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HumanityRenewed

Month: February 2021

Biden Continues US Imperialism in the Middle East

A few days ago I wrote here about the hypocrisy of US (and Israeli) military exploits in the Middle East. It was titled “A Tale of Two Missile Attacks.”

Today we learned that president Biden approved several new attacks in Syria. The ABC news headline reads, “US carries out airstrike against Iranian-backed militia in Syria.”

As I was preparing another post on this unfolding situation, I discovered Caitlin Johnstone’s article covering the same ground, in fine form. Her piece is titled “US Bombs Syria and Ridiculously Claims Self Defense.”

I remain ashamed to be an American today.

I have excerpted her article below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:

On orders of President Biden, the United States has launched an airstrike on a facility in Syria. As of this writing the exact number of killed and injured is unknown, with early reports claiming “a handful” of people were killed.

Rather than doing anything remotely resembling journalism, the western mass media have opted instead to uncritically repeat what they’ve been told about the airstrike by US officials, which is the same as just publishing Pentagon press releases. . . 

So we are being told that the United States launched an airstrike on Syria, a nation it invaded and is illegally occupying, because of attacks on “US locations” in Iraq, another nation the US invaded and is illegally occupying. This attack is justified on the basis that the Iraqi fighters were “Iranian-linked”, a claim that is both entirely without evidence and irrelevant to the justification of deadly military force (emphasis mine). And this is somehow being framed in mainstream news publications as a defensive operation.

This is Defense Department stenography. The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor. It’s the people trying to eject them who are acting defensively. The deaths of US troops and contractors in those countries can only be blamed on the powerful people who sent them there.

The US is just taking it as a given that it has de facto jurisdiction over the nations of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and that any attempt to interfere in its authority in the region is an unprovoked attack which must be defended against. This is completely backwards and illegitimate. Only through the most perversely warped American supremacist reality tunnels can it look valid to dictate the affairs of sovereign nations on the other side of the planet and respond with violence if anyone in those nations tries to eject them.

 

It’s illegitimate for the US to be in the Middle East at all. It’s illegitimate for the US to claim to be acting defensively in nations it invaded. It’s illegitimate for the US to act like Iranian-backed fighters aren’t allowed to be in Syria, where they are fighting alongside the Syrian government against ISIS and other extremist militias with the permission of Damascus. It is illegitimate for the US to claim the fighters attacking US personnel in Iraq are controlled by Iran when Iraqis have every reason to want the US out of their country themselves.

Even the official narrative reveals itself as illegitimate from within its own worldview. CNN reports that the site of the airstrike “was not specifically tied to the rocket attacks” in Iraq, and a Reuters/AP report says “Biden administration officials condemned the February 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out.”

This is all so very typical of the American supremacist worldview that is being aggressively shoved down our throats by all western mainstream news media. The US can bomb who it likes, whenever it likes, and when it does it is only ever doing so in self defense, because the entire planet is the property of Washington, DC. It can seize control of entire clusters of nations, and if any of those nations resist in any way they are invading America’s sovereignty. . . 

. . . This sort of nonsense is why it’s so important to prioritize opposition to western imperialism. World warmongering and domination is the front upon which all the most egregious evils inflicted by the powerful take place, and it plays such a crucial role in upholding the power structures we are up against. Without endless war, the oligarchic empire which is the cause of so much of our suffering cannot function, and must give way to something else. If you’re looking to throw sand in the gears of the machine, anti-imperialism is your most efficacious path toward that end, and should therefore be your priority.

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Author David CrumpPosted on February 27, 2021Categories American Empire/Foreign Policy, Corporate Media, Media, President BidenTags American Empire, Propaganda, Syria

America’s Richest .01% Pay Only 1/6th of the Taxes They Used to Pay

Several weeks ago Chuck Collins and Bob Ward (both at the Institute for Policy Studies) posted a brief summary at Inequality.org of their recent study, “Wealth Concentration: The Unique and Dominant Role of Tax Policy.”

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Collins and Ward demonstrate once again that the game is rigged. And it’s not rigged in favor of working people.

Every since Ronald Reagan sold America a bill of goods called trickle down economics, changing the tax code to lighten (or to sweep away!) federal taxes for the richest among us has become standard, operating procedure.

Their study is shocking enough, so I’ll just get to it:

America hasn’t stopped taxing its wealthiest citizens entirely.

But that’s where we’re headed.

According to a new IPS briefing paper, the richest .01 percent of Americans, about 33,000 lucky souls today, now pay just one-sixth of what they used to pay in tax, when measured as a percentage of their total wealth.

The top .01 percent in America is a phenomenally wealthy group. Even during America’s most egalitarian periods, the average member of the top .01% held over 200 times the wealth of the average American. Today, the wealth of the average top .01 percenter is nearly 1,000 times that of the average American and is closing in on one billion dollars.

Hence, it doesn’t matter to the top .01 percent what type of tax they pay, be it income, sales, property or anything else. Taxes don’t influence their spending decisions or such mundane things as how many hours they work, when they retire, or whether their spouse must work. For a group whose poorest members are worth more than $100 million, the only impact any tax has is its impact on their wealth–and tax payments decrease the rate at which their wealth grows.

America’s radical tax transformation occurred over the last 65 years. The process started slowly between 1953 and 1980. It took 26 years for tax payments by the top .01 percent to fall by one-third from their 1953 peak. But starting in 1980, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans have followed a clear pattern: When Republicans have held power, tax cuts for those at the top have been slashed; When Democrats have held power, they’ve enacted a few slight tax increases, but mostly have maintained the status quo.

The result has been a systematic shift in America’s tax policy, with taxes on wealth moving inexorably lower and taxes on work moving inexorably higher. As economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have reported, the country has moved from a progressive tax system to one where the overall tax rate, as a percentage of income, is lowest for the very wealthiest of us. That’s bad enough. When we view the policy shift through the lens of taxation of wealth, as the IPS briefing paper does, it’s far uglier.

Effectively, taxes on the ultra-wealthy have nearly been eliminated. The members of the top 0.1 percent pay only one-sixth of what they paid a half century ago in taxes.  What used to be paid every two months is now paid every twelve.

And there’s no sign this trajectory is changing.

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Author David CrumpPosted on February 24, 2021Categories Class Warfare, EconomicsTags Class Warfare, Economics

More Advice to Churches Divided by Trumpism, QAnon, Stolen Elections, and Other Myths, Part 2

[This is my second post addressing the problems of political divisions in American churches. You can read the previous post here.]

In the New Testament passages that I cited in the last post, Paul warns his young friend Timothy about the dangers created by church members who believe in mythology, promote mythology, and stir up divisive controversies and squabbles as they spread their favorite mythologies.

Paul’s advice to Timothy is simple: Don’t tolerate any of these things.

In 2 Timothy 2 he says, Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels . . . Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

Let’s notice several issues in these letters.

First, what are the “myths” Timothy must combat? We can sidestep the debate over the specific content of the myths confusing Timothy’s churches. For our purposes, it is enough to understand what a myth was and how it functioned for those who believed it.

A myth was an invented story that explained why things are the way they are for those who believed it. Myths ordered a believer’s view of the world, bringing a sense of meaning and purpose to the devout.

For Christians, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, announcing the arrival of God’s kingdom on earth, is to accomplish all of these same things. But, of course, Christians believe that the Gospel is not a “myth,” in the common sense of that word, because we believe that the Gospel message is historical fact.

Second, we see that the contest between fact and fiction in religious debate is an ancient one. It is particularly dangerous to organize one’s view of the world around fancifully invented stories. As a Christian, I’d say that this is the problem with non-Christian religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Mormonism, to name only a few.

Third, anyone hoping to share the Gospel effectively with people devoted to mythology would do well to know the myths themselves and have some ability to point out their errors. Share the Gospel and knowledgeably point out the falsehoods of the myth. In other words, from a Christian perspective, replace fiction with facts. Then call for confession, repentance, and conversion.

Allowing a lie to shape the course of one’s life never pleases God.

Fourth, recognize the fact that not everyone will be willing to repent and change. Some people will prefer their mythology to the Truth of Jesus Christ. Here the leader/teacher must have wisdom. Recall, that Timothy was dealing with “church members” who claimed to be Christians.

They probably claimed to have a “new insight” that somehow enhanced or added to their Christian life. It would be tempting for a leader to think, “well they have some odd ideas, but they still confess Christ, so I’ll leave well enough alone.”

Bad idea.

People who cling to mythologies while continuing to profess faith in Christ are usually eager to share with others how much their mythical beliefs had added to their lives. Faith in Jesus is supplemented, and eventually usurped, by the mythology as the all-important elements of faith.

No faithful church leader can tolerate such compromise. No falsehood is EVER compatible with the truth of the Gospel. Controversy is inevitable. Paul judges it all very harshly. He concludes that such people have fallen into the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

Division in the Body of Christ, foolish quarreling, replacing the centrality of worship and service to Jesus Christ with other competing priorities, causes, leaders, or belief systems is all the devil’s work. He loves to see it happen. Wise, godly leaders will respond accordingly.

Fifth, the Christian church is not intended to include anyone and everyone. It is, after all, the Body of CHRIST. The church must reach out to everyone, hoping to persuade everyone, but will finally recognize that the Family of God only includes those who surrender their hearts, minds, and wills to the Lord Jesus.

And this family never entertains mythology and lies.

So, when people choose to reject the burdens and responsibilities of Christian discipleship; when they cling to their mythologies and continue to spread contentious lies inside the church; when they decide that pastoral correction infringes upon their freedom to believe what they want, and they eventually decide to leave, the church has not been split. The wheat has been sifted from the chaff.

Remember that Paul also says:

As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. (Titus 3:10-11)

If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. (2 Thess. 3:14)

The apostle John says about those who leave the church (rather than correct their false teaching) that “they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.” (1 John 2:19)

In fact, in 1 Corinthians 11:19 Paul even goes so far as to say, “No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval.”

To show which of you have God’s approval…

You may have noticed by now that “church splits” are not what concern me most at this point in America’s post-Trump history.

The greater problem, I believe, is the way in which Trump’s presidency exposed the infantile “spirituality” of American evangelicalism, the widespread failure of evangelical leadership, the lack of deep, meaningful kingdom discipleship among so many who call themselves Christians.

The evangelical wing of American Christianity must take our recent political history as a wake-up call.

Unthoughtful cries for “church unity” are NOT what is most needed in this moment.

Instead, the more necessary cry is It’s Time for the Church to Grow Up?! Evangelicalism’s wholesale devotion to Donald Trump; the continuation of “Stop the Steal” rhetoric within the church (and much more) all demonstrate the failure of meaningful discipleship development inside our churches.

We don’t understand the Lordship of Christ.

We don’t understand the nature and meaning of the kingdom of God.

We don’t understand what Jesus meant when he said, “Seek God’s kingdom first.”

We don’t understand what it means to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom.

We don’t grasp the all-encompassing upside-down, inside-out nature of Jesus’ ethical teaching.

Don’t be distracted by the superficial calls of distress, wailing superciliously about the dreaded dangers of division.

Focus instead on meeting the needs of the hour: It’s Time for the Church to Grow Up!

[In the next post on this subject, I will finally get to the article that initially prompted my thoughts. Thanks for reading.]

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Author David CrumpPosted on February 23, 2021Categories Bible & Theology, Christian Living/Church Related, Evangelicals & Politics, Pro-Trump InsurrectionTags American Christianity, Christian Ethics, Christianity and Politics, Court Evangelicals, Following Jesus, Religious Right

Texas Robber Barons Hit the “Jackpot” While Poor Texans Freeze in Bed

Cristian Pineda died of hypothermia, shivering to death inside his Texas

Cristian Pavon Pineda

home curled into a ball beneath layers of blankets. He was 11 years old.

Meanwhile, Jerry Jones, billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, declares that his Texas drilling company has “hit the jackpot” as natural gas prices shoot through the roof in Texas.

Jones is only the latest poster child for the evils of crony capitalism.

The rich get richer while the poor suffer, die, and get hit with sky-high price gouging. It’s the American way.

Camila Domonoske

Below is an article by Camila Domonoske at NPR.org. She fills in the details:

The winter storms gripping much of the United States have devastated many families and businesses, with frigid temperatures and power outages causing particularly dire conditions in Texas.

But for oil and gas producers that have managed to keep production going, this is proving to be a big payday. Jerry Jones, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, appears to be one of the beneficiaries.

Comstock Resources Inc., a shale driller that operates in Texas and Louisiana,

ARLINGTON, TEXAS – NOVEMBER 08: Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys watches action prior to a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at AT&T Stadium on November 08, 2020 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

told investors on an earnings call this week that the surge in natural gas prices was providing it with a major — albeit almost certainly temporary — financial boost. The company is publicly traded but Jones holds a majority of the shares.

“Obviously, this week is like hitting the jackpot,” President and Chief Financial Officer Roland Burns said Wednesday.

The storm has reduced natural gas output at the same time that demand — for both home heating and power generation — has skyrocketed.

That’s resulted in catastrophic shortages, as well as some truly eye-popping prices for natural gas in the affected regions.

Many in the oil and gas industry have taken a blow because wells and pipelines have stopped working in the unexpected cold.

But Comstock was already ramping up production in anticipation that natural gas prices would increase, and now finds itself benefiting from what it described as “super-premium prices” of “anywhere from” $15 per thousand cubic feet to as much as $179 per thousand cubic feet.

For comparison, the company had sold the same gas last quarter for an average of $2.40 per thousand cubic feet.

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Author David CrumpPosted on February 22, 2021Categories Class Warfare, EconomicsTags Christian Ethics, Christianity and Politics, Class Warfare, Economics

An Apostle’s Advice to Churches Divided by Trumpism, QAnon, Stolen Elections, and Other Myths

John Fea recently posted his thoughts about an opinion piece written by

Francis Wilkinson

Francis Wilkinson at Chicago Business.com. Wilkinson’s editorial is entitled “America’s Churches Are Now Polarized Too.”

His article is interesting, and I will return to it in a future post. As I read this piece, I found myself reflecting on my recent readings in the New Testament letters of 1 and 2 Timothy.

Timothy was a close assistant to the apostle Paul. 2 Timothy was Paul’s final letter to his young co-worker, written shortly before Paul’s brutal execution in Rome.

Both letters overflow with advice on what it takes to be a faithful pastor in an agitated Christian community threatened by internal divisions.

In other words, Paul is coaching Timothy in how to deal with the 21st century American church. For the more things change, the more they stay the same.

In this post I will print what I judge to be the most relevant sections of Paul’s advice to Timothy. It’s also very good advice for anyone calling him/herself a follower of Jesus Christ today.

I will deal more specifically with the relevance of Paul’s advice to the contemporary evangelical church in an upcoming post. For now, I will only draw your attention to Paul’s insistence on the importance of combating myths that challenge the truth of the Gospel.

One of the major problems confronting conservative churches today is the open circulation of destructive myths – political myths about Trump, elections, political parties, government agencies, and secular savior figures.

God’s people are called to remain fearlessly faithful to Truth. Truth is always the enemy of myths, whatever form they take.

1 Timothy 4:1ff

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. . .

 If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished on the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed. Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. 

1 Timothy 6:3ff

If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth. . .

2 Timothy 2:16ff

Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene. . .

 Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

 2 Timothy 4:3f

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

May we all ponder, pray, and act accordingly.

Amen.

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Author David CrumpPosted on February 22, 2021Categories Bible & Theology, Christian Living/Church Related, Evangelicals & PoliticsTags American Christianity, Christian Ethics, Christianity and Politics, Court Evangelicals, Propaganda, Religious Right

Greg Palast on the History of Texas Electric Power

Greg Palast is an investigative reporter who has recently written about the

Greg Palast, investigative journalist

Texas power debacle (among other things). His piece is entitled “Texas Gets Lay’d: How the Bush Family Turned Off the Lights.”

Palast covers Texas’ history of deregulation and ability it gives the power companies freely to engage in extreme price gouging.

Not only was this crisis anticipated, not only did the power companies refuse to prepare, now those same companies are charging exorbitant prices for power they have failed to deliver.

You can’t make this stuff up. It’s called crony capitalism — and how much capitalism is not tied to cronyism in one way or another?

Below is an excerpt, or you can read the entire article by clicking on the title above:

Maybe because Texas gave us that wet-lipped huckster Ted Cruz, you think the state deserves to freeze in the dark.

I get that, but it’s not their fault, a least not the victims burning family heirlooms to stave off frostbite.

“What happened was entirely predictable,” power distribution expert attorney Beth Emory said of the blackouts. She told me this twenty years ago, after the first blackouts in Texas and California, following the cruel experiment called “deregulation” of the power industry.

Until 1992, the USA had just about the lowest electricity prices in the world and the most reliable system.

For a century, power companies had been limited by law to recovering their provable costs plus a “reasonable,” i.e. small, profit. But in 1992, George H. W. Bush, in the last gasps of his failed presidency, began to deregulate the industry.

“Deregulate” is a misnomer. “De-criminalize” describes it best. With the “free market” supposedly setting the price of power, Texas-based Enron was freed to use such techniques as “Ricochet,” “Get Shorty,” and “Death Star” to blow prices through the roof when weather shut down power plants. (This week was not the first game of Texas Gouge’m.)

Enron was not the only Lone Star power pirate. Houston Power & Light was “ramping” plants up and down at odd hours which whistleblowers said was deliberate.

Bush’s son “Shrub,” Texas Gov. George W. Bush, signed a law in 1999 forcing the state’s hapless customers to accept any price the “free” market dictated. Enron’s CEO Ken Lay showed his appreciation by becoming Baby Bush’s number one donor for Dubya’s presidential ambitions.

This week, wholesale electric prices in Texas, normally $50 per megawatt-hour, busted over $9,000/MWHR. Again. It happens with every cold snap and heat wave. One shop owner, Akilah Scott-Amos, showed the Daily Beast her electric bills which blew up from $34 per month to $450 for a single day.

 

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Author David CrumpPosted on February 21, 2021Categories Class Warfare, Economics, Texas Power OutageTags Class Warfare, Propaganda, Texas Power Outage

Privatization + Deregulation = Texas Nightmare

I am sure that you have already heard or seen examples of the conservative misinformation machine’s attempts to blame the Texas power outages on the inadequacies of wind turbines, solar power, and the Green New Deal.

Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, gave the game away, however,

Texas governor Greg Abbott

when he made two different TV appearances on the same day to discuss the problems Texas is facing.

Chris Hayes of MSNBC broadcast the clips back-to-back, highlighting both the conservative, Republican lies about green energy, but also Gov. Abbott’s close kinship to Pinocchio. You can almost see his nose grow in the clip below.

http://humanityrenewed.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/‘Brazen-Lie-Chris-Hayes-Calls-Out-Gov.-Abbott-Fox-News-For-Texas-Power-Grid-Lies-All-In-MSNBC.mp4

First, Abbott spoke on local, Texas television. When talking only to Texans, he explained the power outages accurately, like a reasonable person. The primary issue was a lack of winterized equipment, especially for the natural gas facilities and pipelines. The gas tanks and supply lines were frozen solid.

Then Abbott spoke to a national audience on the Fox network. In this interview, he spewed his conservative hogwash about the failures of wind farms and solar panels, though (strangely enough) he did mention that these sources only supply about 10% of Texas’ power. (He, obviously, was counting on his conservative coconspirators to be so busy cheering his lies that they wouldn’t stop to reflect on the obvious incongruity of his statement.)

Gov. Abbott’s two-faced appearances demonstrate that he is a sock puppet for America’s fossil fuel industry, as are all the other conservatives spewing the same rubbish. They are exploiting the poor people of Texas by balancing their corporate lies about what went wrong on the frozen backsides of suffering people who have no heat or clean water.

But, hey. That’s what selling your soul to corporate power will do to you.

According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Greg Abbott has taken over $28 million from fossil fuel corporations over his political career, including $11 million alone in his most recent election campaign.

No wonder he can only criticize the Green New Deal.

The real problem in Texas – aside from unscrupulous politicians – is the inhumane economics of deregulated privatization. Neoliberalism strikes again, but his time it’s the conservative fan base of anti-government, pro-laissez faire capitalism that is paying the price. (As opposed to the South American working class and other species of human cannon fodder typically exploited by US corporations around the world.)

Federal regulators warned Texas officials a decade ago (!) that its power grid was not prepared for extreme winter conditions, the very conditions that struck Texas this week. (Check out this good overview of the issues by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Thanks to my friend Suzanne McDonald for bringing this report to my attention.)

Texas had been warned. The CEOs and politicians chose to do nothing.

It’s not hard to figure out what happened. First, the majority of Texas is not connected to the national power grid. Texans pride themselves on their independence. So, they decided to go it alone.

Furthermore, Texan “power independence” is motivated by the conservative hatred of federal regulation. By keeping Texas power separated from the rest of the nation, Texas power companies remained free of regulatory oversight.

Ahem……Sooooo…when federal regulators told Texan power company officials that they were woefully unprepared for future blizzard conditions, Texan politicians remained warm and cozy with their corporate overlords and told the feds to stuff it. No one could force them to do otherwise.

It’s not hard to imagine the decision-making process.

The CEOs and board members of Texas power companies got together and decided that preparing for a “once in a century” winter storm front was not cost effective.

Cost effectiveness is the cold, hard, bottom-line reality that the sycophants of unfettered, global capitalism love to ignore – and what too many of their followers rarely think about. (The economics at play are also known as neoliberalism – check out this good discussion at Jacobin magazine.)

It is ALWAYS a bad idea to hand over control of public services/utilities to private corporations. Private corporations do not work in the public interest, regardless of what the PR department tells you.

Yes, yes, neoliberal propagandists like to talk about the superior services that will supposedly arrive with privatization, and the lower prices made possible by glorious deregulation.

Except, this predictable PR palaver is all smoke and mirrors.

The truth of the matter is that the #1 priority of any corporation is PROFIT, making as much money as possible for its shareholders. Cost effectiveness is judged according to increasing profit margins.

Winterizing Texas was not economically feasible if these corporations were to continue raking in the dough.

Predictably, then, the rich made more money while the majority of Texans were set up to suffer. But, hey, it’s only once a century, right?

This, folks, is neoliberal chicanery writ large.

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Author David CrumpPosted on February 20, 2021February 20, 2021Categories Class Warfare, Corporate Media, Economics, PoliticsTags Class Warfare, Economics

A Tale of Two Missile Attacks

A Tale of Two Missile Attacks

This past Monday evening, the Iraqi city of Erbil was hit by a rocket attack that

A rocket explodes in the streets of Erbil, Iraq

killed one US contractor and injured eight others, as well as one US service member.

Naturally, US spokespersons are up in arms threatening retaliation “at a time of our own choosing,” to quote the president. This has been a leading news story in the American press (see here, here, here, etc.)

The issue right now is that US officials have yet to identify the perpetrators.

Of course, their ignorance does not stop those same officials from pointing fingers at Iran (read the articles highlighted above). Naturally, no one in the American press has the courage to push back or ask questions like:

If you have evidence of Iran’s guilt show it to us. You have yet to produce anything.

It seems far too convenient for you to accuse Iran while you are also pressuring them to accept your unreasonable terms for reentering the JCPOA nuclear treaty.

Of course, Iran might be responsible. Or it might not. If it is responsible, the fact that president Trump assassinated Iran’s Commander of Iranian military

Iranians mourn Qassim Suleimani

forces, Qassim Suleimani, certainly gives them good reason to strike back at the US.

Imagine how the US would respond if Iran launched a drone strike and assassinated the the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the leader of all US armed forces, on American soil. I don’t think I need to elaborate, except to point out that Iran has remained amazingly restrained.

On the other hand, the rocket may also have been launched by any one of a number of Iraqi militias.

The vast majority of the Iraqi people are Shia Muslims, as are the majority of Iranians. Most Iraqis have more reason to identify with Iranian opposition against the United States than they do to sympathize with America.

After all, the Iraqi government has repeatedly told US officials that they want American forces OUT of their country. Yet, the US continues to ignore these demands.

While there have been Iraqi protests against Iranian actions in Iraq, there have been far more popular protests against the American presence in Iraq. The people want the US out of their country just as much as the government does.

So, perhaps the recent rocket attack was the work of an Iraqi militia showing their displeasure with American forces remaining in their country?

This is an equally valid conjecture, perhaps even more so, yet American’s will

Iraqi crowds demand US withdrawal from their country

never hear about this possibility in US news coverage. No, Iran is the current US whipping boy. So, whether with evidence or without, Iran will continue to be demonized in the American press.

But that is only half of the story.

Another rocket attack occurred in Syria only a few days prior, but this attack received minimal coverage by the US press. More than that, US officials have not offered a word of condemnation because these missiles were launched from Israel.

Israeli sources report that nine pro-Syrian government personnel were killed. Syrian sources report that three Syrians and four Iranians were killed in the attack. And we must remember that whatever Iranian forces are fighting on the ground in Syria, they are in Syria at the government’s invitation to help Syria combat US aggression.

Actually, this was the third Israeli missile attack in ten days. How much US coverage did Israel’s offensive actions receive? Very little.

Attacking its neighbors is standard Israeli operating procedure.

Israel has bombed Syria for years, with impunity. Israel even boasts about its

Israeli rockets hit Syrian forces near Damascus

bombing sprees. In fact the Chief of Staff of the Israeli forces, Aviv Kochabi, proudly admits, “We have struck over 500 targets this year (2021!) , on all fronts, in addition to multiple clandestine missions.”

The US never objects to these attacks because Israel shares the US goals of overthrowing the Syrian government. And both nations have black-balled Syria and Iran as dangerous enemies.

So, let me get this straight.

Israel can attack whomever it wants whenever it wants, with US support (and media silence).

The United States can continue forcefully to occupy whatever nation it wants for as long as it wants, despite the fact that both the national government and the majority of the population repeatedly demand that the US withdraw its forces.

However, Iran and Syria remain the “bad guys” who deserve to be punished — primarily for refusing to accept US/Israeli unilateral demands.

Meanwhile, any attack, no matter how small and ineffectual, against US (or Israeli) forces is decried as a horrible crime deserving the harshest punishment.

This is the Tale of Two Missile Attacks. One by Israel. The other by who knows who.

It is the story of American (and Israeli) Empire. It is ugly and unjust. It is a wicked abuse of power that ought to be condemned by every follower of Jesus Christ around the world.

Yet, the majority of America’s evangelical Christians will faithfully cheer on the  bloodshed.

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Author David CrumpPosted on February 17, 2021February 18, 2021Categories American Empire/Foreign Policy, Corporate Media, Evangelicals & Politics, Iran, Israel, Media, President Biden

President Biden Continues Trump’s Unmerited Hostility Towards Iran

Caitlin Johnstone has written another good article explaining the ridiculous

Caitlin Johnstone

nature of president Biden’s current policy towards Iran.

The article is entitled, “Biden’s Iran Policy is Just Trump’s Iran Policy with a Rainbow Flag Emoji.”

Tragically, Biden is continuing to pursue standard, irrational bullying tactics that have long characterized US foreign policy.

And, of course, no one but no one in the mainstream media pushes back or dares to question the fundamental injustice, not to mention the militaristic dangers, now posed by this administration’s behavior.

I have excerpted a part of the article below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:

In a new interview with CBS Evening News, President Biden confirmed that his administration will not be lifting sanctions imposed upon Iran in order to bring Tehran to the negotiating table for the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal.

“Will the U.S. lift sanctions first in order to get Iran back to the negotiating table?” Biden was asked by CBS’s Norah O’Donnell.

“No,” the president replied.

“They have to stop enriching uranium first,” asked O’Donnell.

Biden nodded in response.

With Iran resuming its enrichment of uranium, we asked Pres. Biden if the U.S. will lift sanctions first in order to get Iran back to the negotiating table on a nuclear deal.

“No,” Pres. Biden says, affirming that Iran will have to stop its enrichment program first pic.twitter.com/OPszf15Q1o

— Norah O'Donnell 🇺🇸 (@NorahODonnell) February 7, 2021

There are a few things that are ridiculous about this, the first being that the JCPOA does not require that Iran “stop enriching uranium” at all. As explained by Al-Monitor‘s Arash Karami, the deal only calls for Iran to “keep its level of uranium enrichment at up to 3.67 %”, a level it only began exceeding when the Trump administration backed out of the deal and imposed sanctions. The administration later clarified that Biden meant Iran would have to return to its JCPOA levels before negotiations could begin, but the fact that neither the United States president nor the high-profile reporter interviewing him appear to have been clear on this says a lot about the vapid nature of America’s political/media class.

More importantly, this is confirmation from the horse’s mouth that Biden is in effect continuing Trump’s Iran policy. Trump began strangling Iran with crushing sanctions in an effort to force it to obey US dictates, and Biden is continuing that exact same strangulation while continuing to demand compliance with its dictates. The demands might be a little different, but the effect is identical since Tehran would never bow to either of them.

The Iranian government has repeatedly made it abundantly clear that it will not be rejoining the JCPOA until the United States comes back into compliance, since it was the US who first abandoned it. It claims, correctly, that it was in full compliance with the agreement when the Trump administration unilaterally backed out in May 2018. The argument that it is therefore Washington’s responsibility to come back into compliance first is indisputable. Why would it re-enter a deal with a government that is clearly acting in bad faith and could just back out and impose civilian-killing sanctions on the nation again?

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Author David CrumpPosted on February 17, 2021Categories American Empire/Foreign Policy, Corporate Media, President BidenTags American Empire, Iran, Israel

What is Intersectionality?

Scientific researchers still discover new, previously unknown species of animals as they explore our world. Believe it or not, hundreds a new species were discovered in 2020 alone.

Each new discovery requires study, weighing, measuring, and analysis in order to figure out where to locate this new creature within the current taxonomy of known animal life.

The biological description required is not inventing anything truly new, but is merely describing a creature that has always existed. The animal is only “new” to us.

No sensible person would read a scientific report describing a newly discovered creature and say, “I don’t believe this! I have never seen such a creature before; therefore, it cannot be real. The sphere of my current understanding encircles all that can be truly known. And my understanding does not include this!”

We would call that person a Luddite, an anti-intellectual, an obscurantist. Certainly, such a person has no business running or making decisions for educational institutions like Christian seminaries!

But, alas, certain qualities of “conservativism” never change. That’s why they are conservative.

Knee-jerk reactions against new ideas – especially if those ideas are developed by the dreaded “non-Christian secularists” – have always characterized conservatism, whether politically or religiously.

As I continue my series discussing Critical Race Theory (see the previous post here), you may recall that I have defined this Theory according to three analytical grids: White Privilege, Systemic Racism, and Intersectionality.

This post will briefly discuss Intersectionality. (For more explanation of Intersectionality, I suggest looking here and here for starters.)

The principle of Intersectionality recognizes that each person represents the intersection of different individual characteristics. In western society, the most pertinent characteristics are gender (male/female; I am not discussing transgenderism in this post), race/ethnicity (white, black, Asian, Arab, etc.), and class (rich, middle-class, poor, educated, uneducated).

Each individual instantiates, or incarnates, a different combination of these various characteristics. These distinctions are important to recognize because each of them, in their many combinations, can bring a different range of social and economic status to the individual.

For example, for several summers during college my wife worked in Alaska salmon canneries. When I recently explained Intersectionality to her, she immediately recognized it from the working conditions and payment schedule in Alaskan canneries.

She described a very rigid hierarchy of power and privilege, with white men at the top (with the most authority and highest wages) and Eskimo women at the bottom (with the least authority and lowest wages). Ranked in between (I don’t recall the exact order) were Japanese men, white women, and Eskimo men.

It’s not hard to see how the intersection of race and gender (and perhaps class) determined very different treatment for different people who were all doing basically the same work.

So, Intersectionality merely recognizes the obvious: that in many respects African-American women have had a much harder row to hoe than white women, and both have faced many more difficulties than white men.

It recognizes that white applicants from wealthy families of alumni have a far easier time getting into Ivy League schools than white (or black) applicants from lower-class families who are first generation college applicants. (That’s the reason for affirmative action, by the way.)

(I am reminded of the book The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein, which explains how the leaders of Ivy League universities insisted that the residential neighborhoods surrounding their campuses must all be segregated to exclude black residents.)

I could continue with more examples, but I think you get the point.

The principle of Intersectionality, as a tool in Critical Race Theory, simply describes the obvious. The theory does not create anything new. It only points out reality and tries to describe discriminatory processes more accurately. In this respect, Intersectionality helps to shed light on the complexity of Systemic Racism.

At the descriptive, analytical level I suggest that Christians ought to be thankful for the insights of Critical Race Theory and its application of Intersectionality to our social norms and relationships.

Every Christian organization and denomination ought to be applying these analytical tools to itself and learning from its own history, as we all work at understanding and correcting race/class/gender relations within the Body of Christ.

However, as with my previous posts on this subject, I also think that Intersectionality can be misused (Joe Carter provides a good analysis of such misuse in his article, “What Christians Should Know About Intersectionality. I think he gets it right when he writes, “The problem with intersectionality arises when it ceases to be an insight and becomes an ideology.”)

Intersectionality focuses on “power relationships” — who has power, who lacks power, who is the oppressor, and who is oppressed.

Evangelicals dislike this discussion of power relationships, and it becomes a major reason for their wholesale rejection of Critical Race Theory. Why? Because Karl Marx was the first social, cultural critic to describe human

Karl Marx

relationships in terms of power dynamics.

Conservatives criticize the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement for the same reason. Thus, both Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory are dismissed with a facile flick of the wrist as dangerous harbingers of “Cultural Marxism,” the latest, bogus boogie-man propped up by pseudo-intellectual, culture critics.

However, Marx was absolutely correct in his analysis. The problem today is not the fact that Intersectionality draws insights from Marx, but that certain advocates of Intersectionality see all human relationships as nothing but power contests between the exploiter and the exploited.

I encountered this often during my years as a university professor, especially when a feminist colleague explained some policy or curricular disagreement between two people (or groups) who happened to be (represented by) a man and a woman.

Invariably, the disagreement was reduced to a power contest where the man was trying to impose his authority over the female. Often, the actual content of the debate would be set aside.

I would hear the advocate of Intersectionality insist that the rational arguments involved merely provided cover for the imposition of white, male power over the woman “opponent.”

Of course, power and control may have been key issues in those debates. After all, such power contests are a perennial feature of human behavior.  But making that judgment first requires familiarity with the details of the debate. It cannot simply be assumed and imposed as THE explanation for all such disagreements.

When a critical, analytical tool is ossified in this way, reified into an ideological template that is universally imposed upon all human interactions, we have entered into dangerous territory. This transition from analysis to ideology is often reductionistic, and that’s a problem.

When this happens we have entered an anti-intellectual realm where evidence must always yield to the current theory; it becomes a totalitarian territory where understanding is governed by the conformist power of an immutable idea.

So, here is the challenge: thoughtful Christians must always walk a line between teachableness and cooption.

Unfortunately, too many Christian leaders (who ought to know better) fail to understand this difference.

On the one hand, Critical Race Theory together with Intersectionality provide important insights into the reality of human relationships. Wise Christians will take these insights seriously and respond accordingly, while always remembering that all people are created as the Image of God. Jesus Christ loves all people equally; he gave his life for all equally.

Critical Race Theory can help us all understanding the continuing challenges we face in dismantling discriminatory practices that run against the grain of Christ’s gospel message.

On the other hand, the Image of God is much, much, MUCH more than the sum total of each individual’s intersecting, distinguishing characteristics. The Image of God is essential, definitive for humanity.

As we acknowledge the negative, unjust situations often created for a person in response to her intersecting, distinguishing traits, we can never reduce that person to the theoretical social outcomes of those traits in today’s society.

Yes, life is filled with power games. But life is also much more than the combined outcome of intersecting power dynamics imposed upon me by others.

Yes, there is a great deal I cannot change or influence. But as The Original confronting my reflected Image, God holds me accountable for how I served others; how I worked to empower the disempowered; how I sacrificed my privilege so that the underprivileged might get ahead; how I lifted up those who had fallen; how I embraced the excluded; how I denied myself to serve others as Jesus has served us all.

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Author David CrumpPosted on February 17, 2021February 18, 2021Categories Christian Living/Church Related, Critical Race Theory, Evangelicals & Politics, Racism, Systemic Racism, White PrivilegeTags American Christianity, Black Lives Matter, Christian Ethics, White Privilege

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