Driving Over the "Fiscal Cliff" with Eyes Wide Shut

Iran Today

Ganji (at right) with Richard Rorty in 2006.

2008 interview with Iranian intellectual Akbar Ganji.

Magi Meet The Wall

Merry Christmas!

John Lennon - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Obama Takes Time Out From Cutting Social Security Just Long Enough To...

Obama announces task force on gun violence - World Socialist Web Site

Film Review

Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty: Hollywood embraces the “dark side” - World Socialist Web Site

Brave Woman Speaks Out On Drone Strikes and Blowback

The U.S. Culture of Violence

"Americans Kill People": Michael Moore on Newtown, Mass Shootings, and the U.S. Culture of Violence

Life During Wartime

Ten girls die in Afghanistan explosion as US pushes for permanent presence - World Socialist Web Site

Commentary On Our Culture of Violence

Horror in Newtown - World Socialist Web Site

O Mundo Amanhã - Noam Chomsky e Tariq Ali

Connecticut School Shooting

"He opened fire about 9:40 am dressed in black camouflage gear and military vest and armed with two handguns and a rifle."

As long as we glorify this kind of behavior, we will continue to experience it ourselves as "blow-back."

From Ralph Nader

Overcoming Powerlessness | The Progressive

Hamid Dabashi On the Latest in Egypt's On-Going Revolution

To protect the revolution, overcome the false secular-Islamist divide - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Several killed in Egypt clashes

Several killed in Egypt clashes - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Establishing Procedures To Silence The Conscience

The “rule of law” and state killings

Solidarity

"Law Enforcement"

Cleveland Anarchist Bomb Plot Aided and Abetted by the FBI

War Is Big Business

A Post-Israel Middle East?

Someone in the CIA no longer wants his/her job.

The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

Tolstoy – The Renunciation of Violence | Harper's Magazine

Genocide

Israel pounds Gaza Strip from air and sea - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Ethnic Cleansing As Nation-Building

The Latest Outrage.

Four Points about the Israeli assault on Gaza

This Isn't Rocket Science

"War will disappear only when men shall take no part whatever in violence and shall be ready to suffer every persecution that their abstention will bring them. It is the only way to abolish war." --Anatole France (recorded by Leo Tolstoy in his Daily Reading).

Afghanistan

Fail.

Noam Chomsky

I wouldn't wish to speculate how many emails Noam Chomsky receives each day, but I imagine the number to be in the triple digits.

On December 18, 2001, I sent Professor Chomsky an email with the subject: "Advice On Reading." I was not a student of Chomsky's nor had I ever met him or communicated with him previously. In other words, my email came to him out of the blue.

I told him that I was interested in doing some reading on Anarchism "as a political philosophy and/or community practice," and added, "when you have a moment, would you be so kind as to suggest some good sources for reading?"

Late that same evening, Chomsky replied with a list of books: "A good general book, to get one into the topic, is Peter Marshall, 'Demanding the Impossible.' A shorter one, with discussion of practice (Europe-oriented), is Daniel Guerin, 'Anarchism.' Nothing beats the classics: Kropotkin, Bakunin (Dolgoff's 'Bakunin on Anarchy' is good), Goldman, Rocker, etc. Quite rich pickings."

With overwhelming modesty, he did not bother to mention any of his own writings. Needless to say, I'm a big fan.

Anarcho-Islam

From the blogosphere...

Why Calling Obama "Progressive" Ignores His Record

Tavis Smiley, Cornel West on the 2012 Election & Why Calling Obama "Progressive" Ignores His Record

This Election Year:

The Will To Believe Is So Strong That We Lose Contact With Reality

This November, exercise the only choice you really have:

DON'T VOTE!

Remembering George McGovern

George McGovern Dies at 90: Remembering Democratic Senator, Antiwar Candidate's Life and Legacy

In Memoriam: The Late, Great George McGovern

McGovern: He Never Sold His Soul | Common Dreams

This I Believe

Righteousness is not rocket science.

US War-Mongering Is The Cancer That Will Eventually Bring Our Country To Its Knees

Sunrise and Sunset in Afghanistan

Bonhoeffer Co-Opted

The recent co-optation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by evangelical Christians on the political Right (e.g., Eric Metaxas) and the Nazi resister's re-invention as an evangelical warrior-saint is, for someone who has long admired Bonhoeffer, quite disturbing. Like every human being, there is enough ambiguity in the development of his political thinking and theology to paint a variety of portraits. But those on the Right who wish to claim Bonhoeffer's legacy should bethink themselves and the relationship of their own politics to the politics of the regime Bonhoeffer gave his life to defeat.

In a speech delivered on July 22, 1933, Adolph Hitler pledged that "The national government [of Germany] will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the very heart of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press--in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past years."

Those words sound remarkably like Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck-speak. I am grateful to Jeffrey C. Pugh's 2008 study of Bonhoeffer Religionless Christianity for (1) its consistently moral voice and reflection and (2) complicating the picture of Bonhoeffer the man.

The above quote from Hitler may be found on page 27 of that book.

Bread and Circuses

The Democan-Republicrat Duopoly presents: its quadrennial production of American Marionette Theater! Yes, every four years the militarized corporatocracy that runs USA, Inc. puts on a show designed to create a little distracting drama with the hopes of drumming up public interest in its ongoing farce. Success is a game of numbers: if the corporatocracy can convince a majority of registered voters to return to the polls in order to ratify its choice of two puppets, one of those puppets will then be granted a four year term as "chief executive" and live in a mansion in Washington, D.C.

Why should the American public bother with participating in this quadrennial farce? Because, for most people, what William James so rightly named the "will to believe" is tantamount to the will to live. If the American people were ever to admit to themselves that the story they tell about themselves (their sacred narrative) is a fiction and that they do not possess a government of, by, and for the people, the onus would be upon them to take action against the existing regime. That would require much personal courage and sacrifice.

Better to content oneself with bread and circuses in this, the Empire of the Evening Lands.

Commentary From The Left

Obama and the debate

The Corporatocracy At Work

The United States of ALEC: Bill Moyers on the Secretive Corporate-Legislative Body Writing Our Laws

If You've Violated Your Parole, It's Probably Not A Propitious Moment To Seek Your 15 Minutes Of Fame

Just sayin':

California Man Behind Anti-Islam Film Arrested for Probation Violation

Lies Our Fathers Told Us

"And this, children, is the reason we are at war in Viet Nam..."

Or so I was told as a child. If we let the Communists win in Viet Nam, there would be no stopping them. The Communists hated freedom, you see, and they wished to take away our shiny new modern appliances and enslave us all. If Communists had their way, we would all be subject to Five-Year Plans and sentenced to concentration camps for wanting to make a profit, or for laughing in public. Or for wearing bright clothes instead of a drab, military-style uniform. Yes, if the Communists were allowed to prevail, the future looked grim indeed.

In the 1960's through the 1980's, the phrase "Communist bloc" hit one's ears with such a heavy thud--much like the phrase "Muslim world" does today. And like the Cold War era of my youth, a similar rhetoric confronts us: "If we let the Taliban win in Afghanistan, children, there will be no stopping them. The Taliban hate freedom, you see, and they want all women everywhere to wear the burka. So if they are allowed to win in Afghanistan"--where, we conveniently forget, they were CIA-trained freedom fighters in a struggle to the death with Communism--"there will be minarets in every American town, blasting their hated Arabic propaganda at all hours of the day and night, and we will be forced to go to mosques and pray to their Moon god instead of our sweet Jesus and, if we refuse, they will chop off our heads."

I'm no fan of the Taliban, but neither do I appreciate being lied to. Similar lies are being told about the Palestinians--and have been for as long as I can remember. But the state of Israel is not an island of civilization in a sea of savage barbarism: it is an apartheid state engaged in the systematic liquidation of an indigenous population. There has to be an end to the lies, and to the theft and the violence that they are meant to cover up and justify.

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us (Ecclesiasticus 44:1); but let us banish the liars from our midst and their lies from our ears, for we have suffered them gladly for far too long and they have profited mightily at our expense and at the expense of the weak and the vulnerable.

Where are the prophetic voices to call us back from further bloodshed? To call us back to what sense we have left?

Take the Red Pill

Christian Anti-Semitism and the Impulse Towards Violence

Ouch!

Despite the offensiveness of this brief diatribe, its anonymous author has a point. Christians face a serious challenge. While it may make sense to them to deify a first century Palestinian apocalypticist and to worship him as a god, there are many people on the planet who look at what they do, scratch their heads in bewilderment, and decline to follow suit. Traditionally, Christians view the rejection of their religion by others as evidence of a "hardness of heart." And when they ceased being a persecuted minority and took the reigns of the Roman state, Christians went on the offensive: purging their own ranks of heretics and seeking out non-conformists and torturing and killing them. In various ways, this impulse to violence on the part of Christians continues to the present day.

After the Second World War, some Christians felt chastened by the orgy of violence that their German co-religionists had visited upon European Jews and a new, post-holocaust form of ecumenicism set in. But it appears that the warming of Christian-Jewish relations in the last half century has opened the door to a new form of "anti-semitism" directed towards Muslims. Christian attacks upon the Prophet Muhammad and defended as "free speech" fall into this category. In my view, such attacks do indeed constitute instances of free speech and must be defended as such. But let us not be naive: it is free speech exercised with the intent to wound. And when individuals who have been wounded succumb to the visceral impulse to strike back, it is disingenuous (to say the least) to play the victim.

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" (Galatians 6:7).

In my copy of the New Testament, Jesus is recalled to have said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you" (Matthew 5:44--if you don't believe me, look it up). Perhaps I have come into possession of an unexpurgated edition. Many people who identify themselves as Christians do not appear to find these words in their copy of Matthew's gospel, or do not feel that Jesus intended his words to apply to them. As an Alfarabian Abrahamic pluralist and practicing Tolstoyan I can only say: the gospel writer wrote those words and attributed them to Jesus in a sermon he is portrayed to have preached to his disciples. If you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, it would seem logical to presume that he intended those words for you.

As the diatribist says: "Makes perfect sense."

Where Have You Gone, Jackie Robinson, A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes To You...

Jackie Robinson's lifetime batting average in the major leagues was .311. He was just as effective playing in the field. Baseball manager Charlie Dressen said "Give me five players like Robinson and a pitcher and I'll beat any team in baseball."

Robinson's Presidential counterpart, Barack Obama, has been less impressive in the field or at the plate. Swept into office in 2008 with an Electoral College landslide (365 electoral votes), the American people also gave Obama clear Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. In the House of Representatives, Democrats took 21 seats from Republicans (giving them 257 seats to the Republicans' 178) and in the Senate, Democrats held 57 seats (to 41 Republican).

Obama had two years (before the 2010 mid-term elections) in which to implement the agenda of sweeping change that his candidacy had appeared to promise. He had the good will of the electorate and Congressional support.

But he balked. The reasons for this are unclear, but the evidence is overwhelming. President Obama and 2008 Candidate Obama are like two different people.

His immediate Presidential predecessor, Halliburton, Inc., stole the 2000 election and squeaked by in 2004, and yet governed as if the American people had given it the mandate that they would give to Obama in 2008 to repair the damage done.

In 2012, Obama is running for re-election. Presidential second terms are rarely productive of much besides scandal and a final two years of lame duck quacking about "legacy." Obama would like to have the opportunity to tarnish his reputation further. Such is the state of American Presidential politics in 2012.

Where have you gone, Jackie Robinson?

More Blood On Obama's Hands

Dead Guantanamo Prisoner On Why He Gave Up on Life

The Pro-Israel Religious Right Defined

Human beings with nothing better to do than hate other human beings.

To paraphrase Bob Dylan: "They are idiots, babe/It's a wonder they can even feed themselves..."

The "Party of the People"

It's Party Time: Corporations, Donors with Billions at Stake Fund Lavish Events at DNC

The Difference Between Compromise and Capitulation

Compromise looks like this:

Capitulation looks like this:

End of story.

The Long and Short of It.

The Democratic convention opens

On Arabs and the Art Awakening

On Arabs and the Art Awakening: Warnings from a Narcoleptic Population

2011 A Banner Year For US Arms Trafficking

Once again, the NYT reports the news and obfuscates it at the same time. Persian Gulf countries are not seriously concerned about Iran; if the regimes of those countries are worried about anything, it is (as with the U.S. government) the democratic aspirations of their populations. What truly lies behind the buying spree is the fact that the U.S. economy is built around militarism--we have a war-based economy. If we don't sell this stuff (at undoubtedly inflated prices to regimes that have no real need for it), our economy, which is already anemic at best, will head into further decline. The Persian Gulf regimes are simply "scratching our back" so that, when the next popular uprising occurs within their own borders, they can be assured that the U.S. government will "scratch theirs."

It is anti-democratic corruption all around.

Revolt Is All We Have Left

Truthout Interviews Chris Hedges About Why Revolt Is All We Have Left

Dangerous Extremist (part three)

I had gathered a big bouquet of various flowers and was walking home, when I noticed in a ditch, in full bloom, a wonderful crimson thistle of the kind which is known among us as a "Tartar" and is carefully mowed around, and, when accidentally mowed down, is removed from the hay by the mowers, so that it will not prick their hands. I took it into my head to pick this thistle and put it in the center of the bouquet. I got down into the ditch and, having chased away a hairy bumblebee that had stuck itself into the center of the flower and sweetly and lazily fallen asleep there, I set about picking the flower. But it was very difficult: not only was the stem prickly on all sides, even through the handkerchief I had wrapped around my hand, but it was so terribly tough that I struggled with it for some five minutes, tearing the fibers one by one. When I finally tore off the flower, the stem was all ragged, and the flower no longer seemed so fresh and beautiful. Besides, in its coarseness and gaudiness it did not fit in with the delicate flowers of the bouquet. I was sorry that I had vainly destroyed and thrown away a flower that had been beautiful in its place. "But what energy and life force," I thought, remembering the effort it had cost me to tear off the flower. "How staunchly it defended itself, and how dearly it sold its life" ... And I remembered an old story from the Caucasus, part of which I saw, part of which I heard from witnesses, and part of which I imagined to myself...

Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat (Pevear and Volokhonsky translation), 375.

Notes On The Victory March...

The US debacle in Afghanistan

Dangerous Extremist (part two)

Cochise.

Dangerous Extremist

"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right...A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, private, powder-monkeys and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to wars, against their wills, aye, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? Or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts, a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments..."

--Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.

The Color of Heroism

Growing up white in an all-white suburb, I didn't have a close friend who was a person of color until I went away to college. In fact, the only person of color I had any contact with prior to college was a woman who came to help my mother with the house cleaning once a week. She treated me as if I were her own child and I loved her in return but, in my family, she was always a domestic servant.

During my childhood (say, between the ages of 5 and 12), the people of color who had a real impact upon me (beyond Carrie, the cleaning woman) were professional athletes. These individuals were heroes to me and their grace, skill, and beauty left an indelible impression. How anyone could consider them to be inferior on account of their race? Professional sports played an important role in my moral education.

In chronological order, my earliest sports heroes were as follows:

First, was the "Great One," the Pittsburgh Pirate right fielder with the golden arm, Roberto Clemente. Clemente's death in 1972 while engaged in a charitable mission to Nicaragua elevated him in my mind (and in the minds of many) to the level of a secular saint.

Second, the poet and wit of the boxing ring and one of the most impressive athletes of the 20th century, Muhammad Ali. His conversion to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his principled refusal to fight in the Viet Nam war also affected me deeply

Third was Cleveland Brown's running back Leroy Kelly. I began to follow Kelly in the years prior to the rise of the Pittsburgh Steelers to dominance in professional football. Even after the "immaculate reception" of Franco Harris and the victorious run of the Noll years, my loyalty was to the Steelers as a team. I never acquired the same level of admiration for any particular Steeler that I reserved for Cleveland's number 44.

Finally, when I began to "discover" basketball, I also came to admire Johnny Brisker of the ill-fated ABA team, the Pittsburgh Condors. Brisker's later disappearance in Uganda is shrouded in mystery, but seems to have been consistent with the personal intensity and even volatility he exhibited on the court.

I am sensitive to the argument that professional sports is one of the few avenues of economic success available to people of color in the United States--some have called this the "new plantation." I think that, unfortunately, there is an inescapable degree of truth to this argument. But, speaking from personal experience, I can also attest that it was exposure to the careers of these four athletes in particular that made it difficult for me accept racist assertions of black inferiority. All four of these men were clearly superior in many respects to the whites against whom they competed and with whom they played.

Racism is a peculiarly American disease and, for me at least, the ability to witness such individuals in action proved to be part of the antidote.

The War Economy

Just the facts.

Obamney

Obama is a fraud and Romney an idiot. The Presidential campaign season is upon us!

An Editorial Worth Reading

The Aurora Massacre: Once again, evasions rather than explanations

Anxious Days For The Gun Lobby

The aftermath of any mass shooting such as the one that occurred in Aurora, Colorado, on July 20, 2012, always creates anxiety in the gun lobby. But, fortunately for them, these tragedies occur with such regularity that they have become quite practiced at taking the "high moral ground" and deflecting any criticism of their cherished ideals. You see, at bottom, it really is all about principle. The occasional slaughter of innocents is simply the price one has to pay in order to be true to one's higher vision.

As a result, whenever these events (quite naturally) raise questions in the minds of American citizens about the meaning of the Second Amendment or the wisdom of making assault rifles readily available to American consumers, the position (pose) of weaponry apologists is quite consistent: "Have you no decency? This is not the time to engage in political debate; this is a time to mourn the tragedy..." We sometimes forget that weapons manufacturers, like all corporations (since the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case), are people too. In fact, they are sensitive, poetic types, filled with love and overflowing with compassion for their fellow human beings.

The effectiveness of this strategy is obvious to anyone paying attention: shamed into silence, inquirers and critics alike await a more "appropriate" moment in which to raise their questions and concerns.

But, conveniently for the lobby, that moment is deferred into a future when the public's attentions have been re-focused on whatever the media circus has portrayed as the "next big thing," and the prevailing political discourse carries on with its usual irrelevancies. In this way, a serious national conversation about this most urgent of topics and the delusions of the American electorate (about being in possession not only of a democracy but the greatest democracy the world has ever seen) are efficiently and effectively managed.

Deflect. Defer. Delude. These are the "three D's" of American political discourse in the opening decades of the 21st century. The Ghaffar Khan Society responds to these "three D's" with its own "three R's": Resist. Refuse. Renounce.

The prevailing degree of what we may term "political manipulation through discourse management" reminds us of our Shaykh, Leo Tolstoy, and his novel Resurrection.

There is an episode in that novel that treats of the political radicalization of an individual by the name of Kryltzoff. Prior to his radicalization, Kryltzoff was arrested and jailed for having made a monetary contribution to a political cause concerning which he, personally, was indifferent. While incarcerated, he becomes acquainted with his fellow inmates, including "a Pole, Lozinsky" and a seventeen year old boy, Rozovsky, a Jew. These two were taken off one morning for their trial and when they returned to their cells later in the day they revealed that they had been condemned to death. Tolstoy wrote:

No one had expected it. Their case was so unimportant; they only tried to get away from the convoy, and had not even wounded any one. And then it was so unnatural to execute such a child as Rozovsky. And we in prison all came to the conclusion that it was only done to frighten them, and would not be confirmed. At first we were excited, and then we comforted ourselves, and life went on as before [emphasis added].

This passage speaks so clearly to the present state of American politics: discourse management deceives only those who desire to be deceived. Tolstoy's insight here echoes perfectly Etienne de la Boetie's argument in The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. The American electorate's inability to question the status quo is self-inflicted. We are not a free people because the price of liberty is eternal vigilance (a maxim attributed to Thomas Jefferson) and, long ago, we grew tired of keeping watch.

And, yes, if you have not read Resurrection, it is important that you learn that both Lozinsky and Rozovsky were subsequently executed by hanging.

Kryltzoff, astonishingly, took note and thus came about his political radicalization.

Would that the American electorate could break the cycle of excitement, self-comforting, and status quo.

It is a fond hope, but a hope cherished by the GKS nonetheless.

Then Let Us Go Forth, Together, Armed Only With Our Conscience And Our Higher Vision

"I pledge allegiance to the dream of the Invisible Whitmanian Republic, and to the principles for which it stands: Cosmopolitan, Pluralistic, with Liberty and Justice for All."

In the wake of yet another horrific mass murder, emblematic of our cruciform culture of violence--with its unholy trinity of salvation religion, consumer capitalism, and unbridled militarism--let us pause to consider that lost America of the road less traveled: the America that Whitman sang, that Emerson exhorted us to midwife, that Thoreau constructed in microcosm with his own hands on the shores of Walden Pond. An America that is cosmopolitan and pluralistic: not just for the rich and the white. Not for the violent. Not for the politicians who are willing tools of the rich, the white, and the violent. Not for the preachers of hatred and their religions of "What about me?" salvation ("Get saved!"). In other words, not for those who are presently ascendant in our national culture and political life.

We need new heroes in this country: real heroes--not soldiers who invade foreign nations to do the dirty work of craven oilmen, not Hollywood fantasies like "the Dark Knight." We've had enough of those "heroes." We've seen what trouble they can bring.

We need heroes of reason and deliberation, of curiosity, of generosity and heart. Heroes who understand that the limit to their own freedom is the freedom of others--and who dedicate their lives to discovering the proper balance: this is Liberty. Heroes who understand that Liberty must always be predicated upon Justice, and that Justice is not "what happens when I get my way" (a corollary of "What about me?" salvation religion) but when the Golden Rule triumphs among us. All of us: without regard to race, ethnicity, creed, gender, sexuality or (and, nowadays, perhaps especially) that forgotten element--the unmentionable--socio-economic status.

Poverty is not an accident from which we avert our eyes: it is an injustice. It is the enemy of individual liberty. The poor are not free to pursue their own flourishing. They are, as a practical matter, enslaved. Lyndon Johnson--for all of his faults (and he had many)--got this right when he declared "war" on poverty.

There is room for warfare in our lives: not wars of violence against fellow human beings--"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12).

And low places as well. Indeed, we must wrestle against the dark forces of the self. Salvation religion is popular across this broad land because it promises relief not through effort, not through struggle, but through belief. And anyone can believe anything they like--as it should be. But everyone must be persuaded that not all beliefs are equally true or wholesome. Belief in the "unbelievable" (as the theologian Paul Tillich characterized much of latter-day Christianity) is but a form of selfishness: for it is self-serving self-delusion to think that any salvation worthy of the name can be achieved without effort, without struggle.

Christians must re-dedicate themselves to struggle with the self--not armed struggle against the various external "infidels" that populate many a pious Christian imagination (those "demonic" socialists, secularists, abortionists, sexual minorities, Muslims). Christians must re-dedicate themselves to struggle with the Christian self: that is, to struggle with their whole notion of religion. For, as Rene Girard pointed out long ago, salvation religion that is based upon a substitutionary sacrifice is a religion of scape-goating. And when scape-goating becomes an accepted pillar of one's world view, holocausts result. This is the worm in the apple of the dogma of substitutionary atonement: a dogma that Christians would do well to abandon, once and for all.

Scape-goating is a form of pyschopathology: it is a crude drama of human helplessness and the dark fears that attend such helplessness. Fear must be met with courage, not with sacramental violence against the weak.

Islamophobia is a form of scape-goating; it is, therefore, a form of psychopathology--the psychopathology endemic to and emblematic of the cruciform culture of violence that pervades the United States.

This disease does not infect the Invisible Whitmanian Republic...The Invisible Whitmanian Republic is truly--and tragically--the American road less traveled...

So take the pledge today. Meet your darkest fears with courage. Examine your beliefs and your lives. Examine your religion. And then let us go forth, together, armed only with our conscience and our higher vision.

Once Again, We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us...

Call it “terrorism”

In Other News...

Hillary Clinton’s incendiary global tour

Egypt Rising!

Egypt: A second republic? - Empire - Al Jazeera English

The Convoluted Moral "Logic" of Militarism

Ask many people if they believe in the validity of the 6th commandment (Exodus 20:13) "Do not kill" and they will say, "Yes, of course." Ask them if, on that basis, they are morally opposed to war, however, and the validity of the 6th commandment is quickly compromised through casuistry.

The convoluted moral logic of militarism often runs along the following lines: "Of course I believe that it is wrong to kill. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many other people don't share that view--or maybe share that view but kill anyway. And since there are such people in the world who do kill, I am willing to pay others to kill on my behalf."

As Tolstoy pointed out (brilliantly and repeatedly), such "reasoning" makes no sense. If this isn't obvious from what I have written above, try this: substitute the word "theft" or "adultery" or some other category of action that you consider to be morally wrong for the word "kill" in the paragraph above and then observe how nonsensical it is:

"Of course I believe that it is wrong to steal. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many other people don't share that view--or maybe share that view but commit theft anyway. And since there are such people in the world who do steal, I am willing to pay others to steal on my behalf."

Who would make such an argument for theft? No sane person. But when it comes to murder--the organized mass murder that armed forces engage in--this very same argument suddenly becomes not only sane but perfectly compelling.

Militarism is big business and survives because so many profit from it. Our complicity with government-sponsored Murder, Inc. leaves us all morally compromised. It is our conscience that prompts us to rationalize our complicity with actions that we personally disavow. But instead of rationalization, we should examine our consciences and decide what our true convictions may be and whether or not we have the courage to follow their lead.

Ending war does not involve rocket science. If anything, it involves the refusal to engage in a particularly dishonest species of casuistry where conflicts of interest pre-determine the outcome of the case.

Resist. Refuse. Renounce.

The Last Frontier

Non-violent non-cooperation with violence in general and with militarism in particular is the last frontier for the truly adventurous: the great American heroes of the future.

After the inglorious demise of the Viet Nam war, the reputation of the military in the United States was at a very low ebb. At the time, I felt confident that my fellow citizens had turned an important corner. I assured myself that we had all seen through the lies of the military-industrial complex; never again would we be willing to take militarists at their word: "Trust us. We know what we're doing. You need us. You should thank God that we are here to protect you." We understood that the military is a government authorized protection racket, and we would not be fooled again.

I should never have underestimated the resolve of the Pentagon or ignored what kind of propaganda machine practically limitless taxpayer funding can buy. The carefully choreographed 1991 Gulf War was the Pentagon's show-case, and the fawning media fell into line. A decade later, the spectacle of 9/11: with the finger-prints of CIA involvement in evidence--from the training of the Afghan freedom fighters with Saudi assistance (including, of course, one Osama bin Laden) to the mysterious collapse of Trade Center building 7.

Of course, government complicity in the creation of that tragedy will never be seriously contemplated by any but a few on the fringe; consequently, the road to the Last Frontier cannot be reached through righteous indignation at the unconscionable manipulation of the American public (and the mass murder of its members) through our own version of the Reichstag fire.

The road to the Last Frontier is a moral road. It is traveled by those who finally reach the conviction that the only way to end violence is the principled refusal to participate in it or aid and abet its commission in any way.

Few have the courage to embark upon such a journey--least of all those who boast of courage for combat (though rarely see it themselves, e.g., Dick Cheney, Barack Obama).

This country, which claims to be leading the world to a better future, is on the wrong side of history. The leaders of the future--should there be a future worth having--will be those with the guts and the nerve required to renounce violence.

Pulling a trigger is for the morally numb.

Resist. Refuse. Renounce.

The Relentless Chris Hedges

War is betrayal

Gosh, I Can't Think Of Anything The Afghans Need More Than Multi-Million Dollar Military Installations

AMERICAS - Washington building ‘Pentagon’ in Kabul

Except maybe food, medicine, schools, hospitals, the usual infrastructure of a CIVIL SOCIETY...

Yes, indeed: God bless America!

Straight Out of Goebbels' Playbook:

The Pentagon's grip on Hollywood - Listening Post - Al Jazeera English

To Be A Soldier Is To Be Morally Defective

Any person who kills another because ordered to do so by his or her government is morally defective.

Any person who accepts money (i.e., a salary) for killing another is morally defective.

Any person who is offered a job with the understanding that killing another is part of that job, and who accepts that job regardless, is morally defective.

Any person who knowingly assists others in the killing of fellow human beings is morally defective.

Soldiers are, by definition, morally defective.

If you are a soldier, and you believe that you are not morally defective, you must leave the military immediately.

A conscience is a terrible thing to waste.

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch...

Morsi Wins Egypt's Presidential Election

This is an important first step towards a new, democratic Egypt. But no one should underestimate SCAF or the determination of the U.S. government to undermine any genuine democratic reform in the Arab world. The U.S.--despite all lip-service to the contrary--has been on the wrong side of history for the last several decades. Don't expect a sudden change of heart in the heartless counsels of our government.
 
Morsi wins Egypt's presidential election - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Don't Put Your Finger In The Scorpion's Hole...

if you don't wish to be stung (Sa'di). The Egyptian people have had a long love affair with their Armed Forces. They are beginning to discover, however, that there is no more trenchant enemy of democracy than a military. We shall see how this plays out.

 Rise up great people of Egypt! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Anti-military crowds mass in Cairo's Tahrir - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Summer Reading

Anarchism and Its Aspirations e-book | AK Press

If He Walks Like A War Criminal, Talks Like A War Criminal, Gives Orders Like A War Criminal, Maybe, Just Maybe...

President Obama as 'warrior-in-chief' - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

The Unofficial Word Out of Egypt

Morsi camp claims Egypt presidency win - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

More On The Mubarakian Revanchement Taking Place In Egypt

The Egyptian coup

The Counter-Revolution Is Under Way In Egypt

Court throws Egypt transition into disarray - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Recall Obamney's Feigned "Outrage" At The "Citizens United" Decision

Recall how he vowed, in his State of the Union address, to craft legislation to overturn it.  
The Obama campaign and “vampire” capitalists
Ask yourself: at what point does a politician earn the epithet "swine"?

satyagraha/i'tisaam

It is often mistakenly assumed that Mahatma Gandhi's notion of satyagraha is indigenous to Hinduism. It is not. Gandhiji was a disciple and interpreter of Leo Tolstoy; instead of deriving his commitment to non-violence from his inherited religious tradition, the Mahatma attempted to introduce the Tolstoyan doctrine into Hinduism by "domesticating" it with a newly coined Sanskrit term.

According to Gandhi, "satyagraha is literally holding on to Truth and it means, therefore, Truth-force. Truth is soul or spirit. It is, therefore, known as soul-force. It excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and, therefore, not competent to punish [--this is a variation on a Tolstoyan argument]. The word was coined in South Africa to distinguish the non-violent resistance of the Indians of South Africa from the contemporary 'passive resistance' of the suffragettes and others. It is not conceived as a weapon of the weak" [M. K. Gandhi, Non-Violent Resistance (Satyagraha), Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. (2001), 3].

This explanation is quite interesting because it calls to mind a famous passage from the Qur'an that Gandhi may well have had in mind when he coined the term. It must be recalled that many of the South Asians living and working in South Africa and subject to the voting rights curb enacted into law by the Natal Legislative Assembly were Muslim.

The Qur'anic passage that the term "satyagraha" calls to mind is this:

Hold tight the rope of God and be united; do not split up into factions but recall the blessings of God upon you. When you were enemies, God bound your hearts together and you became brothers by His grace. You were poised on the edge of the pit of Hell but God drew you back from it. Thus did He make clear to you his Signs; so perhaps you may be guided [Q. 3: 103, my translation].

The Arabic imperative in the passage that translates as "hold tight" comes from the triliteral root '/s/m. This root has come down to modern standard Arabic with a variety of meanings: to hold back, restrain, curb, check, prevent, hinder; preserve, guard, safeguard, defend. The particular form that the Qur'an employs in this instance is VIII, which has the sense of clinging onto something (such as, in verse 103, "the rope of God"). It also retains the sense of taking shelter or refuge, to guard or preserve and, in modern usage, may signify the occupation of a building as occurs in a work stoppage or sit-in strike--important "weapons" in the Gandhian arsenal. It may also be used in the sense of resisting temptation.

The Qur'anic i'tisaam therefore conveys a sense of strenuous effort as opposed to the passivity that Gandhi wished to avoid when he coined satyagraha and attempted to persuade his Muslim admirers to adopt it. It also imports the sense of a united front against oppression and the conversion of enemies into friends.

i'tisaam is therefore a cardinal Tolstoyan principle of the ascetic lovers of humankind who embrace the Islamic vision of Nizami Ganjavi: the Majnuniyya.

The Islamic Vision of Nizami Ganjavi

Qays ibn al-Mulawwah (d. 688) was a poet of Najd--a region of the Arabian Peninsula renowned for its Bedouin poets. It is not as an historical figure, however, that ibn al-Mulawwah arrests our attention, but as the legendary unrequited lover of the equally legendary Layla: the poet has come down to us as the Mad One, al-Majnun.

"In the rhapsodies of oral traditionists and storytellers (rawis) from Umayyad times to the present day," writes Zia Inayat Khan, "Majnun features as an endearingly pathetic antihero crushed between the claims of society and the claims of the heart" (Preface to the 1997 edition of R. Gelpke's translation of Nizami Ganjavi's epic of Islamic pietism, The Story of Layla and Majnun, xx).

Nizami collected the oral traditions about the star-crossed lovers that were in current circulation during his lifetime and committed them to the immortality of Persian verse in the year 1188 C.E. In so doing, he brought to the fore the religious character that the tales had acquired through their long phase of oral elaboration and refinement in Muslim societies. In Nizami's hands, Majnun's "madness" is, in fact, the piercing sanity of one who refuses to accept the world as it is: a violent place, riven by the Satanic exigencies of fear and greed. Instead, Majnun embraces compassion for all living things: friend and foe, human and non-human alike.

Contemporary American culture, predicated on a life-style littered with cheap luxury goods obtained through the systematic impoverishment of foreign others and given over to base amusements of violence and sexual exploitation is incapable of absorbing the wisdom and religious insight with which Nizami endowed his telling of this traditional tale. Majnun the ascetic, Majnun the pacifist, Majnun the pietist--all present in Nizami's epic--are repressed in the cultural memory. What remains is the distorted image of Majnun overcome with desire: the typical American consumer incapable of saying "no" to his own insatiable wants for creature comforts.

The Islamic vision of Nizami Ganjavi is nothing less than a litmus test for the spiritual estate of the reader. Few bother to approach it and fewer still can read it with profit. By rights, Nizami's epic ought to be the central text of our time; instead, the central text remains T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men"--though, despite its centrality, Eliot's poem amounts to little more than social commentary.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Liberalism and Imperialism

Liberalism and imperialism have been joined at the hip since J. S. Mill (at the latest). Here is yet another example:

Damascus terror bombing: Made in the USA

More On The Latest CIA Manufacture Of "Terrorism"

Are there no Jeffersonians left among us?

The political uses of the latest “terror plot”

In Other Words, He Was A Plant

And the "sting operation" was more political theater designed to create a false threat where no credible one actually exists:  Would-Be Airline Bomber Was Saudi CIA Double Agent

Just Say "No" To Obamney

Too Little, Too Late

Why the Leftist Critique of Obama is Important

Corporations Are People Too

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the U.S. Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision is that it changes nothing substantial about the way in which politics are conducted in this country. The only change is that the militarized Corporatocracy that runs the government no longer sees the need to conduct itself surreptitiously but, rather, does so openly and in a brazen fashion: buying and selling our politicians and making clear to anyone who gives any thought to it that the principle of "one man, one vote" is absolutely meaningless.

Perhaps we should breathe easier in the new atmosphere of candor. We need not fear that we have have been sold down the river: we can know it with certainty.

Dorothy Day

Muslims for Jesus

If You Read Nothing Else This Year...

Read Tarek Mehanna's statement to the judge who sentenced him:

The real criminals in the Tarek Mehanna case

Leo Tolstoy: Sociologist and Moralist

" ... the whole structure of our lives is such that each man's personal advantage is obtained by inflicting suffering on others, which is contrary to human nature. The whole order of our life and the whole complex mechanism of our institutions designed for the infliction of violence, witness to the extent to which violence is contrary to human nature. Not a single judge would decide to strangle with a rope the man he condemns to death from the bench. Not a single magistrate would make up his mind himself to take a peasant from his weeping family and shut him up in prison. None of our generals or soldiers, were it not for discipline, oaths of allegiance, and declarations of war, would, I will not say kill hundreds of Turks and Germans and destroy their villages, but would even decide to wound a single man. All this is only done thanks to a very complex state and social machinery the purpose of which is so to distribute the responsibility for the evil deeds that are done that no one should feel the unnaturalness of those deeds. Some men write the laws; others apply them; a third set drill men and habituate them to discipline, that is to say, to senseless and implicit obedience; a fourth set--the people who are disciplined--commit all sorts of deeds of violence, even killing people, without knowing why or wherefore. But a man need only, even for a moment, free himself mentally from this net of worldly organization in which he is involved to understand what is really unnatural to him." -- Leo Tolstoy, What I Believe, translated by Aylmer Maude, Oxford: Oxford World Classics (1940), 349.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Obama Justice Department indicts ex-CIA agent for exposing torture

Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy Finally Yields Fiscal Bankruptcy

Gingrich group files for bankruptcy

On the Road Again with Mr. Springsteen

I skipped seeing Bruce and the E Street Band when they came to Denver with the last tour (Working On A Dream)--now that I think about it, that's the first time I'd skipped a Springsteen tour (on purpose) for a while--maybe ever (since I first saw him perform in 1976).

He's back on the road now with a new album (Wrecking Ball) and with what appears to be a new intensity in the wake of the passing of Clarence Clemons--trying his best, single-handedly, to keep the dream of the invisible Whitmanian republic (the "America we hold in our hearts" as he puts it) alive.

I fear, however, that that America is not the one most of his fellow citizens hold in their hearts (like Bruce, I am a throw-back).

Still, he persists, holding his tent-revivals wherever he goes. You have to admire him for that, if you can stomach the pathos.

By the mid-'70's, the Stones were singing "It's only rock and roll" but, for Bruce, it has always been more than that. He is a true believer. Sadly, however, believing just isn't enough. Never has been, of course, but there was a time in this country when the music could lead to more: to a changed consciousness. Those days are well behind us.

Nowadays, I recommend a multi-year reading program in Tolstoy, conducted at whatever pace suits the individual reader. In my view, Tolstoy is essential.

So, God bless Bruce! Long may he run. Unfortunately, though, I think Jagger and Richards probably got it right: it is "only rock and roll" (and, as the song goes, I still like it). If Bruce swings by my neck of the woods again, I'm likely to show up and pay my respects.

But, for the rest of the time, I remember that Tolstoy remains.

I recognize that reading the Russian Bear is a big commitment; indeed, that's what I told a friend who urged me to read Tolstoy when I was 22. She insisted that, if anyone should read Tolstoy, I should. At the time, I just shrugged my shoulders and assured her that I would get around to those fat tomes at some point. And, several years later, I did.

The point is to do it. Do it now. The hour is getting late.

The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex

In the latest issue of Duke Magazine (March-April 2012), there is an article (page 8) dedicated to a recent visit that the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey (a Duke alumnus--A.M. '84), paid to the University in Durham, North Carolina. The article notes that "At Duke, [Dempsey] studied English, and he counts poets William Blake and W.B. Yeats as important influences in his preparation for military leadership."

One wonders what Martin Dempsey could have possibly found in Blake or Yeats to "influence his preparation for military leadership."

Was it, perhaps, Blake's aphorism, "Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations" [Blake, Laocoon, c. 1820]?

As our academic institutions continue to aid and abet the slow suicide of American intellectual life and pander to the military-industrial-complex, one can only stand aside in bewilderment and tragic wonder.

The article also noted Dempsey's "wry sense of humor," on full display (according to the article's author) when he mused: "People say, 'How do you like [being the new chair]?' ... and I say, 'It's good. I have my own jet.'"

Yeah, that's wry alright. About as wry as Marie Antoinette's witticism, "Let them eat cake."

Some days it is difficult to absorb the sheer effrontery of life in these Misguided States of Amnesia.

Union Sundown

Dear Fellow Citizens of the Planet:

I would just like to take this opportunity to apologize to you all for the bleak future that the United States, a country of which I am a natural born citizen, is creating for all of us.

President Obama is a pathetic tool of the Corporatocracy and the Republican candidates are ALL, without exception, certifiably nuts.

The unholy alliance between the Christian Right and the Military-Industrial-Complex has combined to create Yahoo Nation. It is a recipe for inevitable disaster.

Here in Yahoo Nation, white people are scared to death of losing their privileges to people of color. And the threat to white privilege is a real one, only it's not coming from people of color. It's coming from the very rich white people who are robbing the white middle class and underclass blind while successfully manipulating them into racist and anti-muslim frenzies with their culture of fear.

In the early 1980's, Bob Dylan sang: "Well, it's sundown on the union/And what's made in the U.S.A./Sure was a good idea/'Til greed got in the way..."

He was protesting the dismantling of organized labor and with it the only real political leverage the average American had against the Corporatocracy. But nobody was listening.

Now we reap the whirlwind.

The Insanity Of U.S. Military Spending In One Chart

The Insanity Of U.S. Military Spending In One Chart

Afghanistan’s Latest My Lai

Afghanistan’s My Lai

The Rule of my Russian Shaykh

"... all compromise with institutions of which your conscience disapproves--compromises which are usually made for the sake of the general good--instead of producing the good you expected, inevitably lead you not only to acknowledge the institution you disapprove of, but also to participate in the evil that institution produces."

--Leo Tolstoy, 29th March 1898.

Imperial Collusion

In this photo: The President of the United States explains to Barack Obama why imperial troops must attack the Republic of Iran.

Burn the Coat

There is an old Russian proverb mentioned by Tolstoy that runs something like this:

"Burn the coat now that the vermin have got in."

While the Republican Party prepares to offer the American people one of its latest versions of Caligula as Presidential nominee, liberals are rallying around their man--the current President--Nero.

I expect that if Caligula wins in November, liberals will proudly display "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Nero" stickers on the bumpers of their cars. If Nero wins, Republicans will display "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Caligula" stickers on the bumpers of their cars.

Either way, both are to blame: the Republicans for having such twisted values that they would ratify their party's choice of Caligula, liberals for being so deluded that they would imagine Nero the lesser evil--or even a desirable candidate.

Such is the present state of politics in Yahoo Nation.

Come November, I will not vote for Nero or Caligula. Instead, I will continue to urge others to heed the old Russian proverb and "burn the coat." For the vermin have got in.

Heavy-Weight Champion of the World

The Great One.

Ralph Nader Responds to Obama's State of the Union Address

"He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama's State of the Union Address

The Logic of History?

Would that there were a logic to history! Instead, as Schopenhauer taught, there is Wille (brute, wanton, grasping, desire) and, thankfully, Vorstellung (the ability to envision).

Using Vorstellung, we can "discern" distinct patterns in human behavior through time--because human beings appear to have a woefully limited repertoire of action and imagination.

If we pay attention to these patterns (i.e., study history) we discover that there are ways to channel Wille to positive ends--but it takes vision. We know this; we've seen it in action. Great spirits rise up and dream generous, life-affirming dreams. In trying to implement those dreams they provide us a temporary respite--a "Sabbath" as it were. Then the forces of Wille re-group and Dreamland is, once again, laid to waste. The darkness descends; but there are always sparks, here and there, to light our way.

The only thing to do is to stay close to the sparks. And once in a while, if the opportunity presents itself, to leave some obstacle, some debris in the way of Wille.

The best way to do this--as we learn from Etienne de la Boetie's Discourse of Voluntary Servitude--is simply non-cooperation. The problem is that this takes a great deal of self-discipline. And it can be dangerous. Discretion is always the better part of valor.

In the immortal words of Bruce Springsteen:

Badlands/You've gotta live it every day/Let the broken hearts stand/As the price you gotta pay/Keep movin' till its understood/And these Badlands start treatin' us good...

The desire to escape the same dull round, to believe that the cycle has been broken and we are heading into a New Age, can be overwhelming at times; but we must not kid ourselves: if we are fortunate, we will experience from time to time what Schopenhauer termed a "Sabbath of the Willing." In those moments of respite when "these Badlands start treating us good," we should not hesitate to relax and celebrate. But we should also always remember to "keep our powder dry"--for the anti-life forces of reaction are ever present and threatening.