Tag: Propaganda

Forward Magazine: “Does Israel Have the Right to Exist?”

Yousef Munayyer has an excellent article in the Forward entitled “‘Does Israel Have a Right to Exist’ Is a Trick Question.”  Mr. Munayyer provides an

Yousef Munayyer

excellent demonstration in critical thinking and the value of recognizing a leading question when asked.

Asking this question, do you recognize Israel’s right to exist?, is a favorite “go-to” strategy for Zionist apologists when debating critics of Israel.  It can arise in different forms.  Another favorite is the Zionist accusation that non-Zionist criticisms of Israeli policies “delegitimize” the state.

What does that mean, “to delegitimize Israel”?

The implied answer is that critics of Israel’s Zionist policies are denying Israel’s right to exist.  It’s another rhetorical trap.  Don’t fall for it.

Below is an excerpt from Mr. Munayyer’s article.  You can find the entire piece here.

“The truth is that no state has a ‘right to exist’ — not Israel, not Palestine, not the United States. Neither do Zimbabwe, Chile, North Korea, Saudi Arabia or Luxembourg have a “right to exist.”

“States do exist; there are about 200 in our world today, even though there are thousands of ethno-religious or ethno-linguistic groups.

“And these states don’t exist because they have a ‘right’ to. They exist because certain groups of people amassed enough political and material power to make territorial claims and establish governments, sometimes with the consent of those already living there and, oftentimes, at their expense.

“Most people understand this. I’ve never heard anyone demand to know whether Switzerland, or even the United States, has ‘a right to exist.’ States come and go over time; borders can change, names can change, regimes can change and yes, discriminatory systems underpinning regimes can change, too. But one state demands to be beyond reproach through a mythical ‘right to exist’: Israel.

“Can you imagine asking indigenous Americans and indigenous rights activists — fighting for the rights of a population whose languages, societies, culture and possessions were categorically decimated in the process of erecting the United States — whether the United States has a ‘right to exist’?

“That you can’t imagine this is testimony to the disingenuousness of the question. For this question is asked — almost always of critics of Israel’s policies — not for the purposes of debate and discourse, but rather, to create a gotcha moment, to undermine the credibility of the person questioned.

“It is intellectually dishonest and intended, almost always, to silence critics and criticism of Israeli policies.

“Worse, factors like the unfortunate though all-too-often-commonplace conflation of the State of Israel with Judaism and world Jewry, coupled with the awful history of persecution Jews have faced, mean that anyone who doesn’t answer the question about Israel’s right to exist with an unequivocal ‘yes’ risks being portrayed as an eliminationist radical worthy of labels like ‘anti-Semite’ and otherwise marginalized.

“In other words, it’s a set-up.

“Criticizing Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian people, including during its establishment and since, in the form of discriminatory policies against refugee repatriation, should never be conflated with eliminationism. The policies of all states should be open to criticism.

“…it is humans, not states, that have a right to exist. This includes all people: those who identify as Israelis and Palestinians alike, along with seven billion others.

“People also have a whole set of other rights — human rights, which states cannot deny. These include the right to free movement, the right to consent to being governed, the right to enter and exit their country, the right not to be tortured or collectively punished, and so on.

“It is by guaranteeing these rights and only by guaranteeing them that states derive their moral legitimacy; it is not from some mythical ‘right to exist’ or even the historical need of their people, but rather from the extent to which their policies respect the rights of people.

“The question should not be ‘Does Israel have a right to exist’ but rather, ‘Is the way in which Israel exists right?’”

CBN Christian News Misrepresents the Issues While Advocating for the Rich

CBN Christian News has recently posted an article that grossly misrepresents Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion about increasing the marginal tax rate.

The article is written by Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation (more on this later).  It is entitled, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 70% Tax Rate Won’t Work.”  Sadly, it is another example of the many ways

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

in which so-called Christian journalism regularly fails on both counts – failing to provide either real journalism or a distinctively Christian analysis.

Like so many others,  Mr. Moore is too busy carrying water for the wealthy powers-that-be to offer his readers anything beyond the standard conservative, Reaganomics talking-points.  (See my first post in my series on Class Warfare in America).

Since I recently wrote a post discussing American taxation and Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion, I thought it would be worthwhile to use this CBN article for another exercise in how to think critically while reading the news.

There are many things that could be discussed here but I will limit myself, first, to dissecting three specific instances of misrepresentation and falsehood.  Second, I will then pull back for a broader discussion of the political origins to Mr. Moore’s commentary.

Three Specific Points:

First, throughout his entire article Mr. Moore’s tone works to conjure up the conservative bogey-man of a predatory federal government hell-bent on confiscating as much of the reader’s money as possible through higher taxes.

Since, his writing is a piece of commentary, I can let Moores’s overt subjectivity slide.  (His obvious disdain for Democrats reeks through every sentence, but he is entitled to his opinion.  I am no fan of the Democratic party, either).

I’ll give just one example:  Moore describes Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion as “cheery talk of returning to confiscatory tax rates.”

“Cheery talk”?  Notice that Moore’s opponents can’t be taken seriously.  Their heads are in the clouds.

But we can’t forget that all taxation is “confiscatory.”  Should no one pay any taxes at all?  Many libertarians will answer Yes to that question.  But I am not a libertarian.

Taxation is a part of the social contract in which we all participate, allowing our government to provide the numerous services benefiting us all.  It is not a confiscation but a contribution to the common good and the general welfare of the country, of our communities.

Choosing to use that negative word, confiscate, is a rhetorical strategy intended to appeal to every reader’s defensive, selfish, inner-Scrooge.  Sadly, it works, all too well.  Even among the readers of “Christian news.”

Only the selfish – and study after study shows that the billionaire class has a very high percentage of those folks – begrudge assisting their neighbor (who needs the fire department when his house catches fire) or paying their own way (for wear and tear on the roads and highways they drive every day) by paying their share of taxes.

Returning to my main point, what cannot be forgiven, however, is Moore’s clear suggestion that a 70% tax rate would take 70 cents out of every dollar earned by every taxpayer in America.  He knows better, but stoking this lie works to the advantage of his propaganda.

In other words, Mr. Moore is lying and he knows it.  Unfortunately, many readers will not understand that this entire discussion is about marginal tax rates, and Moore has no interest in clarifying this confusion.  He is more interested in sowing fear and anger than he is in educating his readers, so he fails to mention this important fact.

Check out the following sites for easy explanations of how marginal taxation works (here, here and here).  The fact is, only a portion of the millionaire’s/billionaire’s highest bracket of income would be taxed at 70% (or 90% or 50% or whatever); much of it would not.  And the vast majority of Americans would never come anywhere near that higher bracket, remaining unaffected by the marginal tax increase.

Mr. Moore knows all of this.

He is purposely misleading his readers by feeding us misinformation and falsehoods.  This, folks, is utterly unacceptable in any source touting its “Christian perspective.”  It is the most un-Christian, even anti-Christian, sort of writing one can imagine.

In fact, I will say this:  it is worse than printing something overtly Satanic, because Mr. Moore is deliberately abusing his readers’ trust by planting lies which he knows will manipulate his audience into supporting a position built on falsehood.

Now, THAT, my friends is a truly demonic strategy, if ever there was one.

Second, Moore repeats a favorite argument of Reaganomics fans by claiming that Reagan’s tax cuts, and the majority of subsequent tax cuts, increased the national revenue (with no citations for personal follow-up).  In other words, the government gains more money, not less, when it cuts taxes on the rich, according to Moore.

But recall economist Paul Krugman’s claim about “reputable economists”

Professor Paul Krugman

in his article endorsing Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion:

We need to do some research here.  As luck would have it, I already did some.

Check out this detailed analysis and discussion of the Kennedy, Reagan and Bush tax cuts and their effect on the U.S. economy (at econdataus.com with copious citations and data for follow-up, unlike Moore’s article).  It is fascinating.  Or you can jump down to the excerpted summary below:

“The argument that the near-doubling of revenues during Reagan’s two terms proves the value of tax cuts is an old argument. It’s also extremely flawed. At 99.6 percent, revenues did nearly double during the 80s. However, they had likewise doubled during EVERY SINGLE DECADE SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION! They went up 502.4% during the 40’s, 134.5% during the 50’s, 108.5% during the 60’s, and 168.2% during the 70’s. At 96.2 percent, they nearly doubled in the 90’s as well. Hence, claiming that the Reagan tax cuts caused the doubling of revenues is like a rooster claiming credit for the dawn.”

I won’t fault Moore for having a different interpretation of the economic data, but I can fault him for: (a) not citing the sources for his argument in a way that allows the reader to check it on her own; (b) failing to mention that there is a serious debate on the issue among economists; and (c) leaving the impression that all those on the opposite side of the fence are ignorant, dopey-eyed dreamers out of touch with reality and ignorant of history.

Finally, strangely enough, Moore dismisses the idea of taxing billionaires at higher rates by claiming that in the bad old days of higher taxes:

“IRS data confirms that almost no rich people paid those 70, and 80 and 90% tax rates. They hired lawyers and lobbyists to escape paying the taxes, or they stashed their money away in exotic tax-exempt shelters or bought tax-free municipal bonds to avoid forking over the majority of their income to the IRS.”

This is a strange way to bolster his argument.  In fact, it undercuts his point.

His claims may be true, I don’t know.  But, if so, the obvious solution is not to lower taxes on the rich (that is like saying “since a speed limit does not prevent drivers from speeding, we should do away with the speed limit”) but to impose stricter regulation on the many ways created by billionaires for hiding their wealth – methods, by the way, that are not available to the poor or the average taxpayer.

The Author and the Bigger Picture:

Where do Mr. Moore and his article come from?  To answer that question, we need to step back and look at the broader political context of this taxation debate.

For a number of decades, the conservative movement (including Libertarians like the Koch brothers) have brilliantly implemented a strategy

US President George W. Bush speaks on the war on terror 01 November 2007 at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.  AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGAN.

for changing – even controlling – the terms of economic and political debate in this country.

A key ingredient in that strategy was the creation of the think tank.  Think tanks are “academic” institutions that employ researchers to produce books, articles and position papers legitimizing the conservative worldview held by the wealthiest, conservative Americans.

The Brookings Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation are three examples of U.S.-based think tanks.  Remember that our author, Mr. Moore, works for the Heritage Foundation.

These think tanks are bankrolled by wealthy, conservative donors for the sole purpose of influencing public debate to their own political and economic advantage.  Of course, there is nothing wrong with wealthy donors contributing to a research institution…as long as their money does not control the results of the institution’s research.

Once that shift occurs, it’s no longer doing research but producing propaganda.

These think tanks are not intended to promote academic freedom.  Just the opposite.  Their researchers, like Mr. Moore, are paid for one purpose and one purpose only:  to produce “data” and to make arguments that advance the economic and political interests of their wealthy, conservative sugar-daddies.

So, now that we know who Mr. Moore is, where his ideas come from, and what he is being paid to do, his arguments and information are not the least bit surprising.  Neither are his lies, manipulation and misinformation.  He is a hired gun, paid handsomely to promote trickle-down Reaganomics to the general public, by any means necessary.

I wish I could say it is surprising to see a supposedly Christian news outlet like CBN promoting and benefiting from what is, in effect, a public swindle by a high-priced conman.  But, alas, this has become not only the way of the world, but the way of modern, American evangelicalism.

Class Warfare in the United States.  All Hail American Empire!

(This post is part two in a series discussing America’s class war and its bearing upon Christian ethics and the church).

During the 1980 presidential primary race, George H. W. Bush famously described candidate Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic proposal as “voodoo economics.”  (See post #1).

Check out the video below:

If the first ingredient in Reagan’s cauldron of economic voodoo was tax cuts for the wealthiest who needed them the least, the second ingredient was a huge expansion in the nation’s military budget.  Check out this article by Matt Taibbi at the Rolling Stone for more on our current military spending.

More than half of the nation’s discretionary spending goes to the military-industrial-surveillance complex.  The following pie chart depicts the 2015 budget allowances.  Over half, 54% to be precise, went to the military:

The United States spends as much money on its military as the world’s next ten nations in line.  President Trump approved a $717 billion defense bill, increasing U.S. military spending by over $200 billion in 2017.

 

Remember all of this money is going to an institution that recently failed its first ever audit and is unable to account for $21 trillion.  That’s right:  $21 trillion unaccounted for by our military-industrial complex!  Haven’t heard this fact discussed much on network news, have you?

That the American public allows this kind of abuse to continue is not only a classic example of throwing good money after bad, it is the ultimate illustration of something called the Stockholm Syndrome, when kidnapping victims are gradually brainwashed into sympathizing with, and even assisting, the very criminals holding them hostage.

Similarly, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs, the Defense Department and U.S. arms manufacturers all conspire to hold this country hostage.

They concoct imaginary threats (like Iran), bilk the American tax-payer for hundreds of billions of dollars in ransom money every year, and then watch approvingly as the masses dig deep to hand over the military’s blood money while standing to salute the flag and sing “God Bless America.”

The entire scenario is obscene.  Especially because the spending is not motivated by the requirements of national defense, regardless of the political rhetoric used to assuage any (rare) objections or questions from the public.

The only reason standing behind our massive military budgets is the continued expansion of the American Empire, an Empire that enriches our billionaire class.

Do we really need 800 military bases in 70 countries around the world?  No.

Is it necessary for us to conduct secret drone bombing campaigns in 8 different countries?  No.

Don’t worry.  The carnage is bi-partisan.  In 2016 President Obama dropped nearly 31,000 bombs in seven countries.  President Trump, “the most hawkish president in modern history,” topped that by 9,000, dropping nearly 40,00 bombs in 2017.

At the end of the day,  all of these bombs and wars boil down to war-profiteers making more and more money.  Listen to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson lambaste the unfettered greed laying at the heart of American war-making.

Yes, American warfare boils down to billionaires making more and more money; retired generals and admirals becoming CEOs, sitting on more and more boards of directors for more weapons manufacturers; or signing six figure contracts for their “consulting work” (otherwise known as lobbying) on behalf of armaments companies like Raytheon, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Check out the Ten Companies Profiting Most From War.

In 1935, Marine Corp General Smedley Butler wrote the anti-war classic, War is a Racket.  He would know.  I encourage you to read the general’s short book, if you haven’t already.  Below is an excerpt:

“WAR is a racket. It always has been.

“It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

“In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.”

General Smedley’s words are as true today, perhaps more so, than they were 80 years ago.

Nearly 1/4 of every tax dollars goes to the military budget

Once again, feeding the war machine results in a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest Americans.  First, our tax dollars justify increased, military expansion.  Second, that expansion funnels hundreds of billions of dollars in profits to the CEOs and shareholders who run the burgeoning U.S. arms industry.

The rich get richer while everyone else bears the burden.

Of course, the greatest burden is the cost of war in human lives.

Rarely do the rich sign up to go to war (though a few legislators tried to change that in 1935. It didn’t happen). That responsibility falls to others who have few, if any, other options for a career or for higher education.  And who knows how to begin counting the untold numbers of civilian casualties created by America’s sleek, stealth drones firing anonymously from thousands of feet in the air, killing innumerable, nameless brown people, men,woman and children, for who knows what reason.

But, don’t worry, American tax-payer.  Every bomb dropped, every missile launched is just more money in the bank for another U.S. corporation perfecting the dark-arts of human slaughter.

The final injustice of our obscene “defense” budgets (we really ought to call it an “offensive” budget) is the neglect of the American people and the social needs of our society.

In 2017, the U.S. budgeted $623 billion on national defense.  Many budget analysts argue that by reducing our defense budget down to European levels, we would have the money needed to do such things as:

  • Provide free, universal, early childhood development programs to all our children
  • Debt-free college for anyone attending a state university
  • Student loan forgiveness
  • Dramatic reductions in our rates of homeless and childhood-poverty
  • Reduce the nation’s deficit
  • Provide free health care to every American

Everything discussed here are humanitarian concerns that ought to animate every disciple of Jesus Christ.

What could be a more pungent expression of “loving your neighbor” through social engagement than working to starve the war-mongering beast of American Empire for the good of everyone, at home and around the world?

Fact: Most Political Violence Comes from the Right. It Must Be Confronted

In April 2009 the Department of Homeland Security issued a 9 page report entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.

The report summarized a number of government intelligence assessments and warned that a growing movement of “right wing extremist movements” posed the greatest threat of political violence and domestic terrorism in the United States.

As soon as the report was made public (which was not its original purpose), Republican Congressional leaders, together with a litany of conservative commentators, raised a hue and cry condemning the report, lambasting the DHS, and screaming for the heads of anyone — especially “liberals” or Democrats — who tried to engage in a serious discussion of the report’s findings.

Congressman John Boehner said the report was “offensive and unaccceptable.”  Fox News insisted that the DHS owed the entire country an apology.

Sadly,  none of  this was the least bit surprising coming from the conservative-Republican establishment which remains anti-science, anti-evidence, anti-logic, and anti-anything-that-calls-for critical self-assessment.

Of course, the DHS report was  immediately suppressed.  You probably have never heard of it.  As a result, the nation never had an open public conversation about the rising terrorist threat in this country, and why it was emanating from the right-wing.

It is impossible to have a productive conversation when one side can’t stop denying the facts, as Sarah Huckabee-Sanders continues to do almost every day.

Then in 2017 the Anti-Defamation League published another study, bulging with copious evidence and citations, stating similar conclusions.  A Dark & Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States  opens by stating:

“Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years, a fact that has not gotten the attention it deserves.”

Facts cannot be ignored.  They will eventually have their own way, whether we like it or not.

The rank cowardice displayed by the mainstream and the right-wing media guarantees that the public remains steeped in ignorance on this issue.  Daily we hear the mindless, false equivalencies and bogus comparisons.  Pundits insist that both sides are to blame; everyone needs to compromise; the right and the  left must meet somewhere in the middle.

The Republican party moves in a more and more extremist direction, yet anyone who points this out is accused of polarizing the debate.

What absolute rubbish!  It simply is not true.

The right-wing is to blame.  It is a fact, plain and simple.  No one benefits from a lie.

There is something about conservatism and its social, political rhetoric that, especially when taken to an extreme, becomes fertile soil for unstable people prone to violence.

We all — but especially God’s people — must be more concerned with the truth than we are with partisan defensiveness.  This means being open to correction.  Being willing to learn.  To admit when we have been wrong.

And most of all, we must be willing to change.

Tragically, evangelical Christianity persists in unapologetically identifying itself with a right-wing political movement that has blood on its hands.

Yes, that’s right.

Congressman Boehner, Fox News, and every other conservative spokesperson who helped to muzzled the DHS warning in 2009, who plugged their ears to the ADL report in 2017, who still refuses to admit the self-evident connection between Trump’s violent rhetoric — which has repeatedly embraced and advocated more violence — and the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant terrorism dragging itself mercilessly across our country, all have blood on their hands.

God’s people cannot be a party to any of this.

The War Prayer, by Mark Twain

Besides being a brilliant author and humorist, Mark Twain was a man of deep conscience.  But that won’t surprise anyone who has read his books.

From 1899 to 1902, the United States was embroiled in another of its imperialist wars.  This time in the Philippines.  Twain was a staunch opponent of American empire and publicly protested against the Philippine-American war.

His short story, “The War Prayer,” was submitted to the magazine Harper’s Bazaar in March, 1905.  The editor’s rejected it.  Because Twain was under contract, he couldn’t submit it to anyone else.  He wrote to a friend lamenting,

“I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.”

The Prayer was finally published in 1923, thirteen years after Twain’s death.  When I was teaching, I made it a regular practice to read Twain’s story to my students.  It is as relevant for us today as it was in 1905.

 

The War Prayer

by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory with stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!

Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord and God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think. “God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, and the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon your neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain on your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse on some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard the words ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.”

—

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

A Journalist’s Code for Christians

One of the bloggers I always enjoy reading (while not always agreeing with her) is the freelance journalist Caitlin Johnston.  Caitlin recently wrote a post reflecting on a tweet from Tim Black, host of the YouTube program, Tim Black at Night.

Here is an excerpt from Caitlin’s blog:

“Last night, one of my callers said we needed journalists and commentators willing to die for the truth,” Black tweeted. ‘I disagreed. We need journalists and commentators willing to give up their status, quit their jobs and make less money telling truth and sadly to most that’s the same as dying.’

“There’s so much truth in that I just want to unpack it a bit and riff on its implications from my own perspective. What would happen if a significant percentage of journalists got fed up with spoon feeding lies to a trusting populace and decided to place truth and authenticity before income and prestige? Or, perhaps more realistically, what if people who are interested in reporting and political analysis ceased pursuing positions in the plutocrat-owned mass media and pursued alternate paths to getting the word out instead?…

“…as Tim Black said, once you’ve set your sights on climbing to the top of the establishment media ladder, abandoning it can feel like death. And indeed, it is a kind of death: a death of the identity one builds up around the possession and pursuit of the power, prestige and wealth that comes with the realization of that goal. It’s a death of an egoic structure, one that a whole lot of energy has gone into upholding. Serving power has been both financially and socially rewarding for as long as there have been governments.”

Now, reread Caitlin’s post and replace the references to journalists, reporters and political analysts with words like pastors, Christians, and church leaders.  Notice what happens?  We end up with a perfect description of Jesus’ call to Christian discipleship – people who are willing to suffer and die for living a life of faithfulness to the Truth – and his warnings about the many temptations waiting to sidetrack his people – selling your conscience for the sake of ego, wealth, prestige, power and fame.

I am reminded of the message I heard this Sunday at my church.  The concluding text was Matthew 16:24-26.  Jesus says to journalists, reporters, Christian journalists, and Christian reporters of all stripes, as well as butchers, bakers and candlestick makers:

“If anyone would come after me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it do for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeits their soul?”

The church in this country is well and truly lost until it swells with genuine kingdom citizens who have so completely “died to themselves” that the prospects of physical suffering, professional loss, private shunning and even death for the kingdom teaching of Jesus Christ is not only considered inevitable, but is eagerly embraced because we know that then and only then have we fully experienced “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him [Jesus] in his death” (Philippians 3:10).

Good journalists and faithful disciples are like kissin’ cousins.  They both devote their lives to honestly reporting the truth regardless of the cost.

This was the goal of Paul’s life.  It ought to be ours, too.

If Russia is an Enemy, It’s Our Own Fault.  So, Let’s Fix It!

The cheapest, easiest, most reliable –and the vilest – way for a government and its leaders to assure the support of its citizens is to have an enemy.  If the nation doesn’t already have a big, fearsome enemy, then the government can always invent one.  The bigger, more dangerous and frightening the better.  All nations do this.  The good old U.S. of A. is particularly adept at this national game.

We were told that the Soviet Union was out to conquer the world.

Preaching a message of Us vs. Them, especially if you can persuade folks to believe that They pose an imminent, existential threat to Us, is the simple, time-tested method of rallying people around the flag and stirring patriotic loyalty to the nation-state.  Civil religion is the sharpest hoe for plowing this national field.  It doesn’t require much thought from either side, and religious messages – whether civil or uncivil – always cut the deepest.

In fact, the process is downright magical.  Religious leaders, especially preachers, are the most adept practitioners of this art of fear-mongering, but precious few presidents, senators or congress-persons have ever been capable of saying “No” to the mystical powers of simple enemy-conjuring.

In fact, this is a guaranteed method for any nation-state hoping to convince its young men and women to sacrifice their lives on a foreign battlefield, typically a place they have never heard of before, while hating an enemy they don’t know, have never seen, and can only conceive of through the lens of the dehumanizing propaganda dished out to them in basic training – or the nightly news.

Take the latest enemy all Americans are supposed to fear:  Russia and the Bear incarnate, Vladimir Putin.

I will not take on the near-hysterical “Russia-meddling in our elections” story here. (Let me just say that I am standing with journalists like Max Blumenthal, Glenn Greenwald, and Aaron Maté who still refuse to jump onto that bandwagon until we are provided with evidence that any such thing actually occurred.  So far, we have only been shown accusations dressed up like evidence. I will also note that members of the important watchdog group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, such as Ray McGovern and William Binney have written extensively on this subject, an area with which they are intimately familiar, and they generally come to the same conclusion.  Please, check out their arguments.)

Below I have links to 2 interviews of Professor Steven Cohen.

Part 1 here.  Part 2 here.  Please take a few minutes to watch and listen.  Part 2 especially addresses US culpability in damaging our relationship with Russia.

Cohen is professor of Russian studies at New York University.  He is also emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University.  He has spent much of his life working in the Soviet Union/Russia.  He is a lifelong student of Russian political history.  I have read many of his articles, but most recently I read his fascinating book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War (Columbia, 2009).  The book’s final 3 chapters, The Fate of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev’s Lost Legacies, and Who Lost the Post-Soviet Peace? are especially pertinent to today’s anti-Russia headlines.

You won’t see Prof. Cohen interviewed on corporate news outlets because he is a man of principle who, as any true academic will tell you, bases his arguments on facts and evidence.  He doesn’t toe the popular line.  He won’t repeat the standard fear-mongering charges of US politicians, bipartisan  Russia-phobes (the Democrats and so-called liberals have gone around the bend!) and the network talking-heads.

In fact, Cohen presciently warns about the very real dangers of today’s McCarthyite atmosphere — he calls it a New Cold War more dangerous than the last — where anyone who thinks it is a good idea to talk with Russia and to build a positive, cooperative relationship with the world’s other nuclear super-power can only be a Putin stooge. He also explains why Russia has very good reason to see the United States as an aggressor.

If we are in the midst of a new Cold War, it was begun by the USA not by Russia.

Russia need not be our enemy.  In fact, there is every reason for us to work together as allies.  If that is not the case, it is our own fault.  We need to own up to and make amends for the many ways the USA has trashed its relationship with Russia by breaking our promises and betraying their trust.

Christians, too, should be deeply concerned about matters of facts, truth, maintaining peace, and building friendships rather than antagonisms.  I do not believe that these are the concerns motivating president Trump’s overtures to Vladimir Putin.  I suspect that his friendship with Putin has everything to do with his deep financial ties and indebtedness to the Russian mafia, otherwise known as the oligarchs.  (See the books by David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump and It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America).  But, whatever his motives, positive overtures to Russia is the one sensible thing Trump has done.

I encourage God’s people to pray and to think critically before jumping on anyone’s political bandwagon.  Pray for diminishing tensions that will help to ensure peace.  Pray for national humility.  We need to confess our many national sins that have made the Russians skeptical of our intentions…with good reason.

God loves Russia and the Russian people as much as anyone else.  We are not His favorites.

Hands Off Venezuela, America! You’re a Big, Fat, Bully Nation!

I have been meaning to write about Venezuela and the distorted coverage of its internal affairs that we have been receiving in this country for some time now.  Well, I better do it now, before the US sends our troops to help complete the overthrow of another democratically elected, South American government, and the US press extolls the virtues of yet another one of our “humanitarian interventions.”  (That was sarcasm, in case you missed it).

Crowds of voters during the 2012 elections

Western news coverage of Venezuelan politics, whether by print, radio or television, not only in the US but in Britain and Western Europe, offers a perfect example of how corporate media dishes out pure propaganda to its consumers.

This includes everyone.  I have yet to find a single exception to this rule in the case of Venezuela, whether it’s Fox, ABC, NCB, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, you name it.  They are all the same.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro

Everyone is touting the same line: Nicolas Maduro is a dictator.  He has killed Venezuelan democracy.  The people are oppressed. There is no freedom of speech or of the press. The entire nation is starving due to government mismanagement. And on and on…

Sound familiar?

For a legible version see http://lati-negros.tumblr.com/post/31490408699/56-us-military-interventions-in-latin-america

Anyone who knows anything about the long, bloody history of American intervention in South American, however, will already be suspicious of such uniform, lock-step reporting.  Especially when few if any of this “reports” are coming from (a) journalists who speak Spanish (b) doing investigative journalism (c) on the ground in Venezuela (d) by speaking to a broad spectrum of actual Venezuelans still living in Venezuela.  (For information on US-sponsored coups in South America see this, this, this, this and this).

From what I can discover, the reality in Venezuela today is exactly the opposite of what our news media is telling us.  They have democratic elections. In fact, Jimmy Carter’s election monitoring organization observed Venezuela’s national elections in 2012 and concluded that “The election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”  (For further discussion, see this article on “Why the US Demonizes Venezuela’s Elections” by Mark Weisbrot, another guy I pay attention to.  Another great source of information is Venezuelanalysis.com, where you can find “Facts About Venezuela’s Presidential Elections and the Voting Process”).

WW 2 propaganda poster

I mention all of this, not only to highlight another clear example of the way our government and corporate controlled media try to propagandize us all, but also because propaganda often paves the way for military intervention and war.

Remember that President Trump has already threatened using “the military option” on Venezuela if Maduro won reelection (also here).

So, why does the US government hate the Maduro government in Venezuela?

First, Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world and is a significant source for US imports.

Second, the Venezuelan people have chosen to elect a socialist government, which is a convenient way for the US to resurrect the Cold War bogie man of creeping communism sucking at American’s underbelly.  There are several problems however:

  • If America is the great defender of democracy around the world, what business is it of ours to interfere in country’s that democratically choose a socialist government?
  • Venezuela has not threatened to invade any neighboring countries. The US is the only nation threatening to invade another in order to overthrow its (democratically elected) government.

Third, beginning with Hugo Chavez and continuing with Maduro (but not as aggressively) the Venezuelan government has worked at nationalizing its industries, including its oil production.  This has been good news for the general population, but not such welcome news for the CEOs of the major oil companies operating in Venezuela.

Whenever more money flows into the pockets of the local people, ensuring that less money will flow out of the country and into the pockets of foreign oil conglomerates, the corporate executives always call Washington, D.C. and demand some of that ole’ time “regime change.”

Mohammed Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran

Don’t forget that in 1953 the CIA and the British overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mosaddegh in Iran (and had him executed) after he decided to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, depriving British Petroleum of its windfall profits at Iranian expense.  There IS a clear precedent for all this.

So, in preparation, the government propaganda machine has been rolling for some time now, preparing us for the possibility of another illegal military/CIA intervention overseas.  If/when it happens it will be described as another chapter in the noble saga of America’s sacrificial “defense of freedom around the world.”  (Wave flags and play patriotic music, with predictably mind-numbing effects, here).

US orchestrated coup in Chile, 1973

In fact, it will be one more bloody intervention in another nation’s affairs where innocent human beings will be murdered by the thousands simply because US business interests are lusting after more and more money.

This government overthrow will then be followed by the imposition of a conservative, right-wing government, perhaps even a military dictatorship, as has happened so many times before.  The multinational corporations with return. The resource extraction will be denationalized and reprivatized so that the majority of the benefits will go back overseas to Western companies, and the local people are once again deprived of what is rightfully theirs.

THIS IS WHY CHRISTIANS, and by this, I mean the entire Christian church in this country, NEED TO CARE ABOUT THE NEWS AND POLITICS!

Because we want to obey Jesus’ teaching that “we do to others as we would want them to do to us.”

Because we want to “love our neighbors as ourselves.”

The US military kills people all around the world in our name, using weapons created with our tax dollars, pursuing policies supposedly for our benefit, sacrificing the lives of our children and the children of many others, all in the name of “American values.”

I am firmly convinced that nobody who genuinely knows and loves Jesus Christ; no one who understands Jesus’ values and the manner of living he taught and modeled for his disciples, can possibly be at peace with our country’s interventionist policies around the world.

We must object, speak up, write letters, call our representatives and insist that we stop meddling in Venezuelan internal affairs.

No US military or CIA in Venezuela!

(This post originally included a section on finding reliable news sources for this type of information and discussion.  I have decided to make that a separate post to follow shortly.)

“PROPAGANDA 101: HOW TO DEFEND A MASSACRE,” A Superb Deconstruction of a Zionist Attempt to Justify Israel’s Slaughter of Palestinians

Current Affairs online magazine has an excellent article by Nathan J. Robinson entitled “PROPAGANDA 101: HOW TO DEFEND A MASSACRE.”

Recently, the New York Times — a staunchly pro-Zionist newspaper —  published an op-ed from Jewish Journal editor Shmuel Rosner entitled “Israel Needs to Protect Its Borders. By Whatever Means Necessary.”

Rosner is a typical apologist for political Zionism, evincing all the heartlessness and ideological blindness we have come to expect from such defenders of the indefenseless.

Mr. Robinson provides a text-book lesson in how to read as a critical thinker.  He does a marvelous job of deconstructing Rosner’s propaganda line-by-line.

I encourage  to read the entire piece. It will reward your effort many times over. Just click on the title above.  Thanks.

Learn to See Through Israeli & Christian Zionist Propaganda #christianzionism #memri #gaza

I looked in on the CBN website today just out of curiosity.  There I found an article on the many Palestinian people killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza under this headline:   ‘Hamas Sacrificing Children’: Why Gaza Clashes Aren’t Peaceful Protests but a Hamas-Inspired Death Cycle (dated 5/17/18).

Knowing that CBN is a major provider of “Christian news” in the US, and that an article like this will (mis)inform many, many more people than will ever read even-handed reports on what has happened in Gaza, I decided to use this article as an exercise in how to deconstruct propaganda.

This article is  pure propaganda for a Christian Zionist readership, intended (a) to tell people what they want to hear and thereby (b) reinforce what they already believe.  There is nothing informative about it.

  1. First, notice the headline.  The Hamas organization is mentioned 3 times.  In Zionist parlance, Hamas is nothing more than a deranged terrorist organization intent on destroying Israel by any means possible.  Thus, the headline immediately paints the past 7 weeks of protests as an exclusively Hamas-controlled, “terrorist” event designed somehow to destroy Israel.

Note the phrases “cult of death” and “sacrificing children,” both implicit references to the repeated Israeli refrain that all Palestinians — especially Hamas — raise their children to hate Jews; that they have no appreciation for life but only yearn to die as suicide bombers attacking Israelis.

So, the stage is set. This is a story about the irrational hatred of people whose only goal is to “drive Israel into the sea,” as Zionists love to repeat.

2. Second, notice that all the embedded videos, ostensibly providing evidence for the many inflammatory claims made throughout the article, come from MEMRI TV.

So, let’s check out MEMRI.  What is this organization? Where does it come from?  Who is behind it? A little investigation (take some time to read this investigative article from The Guardian newspaper by Brian Whitaker) will quickly reveal that MEMRI is a “non-profit institute” located in Washington, D.C. (subsidized by US tax dollars) established by former members of the Israeli intelligence services, i.e. it is a strongly Zionist outfit that exists in order to promote political Zionism in the English-speaking world.

It seems that MEMRI’s “research” method is to watch and read Arabic and Farsi (otherwise known as Persian; the language of Iran) TV, magazines and newspapers.  They find the most outlandish public statements possible — without providing any context, so the reader/viewer has no way of judging how representative the statements may be — and then disseminate those statements as if they represent the widespread views of the average Palestinian, Arab or Iranian.

THAT is a dishonest, misrepresentation of the facts, and it makes me angry to know that my tax dollars (and yours) are subsidizing this stuff!  It is not hard to find a convenient wacko saying something stupid wherever you look. (I am tempted to say, “Just turn on Christian TV.”) But using those kinds of words to depict an entire group of people as equally wacko is not only dishonest; it is also slanderous and racist, things that every Christian ought to stand against, call out and reject whenever possible.

3. Once we get into the body of the article, its first major point is that:

“…one Hamas official admitted that 50 of the 62 people killed were Hamas members, a group labeled a terrorist organization by the US State Department.”

Let’s ask a few questions about this statement:

(a) 62 people were killed on Monday, May 14 alone.  The total number of dead over the entire period of the protests was 112 – 120, while the wounded were 12,000 – 20,000.  The article deliberately fudges the death toll and fails to mention the injured in order to downplay the vast numbers of people shot by Israeli soldiers.

(b) Is the so-called “Hamas official” a genuine Hamas spokesman? I don’t know. That needs investigation.

(c) If he is, does he know what he is talking about? Is he telling the truth? Or is this another example of an organization taking credit for something it didn’t really do? That happens often. This also needs investigation.

(d) Reminding us that Hamas is “labeled a terrorist organization by the US State Department” is intended to give the claim special authority, legitimizing it.  However, our State Department works in lockstep with the Israeli government and its own views on its “enemies.” So, this assertion is nothing more than a tautology, i.e. the US government is repeating Israeli assertions. It has no independent value.

4. Yes, indeed, Hamas has committed past acts of violence against Israelis, though nothing of significance since Gaza was cordoned off in 2011. (We don’t have time or space here to address the claims of “rockets fired” from Gaza into Israel or the horrific genocide committed by the Israeli military against civilians in Gaza.  I urge you to watch the new documentary, “Killing Gaza”, by the journalists Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen).

But, within Gaza, Hamas functions largely as a political organization which many people join because they need connections to get a job, or they are involved in Hamas-sponsored community/youth activities. Also, not every member of Hamas is involved in their military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.  In fact, the majority of Hamas members are not part of its military wing. They are two different things.

5. But even if all of the people shot and killed by Israeli snipers in Gaza were members of Hamas, since when does membership in an organization frowned upon by the government give the military permission to kill unarmed people — unarmed men, women and children often standing hundreds of yards away?  Is it permissible to shoot anyone simply because they are/may be members of Hamas?

6. The article continues to misrepresent what actually happened in Gaza, as all major US media outlets have also done.  So we read that these deaths resulted from“confrontations with Israeli troops as they [the Palestinians] tried to breach the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel.”

Yes, even this man was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper while sitting in his wheelchair.

(a) Go scan the net. Watch the many videos now available about the Gazan Land Day Marches.  I have.  I have not seen a single one that merits the label “confrontation.” That word implies close contact between two groups, which would require Palestinians to be on the opposite side of their fence, able to make physical contact with Israeli soldiers.  I have not seen or heard of any place where this happened.  In fact, even Israel admits that not one single soldier along the fence was injured in any way. There was no “breach” of the “border” anywhere.  Period.  There were no “confrontations.”  There were only unarmed people being shot dead by army snipers positioned many, many, many yards away.

Neither have I see anyone throw a bomb or Molotov cocktail or shoot a missile.  Though these charges are often repeated, I have yet to see a scrap of evidence to substantiate them.  Have you?

Norman Finkelstein is an historian with a special focus on the history of Israel-Palestine. He is the son of Holocaust survivors.

(b) As Norman Finkelstein has ably explained (here, here, and here ) the huge fence surrounding Gaza is not a border. The fence is not delineating two countries.  It is a prison boundary, unilaterally and arbitrarily constructed by Israel to confine the Palestinians living there.  It is ghetto fence; something that should haunt every Jew who aims a rifle into it. Palestinians hate this fence because it keeps them confined like animals in a cage.

Followers of Jesus Christ are supposed to be supremely devoted to telling the truth and eschewing lies.  That includes a refusal to spread misinformation.  Furthermore, everyone, but especially those who claim to be God’s people, need to exercise the common sense of reading responsibly, evaluating our sources of information, and testing the veracity of claims made by so-called “authorities.”

Shame on CBN for spreading lies and misinformation about the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Shame on all Christian Zionists for holding their Zionist ideology as more sacred than Jesus’ own convictions about truth, honesty and justice.