God will Judge Israel

"At 7.30 in the morning on 3 June, a seven-month-old baby died in the intensive care unit of the European Gaza Hospital in the Gaza Strip. His name was Zein Ad-Din Mohammed Zu’rob, and he was suffering from a lung infection which was treatable." - John Pilger, "Smile on the face of the tiger", June 11, 2009.

In the Talmud, it says, "Whoever saves a single life is as if he saved the whole world, whoever destroys a single life is as if he had destroyed the whole world."

"Denied basic equipment, the doctors in Gaza could do nothing. For weeks, the child’s parents had sought a permit from the Israelis to allow them to take him to a hospital in Jerusalem, where he would have been saved. Like many desperately sick people who apply for these permits, the parents were told they had never applied. Even if they had arrived at the Erez Crossing with an Israeli document in their hands, the odds are that they would have been turned back for refusing the demands of officials to spy or collaborate in some way." - John Pilger, "Smile on the face of the tiger", June 11, 2009.

In December and January of this year, Israeli forces brutally massacred hundreds of helpless civilians in Gaza, many of them children, a crime that will be remembered for generations to come. They have continued their slow-motion genocide by denying basic supplies and humanitarian aid to the Gazans. They have gone so far as to threaten to murder those bringing aid to the Gazans, even though they were in international waters and included former Congresspersons and Nobel Prize winners.

The current champion of Israel, Barack Obama, made a speech in Cairo the day after Zein Ad-Din Mohammed Zu’rob died. The speech has been well-characterized as follows: "Naturally, unlike George W Bush, Obama did not say that 'you’re either with us or against us.' He smiled the smile and uttered 'many eloquent mood-music paragraphs and a smattering of quotations from the Holy Quran', noted the American international lawyer John Whitbeck. Beyond this, Obama offered no change, no plan, only a 'tired, morally bankrupt American mantra [which] essentially argues that only the rich, the strong, the oppressors and the enforcers of injustice (notably the Americans and Israelis) have the right to use violence, while the poor, the weak, the oppressed and the victims of oppression must... submit to their fate and accept whatever crumbs their betters may magnanimously deign suitable to let fall from their table.' And he offered not the slightest recognition that the world’s most numerous victims of terrorism are people of Muslim faith – a terrorism of western origin that dares not speak its name." - John Pilger, "Smile on the face of the tiger", June 11, 2009.

The people of Gaza have cried out to Yahweh and he has heard their cry. The Israelis will be destroyed, but not by our violence or the futile violence of the Palestinians, but by their self-inflicted destruction of their own humanity. What is the price of cold-blooded murder? The slaughter of thousands of innocent lives? From the viewpoint of the Domination System, there is no price to be paid for these crimes. But there is a God who cares about the widows and orphans which Israel has made.

The poor and needy ask for water, and there is none,
their tongue is parched with thirst,
I, Yahweh, will answer them,
I, the God of Israel, will not abandon them.

- Isaiah 41:17

What will the day of judgment mean for you, O Israel,
It will mean darkness, not light.

Oppression makes a wise man mad

Christians who truly believe that God can only be loved by doing justice to the oppressed must think through their convictions. To say that we are concerned about the poor, but that we have no competence in matters of social structure is a refusal of both responsibility and compassion. The attitude is well characterized by Walter Wink, a theologian whom I admire above all other living theologians, "No social struggle can hope to be effective if it only changes structural arrangement without altering their spirituality...We are not commission to create a new society; indeed, we are scarcely competent to do so. What the church can do best, though it does so all too seldom, is to delegitimate an unjust system and to create a spiritual counter climate. We may lack the wisdom to determine how homelessness can be solved; and our attempts as churches to feed, clothe, and house the homeless may only obscure the true causes of homelessness and fill us with false righteousness. But what we can do is create an insistent demand that homelessness be eradicated." - Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers.

Are we Christians incompetent to analyze the "true causes" of oppression? Have we not be commissioned to create a new society? Or did Jesus only commission us to found churches? Is the attitude above not simply another variation on the theme that spiritual and material concerns are safely isolated from each other? As the rulers of this society devoutly wish them to remain.

If Christ came to save the world, then did he only come to save it "spiritually", and not materially? "...is unrestricted fidelity to Jesus Christ to be reproached as preoccupation with the material? How are we going to give food to all who are hungry if we leave the means of production in private hands, which necessarily destine these means to the augmentation of capital and not to the satisfaction of the needs of the population?" And again, "The God of the Bible is knowable only in otherness, in the call for help of the poor, the orphan, the widow, the stranger...Our revolution is is directed toward the creation of the new human being. But unlike the attackers, we seek to posit the necessary means for the formation of this new human being. And the indispensable means is a new social structure." Jose Miranda, "Communism in the Bible".

The moral principle is that if you will the end, then you must will the effective means. Far from being incompetent to envision and implement new social structures, Christians led the way by founding communism in the Acts of the Apostles. It is only with the modern uncovering of the mechanism of social and economic oppression that Christians can take the next step toward the fulfillment of Jesus' vision. Only through common ownership of the means of life can that vision be fulfilled: "In conformity with the material position of the men belonging to this class, the first Christians put forward the demand for property in common - communism. What could be more natural? The people lacked means of subsistence and were dying of poverty. A religion which defended the people demanded that the rich should share with the poor the riches which ought to belong to all and not to a handful of privileged people; a religion which preached the equality of all men would have great success." - Rosa Luxemburg, "Socialism and the Church"

Communism was first established by Christians, as we learn from the words of a contemporary, "...these do not believe in fortunes, but they preach collective property and no one among them possesses more than the others. He who wishes to enter their order is obliged to put his fortune into their common property. That is why there is among them neither poverty nor luxury – all possessing all in common like brothers. They do not live in a city apart, but in each they have houses for themselves. If any strangers belonging to their religion come there, they share their property with them, and they can benefit from it as if it their own. Those people, even if previously unknown to each other, welcome one another, and their relations are very friendly. When traveling they carry nothing but a weapon for defense against robbers. In each city they have their steward, who distributes clothing and food to the travelers. Trade does not exist among them. However, if one of the members offers to another some object which he needs, he receives some other objects in exchange. But each can demand what he needs even if he can give nothing in exchange."

Such was the origin of Communism. The original Christians did not consider themselves incompetent to envision and implement new social structures, but considered such implementation the fulfillment of Jesus' vision of the kingdom of God. However, the effort ultimately failed because of an inability to challenge the underlying mechanism of wealth and poverty, precisely the weakness that continues to be encouraged among Christians today.

Economic conditions are far more compelling than the most insistent spiritual demands. If we truly love our neighbor, then we will create material conditions in which our neighbor can flourish. The Church continues to fail in this responsibility and its excuse is that "We are incompetent in matters of social and political structures." This from an institution that structured the politics of entire continents for centuries.

The more fundamental cause is fingered by Luxemburg, "The communism, this community of the consumption of goods, which the early Christians proclaimed, could not be brought into existence without the communal labor of the whole population, on the land, as common property, as well as in the communal workshops. At the period of the early Christians, it was impossible to inaugurate communal labor (with communal means of production) because as we have already stated, the labor rested, not upon free men, but upon the slaves, who lived on the edge of society. Christianity did not undertake to abolish the inequality between the labor of different men, nor between their property. And that is why its efforts to suppress the unequal distribution of consumption goods did not work. The voices of the Fathers of the Church proclaiming Communism found no echo: Besides, these voices soon became less and less frequent and finally fell silent altogether. The Fathers of the Church ceased to preach the community, and the dividing up of goods, because the growth of the Christian community produced fundamental changes within the Church itself."

The Christians among us today are sitting in Israeli jails for bringing humanitarian supplies to those who represent the face of Jesus today - the Palestinians of Gaza. Jesus lives in their dignity and courage in the face of a power structure that denies their right to exist.

"Israel’s murderous 22-day offensive last December/January left more than 50,000 homes, 800 industrial properties, 200 schools, 39 mosques and two churches damaged or destroyed. The International Committee of the Red Cross says the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza are 'trapped in despair', unable to rebuild their lives because Israel, having wantonly wrecked their civil society and infrastructure, is blocking efforts to bring in the necessary repair materials. Those on board the Spirit of Humanity were acting in accord with donors’ pledges of $4.5 billion for reconstruction and rehabilitation and US President Obama’s request to Israel to let those supplies pass." - Stuart Littlewood, Dissident Voice, July 4, 2009.

Let all of our prayers be with the followers of Christ sitting in Israeli jails or in the words of Isaiah, "Justice will go before you/ And the glory of Yahweh behind you." - Isaiah 58:8

Christianity is Communism

To be a Christian is to fight for the poor. Not to fight for justice means not to know God. Therefore it is impossible to be a Christian and not to be a true communist, though the converse is not true.

Christianity is fundamentally incompatible with anti-Communism since communism is the primary social legacy of the Christian path to truth. More to the point in these days of "hope" and "change", Christianity is fundamentally incompatible with neoliberalism. No real "change" is possible unless capitalism is forcefully remounced.

"Obama and his auto commission have decided to use the power of the capitalist state to impose a solution fully in keeping with neoliberalism. Whatever the ultimate outcome for GM and Chrysler, the industry would be modeled on the lean and mean transplants: competitive, profit-making machines with weak or no unions. Finance would retain a dominant role in deciding its priorities. And the demand for short-term profitability, discouraging longer-term investments and costly new technology, would come at the expense of the environment. The administration is using its power to force reluctant bondholders to accept hugely discounted returns, in the name of the broader interests of the capitalist class as a whole. It is using the threat of bankruptcy to force workers to accept further job loss, reductions in wages, benefits, pension rights, work intensification, and deteriorating working conditions. The firing of Wagoner was an effort to appeal to the growing anger of many Americans with the greedy CEO’s of the financial sector — while making no real fundamental changes, other than reinforcing the disciplining power of Wall Street financial interests. In a similar way, in appearing to be equally harsh with both bondholders and the UAW, the administration maintains a façade of fairness — even though workers will end up paying with their basic livelihoods and pensions."- Herman Rosenfield, "The North American Auto Industry in Crisis", Monthly Review, June 2009

The above is a key example of that which negates Christianity. Christianity is about social justice or it is an idol that puts its worshipers into a state of advanced stupor. We Christians are called to remove the workers of iniquity from the field of the world, not in a mythological way, following the Disneyland theology popular throughout North America, but in a real way, by eliminating the causes of injustice. In the real fields of the kingdom which we currently inhabit, the primary cause of injustice and environmental inferno is the ideology John Paul II referred to as savage capitalism. The kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of God, which exists beneath our feet on this beautiful earth. It is a spiritual realm indeed - the spirit of justice that lives within our hearts. There is no heaven other than the one that God creates in those hearts.

The concept of a kingdom that is not of this earth is completely unBiblical. When Jesus said, "I am not of this world,", he did not mean that he existed in some spiritual realm apart from the planet Earth. Instead, his statement had a spiritual meaning, "I am not of this system, but I bring a new system into existence with my presence, one in which the relations of domination and subordination no longer exist."

The Kingdom of God is among us.

"Oh, do not let the oppressed return ashamed!
Let the poor and needy praise Your name." - Psalm 74:21

"For God is my King from of old,
Working salvation in the midst of the earth." - Psalm 74:12

There is no Biblical concept of a permanent spiritual realm apart from the earth where we will one day live, abandoning the earth to its wickedness. Instead, the Bible teaches us that we must be part of the transformation of the earth into the Kingdom of God. We have failed our mission miserably and this failure is justified by escapist dreams of a heaven where all our earthly omissions will be forgotten. Deep down, each Christian knows that the gospel of Jesus Christ was not that there is a heaven where we can escape from all earthly suffering. Instead, the kingdom of God is within us and it blazes up whenever we fight for social justice.

The Way Forward

The following ideas are from a long-time struggler for social justice, Marta Harnecker, now living in Venezuela:

"1. Popular movements and, more generally, various social actors who are engaged in the struggle against neoliberal globalization today at the international level as well as in their own countries reject, with good reason, actions that aim to impose hegemony on movements. They don’t accept the steamroller policy often used by some political and social organizations that, taking advantage of their position of strength and monopolizing positions of leadership, attempt to manipulate movements. They don’t accept the authoritarian imposition of leadership from above; they don’t accept attempts made to lead movements by simply giving orders, no matter how correct they are.

2. Such a hegemonist attitude, instead of bringing forces together, has the opposite effect. On the one hand, it creates discontent in the other organizations; they feel manipulated, obligated to accept decisions in which they’ve had no participation; and on the other hand, it reduces the number of allies, given that an organization that assumes such a position is incapable of representing the real interests of all sectors of the population and often provokes mistrust and scepticism among them.

3. But to fight against an attempt to impose hegemony does not mean renouncing the fight to win hegemony, which is nothing but an attempt to win over and persuade others of the correctness of our criteria and the validity of our proposals.

4. To win hegemony, it’s not necessary to have many adherents from the beginning — a few are enough. The hegemony achieved by the Movimiento 26 de Julio (July 26 Movement), led by Fidel Castro in Cuba, seems to us to be a sufficiently convincing example of this.

5. More important than creating a powerful party with a large number of militants is establishing a political project that reflects the people’s most deeply felt aspirations and thus wins their hearts and minds. What is important is that its politics succeeds in procuring the support of the masses and creating consensus among the majority of society.

6. Some parties boast about the large numbers of militants that they have, but, in fact, they lead only their members. The key is not whether the party is large or small; what matters is that a majority of the people feel identified with its proposals.

7. Instead of imposing and manipulating, we need to convince and unite all who feel attracted to the project to be implemented. And we can only unite people if we respect others, if we are capable of sharing responsibilities with other forces."

I think what Marta Harnecker is saying here is extremely significant, especially when taken in conjunction with her first article. “But to fight against an attempt to impose hegemony does not mean renouncing the fight to win hegemony, which is nothing but an attempt to win over and persuade others of the correctness of our criteria and the validity of our proposals.” This is where much of the American left seems to break down. Since the vast majority of the American left arises in the universities, intellectual trends there have huge impact on political strategies. Post-modernism, which entered the scene in the 70s as a ultra-radical trend, has long shown its deep compatibility with the neoliberal empire. By characterizing traditional leftism as a totalizing ideology, an attempt to impose uniformity on meaning, this ideology has dealt a severe blow to attempts to create social justice. We must return to the straightforward strategy advocated by Harnecker – respect for all those social forces that resist neoliberalism and reasoned persuasion to a leftist perspective. We must become the free and open intellectuals and activists that our vision proclaims. I think particularly of Eugene V. Debs who acted as a passionate and deeply persuasive voice for those whose interests were ignored. The bonds of unity should be created through shared responsibilities in practice rather than striving for theoretical unity. These forces will coalesce when we develop the attractive power to bring them together. Theoretical unity must arise from practical unity. At the same time, we must acknowledge that the current political system is not an appropriate instrument for enabling the systemic change that is necessary. It is structured to redirect the energy for social justice into channels that doom that energy to support for neoliberal policies. I think her ideas represent a way forward, an abandonment of organizational egoism in support of the greater cause.

The Triumph of Illusion

The drumbeat of betrayal is relentless. So far Obama has broken every progressive promise. Let’s examine the record as laid bare in Paul Street’s recent article, “The Dawning Age of Obama as a Potentially Teach-able Moment for The Left”, znet, May 30, 2009, then we will examine the spiritual pathology that underlies the self-deception of progressives regarding “hope” and “change”. So far the record is blazingly clear. Obama has extended and intensified the previous human rights assaults of the Clinton and Bush years. He has acted vigorously to:

“* Significantly expand the reach and intensity of imperial violence (replete with the mass slaughter of civilians and the related escalation of targeted assassinations) in South Asia.
* Promote a notorious assassin and death-squad leader (Lt. General Stanley A. Chrystal - former chief of the military's special Joint Special Operations Command) to the position of Commander of U.S. Forces in the newly merged ‘Af-Pak’ war theater.
* Sustain the criminal occupation of Iraq beneath rhetoric of withdrawal.” Essentially, we must remain in Iraq as long as the world remains “dangerous and unpredictable”, which it might be for some time to come – at least until the capitalist cancer has managed to make over the earth in its own spiritual image.
“ * Increase ‘defense’ (empire) spending, consistent with the following statement in a report issued by the leading Wall Street investment firm Morgan Stanley one day after Obama's presidential election victory: "As we understand it, Obama has been advised and agrees that there is no peace dividend."
* Revive military commissions.
* Continue the practice of renditions.
* Maintain secret prisons for persons ‘held on a short-term, transitory basis.’
* Continue the unspeakable torture of prisoners by an ‘extrajudicial terror squad’ (Jeremy Scahill's description of the Pentagon's sadistic ‘Immediate Reaction Force’ in Cuba) at Guantanamo Bay.
* Advance the policy of ‘indefinite detention’ (potentially permanent incarceration) for Guantanamo prisoners for whom no legally compelling evidence can be marshaled.
* Intimidate England (with a threat to withhold intelligence data on potential terrorist attacks!) into preventing a Guantanamo victim from having his day in court on the Bush administration's torture practices.
* Sustain the Bush administration's abrogation of habeas corpus rights in regard to the roughly 600 "enemy combatants" kept at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan (where people rendered out of other countries like Yemen and England can be considered ‘war [-zone]’ prisoners!.
* Advance nauseatingly specious legal and moral arguments (‘better to look forward than backward’) to prevent serious federal investigation of the Bush administration's human rights crimes.
* Sustain George W. Bush's domestic wiretapping program.
* Invoke the ‘state secrets’ (akin to the divine right of kings) doctrine to prevent disclosure of evidence in response to lawsuits emerging from Bush era rendition and surveillance policies.
* Suppress photographic evidence of U.S. torture practices.
* Justify all this and more in the name of the supposed ‘global war on terror’ that was supposedly launched in legitimate defense against the supposedly unprovoked jetliner attacks of September 11, 2001.
* Disregard qualified progressive defenders of civil liberties and human rights from consideration for appointment to succeed Supreme Justice David H. Souter and to thereby counter the hard right leanings of the court's conservative majority.
* Send clear signals of intent to roll back and partially privatize Social Security and Medicare benefits.
* Betray campaign pledges to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to insert stronger labor and environmental protections.
* Betray campaign pledges of serious intent to advance an elementary and overdue labor law reform (the Employee Free Choice Act).
* Force and approve an automobile industry re-structuring that drastically cuts domestic autoworkers' jobs, wages and benefits while subsidizing General Motors' further shifting of jobs abroad. [8]
* Advance a tepid, business-friendly health care ‘reform’ that leaves the leading parasitic insurance corporations (major campaign sponsors of his) in power.
* ‘Methodically erase single-payer advocates from the picture’ (Glen Ford) of health care reform despite the fact that a majority of Americans have long favored a single-payer (‘Medicare for all’) health insurance system.
* Spend trillions of federal dollars on taxpayer handouts to giant Wall Street firms who spent millions on his campaign and who drove the economy over the cliff. Obama's Wall Street bailout rejects the elementary bank nationalizations and public financial restructuring that are required to put the nation's credit system on a sound and socially responsible basis, choosing instead to guarantee the financial, insurance, and real estate industries' toxic, hyper-inflated assets while keeping existing Wall Street management in place. It amounts to a giant effort to ‘keep perpetrators afloat’ (liberal economist James Gailbraith) through a scheme in which the government takes more than 90 percent of the risk but private investors reap at least half the reward. “

I replied to the article on znet as follows:
The response of progressives has indeed been disheartening, primarily because it indicates despair and detachment from reality. Despair because somehow the assumption has seeped into political discourse that Obama is the best progressives can realistically hope for these days. Such "hope" is just a mask for a practical abandonment of hope for significant change. However, the detachment from reality is more frightening because facing the truth of the situation provides the only possible remedy to despair. Our inability to face the facts about Obama before and after the election is part of a larger failure - the failure to penetrate to the core of the issues of economic power relations in this country and to realize that they can't be reformed, but only overturned.

As Christians, we cannot tolerate illusion. Jesus teaches us to look truth square in the face. We cannot join in the cynicism of believing that the Democratic Party represents a true alternative to the Republican Party. Only an economic system that privileges human need over the rights of property owners can conform to the promise of the Gospel.

The Death of Law

In the words of Brecht's Galileo, "Happy the land that has the rule of law, but sad the land that needs it." And few nations have starved for it more that the U.S. does at present. Barbaric as are Cheney's ideas about the necessity for torture, he is at least correct in declaring that there can be no middle ground regarding political commitment to the security state. Either one believes that national security is more important than the rule of law, as does Cheney, or one believes that the loss of the rule of law is a disaster beside which a dozen 9/11s pale into insignificance. Obama seeks a "centrist" path in this debate. This choice involves treating some people as without legal rights, specifically, "...even as he paid repeated homage to 'our values' and 'our timeless ideals,' he demanded the power (albeit with unspecified judicial and Congressional oversight) to keep people in prison with no charges or proof of any crime having been committed".

But there is no centrist path in this debate or rather moral crisis. Either one believes that all human beings have essential rights, no matter how "evil" they might be or one believes that national security concerns trump such legal rights. The centrist strategy results in focusing on the job of deciding who is "evil" enough to lose all their human rights. In time, legal ethicists will weigh in on the question and precise degrees of threat will be defined beyond which persons will lose all their humanity, and with it, our obligation to refrain from torturing, starving, or murdering them.

Much as I regret the conclusion, the "centrist" path of Obama may turn out to be far more degrading to our humanity that the open brutalism of Cheney. While the former vice president prioritizes the physical security of our citizens over human dignity, Obama exalts these values rhetorically while degrading them in practice in a way far more insidious, but probably much more to the purpose.

Capitalism - a Failed System

"Capitalism, in many respects, has become a failed system in terms of the ecology, economy, and world stability. It can hardly be said to deliver the goods in any substantive sense, and yet in its process of unrestrained acquisition it is undermining the long-term prospects of humanity and the earth." - "Capitalism in Wonderland", Monthly Review, April 2009.

""The world is suffering from a fever due to climate change, and the disease is the capitalist development model.”

— Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, September 2007

Humanity’s Choice

by Ian Angus

"Humanity today faces a stark choice: ecosocialism or barbarism.

We need no more proof of the barbarity of capitalism, the parasitical system that exploits humanity and nature alike. Its sole motor is the imperative toward profit and thus the need for constant growth. It wastefully creates unnecessary products, squandering the environment’s limited resources and returning to it only toxins and pollutants. Under capitalism, the only measure of success is how much more is sold every day, every week, every year – involving the creation of vast quantities of products that are directly harmful to both humans and nature, commodities that cannot be produced without spreading disease, destroying the forests that produce the oxygen we breathe, demolishing ecosystems, and treating our water, air and soil like sewers for the disposal of industrial waste.

Capitalism’s need for growth exists on every level, from the individual enterprise to the system as a whole. The insatiable hunger of corporations is facilitated by imperialist expansion in search of ever greater access to natural resources, cheap labor and new markets. Capitalism has always been ecologically destructive, but in our lifetimes these assaults on the earth have accelerated. Quantitative change is giving way to qualitative transformation, bringing the world to a tipping point, to the edge of disaster. A growing body of scientific research has identified many ways in which small temperature increases could trigger irreversible, runaway effects – such as rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the release of methane buried in permafrost and beneath the ocean – that would make catastrophic climate change inevitable.

Left unchecked, global warming will have devastating effects on human, animal and plant life. Crop yields will drop drastically, leading to famine on a broad scale. Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced by droughts in some areas and by rising ocean levels in others. Chaotic, unpredictable weather will become the norm. Air, water and soil will be poisoned. Epidemics of malaria, cholera and even deadlier diseases will hit the poorest and most vulnerable members of every society.

The impact of the ecological crisis is felt most severely by those whose lives have already been ravaged by imperialism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and indigenous peoples everywhere are especially vulnerable. Environmental destruction and climate change constitute an act of aggression by the rich against the poor.

Ecological devastation, resulting from the insatiable need to increase profits, is not an accidental feature of capitalism: it is built into the system’s DNA and cannot be reformed away. Profit-oriented production only considers a short-term horizon in its investment decisions, and cannot take into account the long-term health and stability of the environment. Infinite economic expansion is incompatible with finite and fragile ecosystems, but the capitalist economic system cannot tolerate limits on growth; its constant need to expand will subvert any limits that might be imposed in the name of “sustainable development.” Thus the inherently unstable capitalist system cannot regulate its own activity, much less overcome the crises caused by its chaotic and parasitical growth, because to do so would require setting limits upon accumulation – an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die!"