oppressed 
Everywhere.” 

Psalm 103: 1-11 

Yes, the Great “I Am”. 
Is the champion 
Of the downtrodden 
Throughout the world 
Hungering and thirsting 
For justice. 
Yahweh is 
Kind and merciful 
Gracious and loving 
Kinder than anyone 
Can even imagine 
The giver of abundance 
The physician 
Who cures, forgives 
And saves the enslaved 
From destruction. 

Who cannot love 
Such a One? 

1st Corinthians 10: 1-6, 10-12 

Certainly, Paul did
Whose God 
He recalls 
Protected His fugitive people 
With cloud, fire 
Desert and sea 
From pursuing 
Egyptian slave holders 
And then fed 
The liberated ones 
In the desert 
With manna 
And water 
Drawn from a rock 
(Foreshadowing Jesus himself.) 

While complainers 
(“What, manna again?”)
Perished 
Preferring instead 
The fleshpots and security 
Of Egyptian captivity. 

For your own good,
Paul warns, 
Don’t be like them! 

Matthew 4: 17 

I mean, 
Leave behind 
Enslavement 
With all its predictability 
And false security 
Choosing instead 
The insecure 
But imminent realm 
Of God’s New Future 
With all its promised 
Freedom, prosperity 
And abundance. 

Luke 13: 1-9 

That’s the realm 
Yeshua based 
His entire life upon. 
He contrasted it 
With Pilate’s Cruel slaughter 
Of insurgent Jews 
Simply trying 
To worship 
Their Great “I Am” 
And 18 other 
Revolutionaries 
Tunnelling under 
A Roman armory 
That collapsed upon them 
At Siloam. 

“No,” Jesus cautioned 
“Choose Yahweh’s 
Non-violent Order, 
Along with 
Complete abandonment 
Of (sinless) religious naivety 
And equally understandable 
And innocent 
Revolutionary derring do. 
Otherwise, 
You’ll have no future 
At all. 

And time’s running out,” 
He warned, 
“You’ve got maybe a year 
Before you’ll reach 
The point of no return.”

Conclusion

As you’ve just seen, the readings for this Third Sunday of Lent call us to repentance – to change of mind about empire, brutal invaders, occupiers, and what to do about all of it.

Followers of the biblical heroes, Moses and Yeshua, are summoned to examine their own consciences about how we see and respond to “current events.” We’re called to repentance.

Many would say that the tragic events unfolding in both Ukraine and in Yemen can be laid at the doorstep of the United States, the bloody successor of the Roman Empire that plagued Yeshua and his people.

Regardless of “the fog of war” that might impede such perception for many regarding Ukraine, the case of Yemen should be crystal clear. It should help us realize that our country’s leaders are not in the least interested in democracy, the deaths of innocents, preventing genocide, or opposing brutality of national leaders considered “friends.”

Instead, the guiding interests of U.S. “leadership” are money, oil, and maintaining hegemony, whatever the cost in human lives. History shows that to realize those interests they’ll ally with anyone – with butchers like MBS, with Nazis like Ukraine’s Azof Battalion, with the Mafia, drug dealers, ISIS, or the devil himself.

Events in Ukraine and Yemen should be forcing us to such shocking conclusions. They should be driving us all towards non-violent revolution — and towards publicizing and resisting U.S. aggression, warmongering and policy hypocrisies on every front.

That is, according to the teachings of Moses and Yeshua, the proper response for believers is unrelenting clarity of thought and analysis, along with non-violent resistance. And we’d better act quickly. As Yeshua warns, time is running out for us too..