A Nation Infallible?
The most difficult person to be painfully honest with is oneself. Likewise a nation.
A friend and myself wrote and distributed the following in September 2001. I included a few articles as examples of our nation' fallible nature. While some will call me a hater of the U.S. , I consider my efforts a matter of removing the log in our nation's eye before attending the speck in the eye of our enemies.
September 17, 2001
I am sending this primarily that you may read what my friend, wrote regarding recent events. If you choose not read anything else please read his comments (at the end of this post). If you can spare the time to read all I have included please read my part(s) first but not at the expense of not reading my friend’s comments.
The articles I have selected are poignant but actually fail to reveal the degree of contempt many nations around the world share for the U.S.
If now is not the time take a critical, objective look at where we are headed as individuals and a nation then the time is quickly approaching. U.S. citizens were in recent decades focused on this very thing but something happened. We have more recently returned to becoming the self-absorbed people we thought we may have left behind. War cries strike fear in most. When afraid we band with anyone we can. Strength in number...we're taught that from childhood.
My greatest strength is found in truth. Truth comes with great pain, a pain greater than any other. I will die in the name of truth. This is my war. I do not know all truth therefore I cannot kill disputing truth with another. I willingly die only in pursuit of truth.
My hope and prayer is that a sufficient measure of 265,000,000 U.S. citizens will persist in their pursuit of truth whatever that may mean in political and nationalistic terms.
I love this nation, but we are flawed. We will fight this war. We each will choose our stance. During this conflict we must work to minimize violence, destruction and hate in whatever way we choose. Should we see its end we must be committed to our pursuit of truth and carry on.
Let me affirm, like my friend, I believe in God. I believe God is in total control even if that means God is simply passively watching events unfold. My God, however, is not an American. I fervently pray to God for our recently murdered citizens, their families and their friends. I pray for our leaders. I pray for Osama bin Laden and his followers. I pray Osama bin Laden and his followers, if innocent of this and other atrocities blamed on them will be spared injustice. I pray for all nations in between.
For those actually responsible for the terror I pray. My human ability to know exactly what and how to pray fails me. However, I am convinced the world would be much safer in the future, if when found, we probe their mind(s) and try to learn why, really why they sponsored such a crime (and this is assuming all those involved are not already dead). I am convinced this would serve humanity as a whole far more than displaying a human head on a platter. Violence has been punished with violent forms of “justice” since the beginning and we still have violence in society.
Those who are already convinced Osama bin Laden was involved can only conclude so based on media reports. Be careful.
I wish I could I have the level of trust in Bush and our leaders that I have in God. I cannot. These are men and women of a carnal nature. I cannot blindly trust what they allow our press to know.
Anger and fear once again reigns across our nation. Americans, predictably, shake angry fists in denial of our fear. We are courageous, we are strong, we are America! Justice is the order of the day. I am not sure I can accept this rhetoric that calls for justice but not revenge. Someone please explain to me the difference. Does this mean we can kill the perpetrators with a loving attitude and that is justice? This would seem justice, then, is about the administrator of it and has little to do with the accused. I am still thinking about this idea. Frankly this rationale does not sit well in my heart.
Above all this rhetoric I keep hearing, “Vengeance is mine, thus saith the Lord.” And I cannot escape the fact that the New Testament provides no example of justified corporal punishment. Ananias, Sapphira and a few others were stricken dead for crimes against God, but by God. No mortal death sentence, to my knowledge, is condoned by Christ.
But then our leaders......
Anything ... they will do anything to right this wrong, they will do whatever it takes to bring about their definition of justice... they will do anything that prevents them from experiencing the greatest pain of all, the pain of self assessment.
Not all will cower to self assessment.
My friend sent me this article on Wednesday (see below). I know him well. To avert any misinterpretation of what you are about to read I want to assure you no political agenda, no religious persuasion, nor philosophical dogma is part of his message. I know he is merely reflecting out loud.
My friend has no requests of anyone who might read this. My friend is simply serving as an example of what it means to be a Christian and/or a loving and caring citizen of planet earth. If he is suggesting anything here it is that each of us might harness all the energy of our emotions, intellect and spirit to consider the deepest truths of what we have become as individuals who happen to have been born or have become naturalized citizens of the United States of America.
My words, though more harsh and accusatory, are intended only to stimulate some serious assessment of what is happening now and the state of affairs that have led to the war we are now engaged in. Please research, with an open mind. Pray for wisdom. Act to right whatever wrong(s) you find. That’s all any of us can do. The soul of nation, in fact the entire world is at stake.
We live in a great nation, a wonderful nation. However, who would deny that we are not a perfect society. There exist degrees of sickness. There exist degrees of tyranny. There exist degrees of terror. There exist degrees of oppression. There are degrees of extortion.
Idealists are often criticized by realists. The opposite is, likewise, true. As mortals we will likely never achieve total agreement on how we, as a nation, must respond to violence.
Those who truly view individual lives and the whole of human existence as a brief defining moment of an eternal fate understand the importance of love and forgiveness. These otherwise uplifting terms at this point in time sound, even to me I must confess, almost as intolerable as the terms hate and revenge. I can only suppress the latter feelings. I cannot deny I have them. When I try, really try, I can understand some foreign perspectives that the U.S. is oppressive and aggressive. I cannot, though I wish I could, stop with these adjectives. Many countries view our “sanctions” and "police actions" on their soils, where their civilians are starving, diseased or maimed and killed, to be acts of terror. Correct or not their perspectives are as real to these cultures as the perspectives we hold today are to us. In our nation’s history we have killed hundreds of times more of our own people than have been killed in all the attacks from our enemies. We may have the distinction of being the only so-called civilized nation to have driven an entire human race to extinction.
Many countries around the world know we have not declared war on them but they also know we use our power to influence other nations to create policy and support our foreign policies that serve our political, military, and economic interests at their cost. This effort continues in perpetuity.
These so-called third world countries have resources, often huge oil and mineral reserves, forests and the like. Bosnia and its neighbors still have huge acreages of forests. Who uses more timber products than any other country in the world? China has fluorite, who uses more fluorite than any other country in the world? Our history is permeated with foreign policy that meddles incessantly with poor countries who possess potential wealth. Our history is all but void of foreign policy regarding countries who have no military, political, and/or economic importance.
Our sanctions often serve to politically freeze resources and then when political conditions permit we help ourselves to their resources and demand they thank us for doing so.
It is not for the perpetrators of violence I mourn for but for the fate of those innocents who invariably, repeatedly and undeservedly bear their punishment.
Christian faith has its origin in the concepts and realities of love and forgiveness. How we reconcile this truism is now more difficult than ever before. Christians can no longer deny historical violent abuses of the so-called Christian Crusaders of the past.
Similarly, our nation can no longer deny the aggressive and oppressive nature of its desire to share what it considers to be politically, economically, and culturally as “Good News.”
A nation that historically proposes to be a Christian nation, must come to terms with its identity. True Christianity has never been a form of religion that forces itself upon individuals and nations. Sadly the human component of this religion, in its zeal to share what it considers “Good News” to the world, has committed grave misdeeds wherever it has spread around the globe. I emphasize again. Nowhere in the New Testament is war con war of the flesh, their own flesh. God's granting us free moral agency, at our bequest, came with price. Our personal spirit and flesh have been warring ever since. Mankind has invented countless ways to project our own battles onto our fellow man. Nations have mastered the exercise. It is basic human nature to, just before one reaches self destruction, lash out and destroy another. The aggression relieves the perpetrator's misery for a while. This aggression takes on many forms when considering the political arena. Slow, measured, and steady aggression is the so-called civilized governments approach of choice.
Earthly nations have never ceased to wage war and often these wars are precipitated by imperfect human thought and convictions that are confused with and contrary to a given religions own set of beliefs and values.
Christian soldiers are to engage in unceasing spiritual warfare. I cannot say whether a Christian should or should not participate in his or her homelands political wars. I wish I had a definitive solution to this dilemma.
I am a Christian. I believe my charge, in its simplest terms, is to follow the example Christ set before us. Anyone who knows me knows I don't live up to this charge perfectly, not near perfectly.
I refuse however, to allow my human imperfections, imperfections that reflect upon my espoused religion to destroy my faith in the ideals of love and forgiveness. If there is any perceived imperfection in the Christian religion it is the imperfection of its human members.
I have been a long time coming to believe this is also true of those religions I don’t understand.
My faith is that Christ, for a time, was God in the flesh. Finishing His work on earth He left us with His Word and now reigns immortal with God and is, in fact God.
Christ, speaking through His inspired apostle James, has this to say about religion. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." James 1:27
Humans tend to complicate things. Pure religion is no exception.
Maybe these are weak analogies but I have to consider them.
Albert E. Einstein once asserted, "one cannot simultaneously prepare for and prevent war."
Similarly, I fail to understand how a "Christian" nation can create widows and orphans and simultaneously attend their afflictions.
Consider the following before reading my friend's comments. We owe it to ourselves and our children.
Our leaders have been drunk on their power and wealth too long. Lost in our government is compassion. All our foreign policy is designed to ratchet the U.S. to world domination. Our leaders are smart (generally speaking). Very smart in social control. They have been experimenting since WW I to see just how much pressure they can place on their own citizens and the citizens and governments of the world.
We, too, perhaps have been too drunk and too well entertained to notice the mounting pressure here at home.
I have heard these Republicans & Democrats, New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani, Gov. George Patiki, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Bush all say the greatest way to help all the victims and our country is to keep on working and keep on spending our money. Guiliani went so far as to do a light-hearted tourism promo for his city. So immersed in capitalism they cannot understand the vulgar, distasteful nature of their actions.
One of the triumphs and simultaneously evil outcomes of entering the information age is that a government such as ours can collect unlimited data concerning human behavior and responses to pressures (stimuli) of countless forms. Little by little government ratchets away our freedoms and civil liberties while causing us to believe those are being expanded.
By ratchet, I mean a method by which pressure or tension is leveled with a predictable easing of that pressure or tension. It work just like a mechanical ratchet works. Force is applied and let off slightly just before a stop falls into place. Having just experienced the maximum pressure or tension the subsequent partial easing of that pressure actually feels great, kind of like it feels after your arms have borne a heavy load until your arms start to tremble. If suddenly that load is lightened your arms, though still under great stress actually feel better. Repeated enough, ones arms grow stronger making them able to bear greater and greater loads. We must ask, who benefits from our capacity to carry a greater load? In my view the load bearer should. I don’t even have a problem with our government taking a fair share but this has not been the case for decades.
Our greatest, most evident example of this form of ratchet manipulation is seen in the arena of economics. Gas prices. Need I say more? Up they go higher and higher. Each time they fall a fraction of the last increase. I’ve heard far too often, consumers express thanksgiving that the prices went back down even though they remain just pennies lower than the last increase when the increase per gallon was a matter of nickels, dimes, and quarters.
Ratchet economics have replaced, as much as possible, the law of supply and demand. When true supply and demand is at work ratchet economics cannot be exercised successfully. Ratchet economics takes advantage of situations where supply is at least adequate to meet demand. Adequate supply is supposed to be a price lowering condition. The economists certainly know this as do most consumers. Research has shown that consumers will not only tolerate but feel relief when ratchet economics is employed. Every reason under the sun is given for gas price increases.
These reasons don’t have to be real or even make sense. Few consumers for lack of time and energy question the reasons given. As long as they can pay they will. If consumers do begin to reduce consumption in protest (which is rarely done excepting cases of no choice due to private, business, or corporate financial constraints) the petroleum industry and OPEC find heroic ways to bring the price back down but not all the way down. This doesn’t matter because a citizenry living at a breakneck pace hasn’t the time or energy to consider the details. Most are just happy they can experience any measure of relief.
We need to wake up. We need to get our minds off government sponsored lasciviousness, sports, and other forms of entertainment that dull our intellect. We need to grow up and be men and women of character. We need to stand for something more meaningful than the Super Bowl or social status. Ask yourself, who or what is my inspiration? We might even consider if our work robs us of the time, we should use as parents and citizens, to think about how things are going in our homes and our nation. We can no longer afford to simply just ride the wave of prosperity. All waves either dissipate or crash to an unyielding end.
Have you heard the phrase, “quasi-private business or corporation.” Listen up. You will be hearing more and more of this term. A great many of our new businesses and corporations are beginning with government funds. Why? Because it is nearly impossible for new business owners and even small corporations to begin new ventures any other way. A relatively new phenomenon called quasi-private businesses and corporations is rolling across the U.S. You may not even know if your paycheck is government funded.
Our freedom today is only as secure as our ability to buy it. The same is true of countries around the world.
By the way our two major political parties, the Democrats and Republicans exemplify how a ratchet works. The Republicans apply the pressure. The democrats release it, but just a bit. Poor folks will justifiably take any relief they can get. Rich folks can endure the high end pressure for a while. This why the two party system has worked so well for so long.
Following our great depressions and wars our parties had to come together and figure out to make this thing called capitalism work. We desperately had to show the rest of the world it works. Decades of inter-party collaboration have resulted in their practice of ratchet government.
It works. Little discussed is the utilization of psychological expertise by our leaders. A process called “habituation” is a well known process by which one simply gets used to a given stimulus to the point that the stimulus is no longer perceived.
This stimulus may be pleasure or pain. We have heard how U.S. has become “desensitized” to violence. This is just a form of habituation. Our leaders use this knowledge to the benefit of the government and even to their constituents when convenient.
Citizens we need to “resensitize” our minds and focus on what is happening in our world.
The latest seed has been planted. In a nearly subliminal way, even before we have positively identified our perpetrators, valuable energy is being exerted on rhetoric designed to groom the airline companies, our citizenry, and our lower level leaders to accept the federal government’s takeover of airline security.
In the 80’s we had an excellent, privately operated, government regulated security system in place. Not one airline incident occurred for ten years after its implementation. Ronald Reagan deregulated the airlines, including the security component. The premise was presented to the public in the terms, why regulate? We trust our airline industry to regulate itself. Air marshals we’re one of the first casualties of deregulation.
In reality, deregulation served our federal government well in its effort to divide and conquer one more cohesive network of Americans, the air traffic controllers. Deregulation was a small price to pay considering it was well known that an event of terror was inevitable. If the government was out of picture the airline industry would bear all the blame. This precept is now reality. And already the government is promoting complete takeover of the security component of the airline industry. But this time tax dollars will pay for the service. You see, raising taxes to pay for a tangible service is much easier than raising taxes to pay for bureaucratic, administrative services involved in the regulatory process. This has all worked out quite well for those dedicated to a vision of global control.
This process is a bit of a reversal of the ratchet principle. In this case our government gives a little and then takes away just a bit more than was given. This creates an outcome where little by little the freedoms and civil liberties of private businesses and private lives are whittled away.
Ours is still a great way of life. Like my friend, I have always been and desperately want to continue to be patriotic but not at all cost.
Blind patriotism is the substance of terror. Blind patriotism fosters hate and leads good people to a point of no return. Blind patriotism makes killers of good men and women.
I will never cease to hope a work for a world of peace. I often wonder where my old hippie friends have gone. Did their drugs satisfy their passion for peace. Have they become satisfied sitting happily and peacefully before their computer monitors, and TV sets while enjoying the effects of their Prozac, Valium, alcohol, four course dinners, and until now, a rising stock market?
Do these old hippies still nearly break into tears while listening to “Four Dead in Ohio” or has habituation set in? Is the tune and melody just a pleasant reminder they were once young? Are the words now just a familiar hum?
We have just lost 5000 [later revised to just under 3000] of our own on our own continental soil. Is anyone going to ask why? No...I mean is anyone going to demand why? Is anyone going to dare explore the possibility that our nation may be forcing starving and oppressed nations to lash out in a desperate attempt to survive? Is anyone going be brave enough to consider this attack was not necessarily orchestrated but possibly allowed to happen. Leaving ones door unlocked and a few words on the street that one has done so can insure a perpetrator will be unable to resist the temptation to strike. Sometimes tragedy is no less than a sacrifice bunt. The loss is considered less than the gain. This may sound cruel and it is but this practice of baiting our perceived enemies is not without precedent.
As God as my witness, the day will come when we or our children will learn of Afghanistan’s great oil reserves, other valuable resource(s) or some other political/military advantage to the U.S. That day will come and we, America the Beautiful, will likely be poised to take advantage of the situation.
The U.S. is, of course, not alone in this movement toward world domination. The New World Order means one world government and that my friends is the driving force of today’s events.
In recent years it has been historically documented that Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen. The Pearl Harbor Attack served its purpose well. It spurred on our economy and launched an unprecedented surge in defensive and offensive [military] technology, firmly establishing us as the undisputed world power. We may well have still been seeking this distinction had Pearl harbor never happened.
Our leaders were undoubtedly surprised at the public’s apathetic response to this news that we had literally dared Japan to attack us and then made sure we were unprepared to defend ourselves. Don’t believe this? All I can say is, “you should.” Search the net for reliable documentation of this. You will find it.
With raised eyebrows and a shrug our leaders logged our apathy and knew they could repeat history because the public had failed (refused) to learn from it. It is a difficult thing to challenge one’s own patriotic desires.
Folks, what we are experiencing, I cannot pretend to understand fully but I can think and I can draw parallels and assimilate global conditions and most importantly I can question authority. It our right and responsibility as citizens of a free, democratic country to do these things. Too long have we been been oblivious to foreign affairs. The rest of the world’s citizenry is very well informed on global affairs.
We are in trouble. Grave trouble. If we survive this clear and present danger we had better work with all our might to change our nation into a content nation. We do not need to rule the world. We do not need to own the world.
I publicly stated the President Bush is a fool when he childishly pulled us out of the Kyoto treaty. I stated that he was exacerbating suspicions and contempt held by many nations of the world toward the U.S.
Our nation has a history of walking out when it doesn’t get its way. Perhaps nothing, short of military violence, infuriates foreign leaders more than the practice of the world's most powerful nation pouting and walking out of talks or away from internationally binding agreements when it is not getting its self-serving way.
Our nation has a history of walking out when it doesn’t get its way. Below are examples of events that demonstrate an "our way or no way national attitude." These didn’t occur in the same century but I think we should consider these carefully.
~~~~~~~~~~
Crude Logic
By Robert Wright
Robert Wright is the author of The Moral Animal and Nonzero: The Logic of
Human Destiny.
Posted Friday, March 30, 2001, at 9:30 a.m. PT
The Bush administration wants to be clear on why it has chosen to antagonize the entire civilized world by abandoning the Kyoto treaty on climate change. President Bush doesn't deny that global warming is a problem, and he isn't averse to addressing the problem. It's just that this particular solution, by exempting developing nations from cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, would make the United States shoulder more than its share of the burden. While such American selflessness may have seemed fine to the woolly-minded one-worlders in the Clinton administration, the steely cost-benefit calculators in the Bush administration won't be so easily bamboozled.
Yet, elsewhere on the energy/environment front, bamboozlement seems to be the official Bush policy. I refer to the insufficiently scrutinized cost-benefit logic of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a project that actually amounts to a big American giveaway to the rest of the world.
On the benefit side of the equation: One standard estimate is that the drilling will yield 3.2 billion barrels of oil, a bit less than America consumes in six months. This number is often cited by critics of the project, who consider six months' worth of oil meager reward for a lifetime of environmental damage. But actually, this number vastly exaggerates the benefits accruing to the United States.
After all, there is one seamless world oil market. The benefit of those 3.2 billion extra barrels will be spread across the whole planet in the form of slightly lower prices. Since the United States consumes one fourth of the world's oil, it will get only one fourth of the benefit, in effect, 800 million barrels compared to 2.4 billion for the rest of the world. Yet the United States is assuming all of the direct environmental costs of the Arctic drilling. How generous! How woolly minded!
So, all told, Americans are getting six weeks', not six months', worth of oil for a lifetime of environmental damage. Yes, I know, the Bush administration quantifies the "environmental damage" side of the equation differently than, say, the Sierra Club. But just about everyone agrees there will be some damage to the ecosystem, and the part of the ecosystem in question is on American soil. So, to phrase the matter in the technical language of game theory: We're getting screwed by the rest of the world.
By the way, the Bush administration's claim that developing nations are "free riders" under the Kyoto accord is not beyond dispute. But for present purposes we can leave this issue aside. Even if we stipulate that Kyoto's distribution of burdens is unfair, we are still left with this conclusion: The basic difference between the Kyoto accord and Arctic oil drilling is that with the former the developing world is a free rider, and with the latter the whole non-American world is a free rider. In both cases, the United States is a free ride.
Puzzling, isn't it? In the Arctic, Bush is magnanimously sacrificing America's national interest while, on the global warming front, he is jealously guarding it. I'm having trouble finding the logical consistency here, unless always doing what American oil companies want qualifies as logical consistency.
Actually, I have nothing against jealously guarding the national interest. I consider myself a one-worlder of the non-woolly-minded variety. While I do believe we're moving toward a system of world governance, I believe we're doing so because, thanks to the non-zero-sum implications of technological evolution, rationally pursuing the national interest will increasingly mean cooperating with other nations. So, I welcome serious questions about whether the Kyoto accord adequately serves American interests.
But, so far, at least, the Bush administration shows no signs of being serious. Though it has rejected the Kyoto treaty, it hasn't said what an acceptable treaty would look like. Is the problem that the administration hasn't had time to find an acceptable alternative? But Bush has been complaining about the Kyoto treaty's unfairness for a year and a half now! In the course of all of his ruminations on the treaty's injustice, didn't Curious George ever once ask an adviser what a just treaty might look like?
Hey, George, I've got an idea that should meet with your approval. It would make a dent, albeit a small dent, in the global-warming problem and would spread the attendant sacrifice well beyond America's borders. Here's how it goes: Don't drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That will keep oil prices slightly higher worldwide and thus dampen the use of this greenhouse-gas-emitting fuel, in developed and developing nations alike! What do you think?
~~~~~
Tension returns to U.S. relationship with U.N. Disputes over human rights panel, racism conference, Bush policies have world body at odds with host
USA Today; Arlington, Va.;
Sep 11, 2001; Bill Nichols;
Abstract:
* The ejection of the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Commission last spring and the controversy over the just-ended U.N. conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, have upset even U.N. supporters in Congress. Secretary of State Colin Powell boycotted the conference because Muslim nations used it to accuse Israel of racism against Palestinians.
[Bush]'s foreign policy team denies responsibility ...
An 18th Century Event
U.S. Delegation Walks Out On Martin Delany's Address in London
INTRODUCTION
Returning triumphantly from his expedition into the Niger River Valley, Martin Delany was in much demand throughout the British Isles as a speaker.
Perhaps his most prestigious speaking invitation before the International Statistical Society, chaired by Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, and then considered the most esteemed scientific body in the world, was also destined for political controversy. Delany's invitation to speak originated from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who welcomed the delegates on the opening day July 16, 1861 at Somerset House. Chairing the gathering was also Lord Brougham and Vaux, then 82 years of age but, according to one authority, "still filled with the fire that had lasted him for sixty years of leadership in judicidal, suffrage, and anti slavery in both Houses in Commons and in Lords." (Ullman, p. 239)
As the August body convened at 4 PM, Lord Brougham, whose hatred of American slavery was most intense, addressed the body which included the delegation from the United States, headed by Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, the jurist, author, and then president of the University of South Carolina. The United States Ambassador George Mifflin Dallas was also seated on the dais, when Lord Brougham began:
Saying according to Mr. Longstreet: "I call the attention of Mr. Dallas to the fact that there is a negro present, and I hope he will feel no scruples on that account."
Martin Delany later recalled to his biographer, Frances Rollin: "While I fully comprehended his lordship's interest, meaning and its extent, the thought flashed instantly across my mind. How will this assemblage take it? May it not be mistaken by some, at least, as a want of genuine respect for my presence, by the manner in which the remarks were made?. . .These thoughts passed through my mind as soon as his lordship concluded his remarks; and as soon as the minister from Spain was seated, I rose in my place, and said: "I rise, your Royal Highness, to thank his lordship, the unflinching friend of the negro, for the remarks he has made in reference to myself, and to assure your royal highness and his lordship that I am a man." I then resumed my seat. The clapping of hands commenced on the stage, followed by what the London Times was pleased to call "the wildest shouts ever manifested in so grave an assemblage." (Rollin, p.119; Ullman, pp. 240+241).
A. B. Longstreet jumped up and led the U.S. delegation out of the hall. Ambassador Dallas stayed seated on the dais, silent. The proceedings were terminated immediately contrary to plans.
The following day, Ambassador Dallas refused to see a conciliatory Lord Brougham. U.S. Secretary of State Lewis Cass chastized Dallas for not walking out with the delegation in light of this "insult." On July 21, Longstreet wrote what Biographer Victor Ullman (Ullman, p. 243) called "one of the longest letters ever published" in the London Chronicle closing it with "farewell to Europe forever and forever!" Delany, quickly becoming an international celebrity, spoke before the Society on its last day, five days later: "I should be insensible indeed if I should permit this Congress to adjourn without expressing my gratitude for the cordial manner in which I have been received from the time when I landed in this kingdom to the present moment and in particular to the Earl of Shaftsbury, the president of the section to which I belong, as well as to every individual gentleman of the section, it matters not from what part of the world he came. I say, my lord, if I did permit this Congress to adjourn without expressing my gratitude, I should be an ingrate indeed.
I am not foolish enough to suppose that it was from any individual merit of mine, but it was that outburst of expression for sympathy for my race (African), whom I represent, and who have gone the road of that singular providence of degeneration, that all other races in some time of the world's history have gone, but I again tender my most sincere thanks and heartfelt gratitude to those distinguished gentlemen with whom Iterms of the most perfect equality." (Rollin, pp. 129+130; Ullman, p. 245).
Delany's off again, on again supporter, Frederick Douglass, wrote Delany highest praise in "Frederick Douglass' Monthly:" "The startling offense of the venerable and learned Lord Brougham was that he ventured to call the attention of Mr. Dallas, the American Minister Plenipotentiary, to the fact that a 'negro' was an acting member of the meeting of the International Statistical Society. This was the offense. There was no mistaking the point. It struck home at once.
"Mr. Dallas felt it. It choked him speechless. He could say nothing. It was like calling the attention of a man, vain of his personal beauty, to his nose or to any other deformity. Delany, determined that the nail should hold fast, rose with all his blackness, right up, as quick and graceful as an African lion, and received the curious gaze of the scientific world. Never was there a more telling rebuke administered to the pride, prejudice and hypocrisy of a nation. It was saying: "Mr. Dallas, we make members of the International Statistical Society out of the sort of men you make merchandise out of in America." Delany, in Washington, is a thing! Delany is London is a man." (Rollin, pp. 122+126; Ullman, p. 244.)
But you say, oh that was over hundred years ago.
~~~~~
Okay, that was then, this is now.
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 26 - US 'RACISM' OVER AIDS DRUGS IN AFRICA ADDS INSULT TO INJURY
From: Kabissa-fahamu Newsletter
Send reply to editor@kabissa.org
Wed, 20 Jun 2001 00:53:52 -0400
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 26
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1. EDITORIAL
US ‘RACISM’ OVER AIDS DRUGS IN AFRICA ADDS INSULT TO INJURY
The recent remarks by Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, on the capacity of Africans to time manage the supposedly complex drug regime of AIDS anti-retrovirals, are astonishing in their ignorance. Natsios has gone on record in a speech made to Congress, and in an interview with the Boston Globe as saying the money raised by a new global fund to fight AIDS should be used almost entirely for prevention services, not for the anti-retroviral drugs that have been so successful in extending the lives of people infected with HIV. Among the more ‘politically correct’ reasons Natsios cited for the difficulties posed in getting such drugs to AIDS victims in Africa - a lack of roads, shortages of doctors and hospitals, and wars – he also stated there is a problem with Africans themselves. Many Africans, he told The Globe, "don't know what Western time is. You have to take these (AIDS) drugs a certain number of hours each day, or they don't work. Many people in Africa have never seen a clock or a watch their entire lives. And if you say, one o'clock in the afternoon, they do not know what you are talking about. They know morning, they know noon, they know evening, they know the darkness at night."
As Bob Herbert, writing in the New York Times points out, this view of Africans as “so ignorant they can't master the concept of taking their medicine on time has become a touchstone of the Bush administration”. As many African specialists have pointed out, the education levels and health infrastructure vary significantly on the 54-nation continent, rendering generalizations about the people of Africa at best useless, and at worst, deeply offensive. Moreover, recent advancements now allow people to take one or two pills daily that each contain several anti-AIDS drugs. This regimen, now being used in several small African trials, means that anti-retrovirals can be taken without the need for exact time keeping methods. Although several groups have called on Secretary of State Colin Powell to fire Natsios for his “racist” remarks, Natsios has declined to comment since his testimony, although a spokesperson has said he regrets offending anyone because of his comments.
This ignorance is a crude example of the Bush administration’s attitude towards issues facing developing countries, and towards the AIDS crisis in particular. The real worry of many, including Natsios and other top US policymakers, is that falling drug prices will shift global funding of diseases such as HIV/AIDS away from prevention efforts, into much more costly drug treatment. This anxiety is shared by many in the West. It was recently reiterated at a United Nations conference in Geneva which announced that the best way to manage spending on AIDS from the proposed new multi-billion dollar global fund for health was to concentrate on prevention strategies rather than the mass purchase of expensive anti-retroviral drugs – despite the fact that these drugs are routinely offered to western AIDS patients. The fear behind Natsios’ ignorance of the facts – and behind much of Western policy on this issue - is that the bill for providing such drugs to those millions suffering from HIV/AIDS in desperately poor parts of the world will simply be too expensive to contemplate.
But the problem of the cost of treating AIDS patients in Africa and in developing countries is not one that is going to go away. Despite some recent advances in this struggle, such as South Africa’s landmark legal victory against pharmaceutical companies allowing it to buy cheap drugs and the offer of cheaper drugs from pharmaceutical companies - resulting in an 85% fall in the cost of anti-retrovirals to developing countries in the last few months; and depite the establishment of a new global health fund, and mounting pressure on the WTO to reform patent rules when they meet later this month in Geneva, many countries in Africa face enormous problems in their ability to afford AIDS treatments, and to administer them. South Africa has recently said it will not embark on a large programme of AIDS treatment, arguing that anti-retrovirals are still too expensive and beyond the budget of the health department. But if South Africa, with a relatively good health care infrastructure, seems unable to initiate such a regime, what chance is there that other African countries can afford to do so either?
AIDS threatens to wipe out an entire generation in Africa, and to destroy gains that have been made in political and economic development. If such a horrendous epidemic is to be prevented, adequate resources are needed, and both prevention and drug therapy treatments should be made available to its people. Yet while the international community considers that preventing such a death toll is simply too expensive, and while it harbours influential leaders in its midst who appear to believe that Africa’s people are even too ignorant to receive help, adequate funding needed to solve Africa’s AIDS crisis seems – shamefully - unlikely to materialise.
To send your comments or corrections to Administrator Natsios directly, use the link:
USAID Inquiries or send a message to pinquiries@usaid.gov
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Armenia: U.S. Withdraws Genocide Resolution
Washington, 20 October 2000 (RFE/RL) - The U.S. House of Representatives has cancelled a vote on a resolution declaring as genocide the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923. The speaker of the lower chamber, Dennis Hastert, said he withdrew the resolution yesterday after President Bill Clinton invoked national security concerns.
Clinton had warned that the non-binding resolution, if passed, could damage U.S. ties with NATO ally Turkey and seriously harm other U.S. interests.
Clinton said these interests include the ability to contain Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, advancing peace and stability in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans, and developing Caspian Sea energy resources. Clinton said the question of genocide would best be left to Turkey and Armenia to resolve on their own.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem says Turkey's relations with the United States have been "saved from a grave threat" by the U.S. House of Representative's withdrawal of the resolution accusing the Ottoman Empire of the genocidal killing of Armenians early last century.
Turkish leaders had warned of retaliatory measures over the resolution, including a threat to halt American use of the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey. U.S. warplanes use the base to patrol no-fly zones in Iraq. Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, denies the charge of genocide of some 1.5 million Armenians, arguing that both sides suffered heavy casualties in partisan fighting as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
No response was immediately available from the Armenian side.
© 1995-2000 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
http://www.rferl.org
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Are We Just Ordinary Men and Women?
I am quite puzzled. Will women of our military be able to kill innocent women, children, and helpless sick and elderly people in order to achieve our objective to bring the terrorists to justices.
I can hardly fathom the image of any woman I know engaged in such an activity.
Ordinary Men, Band of Brothers, Natural Born Killers
Here is a resonant juxtaposition from two recently published history books. We know people lie easily, but both of the following have the ring of truth, because the individuals concerned could easily have concocted better, more self-serving stories.
The shooting of the men was so repugnant to me that I missed the fourth man. It was simply no longer possible for me to aim accurately. I suddenly felt nauseous and ran away from the shooting site....I then ran into the woods, vomited and sat down against a tree...my nerves were totally finished.
Here is the second incident:
They got to the farm and without a struggle took the [man] prisoner. Liebgott interrogated him for thirty minutes, then declared there could be no doubt, this was the man they wanted, and he was guilty as charged....They prodded the man out of the vehicle. Liebgott drew his pistol and shot him twice.
One of these quotes is from an account of a regiment in the 101st Airborne during the invasion of Europe. The other is from a history of a German Reserve Police battalion.
The first is from Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, by Christopher Browning (Harper Perennial 1992), and concerns a policeman named Kastenbaum. Browning studied the records of a series of judicial interrogations of the members of Battalion 101 that took place in the 1960's. His intent was to determine how a group of ordinary middle-aged men from Hamburg, some of whom had worked with and been friendly with Jews before the war, adapted themselves to the executioner's task.
The second, in a way more remarkable, quote is from a less judgmental book, Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (Simon and Schuster, 1992). Liebgott, who executes a former Nazi "head of slave labor camps", is an American soldier. Actually, I loaded the dice a little in editing the second quote. Three soldiers were ordered by their captain to find and execute the Nazi, who was known to be hiding nearby. (The Germans had already surrendered.) One man decided he would not fire, because the captain did not have the authority to order a killing in peacetime. Each of the other two shot the man.
In case we try to derive too much comfort from the fact that one of the three Americans decided not to carry out orders, be aware that twelve members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 declined to shoot any Jews, and a number of others, like the one quoted above, quit when killing became too repulsive. However, they had been told there would be no consequences if they refused to kill. Ambrose does not mention if the soldier who refused to shoot had reason to fear any consequences.
Of course, a story like this would not be so surprising from the Korean or Vietnam wars. It mainly shocks us because almost everyone agrees that World War II was a just war reasonably handled. A description of the events at My Lai in 1968 with place names and people's names excised would be indistinguishable from an account of the actions of Reserve Police Battalion 101 similarly treated.
What this really means is that E Company and Battalion 101 both consist of ordinary men and form part of the same band of brothers. Though their difference in actions may be extreme (this is the only account of cold-blooded murder recounted by Ambrose, while Battalion 101 participated in the murders of 1,500 people on the first day alone), the difference in potential may be imperceptible. E Company did not have leaders instructing it to participate in genocide. Battalion 101 did. Had the situations been reversed, the men of Battalion 101 would certainly have been as decent as the Americans of E Company. Would E Company, if given genocidal orders, been as bloody as Battalion 101? Who can say no with confidence?
Shooting actions, whether genocidal or otherwise, against unarmed civilians have never ceased to occur since World War II. Americans, Jews of the fledgling state of Israel (Deir Yassin, 1948), Russians, South Africans and most recently, Rwandans and Serbs have committed such slaughter.
Yet somehow we are raised to believe that we are morally better than the Germans under Hitler, that what happened there could not happen here. This is self-delusion. The line between the average German in 1933, and the American, Rwandan or Serb today is thin or imperceptible. In any society in the world today, if the authorities order slaughter, a few will refuse, but most will comply.
This is the thesis of Oliver Stone's repellent movie, Natural Born Killers. All humans are murderers, or have the potential to be. Some admit it and act it out, others deny it but are. The police, the prison officials, the FBI agent and even the journalist in the movie are all murderers when the moment presents itself.
If we start from the premise that we are not, that we are better, then the truth may take us by surprise. But if we look inside and admit that we cannot be sure that we would perform differently than Kastenbaum of Battalion 101 or Liebgott of E Company, we have a firm footing to attempt a climb out of the mire.
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My Friend’s Comments:
The news becomes a numbing repetition of chilling scenes with little verbal substance in between. We perhaps know nothing else to do but replay and watch again. A girl in my second period class Tuesday watched, for the nth time, the second plane crash into the towers. She blurted with all sincerity, "I feel really bad. This should be impacting me in some other major way, but I sit here thinking this is a great special effects movie. I don't know that this will affect the way we all carry on business tomorrow."
I replied, "I understand. I grew up on Hollywood too. And yes we'll probably be here tomorrow largely unaffected other than a troubled search of our feelings."
Others - many others - displayed reflex responses of disgust and desire for revenge. It's understandable. It's a first instinct. Most impressive in this historic event is the positive response of volunteers all across the country to assist victims and their families. It is refreshing to see the unity of diverse individuals working for a common positive goal. Prayers have been offered up in volumes for the safety of rescue workers and in hopes of finding more survivors. Prayers have also been heard for the protection of this great country and our way of life. Prayers are offered for an expeditious effort to find and bring to justice the perpetrators. Understandably, there have been rally cries to solidify the citizens of the nation to lay aside peripheral issues and support the cause of bringing back stability. A deluge of commendations for heroic individuals as well as the power and strength of our collective union washes across the screen.
I grasp for thoughts - wishing there was something more I could contribute. I am proud to be an American. I love freedom and suppress images of life without it. I, like most other fellow Americans, am willing to set aside other agendas to support efforts to aid victims and to prevent future occurrences. Emotions run from anger to pride to anxiety to compassion to numbness.
Then my daughter offered a prayer at dinner tonight. She simply prayed, "God help me to have a forgiving heart now so that I can receive forgiveness."
My thoughts were stilled and my heart quieted. In about an hour, I went to Habakkuk. Not a well read Old Testament book, it's best known for the song derived from chapter 2 and verse 20. That's also been one of the most comforting passages to me through much of my life. Now, however, the book is haunting.
The prophet cries out, "Lord how long must I call for help, but you do not listen. " I cry out, "Violence, but you do not save? Why do you tolerate wrong?
The Lord's response is, "I will raise up a ruthless, fierce people bent on violence."
Habakkuk complains again, "Your eyes are too pure to look on this evil. Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?"
The Lord replies again, "See, he is puffed up. He is as greedy as the grave and never satisfied. He is arrogant and never at rest. Woe to him who makes himself wealthy by extortion! Will not your debtors suddenly arise? Then you will become their victim."
Finally, the Lord's reply ends with, "But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him."
I have read Habakkuk over and over and over. There are many parallels and I struggle with perspectives on who is arrogant, greedy, self-reliant. I can only answer honestly for myself. I must question my motives and heart. 'Purer in heart' is the attitude that the song encourages us to achieve. I must question my contribution to the root causes of our present problem. At present, we are only discussing symptoms and ways to treat those symptoms. But there has been an infection growing for years. With all certainty, the evil resides in those who would kill innocent victims. With less certainty is the degree of virulence of the evil residing within our own (at least my own) heart and actions.
I suspect I am experiencing the same reflex emotions that many if not most people across the country are experiencing. As my friend, Kevin, pointed out to me tonight, however, we need to be very conscious of the words and life of Christ right now. His message was something unnatural - not instinctual. [Bush tells Sen. Joe Biden, in essence, "I know what I know because I have good instincts."]
Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'''
Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.''
Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!"
My prayers go out for all those affected by tragedy. I offer my support (although I'm not clear as to what that means) for efforts to expose the causative agents of this disaster. Ultimately, however, I am feeling helpless. I am helpless. Cutting through all of my patriotism, human pride, religiosity, and self-righteousness is a blaring fact. My sin - the greed, the arrogance, the lusts of life, the deception, the anger, and specifics too numerous and embarrassing to mention - places me in the same state of need for grace and forgiveness as those 'enemies' for whom I feel a passionate anger. Perhaps, because of the hypocrisy, my sin is even greater.
I sit in anxiety wanting to do something. I want to control the situation. At least some part of it. It is increasingly apparent to me, though, that I control nothing but the attitude of my heart. I cannot change the hearts or actions (directly) of those who wish me harm. I must maintain my own focus, however, and critically examine what aspects of my life may propagate resentment by others in the world. I must pray for the forgiveness and eventual salvation of those who hurt me most. I must humble myself in realization of the tragedy of my own sinful nature and ask for forgiveness. It is most difficult at this time. It is most necessary at this time. I find it excruciating. Encouragement from friends is always vital.
A simple prayer from my daughter lead to painful thoughts. In an ultimate perspective, however, Habakkuk 2:20 continues to bring me deep sigh and sense of inner peace. "The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him."
A friend and myself wrote and distributed the following in September 2001. I included a few articles as examples of our nation' fallible nature. While some will call me a hater of the U.S. , I consider my efforts a matter of removing the log in our nation's eye before attending the speck in the eye of our enemies.
September 17, 2001
I am sending this primarily that you may read what my friend, wrote regarding recent events. If you choose not read anything else please read his comments (at the end of this post). If you can spare the time to read all I have included please read my part(s) first but not at the expense of not reading my friend’s comments.
The articles I have selected are poignant but actually fail to reveal the degree of contempt many nations around the world share for the U.S.
If now is not the time take a critical, objective look at where we are headed as individuals and a nation then the time is quickly approaching. U.S. citizens were in recent decades focused on this very thing but something happened. We have more recently returned to becoming the self-absorbed people we thought we may have left behind. War cries strike fear in most. When afraid we band with anyone we can. Strength in number...we're taught that from childhood.
My greatest strength is found in truth. Truth comes with great pain, a pain greater than any other. I will die in the name of truth. This is my war. I do not know all truth therefore I cannot kill disputing truth with another. I willingly die only in pursuit of truth.
My hope and prayer is that a sufficient measure of 265,000,000 U.S. citizens will persist in their pursuit of truth whatever that may mean in political and nationalistic terms.
I love this nation, but we are flawed. We will fight this war. We each will choose our stance. During this conflict we must work to minimize violence, destruction and hate in whatever way we choose. Should we see its end we must be committed to our pursuit of truth and carry on.
Let me affirm, like my friend, I believe in God. I believe God is in total control even if that means God is simply passively watching events unfold. My God, however, is not an American. I fervently pray to God for our recently murdered citizens, their families and their friends. I pray for our leaders. I pray for Osama bin Laden and his followers. I pray Osama bin Laden and his followers, if innocent of this and other atrocities blamed on them will be spared injustice. I pray for all nations in between.
For those actually responsible for the terror I pray. My human ability to know exactly what and how to pray fails me. However, I am convinced the world would be much safer in the future, if when found, we probe their mind(s) and try to learn why, really why they sponsored such a crime (and this is assuming all those involved are not already dead). I am convinced this would serve humanity as a whole far more than displaying a human head on a platter. Violence has been punished with violent forms of “justice” since the beginning and we still have violence in society.
Those who are already convinced Osama bin Laden was involved can only conclude so based on media reports. Be careful.
I wish I could I have the level of trust in Bush and our leaders that I have in God. I cannot. These are men and women of a carnal nature. I cannot blindly trust what they allow our press to know.
Anger and fear once again reigns across our nation. Americans, predictably, shake angry fists in denial of our fear. We are courageous, we are strong, we are America! Justice is the order of the day. I am not sure I can accept this rhetoric that calls for justice but not revenge. Someone please explain to me the difference. Does this mean we can kill the perpetrators with a loving attitude and that is justice? This would seem justice, then, is about the administrator of it and has little to do with the accused. I am still thinking about this idea. Frankly this rationale does not sit well in my heart.
Above all this rhetoric I keep hearing, “Vengeance is mine, thus saith the Lord.” And I cannot escape the fact that the New Testament provides no example of justified corporal punishment. Ananias, Sapphira and a few others were stricken dead for crimes against God, but by God. No mortal death sentence, to my knowledge, is condoned by Christ.
But then our leaders......
Anything ... they will do anything to right this wrong, they will do whatever it takes to bring about their definition of justice... they will do anything that prevents them from experiencing the greatest pain of all, the pain of self assessment.
Not all will cower to self assessment.
My friend sent me this article on Wednesday (see below). I know him well. To avert any misinterpretation of what you are about to read I want to assure you no political agenda, no religious persuasion, nor philosophical dogma is part of his message. I know he is merely reflecting out loud.
My friend has no requests of anyone who might read this. My friend is simply serving as an example of what it means to be a Christian and/or a loving and caring citizen of planet earth. If he is suggesting anything here it is that each of us might harness all the energy of our emotions, intellect and spirit to consider the deepest truths of what we have become as individuals who happen to have been born or have become naturalized citizens of the United States of America.
My words, though more harsh and accusatory, are intended only to stimulate some serious assessment of what is happening now and the state of affairs that have led to the war we are now engaged in. Please research, with an open mind. Pray for wisdom. Act to right whatever wrong(s) you find. That’s all any of us can do. The soul of nation, in fact the entire world is at stake.
We live in a great nation, a wonderful nation. However, who would deny that we are not a perfect society. There exist degrees of sickness. There exist degrees of tyranny. There exist degrees of terror. There exist degrees of oppression. There are degrees of extortion.
Idealists are often criticized by realists. The opposite is, likewise, true. As mortals we will likely never achieve total agreement on how we, as a nation, must respond to violence.
Those who truly view individual lives and the whole of human existence as a brief defining moment of an eternal fate understand the importance of love and forgiveness. These otherwise uplifting terms at this point in time sound, even to me I must confess, almost as intolerable as the terms hate and revenge. I can only suppress the latter feelings. I cannot deny I have them. When I try, really try, I can understand some foreign perspectives that the U.S. is oppressive and aggressive. I cannot, though I wish I could, stop with these adjectives. Many countries view our “sanctions” and "police actions" on their soils, where their civilians are starving, diseased or maimed and killed, to be acts of terror. Correct or not their perspectives are as real to these cultures as the perspectives we hold today are to us. In our nation’s history we have killed hundreds of times more of our own people than have been killed in all the attacks from our enemies. We may have the distinction of being the only so-called civilized nation to have driven an entire human race to extinction.
Many countries around the world know we have not declared war on them but they also know we use our power to influence other nations to create policy and support our foreign policies that serve our political, military, and economic interests at their cost. This effort continues in perpetuity.
These so-called third world countries have resources, often huge oil and mineral reserves, forests and the like. Bosnia and its neighbors still have huge acreages of forests. Who uses more timber products than any other country in the world? China has fluorite, who uses more fluorite than any other country in the world? Our history is permeated with foreign policy that meddles incessantly with poor countries who possess potential wealth. Our history is all but void of foreign policy regarding countries who have no military, political, and/or economic importance.
Our sanctions often serve to politically freeze resources and then when political conditions permit we help ourselves to their resources and demand they thank us for doing so.
It is not for the perpetrators of violence I mourn for but for the fate of those innocents who invariably, repeatedly and undeservedly bear their punishment.
Christian faith has its origin in the concepts and realities of love and forgiveness. How we reconcile this truism is now more difficult than ever before. Christians can no longer deny historical violent abuses of the so-called Christian Crusaders of the past.
Similarly, our nation can no longer deny the aggressive and oppressive nature of its desire to share what it considers to be politically, economically, and culturally as “Good News.”
A nation that historically proposes to be a Christian nation, must come to terms with its identity. True Christianity has never been a form of religion that forces itself upon individuals and nations. Sadly the human component of this religion, in its zeal to share what it considers “Good News” to the world, has committed grave misdeeds wherever it has spread around the globe. I emphasize again. Nowhere in the New Testament is war con war of the flesh, their own flesh. God's granting us free moral agency, at our bequest, came with price. Our personal spirit and flesh have been warring ever since. Mankind has invented countless ways to project our own battles onto our fellow man. Nations have mastered the exercise. It is basic human nature to, just before one reaches self destruction, lash out and destroy another. The aggression relieves the perpetrator's misery for a while. This aggression takes on many forms when considering the political arena. Slow, measured, and steady aggression is the so-called civilized governments approach of choice.
Earthly nations have never ceased to wage war and often these wars are precipitated by imperfect human thought and convictions that are confused with and contrary to a given religions own set of beliefs and values.
Christian soldiers are to engage in unceasing spiritual warfare. I cannot say whether a Christian should or should not participate in his or her homelands political wars. I wish I had a definitive solution to this dilemma.
I am a Christian. I believe my charge, in its simplest terms, is to follow the example Christ set before us. Anyone who knows me knows I don't live up to this charge perfectly, not near perfectly.
I refuse however, to allow my human imperfections, imperfections that reflect upon my espoused religion to destroy my faith in the ideals of love and forgiveness. If there is any perceived imperfection in the Christian religion it is the imperfection of its human members.
I have been a long time coming to believe this is also true of those religions I don’t understand.
My faith is that Christ, for a time, was God in the flesh. Finishing His work on earth He left us with His Word and now reigns immortal with God and is, in fact God.
Christ, speaking through His inspired apostle James, has this to say about religion. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." James 1:27
Humans tend to complicate things. Pure religion is no exception.
Maybe these are weak analogies but I have to consider them.
Albert E. Einstein once asserted, "one cannot simultaneously prepare for and prevent war."
Similarly, I fail to understand how a "Christian" nation can create widows and orphans and simultaneously attend their afflictions.
Consider the following before reading my friend's comments. We owe it to ourselves and our children.
Our leaders have been drunk on their power and wealth too long. Lost in our government is compassion. All our foreign policy is designed to ratchet the U.S. to world domination. Our leaders are smart (generally speaking). Very smart in social control. They have been experimenting since WW I to see just how much pressure they can place on their own citizens and the citizens and governments of the world.
We, too, perhaps have been too drunk and too well entertained to notice the mounting pressure here at home.
I have heard these Republicans & Democrats, New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani, Gov. George Patiki, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Bush all say the greatest way to help all the victims and our country is to keep on working and keep on spending our money. Guiliani went so far as to do a light-hearted tourism promo for his city. So immersed in capitalism they cannot understand the vulgar, distasteful nature of their actions.
One of the triumphs and simultaneously evil outcomes of entering the information age is that a government such as ours can collect unlimited data concerning human behavior and responses to pressures (stimuli) of countless forms. Little by little government ratchets away our freedoms and civil liberties while causing us to believe those are being expanded.
By ratchet, I mean a method by which pressure or tension is leveled with a predictable easing of that pressure or tension. It work just like a mechanical ratchet works. Force is applied and let off slightly just before a stop falls into place. Having just experienced the maximum pressure or tension the subsequent partial easing of that pressure actually feels great, kind of like it feels after your arms have borne a heavy load until your arms start to tremble. If suddenly that load is lightened your arms, though still under great stress actually feel better. Repeated enough, ones arms grow stronger making them able to bear greater and greater loads. We must ask, who benefits from our capacity to carry a greater load? In my view the load bearer should. I don’t even have a problem with our government taking a fair share but this has not been the case for decades.
Our greatest, most evident example of this form of ratchet manipulation is seen in the arena of economics. Gas prices. Need I say more? Up they go higher and higher. Each time they fall a fraction of the last increase. I’ve heard far too often, consumers express thanksgiving that the prices went back down even though they remain just pennies lower than the last increase when the increase per gallon was a matter of nickels, dimes, and quarters.
Ratchet economics have replaced, as much as possible, the law of supply and demand. When true supply and demand is at work ratchet economics cannot be exercised successfully. Ratchet economics takes advantage of situations where supply is at least adequate to meet demand. Adequate supply is supposed to be a price lowering condition. The economists certainly know this as do most consumers. Research has shown that consumers will not only tolerate but feel relief when ratchet economics is employed. Every reason under the sun is given for gas price increases.
These reasons don’t have to be real or even make sense. Few consumers for lack of time and energy question the reasons given. As long as they can pay they will. If consumers do begin to reduce consumption in protest (which is rarely done excepting cases of no choice due to private, business, or corporate financial constraints) the petroleum industry and OPEC find heroic ways to bring the price back down but not all the way down. This doesn’t matter because a citizenry living at a breakneck pace hasn’t the time or energy to consider the details. Most are just happy they can experience any measure of relief.
We need to wake up. We need to get our minds off government sponsored lasciviousness, sports, and other forms of entertainment that dull our intellect. We need to grow up and be men and women of character. We need to stand for something more meaningful than the Super Bowl or social status. Ask yourself, who or what is my inspiration? We might even consider if our work robs us of the time, we should use as parents and citizens, to think about how things are going in our homes and our nation. We can no longer afford to simply just ride the wave of prosperity. All waves either dissipate or crash to an unyielding end.
Have you heard the phrase, “quasi-private business or corporation.” Listen up. You will be hearing more and more of this term. A great many of our new businesses and corporations are beginning with government funds. Why? Because it is nearly impossible for new business owners and even small corporations to begin new ventures any other way. A relatively new phenomenon called quasi-private businesses and corporations is rolling across the U.S. You may not even know if your paycheck is government funded.
Our freedom today is only as secure as our ability to buy it. The same is true of countries around the world.
By the way our two major political parties, the Democrats and Republicans exemplify how a ratchet works. The Republicans apply the pressure. The democrats release it, but just a bit. Poor folks will justifiably take any relief they can get. Rich folks can endure the high end pressure for a while. This why the two party system has worked so well for so long.
Following our great depressions and wars our parties had to come together and figure out to make this thing called capitalism work. We desperately had to show the rest of the world it works. Decades of inter-party collaboration have resulted in their practice of ratchet government.
It works. Little discussed is the utilization of psychological expertise by our leaders. A process called “habituation” is a well known process by which one simply gets used to a given stimulus to the point that the stimulus is no longer perceived.
This stimulus may be pleasure or pain. We have heard how U.S. has become “desensitized” to violence. This is just a form of habituation. Our leaders use this knowledge to the benefit of the government and even to their constituents when convenient.
Citizens we need to “resensitize” our minds and focus on what is happening in our world.
The latest seed has been planted. In a nearly subliminal way, even before we have positively identified our perpetrators, valuable energy is being exerted on rhetoric designed to groom the airline companies, our citizenry, and our lower level leaders to accept the federal government’s takeover of airline security.
In the 80’s we had an excellent, privately operated, government regulated security system in place. Not one airline incident occurred for ten years after its implementation. Ronald Reagan deregulated the airlines, including the security component. The premise was presented to the public in the terms, why regulate? We trust our airline industry to regulate itself. Air marshals we’re one of the first casualties of deregulation.
In reality, deregulation served our federal government well in its effort to divide and conquer one more cohesive network of Americans, the air traffic controllers. Deregulation was a small price to pay considering it was well known that an event of terror was inevitable. If the government was out of picture the airline industry would bear all the blame. This precept is now reality. And already the government is promoting complete takeover of the security component of the airline industry. But this time tax dollars will pay for the service. You see, raising taxes to pay for a tangible service is much easier than raising taxes to pay for bureaucratic, administrative services involved in the regulatory process. This has all worked out quite well for those dedicated to a vision of global control.
This process is a bit of a reversal of the ratchet principle. In this case our government gives a little and then takes away just a bit more than was given. This creates an outcome where little by little the freedoms and civil liberties of private businesses and private lives are whittled away.
Ours is still a great way of life. Like my friend, I have always been and desperately want to continue to be patriotic but not at all cost.
Blind patriotism is the substance of terror. Blind patriotism fosters hate and leads good people to a point of no return. Blind patriotism makes killers of good men and women.
I will never cease to hope a work for a world of peace. I often wonder where my old hippie friends have gone. Did their drugs satisfy their passion for peace. Have they become satisfied sitting happily and peacefully before their computer monitors, and TV sets while enjoying the effects of their Prozac, Valium, alcohol, four course dinners, and until now, a rising stock market?
Do these old hippies still nearly break into tears while listening to “Four Dead in Ohio” or has habituation set in? Is the tune and melody just a pleasant reminder they were once young? Are the words now just a familiar hum?
We have just lost 5000 [later revised to just under 3000] of our own on our own continental soil. Is anyone going to ask why? No...I mean is anyone going to demand why? Is anyone going to dare explore the possibility that our nation may be forcing starving and oppressed nations to lash out in a desperate attempt to survive? Is anyone going be brave enough to consider this attack was not necessarily orchestrated but possibly allowed to happen. Leaving ones door unlocked and a few words on the street that one has done so can insure a perpetrator will be unable to resist the temptation to strike. Sometimes tragedy is no less than a sacrifice bunt. The loss is considered less than the gain. This may sound cruel and it is but this practice of baiting our perceived enemies is not without precedent.
As God as my witness, the day will come when we or our children will learn of Afghanistan’s great oil reserves, other valuable resource(s) or some other political/military advantage to the U.S. That day will come and we, America the Beautiful, will likely be poised to take advantage of the situation.
The U.S. is, of course, not alone in this movement toward world domination. The New World Order means one world government and that my friends is the driving force of today’s events.
In recent years it has been historically documented that Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen. The Pearl Harbor Attack served its purpose well. It spurred on our economy and launched an unprecedented surge in defensive and offensive [military] technology, firmly establishing us as the undisputed world power. We may well have still been seeking this distinction had Pearl harbor never happened.
Our leaders were undoubtedly surprised at the public’s apathetic response to this news that we had literally dared Japan to attack us and then made sure we were unprepared to defend ourselves. Don’t believe this? All I can say is, “you should.” Search the net for reliable documentation of this. You will find it.
With raised eyebrows and a shrug our leaders logged our apathy and knew they could repeat history because the public had failed (refused) to learn from it. It is a difficult thing to challenge one’s own patriotic desires.
Folks, what we are experiencing, I cannot pretend to understand fully but I can think and I can draw parallels and assimilate global conditions and most importantly I can question authority. It our right and responsibility as citizens of a free, democratic country to do these things. Too long have we been been oblivious to foreign affairs. The rest of the world’s citizenry is very well informed on global affairs.
We are in trouble. Grave trouble. If we survive this clear and present danger we had better work with all our might to change our nation into a content nation. We do not need to rule the world. We do not need to own the world.
I publicly stated the President Bush is a fool when he childishly pulled us out of the Kyoto treaty. I stated that he was exacerbating suspicions and contempt held by many nations of the world toward the U.S.
Our nation has a history of walking out when it doesn’t get its way. Perhaps nothing, short of military violence, infuriates foreign leaders more than the practice of the world's most powerful nation pouting and walking out of talks or away from internationally binding agreements when it is not getting its self-serving way.
Our nation has a history of walking out when it doesn’t get its way. Below are examples of events that demonstrate an "our way or no way national attitude." These didn’t occur in the same century but I think we should consider these carefully.
~~~~~~~~~~
Crude Logic
By Robert Wright
Robert Wright is the author of The Moral Animal and Nonzero: The Logic of
Human Destiny.
Posted Friday, March 30, 2001, at 9:30 a.m. PT
The Bush administration wants to be clear on why it has chosen to antagonize the entire civilized world by abandoning the Kyoto treaty on climate change. President Bush doesn't deny that global warming is a problem, and he isn't averse to addressing the problem. It's just that this particular solution, by exempting developing nations from cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, would make the United States shoulder more than its share of the burden. While such American selflessness may have seemed fine to the woolly-minded one-worlders in the Clinton administration, the steely cost-benefit calculators in the Bush administration won't be so easily bamboozled.
Yet, elsewhere on the energy/environment front, bamboozlement seems to be the official Bush policy. I refer to the insufficiently scrutinized cost-benefit logic of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a project that actually amounts to a big American giveaway to the rest of the world.
On the benefit side of the equation: One standard estimate is that the drilling will yield 3.2 billion barrels of oil, a bit less than America consumes in six months. This number is often cited by critics of the project, who consider six months' worth of oil meager reward for a lifetime of environmental damage. But actually, this number vastly exaggerates the benefits accruing to the United States.
After all, there is one seamless world oil market. The benefit of those 3.2 billion extra barrels will be spread across the whole planet in the form of slightly lower prices. Since the United States consumes one fourth of the world's oil, it will get only one fourth of the benefit, in effect, 800 million barrels compared to 2.4 billion for the rest of the world. Yet the United States is assuming all of the direct environmental costs of the Arctic drilling. How generous! How woolly minded!
So, all told, Americans are getting six weeks', not six months', worth of oil for a lifetime of environmental damage. Yes, I know, the Bush administration quantifies the "environmental damage" side of the equation differently than, say, the Sierra Club. But just about everyone agrees there will be some damage to the ecosystem, and the part of the ecosystem in question is on American soil. So, to phrase the matter in the technical language of game theory: We're getting screwed by the rest of the world.
By the way, the Bush administration's claim that developing nations are "free riders" under the Kyoto accord is not beyond dispute. But for present purposes we can leave this issue aside. Even if we stipulate that Kyoto's distribution of burdens is unfair, we are still left with this conclusion: The basic difference between the Kyoto accord and Arctic oil drilling is that with the former the developing world is a free rider, and with the latter the whole non-American world is a free rider. In both cases, the United States is a free ride.
Puzzling, isn't it? In the Arctic, Bush is magnanimously sacrificing America's national interest while, on the global warming front, he is jealously guarding it. I'm having trouble finding the logical consistency here, unless always doing what American oil companies want qualifies as logical consistency.
Actually, I have nothing against jealously guarding the national interest. I consider myself a one-worlder of the non-woolly-minded variety. While I do believe we're moving toward a system of world governance, I believe we're doing so because, thanks to the non-zero-sum implications of technological evolution, rationally pursuing the national interest will increasingly mean cooperating with other nations. So, I welcome serious questions about whether the Kyoto accord adequately serves American interests.
But, so far, at least, the Bush administration shows no signs of being serious. Though it has rejected the Kyoto treaty, it hasn't said what an acceptable treaty would look like. Is the problem that the administration hasn't had time to find an acceptable alternative? But Bush has been complaining about the Kyoto treaty's unfairness for a year and a half now! In the course of all of his ruminations on the treaty's injustice, didn't Curious George ever once ask an adviser what a just treaty might look like?
Hey, George, I've got an idea that should meet with your approval. It would make a dent, albeit a small dent, in the global-warming problem and would spread the attendant sacrifice well beyond America's borders. Here's how it goes: Don't drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That will keep oil prices slightly higher worldwide and thus dampen the use of this greenhouse-gas-emitting fuel, in developed and developing nations alike! What do you think?
~~~~~
Tension returns to U.S. relationship with U.N. Disputes over human rights panel, racism conference, Bush policies have world body at odds with host
USA Today; Arlington, Va.;
Sep 11, 2001; Bill Nichols;
Abstract:
* The ejection of the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Commission last spring and the controversy over the just-ended U.N. conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, have upset even U.N. supporters in Congress. Secretary of State Colin Powell boycotted the conference because Muslim nations used it to accuse Israel of racism against Palestinians.
[Bush]'s foreign policy team denies responsibility ...
An 18th Century Event
U.S. Delegation Walks Out On Martin Delany's Address in London
INTRODUCTION
Returning triumphantly from his expedition into the Niger River Valley, Martin Delany was in much demand throughout the British Isles as a speaker.
Perhaps his most prestigious speaking invitation before the International Statistical Society, chaired by Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, and then considered the most esteemed scientific body in the world, was also destined for political controversy. Delany's invitation to speak originated from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who welcomed the delegates on the opening day July 16, 1861 at Somerset House. Chairing the gathering was also Lord Brougham and Vaux, then 82 years of age but, according to one authority, "still filled with the fire that had lasted him for sixty years of leadership in judicidal, suffrage, and anti slavery in both Houses in Commons and in Lords." (Ullman, p. 239)
As the August body convened at 4 PM, Lord Brougham, whose hatred of American slavery was most intense, addressed the body which included the delegation from the United States, headed by Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, the jurist, author, and then president of the University of South Carolina. The United States Ambassador George Mifflin Dallas was also seated on the dais, when Lord Brougham began:
Saying according to Mr. Longstreet: "I call the attention of Mr. Dallas to the fact that there is a negro present, and I hope he will feel no scruples on that account."
Martin Delany later recalled to his biographer, Frances Rollin: "While I fully comprehended his lordship's interest, meaning and its extent, the thought flashed instantly across my mind. How will this assemblage take it? May it not be mistaken by some, at least, as a want of genuine respect for my presence, by the manner in which the remarks were made?. . .These thoughts passed through my mind as soon as his lordship concluded his remarks; and as soon as the minister from Spain was seated, I rose in my place, and said: "I rise, your Royal Highness, to thank his lordship, the unflinching friend of the negro, for the remarks he has made in reference to myself, and to assure your royal highness and his lordship that I am a man." I then resumed my seat. The clapping of hands commenced on the stage, followed by what the London Times was pleased to call "the wildest shouts ever manifested in so grave an assemblage." (Rollin, p.119; Ullman, pp. 240+241).
A. B. Longstreet jumped up and led the U.S. delegation out of the hall. Ambassador Dallas stayed seated on the dais, silent. The proceedings were terminated immediately contrary to plans.
The following day, Ambassador Dallas refused to see a conciliatory Lord Brougham. U.S. Secretary of State Lewis Cass chastized Dallas for not walking out with the delegation in light of this "insult." On July 21, Longstreet wrote what Biographer Victor Ullman (Ullman, p. 243) called "one of the longest letters ever published" in the London Chronicle closing it with "farewell to Europe forever and forever!" Delany, quickly becoming an international celebrity, spoke before the Society on its last day, five days later: "I should be insensible indeed if I should permit this Congress to adjourn without expressing my gratitude for the cordial manner in which I have been received from the time when I landed in this kingdom to the present moment and in particular to the Earl of Shaftsbury, the president of the section to which I belong, as well as to every individual gentleman of the section, it matters not from what part of the world he came. I say, my lord, if I did permit this Congress to adjourn without expressing my gratitude, I should be an ingrate indeed.
I am not foolish enough to suppose that it was from any individual merit of mine, but it was that outburst of expression for sympathy for my race (African), whom I represent, and who have gone the road of that singular providence of degeneration, that all other races in some time of the world's history have gone, but I again tender my most sincere thanks and heartfelt gratitude to those distinguished gentlemen with whom Iterms of the most perfect equality." (Rollin, pp. 129+130; Ullman, p. 245).
Delany's off again, on again supporter, Frederick Douglass, wrote Delany highest praise in "Frederick Douglass' Monthly:" "The startling offense of the venerable and learned Lord Brougham was that he ventured to call the attention of Mr. Dallas, the American Minister Plenipotentiary, to the fact that a 'negro' was an acting member of the meeting of the International Statistical Society. This was the offense. There was no mistaking the point. It struck home at once.
"Mr. Dallas felt it. It choked him speechless. He could say nothing. It was like calling the attention of a man, vain of his personal beauty, to his nose or to any other deformity. Delany, determined that the nail should hold fast, rose with all his blackness, right up, as quick and graceful as an African lion, and received the curious gaze of the scientific world. Never was there a more telling rebuke administered to the pride, prejudice and hypocrisy of a nation. It was saying: "Mr. Dallas, we make members of the International Statistical Society out of the sort of men you make merchandise out of in America." Delany, in Washington, is a thing! Delany is London is a man." (Rollin, pp. 122+126; Ullman, p. 244.)
But you say, oh that was over hundred years ago.
~~~~~
Okay, that was then, this is now.
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 26 - US 'RACISM' OVER AIDS DRUGS IN AFRICA ADDS INSULT TO INJURY
From: Kabissa-fahamu Newsletter
Send reply to editor@kabissa.org
Wed, 20 Jun 2001 00:53:52 -0400
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 26
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1. EDITORIAL
US ‘RACISM’ OVER AIDS DRUGS IN AFRICA ADDS INSULT TO INJURY
The recent remarks by Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, on the capacity of Africans to time manage the supposedly complex drug regime of AIDS anti-retrovirals, are astonishing in their ignorance. Natsios has gone on record in a speech made to Congress, and in an interview with the Boston Globe as saying the money raised by a new global fund to fight AIDS should be used almost entirely for prevention services, not for the anti-retroviral drugs that have been so successful in extending the lives of people infected with HIV. Among the more ‘politically correct’ reasons Natsios cited for the difficulties posed in getting such drugs to AIDS victims in Africa - a lack of roads, shortages of doctors and hospitals, and wars – he also stated there is a problem with Africans themselves. Many Africans, he told The Globe, "don't know what Western time is. You have to take these (AIDS) drugs a certain number of hours each day, or they don't work. Many people in Africa have never seen a clock or a watch their entire lives. And if you say, one o'clock in the afternoon, they do not know what you are talking about. They know morning, they know noon, they know evening, they know the darkness at night."
As Bob Herbert, writing in the New York Times points out, this view of Africans as “so ignorant they can't master the concept of taking their medicine on time has become a touchstone of the Bush administration”. As many African specialists have pointed out, the education levels and health infrastructure vary significantly on the 54-nation continent, rendering generalizations about the people of Africa at best useless, and at worst, deeply offensive. Moreover, recent advancements now allow people to take one or two pills daily that each contain several anti-AIDS drugs. This regimen, now being used in several small African trials, means that anti-retrovirals can be taken without the need for exact time keeping methods. Although several groups have called on Secretary of State Colin Powell to fire Natsios for his “racist” remarks, Natsios has declined to comment since his testimony, although a spokesperson has said he regrets offending anyone because of his comments.
This ignorance is a crude example of the Bush administration’s attitude towards issues facing developing countries, and towards the AIDS crisis in particular. The real worry of many, including Natsios and other top US policymakers, is that falling drug prices will shift global funding of diseases such as HIV/AIDS away from prevention efforts, into much more costly drug treatment. This anxiety is shared by many in the West. It was recently reiterated at a United Nations conference in Geneva which announced that the best way to manage spending on AIDS from the proposed new multi-billion dollar global fund for health was to concentrate on prevention strategies rather than the mass purchase of expensive anti-retroviral drugs – despite the fact that these drugs are routinely offered to western AIDS patients. The fear behind Natsios’ ignorance of the facts – and behind much of Western policy on this issue - is that the bill for providing such drugs to those millions suffering from HIV/AIDS in desperately poor parts of the world will simply be too expensive to contemplate.
But the problem of the cost of treating AIDS patients in Africa and in developing countries is not one that is going to go away. Despite some recent advances in this struggle, such as South Africa’s landmark legal victory against pharmaceutical companies allowing it to buy cheap drugs and the offer of cheaper drugs from pharmaceutical companies - resulting in an 85% fall in the cost of anti-retrovirals to developing countries in the last few months; and depite the establishment of a new global health fund, and mounting pressure on the WTO to reform patent rules when they meet later this month in Geneva, many countries in Africa face enormous problems in their ability to afford AIDS treatments, and to administer them. South Africa has recently said it will not embark on a large programme of AIDS treatment, arguing that anti-retrovirals are still too expensive and beyond the budget of the health department. But if South Africa, with a relatively good health care infrastructure, seems unable to initiate such a regime, what chance is there that other African countries can afford to do so either?
AIDS threatens to wipe out an entire generation in Africa, and to destroy gains that have been made in political and economic development. If such a horrendous epidemic is to be prevented, adequate resources are needed, and both prevention and drug therapy treatments should be made available to its people. Yet while the international community considers that preventing such a death toll is simply too expensive, and while it harbours influential leaders in its midst who appear to believe that Africa’s people are even too ignorant to receive help, adequate funding needed to solve Africa’s AIDS crisis seems – shamefully - unlikely to materialise.
To send your comments or corrections to Administrator Natsios directly, use the link:
USAID Inquiries or send a message to pinquiries@usaid.gov
~~~~~
Armenia: U.S. Withdraws Genocide Resolution
Washington, 20 October 2000 (RFE/RL) - The U.S. House of Representatives has cancelled a vote on a resolution declaring as genocide the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923. The speaker of the lower chamber, Dennis Hastert, said he withdrew the resolution yesterday after President Bill Clinton invoked national security concerns.
Clinton had warned that the non-binding resolution, if passed, could damage U.S. ties with NATO ally Turkey and seriously harm other U.S. interests.
Clinton said these interests include the ability to contain Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, advancing peace and stability in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans, and developing Caspian Sea energy resources. Clinton said the question of genocide would best be left to Turkey and Armenia to resolve on their own.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem says Turkey's relations with the United States have been "saved from a grave threat" by the U.S. House of Representative's withdrawal of the resolution accusing the Ottoman Empire of the genocidal killing of Armenians early last century.
Turkish leaders had warned of retaliatory measures over the resolution, including a threat to halt American use of the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey. U.S. warplanes use the base to patrol no-fly zones in Iraq. Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, denies the charge of genocide of some 1.5 million Armenians, arguing that both sides suffered heavy casualties in partisan fighting as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
No response was immediately available from the Armenian side.
© 1995-2000 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
http://www.rferl.org
~~~~~
Are We Just Ordinary Men and Women?
I am quite puzzled. Will women of our military be able to kill innocent women, children, and helpless sick and elderly people in order to achieve our objective to bring the terrorists to justices.
I can hardly fathom the image of any woman I know engaged in such an activity.
Ordinary Men, Band of Brothers, Natural Born Killers
Here is a resonant juxtaposition from two recently published history books. We know people lie easily, but both of the following have the ring of truth, because the individuals concerned could easily have concocted better, more self-serving stories.
The shooting of the men was so repugnant to me that I missed the fourth man. It was simply no longer possible for me to aim accurately. I suddenly felt nauseous and ran away from the shooting site....I then ran into the woods, vomited and sat down against a tree...my nerves were totally finished.
Here is the second incident:
They got to the farm and without a struggle took the [man] prisoner. Liebgott interrogated him for thirty minutes, then declared there could be no doubt, this was the man they wanted, and he was guilty as charged....They prodded the man out of the vehicle. Liebgott drew his pistol and shot him twice.
One of these quotes is from an account of a regiment in the 101st Airborne during the invasion of Europe. The other is from a history of a German Reserve Police battalion.
The first is from Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, by Christopher Browning (Harper Perennial 1992), and concerns a policeman named Kastenbaum. Browning studied the records of a series of judicial interrogations of the members of Battalion 101 that took place in the 1960's. His intent was to determine how a group of ordinary middle-aged men from Hamburg, some of whom had worked with and been friendly with Jews before the war, adapted themselves to the executioner's task.
The second, in a way more remarkable, quote is from a less judgmental book, Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (Simon and Schuster, 1992). Liebgott, who executes a former Nazi "head of slave labor camps", is an American soldier. Actually, I loaded the dice a little in editing the second quote. Three soldiers were ordered by their captain to find and execute the Nazi, who was known to be hiding nearby. (The Germans had already surrendered.) One man decided he would not fire, because the captain did not have the authority to order a killing in peacetime. Each of the other two shot the man.
In case we try to derive too much comfort from the fact that one of the three Americans decided not to carry out orders, be aware that twelve members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 declined to shoot any Jews, and a number of others, like the one quoted above, quit when killing became too repulsive. However, they had been told there would be no consequences if they refused to kill. Ambrose does not mention if the soldier who refused to shoot had reason to fear any consequences.
Of course, a story like this would not be so surprising from the Korean or Vietnam wars. It mainly shocks us because almost everyone agrees that World War II was a just war reasonably handled. A description of the events at My Lai in 1968 with place names and people's names excised would be indistinguishable from an account of the actions of Reserve Police Battalion 101 similarly treated.
What this really means is that E Company and Battalion 101 both consist of ordinary men and form part of the same band of brothers. Though their difference in actions may be extreme (this is the only account of cold-blooded murder recounted by Ambrose, while Battalion 101 participated in the murders of 1,500 people on the first day alone), the difference in potential may be imperceptible. E Company did not have leaders instructing it to participate in genocide. Battalion 101 did. Had the situations been reversed, the men of Battalion 101 would certainly have been as decent as the Americans of E Company. Would E Company, if given genocidal orders, been as bloody as Battalion 101? Who can say no with confidence?
Shooting actions, whether genocidal or otherwise, against unarmed civilians have never ceased to occur since World War II. Americans, Jews of the fledgling state of Israel (Deir Yassin, 1948), Russians, South Africans and most recently, Rwandans and Serbs have committed such slaughter.
Yet somehow we are raised to believe that we are morally better than the Germans under Hitler, that what happened there could not happen here. This is self-delusion. The line between the average German in 1933, and the American, Rwandan or Serb today is thin or imperceptible. In any society in the world today, if the authorities order slaughter, a few will refuse, but most will comply.
This is the thesis of Oliver Stone's repellent movie, Natural Born Killers. All humans are murderers, or have the potential to be. Some admit it and act it out, others deny it but are. The police, the prison officials, the FBI agent and even the journalist in the movie are all murderers when the moment presents itself.
If we start from the premise that we are not, that we are better, then the truth may take us by surprise. But if we look inside and admit that we cannot be sure that we would perform differently than Kastenbaum of Battalion 101 or Liebgott of E Company, we have a firm footing to attempt a climb out of the mire.
~~~~~
My Friend’s Comments:
The news becomes a numbing repetition of chilling scenes with little verbal substance in between. We perhaps know nothing else to do but replay and watch again. A girl in my second period class Tuesday watched, for the nth time, the second plane crash into the towers. She blurted with all sincerity, "I feel really bad. This should be impacting me in some other major way, but I sit here thinking this is a great special effects movie. I don't know that this will affect the way we all carry on business tomorrow."
I replied, "I understand. I grew up on Hollywood too. And yes we'll probably be here tomorrow largely unaffected other than a troubled search of our feelings."
Others - many others - displayed reflex responses of disgust and desire for revenge. It's understandable. It's a first instinct. Most impressive in this historic event is the positive response of volunteers all across the country to assist victims and their families. It is refreshing to see the unity of diverse individuals working for a common positive goal. Prayers have been offered up in volumes for the safety of rescue workers and in hopes of finding more survivors. Prayers have also been heard for the protection of this great country and our way of life. Prayers are offered for an expeditious effort to find and bring to justice the perpetrators. Understandably, there have been rally cries to solidify the citizens of the nation to lay aside peripheral issues and support the cause of bringing back stability. A deluge of commendations for heroic individuals as well as the power and strength of our collective union washes across the screen.
I grasp for thoughts - wishing there was something more I could contribute. I am proud to be an American. I love freedom and suppress images of life without it. I, like most other fellow Americans, am willing to set aside other agendas to support efforts to aid victims and to prevent future occurrences. Emotions run from anger to pride to anxiety to compassion to numbness.
Then my daughter offered a prayer at dinner tonight. She simply prayed, "God help me to have a forgiving heart now so that I can receive forgiveness."
My thoughts were stilled and my heart quieted. In about an hour, I went to Habakkuk. Not a well read Old Testament book, it's best known for the song derived from chapter 2 and verse 20. That's also been one of the most comforting passages to me through much of my life. Now, however, the book is haunting.
The prophet cries out, "Lord how long must I call for help, but you do not listen. " I cry out, "Violence, but you do not save? Why do you tolerate wrong?
The Lord's response is, "I will raise up a ruthless, fierce people bent on violence."
Habakkuk complains again, "Your eyes are too pure to look on this evil. Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?"
The Lord replies again, "See, he is puffed up. He is as greedy as the grave and never satisfied. He is arrogant and never at rest. Woe to him who makes himself wealthy by extortion! Will not your debtors suddenly arise? Then you will become their victim."
Finally, the Lord's reply ends with, "But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him."
I have read Habakkuk over and over and over. There are many parallels and I struggle with perspectives on who is arrogant, greedy, self-reliant. I can only answer honestly for myself. I must question my motives and heart. 'Purer in heart' is the attitude that the song encourages us to achieve. I must question my contribution to the root causes of our present problem. At present, we are only discussing symptoms and ways to treat those symptoms. But there has been an infection growing for years. With all certainty, the evil resides in those who would kill innocent victims. With less certainty is the degree of virulence of the evil residing within our own (at least my own) heart and actions.
I suspect I am experiencing the same reflex emotions that many if not most people across the country are experiencing. As my friend, Kevin, pointed out to me tonight, however, we need to be very conscious of the words and life of Christ right now. His message was something unnatural - not instinctual. [Bush tells Sen. Joe Biden, in essence, "I know what I know because I have good instincts."]
Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'''
Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.''
Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!"
My prayers go out for all those affected by tragedy. I offer my support (although I'm not clear as to what that means) for efforts to expose the causative agents of this disaster. Ultimately, however, I am feeling helpless. I am helpless. Cutting through all of my patriotism, human pride, religiosity, and self-righteousness is a blaring fact. My sin - the greed, the arrogance, the lusts of life, the deception, the anger, and specifics too numerous and embarrassing to mention - places me in the same state of need for grace and forgiveness as those 'enemies' for whom I feel a passionate anger. Perhaps, because of the hypocrisy, my sin is even greater.
I sit in anxiety wanting to do something. I want to control the situation. At least some part of it. It is increasingly apparent to me, though, that I control nothing but the attitude of my heart. I cannot change the hearts or actions (directly) of those who wish me harm. I must maintain my own focus, however, and critically examine what aspects of my life may propagate resentment by others in the world. I must pray for the forgiveness and eventual salvation of those who hurt me most. I must humble myself in realization of the tragedy of my own sinful nature and ask for forgiveness. It is most difficult at this time. It is most necessary at this time. I find it excruciating. Encouragement from friends is always vital.
A simple prayer from my daughter lead to painful thoughts. In an ultimate perspective, however, Habakkuk 2:20 continues to bring me deep sigh and sense of inner peace. "The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him."
posted by Duane Short | 8/19/2006 09:17:00 AM
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