Tuesday, December 31, 2013

21st Century Bible Lesson: Choices of the Chosen


The colonization of the eastern Mediterranean with Ashkenazi Jews who, subsequently, founded a nation-state that they called "Israel" has ironically (not magically) transformed the Jewish citizens of that state into the Biblical "people Israel."

The Biblical "people Israel" were to be the conscience of the nations (the so-called "gentiles"). They were "chosen" insofar as they provided a proper example of righteous conduct on earth. They could provide that example through positive or negative actions. Positive actions would include fulfilling the 613 mitzvot of the Rabbis. Negative actions would include the failure to fulfill the mitzvot as well as actions that contradict Rabbinic teachings. In the latter case, the "people Israel" risk becoming a byword: they demonstrate unrighteous conduct on earth.


With respect to their treatment of the indigenous peoples of Palestine (whose ancestors were, for the most part, Christians and Jews before they began to convert to Muhammad's movement in the 7th century of the Common Era--an historical fact the Ashkenazis have chosen to ignore), the Israelis become the "people Israel" as byword. The ironies of history can be painfully exquisite.


At one level, the conflict in Israel-Palestine is a dispute over real estate; at another level, it becomes a Biblical metaphor--but not in the way in which, say, Leon Uris presented it in his fictional account Exodus.

It appears that those who have been "chosen" as the positive conscience of the nations are the Sumudin of the West Bank and Gaza. Ironically, many of those who call themselves "Israelis" embody the "people Israel" as negative examples.

Anyone who has bothered to read the Hebrew prophets would not be surprised. Indeed, the prophets themselves would not be surprised.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Moral Suasion
















When it comes to dealing with human beings, the only legitimate form of "force" is non-violent moral suasion.

Parents tell their young children: "Use your words." Then, when those children grow up and join the military, those same parents--dead to the deep irony of their position--weep with pride.

They ought to weep with shame for the confused state of their minds.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Ironies of History: the "Lost Tribes"

When the "Davidic" kingdom of Judah was overthrown by the Babylonians (587 BCE), the people who called themselves "Israel" reinvented themselves: no longer the subjects of a sovereign earthly realm, they were now the dispersed subjects of a sovereign heavenly King. In their Mesopotamian exile, the Judahist moral imagination took flight and the stage was set for the "people Israel" to embody a new role: the conscience of the world.

Then, in 539 BCE, the Messiah came (see Isaiah 45:1): he was Cyrus, king of Persia, conqueror of Babylon and liberator of the Judahists (later Jews).











Those Judahists who were willing to return to Judea did so and, with the financial assistance of the Persian court, attempted to restore it to its former glories.


Over the next two centuries, a new temple was constructed in the capital city of Jerusalem and the cult of sacrifice was reinstated. With the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BCE, however, the relative political independence of Judah came to an end.




Some Judahists embraced Greek cultural imperialism ("Hellenization") in Alexander's wake, while others resisted it. In 146 BCE, the Greek peninsula itself came under Roman rule; the provinces would eventually follow. Rebellion and unrest ensued in Judea (now Roman Palestine) and, in 70 CE, the Jerusalem temple was leveled by the Roman legions.

Once again, the people Israel were left with the choice to reinvent themselves or abandon their communal identity. By this time, however, new ideological currents were stirring the moral imaginations of the people-who-call-themselves-"Israel." One current, the so-called "Jesus Movement," embraced the teachings of a Palestinian apocalypticist. This movement was expansionist, fissiparous, and able to adapt to diasporic exigencies. Moreover, among its influential leaders were individuals who imagined that the ancestral cult of sacrifice had culminated in the human sacrifice of their executed teacher. The era of sacrifice was now over, in their view, and history was also at its culmination and end.









Another current, that of the "sages," attempted to continue the sacrificial cult without a central temple complex as a pilgrimage destination. They reinterpreted the cult of sacrifice by internalizing it and domesticating it. The home was now God's temple; the dinner table, the altar. These sages would later be known simply as "teachers" (Rabbis).

In this way, the Judahist moral imagination continued to develop; eventually, three world religions would emerge from creative re-imaginings of the Judahist heritage.

In the 4th century of the Common Era, the Roman empire itself fell under the sway of the apocalyptic and expansionist branch of the Judahists (now known as "Christianity"). Once again, Judahists were in possession of a kingdom. In the 7th century of the Common Era, many Near Eastern provinces of the (now "Holy") Roman empire shifted allegiance from the emperor in "Rome" (now Constantinople) to Damascus, where they combined their civilizational energies with the former subjects of an Iranian empire (their longtime rivals, the Sassanids) under the aegis of an interpretation of the Judahist heritage that had emerged with the teachings of an Arabian prophet, Muhammad ibn 'Abdallah.

In the 20th century of the Common Era, members of the apocalyptic and expansionist branch of Judahism assisted members of the Rabbinic branch in the creation of a modern nation-state in Palestine (largely populated for over a thousand years by members of the Muhammadan branch). They called this nation-state "Israel."

Some may view this latest episode in what is a continuing saga as an example of "history repeating itself." I prefer a different metaphor. When people have wandered for a long time in a dark wood, only to discover themselves in a place that appears to be the one from which they had originally departed, they have little choice but to conclude that they are lost.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Peace Like A River














Some there are who keep themselves in peace and have peace also with others. And there are some that are neither at peace within themselves, nor suffer others to be in peace; they are troublesome to others, but always more troublesome to themselves. And some there are who keep themselves in peace and study to restore peace to others. Yet all our peace in this miserable life is rather to be placed in humble sufferings than in not feeling adversities. He who knows how to suffer will enjoy much peace. Such a one is a conqueror of himself and lord of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of Heaven.

--Imitatio Christi, Bk. II, Ch. 3.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

All Because a Fictional God Cut a Fictional Real Estate Deal with a Fictional Patriarch












We feel justified in turning a blind eye to the brutalities of some and the suffering of others. Even now, in the 21st century. How progressive!

Monday, October 21, 2013

Something About This Photo...


the pain in the child's face, his grief, his loss of innocence, breaks the heart. This photo accompanied an article on the discovery of mass graves in Serbia for Muslims murdered during the reign of Slobodan Milosevic.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Why U. S. Foreign Policy Is Fatally Flawed


Stephen Kinzer draws to a close his brilliant biography of the Dulles brothers by applying to their decision-making processes "twenty-first century discoveries about how the brain works." These discoveries include:

1. People are motivated to accept accounts that fit with their preexisting convictions; acceptance of those accounts makes them feel better, and acceptance of competing claims makes them feel worse.

2. Dissonance is eliminated when we blind ourselves to contradictory propositions. And we are prepared to pay a very high price to preserve our most cherished ideas.

3. Moral hypocrisy is a deep part of our nature: the tendency to judge others more harshly for some moral infraction than we judge ourselves.

4. Groupthink leads to many problems of defective decision making, including incomplete survey of alternatives and objectives, failure to examine the risks of the preferred choice, poor information search, selective bias in processing information, and failure to assess alternatives.

5. We are often confident even when we are wrong...Declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.

6. Certain beliefs are so important for a society or group that they become part of how you prove your identity...The truth is that our minds just aren't set up to be changed by mere evidence.

[Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and their Secret World War, New York: Times Books (2013), 321-322].

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

The Sandbox Revolution Deferred














When I was a child, my mother used to encourage me to share my toys in the sandbox with other children who came to play. I will confess that I found this a difficult challenge, especially when I did not know the other children involved. "How can I trust that kid?" I would ask myself. "What if he plays too rough with my toy dump truck? I only have one. Let him play with someone else's truck." I was inconsistent when it came to following my mother's advice and, even when I did as she urged, I was rarely enthusiastic.

Then there were times when I arrived at the sand box to find other children playing with their own toys, and I was in the position of hoping that those other children would be kind enough to share with me. Sometimes they did; at other times, they ignored me as I had ignored so many others. I felt the sting of being left out. The hurt feelings gave me pause, but never turned me into a Communist. I've always felt that some property ought to be private, even if it means that sometimes I would have to play alone.

Nevertheless, my mother's admonitions continue to haunt me. The simple orientation towards generosity and learning to share has a real beauty to it. Why not share? What if the other kid is too rough and my toy is broken? Will my life be ruined?

When the lessons of the sandbox begin to be heeded by children and adults alike, the revolution will come. All of the ideological scaffolding that we invoke to convince ourselves and others of the rightness of our cause--whatever cause we support--amount to very little beyond posturing before the crowd, preaching to the choir. The sandbox revolution requires no complex ideological apparatus to be convincing; the appeal is to a simple ethic of inclusion: we all share this same, small sandbox, why not make it a welcome place for everyone who arrives to play?

Governments can adopt this point of view and attempt to institutionalize generosity. As a Tolstoyan, I prefer to preempt government involvement. If the individual conscience is pricked in the sandbox, the government can play a secondary role of facilitation--if that. Of course, I am well aware that the political right has adopted this libertarian rhetoric; the problem today is that the right hides behind this rhetoric in order to avoid the application of the ethic of inclusion. The sandbox revolution is inhibited by a politics of obstinate dishonesty. At present, there seems to be no way forward. We remain trapped in a childhood we should have outgrown decades, if not centuries, ago.

Friday, September 27, 2013

News Analysis

Putin's recent intervention in Syria and Rouhani's speech at the UN urging the Israelis to join in a nuclear weapons treaty are both acknowledgements by world leaders that Barack Obama is a lame duck.

The Russians are (rightfully) nervous about U.S. military intervention in their neck of the woods (what took them so long?) and Rouhani is just saying out loud what everyone who understands the situation in Israel-Palestine has been saying quietly for a long time. I doubt the Iranian President has any illusions that Israel will even acknowledge his invitation.

Every politician in the world is still calculating his or her next move based on local advantage; no one has the future of a united humanity in mind. This is one of the unintended consequences of the European tragedy known as the 30 years war: the invention of the nation state (to stop Protestants and Catholics from slaughtering each other) balkanized the mental horizons of people everywhere.

When Obama, Putin, Rouhani and the Egyptian generals form a study group to work their way through Montaigne's Essais, the revolution will be under way. In the meantime:

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The "Obama Doctrine"?

Once you read past the headlines, you come to see, very quickly, that there is no "there" there. It's just the latest phase of U.S. Presidential self-aggrandizement. Obama's domestic legacy is the further enrichment of an already bloated plutocracy, economic stagnation, a crumbling infrastructure, increasing xenophobia, bigotry, gun violence, and decreasing privacy and civil liberties in the name of "security." Quite an ironic laundry list for the nation's first African American president. We might as well be rehearsing the "accomplishments" of "President McCain."

Abroad, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate has increased the volume of state-sponsored terrorism (our country's number one export) and support for despotic regimes around the world while coddling the apartheid state of Israel and war-mongering with Iran.

But now, he claims, he's going to fix the latter two problems. Why should anyone believe a word he says? The real beneficiary of the two Obama administrations is the Obama family's purse. They're set for life. I guess we should be thankful that our 2008 votes for change haven't been a total loss.

I'm not just disappointed, I'm disgusted beyond outrage. I've heard all the speechifying I need to hear from BHO. Who is the next puppet that the militarized corporatocracy will place before the American electorate for ratification? Are we in for more Clinton?

As Gary Gilmore told his executioners: "Let's do it."

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

A Montaignean Justification for Non-Violent Non-Cooperation No Matter the Consequences


















"I shall be on my guard, if I can, that my death may say nothing which my life has not previously said."

--Michel de Montaigne, "That Our Actions Should Be Judged By Our Intentions," Essais, Bk. I, Ch. VII.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

The Real Target of the U.S. Attack On Syria

The real target of the latest plan for U.S. aggression in the Middle East is not Syria--despite the fact that Syrians will be slaughtered by American bombs. The real target is, as always, Iran.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

William Sloane Coffin, Jr.












In my late teens (sometime around 1977), I had the great fortune of seeing the Reverend William Sloane Coffin speak (and preach) about the Christian duty to promote social justice--for him the sine qua non of Christian being-in-the-world. Immediately afterwards, I read his inspiring memoir Once To Every Man:


















I remember thinking it strange that he seemed to be an embattled figure among his fellow Christians: his message was not "preaching to the choir" by any means. Of course, since then, observing American Christianity (both Protestant and Catholic) lurch rightward politically and self-obsessed (evangelicalism) theologically, I have come to understand that Coffin was something of an anomaly.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Oh, Great People of Egypt!

Nasr City: What remains after a massacre - Features - Al Jazeera English

If the Dictator calls you into the streets to fight "terrorism," i.e., democracy, STAY AT HOME!

If the Dictator orders you to stay at home to show your support for "law and order," i.e., military rule, STEP OUTSIDE FOR A BREATH OF FRESH AIR!

Give the Dictator what he wants, i.e., protests to suppress with violence, he wins.

Never let him win.


Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Did Mr. Obama Just Wake Up?

The plot thickens in the Egyptian regime change scandal.

Now, why don't we review some of those arms shipments to Israel?

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Newspeak, 2013

EU calls for Morsi release amid protests - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

The military overthrows the democratically elected President of a republic, arrests that President, and holds him indefinitely without charge, and forms a new government for that (former) republic--but it's not a coup d'etat. At least not for the purpose of ensuring arms deliveries from the United States (another former republic, now run by a militarized corporatocracy). OK. I think I'm beginning to understand...

Thursday, July 4, 2013

No Surprise Here



The Egyptian military looks out for "number one"--i.e., itself.

Have the great people of Egypt written a death warrant for their own democratic aspirations? Stay tuned...

Declare Your Independence

From this:

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Good News?

U.S. Army forced to make personnel cuts. Will this actually happen? Are the anticipated cuts merely token? Is this part of a larger shell game that is business as usual at the Pentagon? Are combat troops to be replaced by drones? Many questions that ought to be asked are not asked in this NYT article, but that's par for the course with the paper of record.

We Reap What We Sow

Sunday, June 16, 2013

U.S. Government Expresses "Concern" Over Turkish Government's Suppression of Gezi Park Protests, But Let Us Not Forget the Suppression of Occupy Oakland



This is in no way an attempt to excuse the contemptible actions of Erdogan's government towards the protesters in Gezi Park. Erdogan appears to have decided to tarnish his political legacy and, if he had any shred of decency left, would resign from office in disgrace. That said, we must also acknowledge that he has been following a variety of precedents established by governments throughout the world for the suppression of democratic action--not least of which is the example set by government officials in the United States.

Nor is the action of government officials in the United States with regard to the Occupy Movement new. Let us not forget that, in 1932, "after an Army detachment under the command of Douglas MacArthur violently broke up a peaceable encampment of the Bonus Army — a movement of World War I veterans agitating for early payment of a promised government bonus to help overcome destitution caused by unemployment — President Herbert Hoover endorsed the bloody confrontation with the words 'Thank God we still have a government in Washington that knows how to deal with a mob.'"

Note that the source of the above video is Russian. If you depend upon domestic news sources in the U.S. to find out what is actually happening in the U.S., you will end up tragically uninformed. So much for the Fourth Estate.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Hafez Addresses the U.S. Congress



THIS SANE IDEA


Let your

Intelligence begin to rule

Whenever you sit with others

Using this sane idea:

Leave all your cocked guns in a field

Far from us,

One of those damn things

Might go

Off.

English rendering by Daniel Ladinsky

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Once Again, Red Herring Is On The Menu



Media desperation in the wake of the tragic events that began to unfold in Boston on April 15th (and came to a violent conclusion yesterday) is palpable. Whenever Muslims commit crimes, the gold-standard of yellow journalism is to report on the alleged perpetrators in such a way as to imply that their tenuous relationship to the Islamic community was the cause of their criminality. The possibility that there is a difference between a correlation and cause never occurs to anyone.

The energy and ingenuity invested in order to achieve the desired result is impressive. The claim that many journalists have wished to make was that the Tsarnaev brothers were devout Muslims; but there is very little evidence to support such a claim. Failing that, it has been reported that they were Chechens. Unfortunately, this has not turned out to be true. Consequently, the phrase "ethnic Chechens" has appeared in a variety of news sources. What is the relevance of such ethnicity? If you have to ask, you are clearly not in the know.

My mind keeps going back to an April day six years ago (April 16, 2007, to be precise)--the day when another immigrant, Seung-Hui Cho, an "ethnic Korean" who grew up in a devout Christian household, went on a shooting rampage at his University (Virginia Tech). When he was finished, 32 people were dead and 17 wounded.



Before embarking upon his reign of terror, Cho created a video manifesto in which he compared himself to Jesus and Moses. And yet, in his case, the journalistic establishment was able to distinguish cause from correlation.

Funny how that happens. In the United States of 2013, non-Muslims who commit horrendous crimes are "troubled"; Muslims who commit horrendous crimes are, well, Muslims.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The New York Times Defines "Terror"

As it turns out, the mass murders at Virginia Tech, the Aurora Colorado theater, the Sandy Hook elementary school, etc., were not acts of terror.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

The Rise of the West




In Le Pere Goriot, Balzac penned un mot juste that accounts quite well for the so-called "rise of the West":

"Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait."

The crime was colonial appropriation of natural resources and human capital; it has been "forgotten" solely because the criminals have chosen to "forget" it. Moreoever, when criminals write and enforce the laws, they have the luxury of selective amnesia.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

A Public Service Announcement




Few things could be more detrimental to the health of human civilization than the McDonaldsization of cafe society.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Meet the New Boss (same as the old boss)...

The problem that the U.S. government had with Saddam Hussein was not that he was a strongman, but that he wasn't "our" strongman. We never gave two sh*ts about the Iraqi people.  And we still don't.

 Maliki's Iraq: Rape, Executions and Torture

Monday, March 18, 2013

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Decline of the West: Part 72

Does the Pope Matter? by Garry Wills | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

The really fascinating aspect of the Papal election lies in the degree to which there appears to be an expectation that the world--Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic--should care about an office that is increasingly irrelevant (as Garry Wills points out) to its own constituents. One wonders what is behind the desire to make this transition matter. There is a quiet desperation at work here--and it has something to do with the loss of meaning in the modern world. Not just the loss of religious meaning, but cultural and even civilizational meaning. The popularity of the Lewis-Huntington "clash of civilizations" thesis is part and parcel of this sense of loss. Having constructed an entity called "The West," and vaunted it above "the rest," it is difficult--indeed traumatic--for those who have organized their identities around this fiction to catch sight of their beloved Emperor naked as the day he was born. But such is the situation in Europe and North America at the present time. An Argentinian Pope (it would be interesting, though equally irrelevant, if he were a liberation theologian) is yet another attempt to extend the "Western" reach--to assert its dominance. However, no Pope will be able to counter-act the steady entropic decline of a superannuated institution. Nor will a Reformation (that has been tried).

Good luck Pope Francis. Wear the red shoes. Don't forget to read your Spengler.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Resurrection



"Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of complete idleness, that is, absence of all rational and useful work; frees them from their common human duties, which it replaces by merely conventional duties to the honour of the regiment, the uniform, the flag; and, while giving them on the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into conditions of servile obedience to those of higher rank than themselves." --Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection, Oxford World's Classics (trans. Louise Maude), p. 54.