On the Road to Peace

Close Guantánamo Now!
By John Dear SJ
Created Jun 3 2008 - 05:09


[BE SURE TO CLICK ON THE DIRECT LINK SO YOU CAN VIEW THE VIDEO OF THESE BEAUTIFUL SOULS SPEAKING TRUTH TO THE POWERS AND PRINCIPALITIES...]


I was in Washington, D.C. last week for the opening day of the trial of 35 friends and peacemakers who dared to protest the indefinite detention and torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They did their best over several days to speak in court on behalf of those who never had a day in court.


Eventually, the judge dismissed the case of one defendant and found the rest guilty of misdemeanors. A dozen were sent to jail, for 1 to 15 days.

The trial stemmed from a demonstration at the Supreme Court Jan. 11, the sixth anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay U.S. detention and torture facility.

On the first day of the trial, early Tuesday morning, we gathered at the Supreme Court and from there we marched a few miles to the D.C. Superior Court.

Fifty of us wore orange jump suits and black hoods and others wore military fatigues. A large banner saying "Close Guantanamo" brought up the rear.

...

Said Matthew Daloisio of the New York Catholic Worker, "I stood at the Supreme Court on behalf of Yasser Al Zahrani, a 22 year old Yemeni man, arrested at the age of 17 and never charged or tried, who on June 10, 2006, apparently took his own life."

Addressing Judge Wendell Gardner, Matt said, "In the five months since our arrest, we have made it further in the criminal justice system than these men have in over six years."

Fr. Bill Pickard from Scranton, Pa., said: "I went to the Supreme Court to bring before the law the name of Faruq Ali Ahmed -- who claims he traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 simply to teach the Koran to children and that he has no affiliation with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. He cannot do it for himself, so I am called by my faith, my respect for the rule of law, and my conscience to do it for him."

Complementing the uttering of names was silence. Nearly half the defendants elected to remain silent -- this in solidarity with the voiceless prisoners of Guantanamo.

Also rendered voiceless was a witness for the 34 defendants. The judge deemed "irrelevant" and "unnecessary" testimony from Thomas Wilner, a lawyer representing Guantanamo detainees. The judge barred him from taking the stand.

According to human rights groups, the United States holds more than 20,000 people -- some say as many as 27,000 people -- in detention centers around the world. All are held without charge or with no trial scheduled or planned. How many have been tortured we do not know. But torture, illegal detention, and cover-ups have become standard operating procedure for the new American empire.
The defendants are part of a group called "Witness Against Torture," which protests the immoral U.S. policies of torture and demands the closing of Guantanamo and all secret U.S. prisons. Frida Berrigan, the group's spokesperson, said after the verdicts, "We're sad about the convictions, but we're happy, moved and humbled to bring the stories, names and identification of the men in Guantanamo into a court of law."

Hope permeated the forlorn air. And it was because of these good people, many of them Catholic Workers and Christians. They forfeited their freedom for those without civil liberties. They used their voices on behalf of those made silent. They turned a glare of shame on our imperial courts, where lady justice is stridently touted then grossly mocked.

As we join this campaign to abolish torture and Guantanamo, we not only serve the suffering prisoners, but we reclaim our humanity. Let's press the U.S. Supreme Court and the Congress to outlaw torture, close Guantanamo, abolish all secret prisons supposedly outside the realm of law and assert decisively the right of habeas corpus.

To learn more about the trial, the defendants and the movement to shut down Guantanamo, visit http://www.witnesstorture.org/ [1].


John's forthcoming autobiography, A Persistent Peace, will be published on Aug. 1. For excerpts and details, see: www.persistentpeace.com [4]. To order, go to www.amazon.com [5]. This weekend, John will lead a retreat for Pax Christi New Mexico in Albuquerque, N.M. See: www.johndear.org [6] for details.


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Source URL:
http://ncrcafe.org/node/1868
Links:
[1] http://www.witnesstorture.org/
[2] http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/update/dear/archives.htm
[3] http://ncrcafe.org/node/27
[4] http://www.persistentpeace.com
[5] http://www.amazon.com
[6] http://www.johndear.org



http://ncrcafe.org/node/1868

A Massacre of the World's Poor

[From: http://nonviolentjesus.blogspot.com/ ]

"You're like fish that only see the bait, never the line," we would mock in return. For we believed – and quite a few of us still do - that people should not be measured by material possessions but by their ability to transform the lives of others - the poor and underprivileged; that the economy needed to be regulated and reorganised in the interests of the many, not the few, and that socialism without democracy could never work." - Tariq Ali, "Storming Heaven"

"Food riots have broken out across the globe destabilizing large parts of the developing world. China is experiencing double-digit inflation. Indonesia, Vietnam and India have imposed controls over rice exports. Wheat, corn and soy beans are at record highs and threatening to go higher still. Commodities are up across the board. The World Food Program is warning of widespread famine if the West doesn't provide emergency humanitarian relief. The situation is dire. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez summed it up like this, "It is a massacre of the world's poor. The problem is not the production of food. It is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis." - Mike Whitney, "Food Riots and Speculators", April 26, 2008

"The philosophy of oppression, perfected and refined through civilizations as a true culture injustice, does not achieve its greatest triumph when its propagandists knowingly inculcate it; rather the triumph is achieved when this philosophy has become so deeply rooted in the spirits of the oppressors themselves nad their ideologues that they are not even aware of their guilt." - Jose Miranda, "Marx and the Bible"

The voice of Christian tradition transcends the childish evasions of the modern megachurch, "God willed that this earth should be the common possession of all and he offered its fruits to all. But avarice distributed the rights of possession." - St. Ambrose.

What are the obligations of justice? "You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his." - St. Ambrose.

God did not intend that property be an absolute right transcending all other rights and duties and the Christian faith has always protested this travesty of justice. Property rights are always relative to our obligations to the common good. Once we accept this teaching, we experience a strange and wondrous transformation. In the last few centuries, many have sought to break the bonds of religion in order to live what they consider fully human lives. Our acceptance of Biblical truth frees us from the tyranny of property and the sin that wedges itself between buying and selling in the words of Jesus ben Sirach (Ecclesiaticus 27: 1 - 2). Thus we are freed from submission to the inhuman laws of materialistic economics, the global neoliberalism which always privileges blind economic growth over the needs of humanity.

The original sin of modern economics is the commodification of man's life and labor. Its fundamental injustice is to make a human being's life equivalent to a certain quantity of commodities. The fact that this seems utterly natural testifies to the most effective propaganda mechanism which the world has ever seen.

Now at last the Earth itself is in revolt, sick from a severe case of global capitalism, which sees no injustice when millions have to starve so the property rights of three or four commodity traders won't be violated. Global warming is the divine response which shouts, "If only you would listen! You would not listen to my son, so now the deluge."

Crossing the Threshold of Hope

...."Israel's methodical actions make it clear that it is systematically grinding down and now actually starving people for whose welfare it is legally accountable simply because it regards Gaza's 1.5 million men, women and children as a surplus population it would, quite simply, like to get rid of one way or the other: a sentiment made quite clear when Israel's chief Ashkenazi rabbi proposed, shortly after the current crisis began, that the entire Palestinian population of Gaza should just be removed and transferred to the Egyptian desert. 'They will have a nice country, and we shall have our country and we shall live in peace,'"- "The Strangulation of Gaza", The Nation, Feb. 18, 2008.

Such a peace was well known to the Roman empire: "They made a desert and called it peace." - Tacitus.

Christians, of course, need not fear that that they will be forced to look at the starving faces which our government's unceasing support for Israel has procured. Nor will their pastors intrude any unwelcome pleas for justice, but we will all continue to enjoy the "Gospel of Prosperity" until the Rapture takes us to eternal Disneyland. How pleased God must be with us.

posted by Boyd at 12:51 PM

Chalmers Johnson on "military Keynesianism" and imperial bankruptcy

This is a clip from a new film, "Chalmers Johnson on American Hegemony," in Cinema Libre Studios' Speaking Freely series in which Johnson discusses "military Keynesianism" and imperial bankruptcy.

Fresh posts at NonviolentJesus

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

by Jason Barr

PLEASE check out the blog 'Nonviolent Jesus'

What Are Our Voices For?

More wisdom from NonViolentJesus

"And woe unto you if you are torturing your fellow human being. Woe unto you if you are getting rich by providing material support, service, or assistance to the purveyors of torture, for how does it profit a person to gain the whole world but lose his or her soul? Woe unto the politicians who have abused our nation’s fear to find support for torture and who change the definition of torture in order to say with a straight face, 'Americans don’t torture'. Woe unto the politicians who have not spoken out loudly enough to condemn torture. Woe to the religious communities and leaders who have been silent. Woe unto you, for you will have to go to bed each night knowing that you have sinned against humanity and against God." - Ben Daniel

Listen to the words of a soldier trying to follow his faith:

Specialist Joshua Casteel - Listen to the audio clip (or download)

warcomeshome.org


Where is the leadership which should expect from bishops, the shepherds of the people of God? Justice must be enthroned - this is the work of Jesus. 40 years of hermaneutics, Vatican II, and all the rest, and not a single forthright criticism of a war that they admit was in no way justified by just war principles, not as long as it really matters - while the war is in progress.

"For too long the language of morality and sin has been commandeered by those among us who think the primary goal of religion is to regulate human intimacy. People like you and me—that is to say, thoughtful people of faith whose souls are inclined to the work of making the world a better place—we don’t want our religious faithfulness to be confused with prudishness, so we shy away from anything that might look like a pounded pulpit or that might smell like brimstone.

"Brothers and sisters, dear friends, when it comes to torture, we need to lose that inhibition, because how can torture be anything but immoral? And if we cannot condemn as sin that which truly is immoral, then what might our God-given voices be for?Brothers and sisters, dear friends, when it comes to torture, we need to lose that inhibition, because how can torture be anything but immoral? And if we cannot condemn as sin that which truly is immoral, then what might our God-given voices be for?" - Ben Daniel, speech at the headquarters of a company that renders "enemy combatants" to be tortured for the edification and career advancement of American politicians.

Indeed, what is the purpose of spiritual life if it can't be moved by the plight of our brothers and sisters and we are condemned to live in a fairy land of Rapture? For what has God given us minds and hands and hearts if they cannot be moved by a world of starvation caused directly by the corporations that coddle us with obscene and undeserved comfort? Our hearts were not given us so that we could distract them with brainless nonsense while the world burns.

"I am not schooled in national security or in international politics. I am a pastor, and I wouldn’t be a very good one if the promotion of social righteousness were not part of my ministry. What I know about torture is this: it’s not just ineffective, and unpatriotic and illegal, and dangerous. To torture someone is immoral because it is cruel and it is unfair. Torture uses punishment to determine guilt rather than using guilt to determine punishment. Torture desecrates the image of God that is common to all humanity. Torture is a sin." - Ben Daniel

It is as much a mortal sin as abortion, though you don't hear Catholic bishops shaking that tree very often. They have more important things to deal with than the torture of human beings.

"And woe unto you if you are torturing your fellow human being. Woe unto you if you are getting rich by providing material support, service, or assistance to the purveyors of torture, for how does it profit a person to gain the whole world but lose his or her soul? Woe unto the politicians who have abused our nation’s fear to find support for torture and who change the definition of torture in order to say with a straight face, 'Americans don’t torture'. Woe unto the politicians who have not spoken out loudly enough to condemn torture. Woe to the religious communities and leaders who have been silent. Woe unto you, for you will have to go to bed each night knowing that you have sinned against humanity and against God." - Ben Daniel

And you will have to sleep in the sin your silence has nurtured.

"The final word belongs to grace. Grace enables and empowers us to change. The good news is that no matter what the propagators of hatred and fear may tell us, we can reject the sin of torture and so can they. We can just say no. There remains time for the amendment of our national character. By grace we can affirm the sanctity of each human life. By grace we can refuse to live under the illusionary comfort of security that is conceived in cruelty and born of brutality. By grace we may live moral and upright lives." - Ben Daniel

Wake from sin and speak. It is the only true security.

posted by Boyd at 1:05 PM | 0 comments links to this post

ON THE LINE

What happens when a group of activists, priests, celebrities, and students risk arrest to protest U.S. foreign policy in Latin America?

ON THE LINE is an inside look at the people behind one of the largest nonviolent movements in America today: the movement to close the School of the Americas/WHINSEC, a U.S. Army school that trains Latin American soldiers. In a world where politics, passion, and Constitutional rights collide, protesters discuss their activism, the dark side of U.S. foreign policy, and the challenges of protesting since 9/11.

The principal cast includes:

* Martin Sheen, actor
* Susan Sarandon, actor
* Fr. Roy Bourgeois, Founder of School of the Americas Watch
* John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman
* Bob Barr, political analyst and former US Congressman
* Gerry Weber, ACLU-Georgia

25,000 protest the SOA/WHINSEC and U.S. policy

[And not a peep from the corporate media...]

From VoxNova

The annual protest at Ft. Benning in Georgia to close the SOA/WHINSEC continues to grow. This past weekend, 25,000 protesters, including Catholic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich, made the trip to Georgia. Read reports here and here.

Michael J. Iafrate Says:
November 19, 2007 at 10:40 pm

Strange, isn’t it, that it is so silent considering the media’s recent sudden realization that — gasp! — torture is a real issue. Recognizing this movement now would show the media’s own complicity in remaining silent on the issue of torture for decades. The media will recognize torture as a mere election year issue, but on its own terms, not facing up to the fact that torture is as American as apple pie.

Mindblowing..."Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice: Navigating the Path to Peace"

Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice: Navigating the Path to Peace (Theology in Global Perspective) (Paperback)

By Mary J. Miller (Iowa and Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

"This book may take our breath away." So states the cover blurb from Walter Brueggemann on "Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice: Navigating the Path to Peace," released on April 17, 2007 by Daniel G. Groody. The basic premise is, metaphorically, that the global family has booked passage and is now aboard the ship of globalization and there is no turning back to the shore. The question we must ask ourselves, as passengers on this ship, is, "who is at the helm and where are we going?" As Gustavo Gutierrez quips, "Being against globalization is like being against electricity." We can't stop the ship, and one would question the wisdom of wanting to, but the issues of who's driving and where will we end up are legitimate.

The book begins by offering an overview of the dual nature of globalization--its inherent propensity for good, such as the triumphs of technology, and for ill, such as the tragedy of poverty. Perhaps more importantly, chapter one details where we have sailed on this ship so far. This chapter seeks to give a realistic picture of the world today and paints that picture by using the most current statistics available. These statistics were gathered from sources such as the World Bank, the United Nations annual Human Development and World Development reports, and the World Institute for Development Economic Research. It is staggering to learn that 19 percent of the global population lives on less than $1 per day, 48 percent live on less than $2 per day, 75 percent live on less than $10 per day, and, according to the World Bank, two-thirds of the population of the planet lives in poverty. The weight of these income disparities is compounded when one looks at the unequal distribution of wealth and our disordered spending patterns. According to an article in the December 2006 issue of "The Economist," half of all wealth is held by only 2 percent of the world's adults. The world spends almost as much money on toys and games as the poorest 20 percent of the population earns in a year, and four times as much on alcohol as on international development aid. The troubling area of military spending is also addressed.

The world picture, from the perspective of poverty and need is indeed bleak, but Professor Groody does not leave us in the grip of its reality with no hope. He is convinced that, while fully aware of the abuses committed in the name of religion throughout history, the gift theology can bring to the process of globalization is a navigation system that has the potential to guide us to a place of solidarity and peace, where if globalization is left to itself or to those leaders who are only motivated by profit we may run aground on the icebergs of greed. As Groody notes, we are doing theological reflection all the time, but he argues that to find a place of human solidarity we must undergo a conversion from "money-theism" to monotheism. The remaining eight chapters of the book deal with how the various sub-disciplines of theology inform the process of globalization.

* Chapter two details the core narratives of the Bible--the Narrative of the Empire, the Narrative of the Poor, the Narrative of Yahweh, the Narrative of Idolatry, and the Narrative of the Gospel, integrating them all with the Narrative of the Passover.
* Chapter three challenges idolatry and excessive wealth through the words of the early church writers.
* Chapter four lays out an overview of Catholic social teaching with an acronym ("A God of Life") that provides a framework on which to hang the basic tenets. There are also several very useful charts that detail the documents of the universal and regional churches by categories of year, author, context, and key concept.
* Chapter five consists of a short section (five or six pages) on the basic social teachings of each of the major, non-Judeo-Christian, world religions--Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Bahai Faith, and African Indigenous religions. Here we see that social justice is not unique to Christianity.
* In chapter six the lives of five contemporary models of justice are briefly chronicled: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and Oscar Romero. Attention is paid especially to their foundational experiences, the major metaphor of their life, their operative theology, and their core contribution to justice.
* Chapter seven reflects on God through the perspective of the poor by looking at liberation theology and the preferential option for the poor. This chapter is an especially helpful read for anyone who wishes to understand what is meant by these two terms and the position of the Vatican on liberation theology. The global perspective is readily apparent again in this chapter as attention is paid to Black, Hispanic, Feminist, and Asian liberation theology.
* Chapter eight concerns the rite of the liturgy, and justice as living in right relationships with God, self, others, and the environment. This chapter also has several nice charts that are helpful in linking the sacraments to social teaching by way core issue.
* The final chapter on spirituality and transformation beautifully sums up the book by looking to the spiritual disciplines which can strengthen us for doing the work of justice in the world: fasting, prayer, community, solidarity, nature, simplicity, recollection, and Sabbath.

Each chapter begins with a relevant story, and ends with a set of questions that would be helpful for personal reflection, group discussion, or classroom use, and a detailed bibliography for further reading and study.

I recommend Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice for upper level undergrads and graduate students in theology, peace studies, political science, ethics and justice, and economics and business, as well as justice groups, and the general reader interested in this vital and timely topic. Groody has managed to research and write a compelling treatise on global injustice without conveying a bleak and hopeless message. At its core, this book seeks to respond to the deeper issues of the human heart that globalization has largely left unexplored--questions related to belonging and loneliness, good and evil, peace and division, healing and suffering, meaning and meaninglessness, hope and despair, love and apathy, justice and injustice, freedom and slavery, and ultimately life and death. He is not interested in overwhelming readers with guilt, but rather with guiding readers to examine our personal and corporate lives and motivations, all the while encouraging us to think beyond ourselves to the needs of our brothers and sisters in the global family. The book is clear and well documented, exquisitely written, and sings a wonderful melody of the gratuitousness of God that is both a gift to and a demand on our lives.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

By Bob Waldrop

September 17, 2007

The article linked here, Red October, from the secular news source Stratfor.com , is troubling. The gist of the Stratfor analysis below is that Russia is making a move to oust the US from its present influence in the former Soviet Union countries like Georgia, Ukraine, and the Baltic republics. This would be in exchange for Russia not providing the Iranians with air defense and nuclear technology. Today's news also has articles about the French warning the Iranians that war may be coming their way. Stratfor.com of course is a "real-politik" news source. They don't ask or answer moral questions about our policy, they just report and comment. But as part of the "being wise as serpents and harmless as doves", I think we need to keep an eye on what they are saying.

And what they are saying is that we may be moving towards an old-fashioned super-power confrontation, US versus Russia, with Iran as a surrogate battlefield. "The more things change, the more they remain the same." See also "those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them."

If nothing else, read with "Catholic Worker" eyes, it seems to me that the American Empire's "last man standing" strategy seems to be moving to a new stage and may expand to include an "air war" in Iran.

I note that the US bishops haven't had much to say about Iran, and they remain fixated on their "responsible transition" newspeak, even though the whole idea of "transition" in the nationalist conversation about Iraq is passe, "last year's news". We are in Iraq to stay, and even if the Democrats sweep the nationalist elections in 2008, I think we will continue to stay until we are forced to leave (either military force or circumstances such as money/resource constraints). The Empire is "all in", as they say down at the Texas hold-em poker tables. Victory or bust.

It would be nice if the Catholic Church could play a heroic role in a movement for peace, but alas, that ain't happenin'.

Even so, we know which side the Lord Jesus Christ and his most blessed Mother are on. . .

Fecit potentiam in brachio suo, dispersit superbos mente cordis sui.
Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles.
Esurientes implevit bonis et divites dimisit inanes,

He has shown strength with his arm and has scattered the proud in their conceit,
Casting down the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

Note that in this equation, the United States is not the "lowly" nor are we the "hungry". We are the mighty who will be cast down, the conceited proud who will be scattered, and the rich who are sent away empty.

Meanwhile, the price of oil hit another all-time high in trading earlier today, and in England, a major bank run continues that has seen $4 billion withdrawn from one banking institution in only 4 days. There are fears that the crisis of confidence in the banking system could spread.

We've spent over a trillion dollars on the Iraq war, as well as an additional trillion on other "war" expenditures since Sept 11, 2001.

So it comes to pass that the rich are getting richer, and everybody else is getting poorer. But note how the financial press regularly blames the mess on "sub-prime loans" made to lower income people with higher credit risks. We're not supposed to think about the 2 trillion dollars squandered on war and destruction. Nor should we focus on the hundreds of billions we pay for our petroleum gluttony. Everyone is clearly instructed to ignore the man behind the curtain. Where is Toto when we need him?

Well, possessed by the spirit of the intrepid Toto, in England, some bank depositors have decided they don't like the looks of the man behind the curtain and they are in "take the money and run" mode. I am not sure where they can run to with it, but they are certainly moving right along with it. They are being blamed by the "Establishment" for their "irrational fears about the banking system". "How dare you lose faith in one of our Fine Honest Banks!"

A bank run here, a few record high prices for oil over there, and a new "splendid little air war" as icing on the cake. This is what it looks like as a great empire edges towards the ash heap of history.

Please pray for peace on all military and economic battlefields.

Please continue to build new structures among these collapsing ruins of the old. The day is coming when we will desperately need them.

Bob Waldrop, picketing St. Joseph in Oklahoma City

Eugene McCarraher nails it again...

From a discussion at dotCommonweal:

Posted by eugene mccarraher
on September 17, 2007, 7:36 am

The reason the Democrats have not shown any interest in exploring the reasons for the invasion is that they already know the reasons: oil, Israel, the desire to establish a U.S. strategic presence. The fact is that they share these objectives no less than the Bush Administration does. They understand full well what's imperialist about what the U.S. has done. (It's worth recalling that the first Congressional resolution supporting "regime change" in Iraq -- which was, admittedly, non-binding -- was passed in 1998, with the full support of the Clinton Adminstration and Senate Democrats.) What else explains, for instance, Obama's stated willingness to unilaterally bomb Pakistan? Or Clinton's dithering about what she would do? The Democrats are the left wing of the military-industrial complex: get the oil, make some noise about Palestinian rights, "oppose the war and support the troops" (a pathetic rhetorical evasion of serious debate about the war), vilify Bush's "incompetence" for the umpteenth time, chicken out when it comes to civil liberties and cutting funding for the war, which is the only serious way to get this President to do anything.

What's truly sobering is that, given the persistence of U.S. economic, diplomatic, and strategic interests, we're not leaving Iraq. Getting out would require, not only that we have an open and unfettered debate about our relationship with Israel (don't hold your breath on that), but that we get serious about finding substitutes for oil (don't hold your breath on that either).

I must say I find it amusing that Powers has, in effect, confirmed what the radical left has been saying about the war all along. Many contributors to this and other blogs have been characterizing us as a bunch of wackos for quite some time, and now we have one of the nation's premiere analysts of foreign and military affairs saying, gee, those wackos got it right. We'll all learn a lot more from Chalmers Johnson than from Thomas Friedman, that overrated blowhard who, when once confronted on NPR with his support for the invasion, said, "Yes, there were no WMDs. I'll have to live with that." While thousands have died with that.

"We're almost there now"

[This is a comment that was posted after the linked article at commondreams]

by Cee Miracles September 16th, 2007 8:52 pm

How many Germans sat around their kitchen tables and tried to find sense and reason and ways to stop what was underway? How many Germans lay in bed at night talking in worried tones with their spouses and lovers wondering what would happen to their lives and the lives of their children and families? How many Germans became fearful as the signs were everywhere of punishment and incarceration if one actively opposed the Fuehrer and his “government”? How many Germans began to walk with their heads down trying to be as unobtrusive as possible? How many walked on with poker faces as old Jewish men and women were assaulted by young Nazi soldiers because it was the safest thing to do?
We’re almost there now. Hitler’s plans were in the works for a decade or more. So have the plans been in the works of the Bush cartel of family, Right Wingers, NeoCons, elected ones in the hallowed halls of Congress, corporate and media whores, and all the rest of the greedy, ambitious-for-empire, psychopathic devils from this country and across the seas where the arrogant White, racist Colonialists are still firmly entrenched, and in Israel where the Zionist cabal has planned, acted and dreamed of this day and are now rubbing their collective hands together as the dream seems to be coming to fruition.
We are the Germans now, … and the Italians and the Japanese … and even many of the French, who have now voted in Sarkozy as Premier, a man cut from old, familiar cloth.
The world blamed the citizens back then for doing nothing, and now U.S. of A. Americans for allowing what is happening to happen.
It is not easy evidently for us of the U.S. of A. who understand and know what is happening to figure out what to do. The old ways of marches and protests, letter writing, appealing to elected officials … none of it is working. The media is purposefully blind and silent and distorts snippets of truth. We have been propagandized to death … to accept the deaths of others.
Iraqis, the Palestinians, the Somalians, the Darfurians, the Lebanese, and the peasants in Columbia and so many others caught in the crossfire of brutal, vicious insanities … GENOCIDE is happening and more is planned.
We are the Germans now … and all the others. The detention camps are ready. … And so are the bombs.
Reasoned, compassionate thinking is lost on those who have no conscience and are driven by their irrational, insane compulsions. Brutality is nothing to them.
Our governmental mechanisms are failing.
Who are you and who am I? We have entered the hours and days of our individual and national and spiritual testing. And the anvil is hot and the coals are glowing redder and redder...

Where Fisk Goes Wrong about 911

By Winter Patriot

The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America

By Peter Dale Scott

Published: Tuesday August 14th, 2007
In this exclusive excerpt from his powerful new book, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), UC Berkeley professor emeritus Peter Dale Scott asks whether there is a connection between America’s historical use of terror as a political weapon and the recent moves by the Bush administration to suspend the Constitution and create a “shadow government” in the wake of the next terrorist attack: CONTINUE

Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

Published: 25 August 2007, The Independent

[could be better written. Some of the comments are good]

Evangelical Meditates on Nationalistic Blasphemy

By Morning's Minion, at VoxNova

Greg Boyd is a pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Something that happened in 1992 changed his life. Visiting a July fourth "worship service" in one of the huge evangelical megachurches, he saw something that shocked and appalled him to the core. He watched a video featuring a high ranking member of the military talk about how God is on America's side, and how that was evident during the (first) Gulf war. The video ended with three crosses on a hill with an American flag in the background. Patriotic music played. All of a sudden, four fighter jets thundered over the crosses, and split apart. The crowd loved it. Greg Boyd did not. In his words:

"How could the cross and the sword have been so thoroughly fused without anyone seeming to notice? How could Jesus' self-sacrificial death be linked with flying killing machines? How could the kingdom of God be reduced to this sort of violent, nationalistic tribalism?...

The evangelical church in America has, to a large extent, become intoxicated with the Constantinian, nationalistic, violent mindset of imperialistic Christendom. ... Among other things this nationalistic myth blinds us to the way in which our most basic and cherished cultural assumptions are diametrically opposed to the kingdom way of life taught by Jesus and his disciples. Instead of living out the radically countercultural mandate of the kingdom of God, this myth has inclined us to Christianize many pagan aspects of our culture. Instead of providing the culture with a radically alternative way of life, we largely present it with a religious version of what it already is. The myth clouds our vision of God's distinctively beautiful kingdom and undermines our motivation to live as set-apart (holy) disciples of this kingdom.

The myth harms the church's primary mission. For many in America and around the world, the American flag has smothered the glory of the cross, and the ugliness of our American version of Caesar has squelched the radiant love of Christ. Because the myth that America is a Christian nation has led many to associate America with Christ, many now hear the good news of Jesus only as American news, capitalistic news, imperialistic news, exploitive news, antigay news, or Republican news. And whether justified or not, many people want nothing to do with any of it."

Reading the writings of some prominent American Catholics over the past few years, staking out nationalist positions on war that diverged markedly from what the Church was teaching, makes me wonder if this is not just an evangelical issue.

It reminds me of Adolf von Harnack, the leading German Protestant theologian of his day, who also thought that God was on the side of the Kaiser in 1914...

Posted by Morning's Minion at 7:02 PM Comments (12) | Trackback Links to this post

Is the "Pro-Life Movement" Really Concerned with Reducing Abortion?

Great post from MorningsMinion over at VoxNova. Here's an excerpt:

How easy it is to be pro-life! All you need do is talk about picking the kinds of judges that would (maybe) overturn Roe v. Wade and voting against (or vetoing) some marginal legislation with minimal impact on abortion rates. In the meantime, none of the core economic beliefs of that party are challenged. On the contrary, those very judges who are supposed to be pro-life are also the ones who vote solidly on pro-business lines (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), and also (for pro-lifers) have a curious attachment to the death penalty. And the unborn keep dying.Can we do better? Yes, we can. We can develop a strategy that could even attain bi-partisan support. We need to encourage people not to have abortions. We start by saying that the ideal abortion rate is a zero rate. We must also acknowledge that economics matters. I showed in an earlier post that there is a statistical association between poverty and abortion rates and ratios. The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level. And when asked to give reasons for abortion, three-quarters of women say that cannot afford a child. At the same time, black women are almost four times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are two and a half life times as likely.The pro-life movement needs to address these issues. It needs to push for a reduction in poverty. We need universal health insurance and adequate maternal primary health care. We need mandated maternity leave. We need subsidized childcare for families where both parents need to work. So far, so standard. Perhaps we need something far more radical. Maybe the government can offer a cash sum to all pregnant mothers who agree to bring their unborn child to term (this sum could be proportionately greater for women below the poverty level, or for those victims of rape and incest). The government could also give significant subsidies (through the tax code or directly) to families willing to adopt. And, as a last resort, the government must stand ready to fund orphanages willing to raise unwanted children with dignity and care, providing for all their basic needs. And the government need not do this directly: it could provide funds to churches to do it. This is real "compassionate conservatism", not the con game peddled by Bush back in 2000.Here's the problem: everything I have mentioned costs money, a lot of money. It would call for hikes in taxes, perhaps substantially. And this is precisely why the current Republican party would never in a million years go near these proposals. For them, free market individualism and monetary gain trumps the gospel of life. But should that be true for Catholics too? We are all too painfully aware of the limitations of the Democrats on this matter, but this does not mean we should conned by sweet talk of the other side either. We need to think outside the box.

The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth - Book Review

Just picked this book up...