Violence is the Voice of Despair

Commenting on a dismissive remark by a right-wing pundit, Glenn Greenwald wrote the following, "Look at how personally vital — how indispensable — the War of Civilizations is to McCarthy, to his identity and sense of purpose. He doesn’t even need to go anywhere near combat, or fight in the Wars he cheers on. He still gets to be on the front line — a gruff, hard-nosed, no-nonsense veteran-warrior who has been in the trenches, who has stared down the ugly realities of the Civilization Wars and — despite it all — still soldiers on. Think of the emptiness and loss of purpose if the Threat from the Enemy were exaggerated and all of that faded away. This is why our nation’s faux-warriors can never be reasoned with. It’s why their greatest fear is having the Threats from Our Enemies be put into rational perspective, alongside all the other garden-variety manageable threats we face. To argue that they are exaggerating and melodramatizing the Enemy and the threat is to take away from them that which is most personally important to them." - Glenn Greenwald, "The Fun and Excitement of Civilization Wars (Fought from Afar)", Feb. 17, 2008

It would be well if such childishness were confined to the video game room. Instead they have revealed a rift, a secret illness in the mind of the rulers of this empire that has erupted into war causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the displacement of millions more and the destruction of an entire country. "But the 9/11 attacks and ensuing events catapulted their paranoia and powerlessness syndromes from clownish sideshow to dominant political faction. And their fevered, self-serving fantasies have empowered the Federal Government beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, created a completely out-of-control domestic surveillance state, subordinated even the rule of law to the lawless dictates of Security State officials, and dismantled long-standing constitutional protections and political values so basic that they were previously beyond debate." - Glenn Greenwald, "The Fun and Excitement of Civilization Wars (Fought from Afar)", Feb. 17, 2008

As Christians, we must discern the spirit manifested here. To help us, let us contemplate Jesus' temptation in the desert. According to Fr. John Dear, the nature of the last temptation is as follows: "After the temptations to despair and doubt comes the last temptation to domination. It is the temptation of imperial power. It urges us to be number one, to be emperor over all, owners of everything, in control of everyone, in charge of life itself. It is the temptation to be god -- and it comes with a price: the loss of our souls. It requires the worship of false gods, the idols of death. As we give in to this last temptation, try to dominate the world, and resort to imperial violence and nuclear weapons to maintain our imperial domination, we stop worshiping the living God and instead worship the false gods of violence." - Fr. John Dear, Feb. 12, 2008

Note the connection between the temptation to despair and the desire for domination. This brings to mind the title of Chris Hedges' great book on war, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, in which a veteran war journalist fully explores how the quest for meaning functions in real wars. "War is always a failure for humanity," in the words of John Paul II. It is invariably the result of a failure to hope, dream and trust in God. "The first temptation to violence is the temptation to despair ... It renounces patient trust in God and relies on its own power, which, in the end, amounts to nothing." - Fr. John Dear, Feb. 12, 2008. The emptiness fostered by the inhumanity of empire is the perfect petri dish in which to cultivate violent fantasies of domination, such as those promoted by Christian dominionists.

Out of this despair come the plagues that we are currently enduring, which is well-described as "worshiping the false gods of violence." The psychological needs behind this worship are clear enough, but the cure for this spiritual disease can only be found in Jesus Christ. "Jesus rejects the temptation to dominate the world. 'Get away, Satan!' he orders. 'Satan' was a code word for the Roman empire. Jesus and the early community resisted the empire and its domination over others. He teaches us not to lord it over others but to serve one another, love our enemies, show compassion to each other, and worship the living God. Because he turns his back on the domination system, the empire eventually kills him. The Gospel invites us likewise to reject the way of domination and empire and worship the living God of peace." - Fr. John Dear, Feb. 12, 2008

'Satan' is still the code word for empire, for the despair of God that feeds the fantasies so well described by Greenwald. The bargain is well-known - we give up our souls and Satan pays us back in the coin of dreams in which we play the role of "gruff, hard-nosed, no-nonsense" veteran-warriors fighting an enemy of unimaginable evil. Such are the wages of sin, and such will be their reward.

The Illness of the Powerful

"Jesus, healer, physician of the spirit, relentless diagnostician of the illness of the powerful." - Daniel Berrigan, "You Shall Love"

"... a UCSB researcher worked on technology for a new type of bomb which was dropped on an Afghan wedding, killing 40 Afghanis gathered to celebrate the love between two people and their families. U.S. officials denied responsibility for the bombing until camera footage made it impossible to deny. To the researcher's horror, his teammates working on the bomb expressed no remorse for the innocents killed by their invention. Instead, they celebrated the news because the bomb worked as they intended it to." - "UCSB Students Against War Disrupts Collaborative Biotechnology Military Research Conference", Feb. 12, 2008, Santa Barbara Indymedia.

In the words of Jacques Ellul, we are a "civilization of means." As long as those means fulfill their purpose, namely destroying human life according to the technical requirements specified in the contract, then we should celebrate our triumph, even though the celebrants of love must go quietly to their graves. All is justified when the "bomb worked as they intended it to do." The Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies does research that "give[s] the Army multiple sensing and identification options, depending on the target's complexity, source, availability and distance." - from their website. These "targets" are invalid units of biologically human organic material that require elimination.

Our worship of technique blinds us to the ends that it creates. These biotechnologies foster the illusion of omnipotence, that we can control life, while resulting in a deepening reality of impotence towards the true end of man. In fact, technology has been and will remain fundamentally ineffective for humanity as long as it is worshiped in itself. It frees us from our subjection to nature while enslaving us to the technological processes themselves. The biotechnologies pursued at the ICB will achieve their end with spectacular success - they will end life in an exponentially more efficient way. While we are busy with "Reusable Solid-State Optically Amplified Conjugated Polymer Sensors", we are constructing ends from these means that will destroy any human value that this research might contain.

Let me be as clear as possible about what the real crime here is. It is not merely spending billions to murder our fellow humans while most of the world is starving, though for earlier generations of Christians that would be sufficient to justify outrage. It is that we have entered an era of deliberate self-deception that is hidden and fostered beneath the gleam of our technological wonders. We have entered a kind of collective hypnosis in which we no longer recognize that our technological means create their own life-destroying ends, no matter how noble we pretend our ultimate goals are. If the goal is to eliminate terror, then we cannot begin by spending billions on biotechnology to identify and eliminate biological targets. "We are no longer even at the criminal stage of justifying our murderous means by a compromised end, but at the pathological stage of refusing to acknowledge, much less resist, the real and overwhelming end emerging from our civilization means like the beast from sea." - James Douglass, The Non-Violent Cross.

This beast can only be defeated by the power of penance. "The alternative to deepening slaughter and guilt, and one seldom chosen in international politics, is repentance: the admission that the existential end implicit in the execution of our policies was criminal from the beginning." - James Douglass, The Non-Violent Cross.

Let us pause for a moment to contemplate the end implicit in "...advancing the survivability of both the soldier and weapons systems through fundamental breakthroughs in the area of biotechnology," including sensors, electronics, and photonics for these military applications. The survival of soldiers and weapons systems is necessary for the continued elimination of invalid biological units. The end implicit in these means is to strengthen the powers of destruction while celebrating biotechnologies.

On Feb. 12, 2008, the powers of life won a momentary victory: "500 UCSB students and Santa Barbara community members disrupted the [ICB] conference to demand an end to UC complicity in illegal weapons research designed to kill Iraqis in an illegal war."

The article continues: "There was a heavy police presence but protesters were not intimidated and conducted their non-violent direct action against UCSB war profiteering with courage and determination. Police arrested three protesters. Eyewitnesses said there was no justification for the arrests and hundreds of people chanted "Let them go! Let them go!" and laid their bodies on the pavement around police cars as a human shield demanding that the peaceful protesters be released. The arrested protesters urged everyone to return to the ICB conference to finish what they came to do and protesters returned to the Corwin Pavilion peacefully to continue disrupting the ICB.

Students Against War Santa Barbara declared victory as the ICB conference was disrupted, military scientists were informed about the consequences of their actions and a message was sent to UCSB officials that students will not rest until UC complicity in war ends.

UPDATE: The ICB conference was shut down and did not continue its second day sessions. This constitutes a major victory for UCSB students in the campaign to demilitarize UCSB and the whole UC system." - "UCSB Students Against War Disrupts Collaborative Biotechnology Military Research Conference", Feb. 12, 2008, Santa Barbara Indymedia.

Thou Shalt Not be a Bystander

"Members of Washington-area Catholic groups began the Lenten season Wednesday by smearing ashes over walkways in front of the White House as a symbol of what they called repentance for the country's involvement in the war in Iraq and the torture of Guantanamo detainees." - theday.com, Feb. 7, 2008.

One particular sin that all Americans should do penance for is the sin of abandoning the human rights for which we once were admired. The following is a passage from the Military Commissions Act: "No person may invoke the Geneva Conventions or any protocols thereto in any habeas corpus or other civil action or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States is a party as a source of rights in any court of the United States or its States or territories." The U.S. thereby revokes 800 years of evolution toward humanity.

Clearly, the purpose of this act is to instill fear and intimidate those who might be tempted to resist the empire's reach. Ft. Huachuca is one of the principle sites where our military are trained in torture techniques against "enemy combatants" under an infamous veteran of the Iraq occupation, Major General Barbara Fast. In the words of one who has risked and accepted jail repeatedly in witness to the law of Christ, Fr. Louis Vitale, "We are becoming more aware of how central the mission of Ft. Huachuca is to the Domination System's apparatus for world control and for intimidation of those who might thwart our political/economic purposes both here and abroad (witness Guantanamo). Our effort may just be the first steps in exploring what is happening at Ft. Huachuca, but the larger picture continues to emerge. I feel an ever greater commitment to do what we can to stop what is happening at Ft. Huachuca and wherever we encounter this force of domination and suffering."

Along with him stood Fr. Steve Kelly, about whom his Jesuit provincial has written, "Guided by the Gospel mandate of peace and nonviolence, as well as the Ignatian commitment to a faith that does justice, Steve is no stranger to being imprisoned for speaking and acting out against institutions and mechanisms of violence. Steve's prophetic witness against nuclear proliferation and war-making speaks a Christ-like love for peace--a voice all too often drowned out and actively suppressed by the cultural and political powers that support violence and war. His incarceration provides a powerful point of reference for contemplating the truth of Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer's famous line: 'Thou shall not be a victim. Thou shall not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shall not be a bystander.'" - Letter of Provincial, California Province, Society of Jesus.

To those Christians who believe that Romans teaches them to obey the government no matter what the justice or injustice of its laws might be, I reply in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, "[T]here are two types of laws: just and unjust … One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.' ... We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal' ... Any law that degrades human personality is unjust ... I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.'" - Letter from the Birmingham Jail.

"An unjust law is no law at all." This has been the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church for over fifteen hundred years, as most fully expounded by St. Thomas Aquinas. The idea that Catholics could defend a law that allows torture is blasphemous. From the traditional Christian viewpoint, it is the major generals, the judges and the politicians who use law as an instrument of power to dominate the weak who are the true lawbreakers. It is they who diminish respect for the law by protecting its abuse as an instrument to shield mercenary murderers from the justice which will one day come calling.

Secret trials have become a reality in the U.S. and they are not just for alleged "enemy combatants." "A month after the Nisour Square massacre, on Oct. 20, a group of about 50 activists gathered outside Blackwater’s gates in Moyock, N.C. There, they reenacted the Nisour Square shooting and staged a 'die-in,' involving a vehicle painted with bullet marks and blood. The activists stained their clothing with fake blood and dramatized the deadly shooting spree." - Jeremy Scahill, "Pioneering Blackwater Protesters Given Secret Trial and Criminal Conviction"

For those who need a reminder, armed thugs from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded more than 20 others in Baghdad’s Nisour Square last September. As of yet, no charges have been brought. Indeed, because of the State Department's illegal guarantees of immunity, it is very unlikely that any charges will ever be brought. The treatment given to those whose conscience moved them to bring these crimes to public notice was far different.

"Their action at Blackwater, the activists said, was in response to war crimes, the killing of civilians and the fact that no legal system — civilian or military — was holding Blackwater responsible. The Nisour Square massacre, they said, 'is the Iraq war in microcosm.'"

But the judge had no mercy for this flagrant display of the duties of American citizens to bring crime to the attention of the state. "But District Court Judge Edgar Barnes would have none of it. So outraged was he at Baggarly, the first of the defendants to appear before him that day, that the judge cleared the court following his conviction. No spectators, no family members, no journalists, no defense witnesses remained. The other six activists were tried in total secrecy — well, secret to everyone except the prosecutors, sheriffs, government witnesses and one Blackwater official. Judge Barnes swiftly tried the remaining six activists behind closed doors and convicted them all. It was as though Currituck, N.C., became Gitmo for a day." - Jeremy Scahill, "Pioneering Blackwater Protesters Given Secret Trial and Criminal Conviction"

Every last one of these dangerous Christians, upholding God's law in the face of blasphemous disregard for human life, was secretly convicted while their accusers looked on. Truth - what is that? No one was allowed to hear the truth.

So blatantly illegal was the action of the judge that the ACLU stated, "'It’s a clear violation of constitutional rights, not only of the defendants but the press and public,' said Katy Parker, the group’s legal director. 'They have a right to a public trial, so any trial that goes on behind closed doors is a farce.' She added, 'We are very concerned about this reported disrespect for the laws of our land by a member of the judiciary, especially in a controversial and politically laden case such as this.'" - Jeremy Scahill, "Pioneering Blackwater Protesters Given Secret Trial and Criminal Conviction"

But where was the arm of American justice when Mohammed Hafiz cried out? "Mohammed Hafiz was driving four children when Blackwater mercenaries riddled the car with bullets. His ten-year-old son Ali was shot in the head. Mohammed had to gather up pieces of the child’s skull and brains for the burial. During one point in the massacre, Blackwater operatives concentrated fire on a passenger bus. A small boy fled the bus in terror and was shot down as was his mother who ran after him." - statement of Steve Baggarly at his trial.

While drug-crazed butchers are coddled, those who publicize the killing are prosecuted to the limits of the law and even subjected to lectures on theology. After hearing the reasons for their action, the judge said, "'I’ve always thought that if you’re going to be a follower of Jesus or someone who appreciates the Constitution, you can’t select the portions that you like and disregard the rest,'" - Jeremy Scahill, "Pioneering Blackwater Protesters Given Secret Trial and Criminal Conviction"

I'm sure Jesus would agree with the judge, but would show mercy to the "Christian" thugs who had no mercy for the inhabitants of Nisour Square.

"So where there is illegitimacy in political authority or the disorder of coerced order, or injustice of any degree afflicted upon anyone, there is blasphemy. And when nations conceive their own sanctification and pronounce wars just, there is a bombast and blasphemy of the Antichrist." - William Stringfellow, Conscience and Obedience.

Stations of the Cross: Sixth Station

"Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged."

"As we recall Jesus standing before Pilate, who represents the Occupying Roman Forces, and the full weight of the Roman Empire, let us meditate on a scene happening in Hebron. Six Palestinian youths, between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, stand before the Israeli military, accused by a settler woman of breaking and entering her home."

When the Israelis move to demolish homes, what is the response of Palestinians? One of them, Jaber, struggling to build a clinic that is now scheduled for demolition, said: "We want the world to know that with our new clinic that has the demolition order, if there was an automobile accident on the Bypass Route 60, and Israelis were injured and could not get to a hospital, we would give them medical treatment right here in this Palestinian clinic. Tell the world." Israeli authorities demolished Jaber’s home in the Beqa’a Valley three times.

The problem is to find a response to Israeli violence that does not perpetuate injustice, a creative resistance that does not add more fuel to the flames, a patient endurance that draws the sting of evil, a total abandonment of revenge that leaves evil empty, unable to find a target and thus starved of the food of hatred. By refusing to join in the enemies' hatred and contempt for human life, we make the enemy visible to himself and to others. Creative non-violence is a mirror in which our sinfulness and that of our "enemy" can come to the surface. Rather than surrendering to the trance of revenge and counter-revenge, we awaken and raise our eyes from the deadly gleams flashing from the myth of redemptive violence. When it is met creatively, without the automatic counter-response to which we are daily conditioned, violence exposes its true nature even to the blindest eye - that of its perpetrator. Violence condemns itself when it fails to evoke counter-violence.

When we renounce the ego and its demand for revenge, we embrace the freedom of Jesus Christ. That is why Gandhi never aimed at non-violence in and of itself, but at Truth in and for itself. When our eyes are turned away from each other and toward the one who is Truth, then the Holy Spirit can find a chink in our hearts and come rushing in.

Creative non-violence does not justify the aggressor and it does not concede rights to unjust aggression. It is not a "balanced" approach, where the supposed "rights" of both sides are recognized in the manner of the corporate media which attempts to smother the rights of the Palestinians beneath a false "complexity." Patient endurance of Israeli insult does not concede its unjust authority. Where counter-violence attempts to say, "You cannot conquer me - part of me is free from you and triumphs over you!", non-violence says, "We are both free from the dominion of hatred - it's reign has ended in our hearts!"

Far from justifying evil, creative non-violence exposes the depth of evil so that it can be washed away. Evil has no rights, but it can only be slain in our own hearts. The Christian, more than anyone, recognizes the true nature of evil and never concedes it any rights and hunts it out wherever it is whitewashed. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "The disciple must realize this, and bear witness to it as Jesus did, just because this is the only way evil can be overcome. The very fact that the evil which assaults him is unjustifiable makes it imperative that he should not resist it, but play it out and overcome it by patiently enduring the evil person. Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil." - The Cost of Discipleship.

"The worse the evil, the readier must the Christian be to suffer." By doing this, we place the evil one in the hands of Jesus. "And the cross is the only justification for the precept of non-violence, for it alone can kindle a faith in the victory over evil which will enable men to obey that precept. And only such obedience is blessed with the promise that we shall be partakers of Christ's victory as well as of his sufferings." - The Cost of Discipleship.

God's Graceful Company

"Please remember that our Maker (& Sons and Daughters of the Holy Spirit))
requires that each of us, consistent with our capacity and experience, stand up to and intellectually confront with love in our hearts and with a brave soldier's resolve, those persons who torture, imprison or kill our Brothers and Sisters everywhere on this earth; we may not,for the most part, simply hide under the image of the Great One whom we pretend to worship and thereby presume to live eternally in God's graceful company." indymedia argentina, "fbi/cia must be stopped", Feb. 11, 2008

In order to understand the cost of our silence, we must open our hearts as wide as they will go and see the human face of the disaster in Iraq. Bassim is a Sunni Iraqi that Patrick Cockburn had befriended.

"[Bassim] loved the house, which had a sitting room and two bedrooms, because he had built it himself in 2001. "I didn't complete it because I didn't have enough money," he said. 'But we were so happy to have our own home.' - Patrick Cockburn, "Is the US Really Bringing Stability to Baghdad?", Feb. 15, 2008.

"He was living there in the summer of 2006 with his wife Maha, 38, and his children Sarah, 13, Noor, eight, and Sama, three, when Shia militiamen took over Jihad. The struggle for the capital had begun on February 22 when Sunni insurgents blew up a revered Shia shrine in Samarra. Bassim fled to Syria with his family and, when he returned to Jihad three months later, he found pictures of Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia nationalist cleric who heads the Mehdi Army, pasted to the gate of his house." - Patrick Cockburn, "Is the US Really Bringing Stability to Baghdad?", Feb. 15, 2008.

"'I have nothing else to lose aside from my house,' he wrote to me in a sad letter in the autumn of 2007, 'and because of what happened I had a heart attack. I worked as a taxi driver for a few days, but I couldn't do it any longer because of the dangerous situation and I had no other way of earning a living.'" In another war he might have fled to America, but this time Americans have little appetite for seeing the faces of those whose lives they have destroyed.

"Neighbors told Bassim to get out as fast as he could before the Mehdi Army militiamen came back and killed him." - Patrick Cockburn, "Is the US Really Bringing Stability to Baghdad?", Feb. 15, 2008.

He tried to flee to Sweden, but all the doors were shut. After a 3 months of desperate attempts to find a place where his family would not be killed, he finally discovered that "...'for Iraqis, all the ways from Asia to Sweden are shut'... Demoralized, and hearing that many Iraqi refugees trying to get to Europe through Indonesia simply disappeared, Bassim used his last few dollars to fly to Damascus and took a shared taxi across the desert to Baghdad. "The journey took three months but it felt like 10 years,' he said. 'I have lost everything.'" - Patrick Cockburn, "Is the US Really Bringing Stability to Baghdad?", Feb. 15, 2008.

The same system that makes the lives of a few comfortable in the United States has made the lives of millions in Iraq miserable beyond belief. "But for millions of Iraqis like Bassim, the war has robbed them of their homes, their jobs and often their lives. It has brought them nothing but misery and ended their hopes of happiness. It has destroyed Iraq." - Patrick Cockburn, "Is the US Really Bringing Stability to Baghdad?", Feb. 15, 2008.

Naturally, we Christians will keep our eyes safely averted, lest we see the price that others must pay for our sanctity.

An Orderly and Peaceable World

Palestinians brutalized by settlers while working their own land. (Christian Peacemaker Teams).

"The courts pretend that adherence to the law is what makes for an orderly and peaceable world," said Steve Baggarly, one of the protest organizers. "In fact, U.S. law and courts stand idly by while the U.S. military and private armies like Blackwater have killed, maimed, brutalized and destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis." - Statement of Steve Baggerly on being sentenced for protesting Blackwater's murder of 28 Iraqis in Nissour Square, Baghdad.

We are currently facing one of the most massive failures of political imagination to ever visit our fair race in this orderly and peaceable world. In an era when we have the political dreams of the ages at our fingertips, we can conceive no alternative, literally no alternative to endless inhumanity and planetary rape. As if our wills had been medically enervated and our minds stripped of the glories to which they are heirs, we live in deadened world where consumption and violence are only the realities still supportable. Lord, free us from the prison where imagination sits encased by sin.

This Lent, remember the people of Palestine and Iraq, many of whom are starving as these words are written. Let us release ourselves from the spiritual cartoons drawn by well-trained performers who feed off the goodness that longs to burst from our hearts and embrace those from whom God's eyes look out. Let this be a holy Lent, filled with fasting and prayer.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams call us to the following acts of penance:
"

• Fast proactively. CPT Palestine urges that, every Friday during Lent (Fridays being traditional Christian fast days, particularly through Lent), supporters commit to writing letters or make phone calls to end the support of Israeli occupation of Palestine. As a Lenten discipline, on Fridays write or call government officials, write letters to the editors of newspapers, etc.

• Fast from mainstream media. Choose a day every week (or 40 days!) and commit to reading Arab news sources: Al Jazeera, Maan, International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC), Palestine News Network (PNN), etc. to hear a perspective different from that often portrayed by mainstream Western media.

• Fast from food. Choose to fast a meal a week, fast from desserts, fast from sunup to sundown, or some other type of fast. Use this fast as a reminder to pray for an end to the occupation and reflect on the suffering experienced by Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation."

It would be a real miracle if Israeli hearts could be en-fleshed and mercy for the Palestinians at last be born with that birth from heaven. In our fast, let us call for this miracle with faith, faith which yet might succeed where all the stratagems of this world have failed, where we stare across desert plains watching murder and see no springs of water.

Dust and Ashes

Today's picture is a tree on Palestinian land burned by Israeli settlers in Tel Rumeida in an act of blind hatred to force Palestinians from their ancient home. Imagine this Lent, what you might feel if strangers came onto your property and began burning trees that had been in your family for generations. Part of penance is awakening the imagination that leads to humanity. Let your humanity awaken this Lent as we pray for those our silence has made homeless.

"Creator God, the Parent of all people, we remember on this day of mourning all those suffering from injustice, war, and military occupation. We remember especially those living under military occupation in Palestine. We repent and mourn of the ways in which our government has participated in or complied with this occupation. May these ashes remind us of trees in Palestine that have become ashes – trees on Palestinian land that Israeli settlers have set on fire." - Christian Peacemaker Teams

We could be silent - we could simply surrender and conform - and everyone would approve. We could join in the mad rush to consume and everyone would say we had at last grown up, but instead "...the Word of God brings me insults and reproach all day long...But if I say: 'I won’t do it any more. I won’t even consider what you want, God, there’s just no point in starting trouble.' Your message of Truth, Nonviolence, Justice, Hope, Compassion for Mother Earth and all your creation burns like a fire, a
fire shut up in my bones. It’s wearing me out - I can’t keep it in anymore - I can’t ... shut out that voice in Ramah, weeping and great mourning. Rachel, crying for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more (Jer 31.15; Mt. 2.18)"

"Well, God, I still find You pretty clever. You might have pulled a fast one on me, but I rejoice in the meaningfulness You've given to those who take risks in a myriad variety of ways for the sake of a world renewed, where Rachel's tears will cease and
we'll hear Your sacred song: 'Your struggle is over. There is hope for your future.' Amen, (Jer. 31:16)."

The fast that many of us will choose this Lent comes from the words of another prophet, Isaiah, "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?"

How many of us have the strength to fast from injustice? From unloving acts that dehumanize those whom we oppose? To fast from outbursts of temper and impatience against those who love us?

Let the spotlight move off the drama at the center of our ego this Lent. For moments during the day, in prayer, let our attention wander to the suffering experienced by Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, to Iraqis living under U.S. occupation and let our hunger be felt in solidarity with those who have no choice.

Keep the Voice Alive

"Jan. 28, 2008, is a date that will live in congressional infamy. Congress surrendered the power of the purse over national security affairs to the White House.

President Bush appended a signing statement to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 denying the power of Congress to withhold funds for establishing permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, or to control its oil resources. The statement tacitly averred that Congress was required to appropriate money to support every presidential national security gambit, for example, launching pre-emptive wars anywhere on the planet or breaking and entering homes to gather foreign intelligence.

....The National Defense Authorization Act's restrictions on President Bush in Iraq were no novelty. Congress has repeatedly legislated to constrain the president's projection of the military abroad or has otherwise overridden his national security policies.

....Yet Congress acquiesced...." - Kevin Drum, Politico

But Democrats are no longer satisfied with merely approving all the emperor's whims. Now they seek to punish those who dare dissent from their submission:

"Before the Nevada primary, [Presidential candidate] Dennis [Kucinich] was visited by representatives of Nancy Pelosi and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — AIPAC. They told Dennis that if he would drop his campaigns to impeach Cheney and Bush, they would guarantee his re-election to the House of Representatives.

Kucinich threw them out of his office. (Note: this story has since been denied by Kucinich. However, it remains symbolic of the relations between progressives and Democratic leadership).

Dennis now faces the toughest election campaign of his entire tenure in congress, with huge amounts of money being spent to turn his constituents against him due to 'his neglect of his district while he ran for president.'" - Portland IndyMedia, Feb. 6, 2008.

Those who have followed the words and deeds of Mr. Kucinich over the past few years know that he is being punished for much more than honoring his obligations to the Constitution to impeach those guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. "Kucinich has aggressively challenged the Democratic Party leadership in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail on the issues of war, civil liberties, impeachment and big business control of government. He's even refused to pledge to endorse the party's presidential nominee." - Kevin Zeese, "Is Kucinich Being McKinnied?", Feb. 8, 2008.

His real crime was exposing the craven surrender of Democrats to the imperial agenda and for that he must now pay the price. Pelosi and AIPAC might well study the results of similar acts of tyranny in recent history. But such tyrants seem incapable of learning from history that " ... every frail being slain by Church and State grows and grows into a mighty giant who will someday free humanity from their perilous hold." - Emma Goldman. Kucinich is targeted because he has made himself vulnerable by his stubborn and daring adherence to principle. It is likely that the Democrats will soon rid themselves of this irritating voice of courage and truth, but once they have succeeded, they may well discover the price of their moral comfort is far more bitter than any could foresee. Be this as it may, the exigencies of power compel them to make an example of Kucinich, "So, Kucinich needs to be taught a lesson that other members will learn from. The growing revolt of the 'Out of Iraq Caucus' needs to be kept impotent. Knocking out Kucinich will prevent others from too loudly disobeying leadership." - Kevin Zeese, "Is Kucinich Being McKinnied?", Feb. 8, 2006.

Throughout history, those who spoke as Dennis speaks have almost invariably been crucified. They are rarely attractive, never the preferred talk show guest, and those in power feel great relief as soon as their screeching is removed. But something dies in us and the world in the silence following their removal. And nothing ever replaces that voice.

The voice of conscience is not so easily silenced. Dennis is now in the fight of his life. We can allow Democrats to complete their surrender by attacking all those who don't join in their moral collapse, or we can give help to those who keep the voice alive. Please consider making a sacrifice to keep Dennis in office: Re-Elect Dennis Kucinich for Congress

Stuck in the Elevator of Peace

"You are a renegade priest and a renegade citizen. Many people think you're a hero of nonviolence, but you're a phony. You're a fraud. You are a person of violence because you used a hammer on one of our nuclear weapons! You're a coward. You're afraid. You are no Gandhi. I will not join your cause, but I will not make a martyr out of you so that the world thinks you are the heir of Gandhi." - U.S. Magistrate Don Svet on sentencing Fr. John Dear to the limit of the law's severity.

Thus do the violent defend themselves against the threat of peace, even when it's stuck in the elevator. Fr. Dear's threat to our government consisted of "failing to comply with signs and regulations in a federal building."

"No violence is private. On the contrary, violence is so dynamic, variegated, and pervasive that all violence must be regarded as essentially political." - William Stringfellow.

"In September 2006, Dear and other peace activists spent four hours in an elevator after security guards prevented them from going to Domenici’s third-floor office where they wanted to talk with Domenici and his staff about changing his support for the Iraq war."

Prophetic acts such as Fr. Dear's are necessary in order to achieve these spiritual purposes: 1) To show our willingness to suffer for the sake of our love of Christ and 2) In order to demonstrate that these injustices are not "ordinary", but cry out to God for public recognition and public action. Clearly the war in Iraq is not a private matter between each person and his or her conscience, but a public crime that can only be justly addressed in a public way.

To sit in your room and pray about the war in Iraq is a worthy act that may well bring spiritual benefit to this world, but if it is not accompanied by public acts, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion of hypocrisy. When there is a blatant act of public mortal sin carried out by an institution that has been charged with the public good, then private activity is not morally sufficient to the justice required by the situation. The war-making authorities in this country have direct access to the corporate media and blanket us with unremitting and scientifically-crafted propaganda. For Christians to respond to this circumstance by limiting themselves to private conversations and prayer is in practice to surrender to the evil principalities against which we are called to fight.

For Christians, there can be no obedience to illegitimate power. This is a quite traditional principle and it immediately gives the lie to Judge Svet's conception of authority and violence. Resistance like that of Fr. Dear is actually an act of love for true authority, not a repudiation of authority itself, as the judge would have us believe in his vitriolic fit. Legitimacy can only be attributed to this or any government when it acts according to its true vocation so that its authority can be conscientiously obeyed. If those in authority violate the principles that legitimate their authority, for instance by repudiating the rule of law that should guide their own actions, then by that very act they cancel our obligation to obey their rule, though not, of course, to obey the rule of law that they have disdained. Public opposition to a regime that falsifies evidence in order to enter a war that has been declared illegal by international authority is necessitated by our obligation to honor the sovereign - the rule of law in this instance. Not to discontinue our allegiance to such an authority would be to join in its promotion of contempt for the rule of law. The sovereign we honor is justice, the only possible source of governmental authority.

The point is worth all the emphasis we can give to it. Fr. Dear's "criminal" behavior is an act of obedience to government's true vocation, which is to defend and cherish the rights of its citizens. To obey a government that builds weapons of mass slaughter is in itself a criminal act. Judge Svet's characterization of hammering a nuclear warhead as "violence" is the reduction of the term to a technical definition as an act which interferes with the purpose assigned by the owner to an item of corporate property. The far more significant violence of continuing a war that has caused the death of over one million Iraqis is a crime of such magnitude as to condemn those who fail to oppose it. Acts of resistance to this criminal regime are legitimated by the Christian vocation to defend just order.

To suppose that God is pleased with his children when they unthinkingly submit to whatever government happens to be in power because that government "does not bear the sword in vain" is a blasphemy. Instead of participating in governmental crimes by our "submission to authority", let us submit to the authority of justice.

I'll let Fr. Dear have the last word: "As a Christian and Jesuit, I feel I must say no to the war, in this case by resisting the system. During those moments when my life feels disrupted, I recall the millions of Iraqis and Afghanis who have had their lives disrupted and destroyed because of our war, and I realize it's a small price...

The Gospel story remains the primary motivation for my resistance. I'm always amazed that Jesus did not spend his life sitting under a tree, dispensing his wisdom. He stood up, spoke out, and marched to Jerusalem, where he confronted the culture of injustice, the empire and its religious backers, and suffered the consequences of his civilly disobedient, nonviolent action. His life was disrupted, wrecked, shattered...

If I want to enter his story, share his life, and follow his lead, I have to enter the fray and resist the empire, too, and that's a messy and complicated business. Still, it's a blessing to be misunderstood, insulted and in legal jeopardy for one's pursuit of God's reign of peace. As I left the courthouse, I remembered the Sermon on the Mount: 'Blessed are you when they insult you…Rejoice and be glad!'" - Fr. John Dear, My day in court

Resistance to Death

It has become chillingly clear that democracy is nearly dead in the United States. The government is now controlled by those who have ceased even to pretend to believe in it: "[Mukasey] repeatedly endorsed patently illegal behavior — including torture — and refused even to pretend that he cared what the Senate thought about any of it. He even told Republican Senators that they have no right to pass a whistleblower law allowing federal employees who learn of lawbreaking to inform Congress about it, because such a law would infringe on the President’s constitutional powers. In Mukasey’s worldview, the President has unlimited power and Congress has none." - Glenn Greenwald, "Mukasey’s Radical Worldview Is Now the Norm", Jan. 31, 2008.
Congress has come to the state where, when they learn of Bush lawbreaking, they simply vote after the fact to legalize anything he might have done. Indeed, you won't find any "partisanship" in this Senate. Their power has devolved to the point that legalizing the emperor's lawbreaking is their last claim to relevancy. As in ancient Rome, the senate's role is simply to put the Senate's imprimatur on whatever the emperor decrees. In their defense, they have little choice but to do nothing or cling to the image of power by ratifying whatever lawlessness the emperor chooses to practice.

The ruling elite is faced with a dilemma that they believe can only be resolved though the abolition of democratic politics and it's replacement by technocratic management. The mentality that sets the stage for this nullification of human dignity is the demoralization, in the most literal sense, that has been carried out over the past thirty years. The following description applies equally to American citizens and their representatives: "By now truly demoralized, they suffer no conscience and they risk no action...They have lost any expectations for society; they have no stamina left for confronting the principalities; they are reduced to docility, lassitude, torpor, profound apathy, and default. The demoralization of human beings in this fashion greatly conveniences the totalitarianism of the demonic powers since the need to resort to persecutions or imprisonments is obviated, as the people are already morally captive." - William Stringfellow, "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land."

We are captivated by internal prisons that we have created for ourselves. In fact, the ruling elite can't build enough prisons to immobilize opposition, but they can use motivational techniques through visual and audio media in order to much more effectively douse the flame of justice.

The institutional engines of resistance have become completely exhausted: "Congress long ago decided it would do nothing about any of it, would acquiesce to it, and thus — as was predictable and predicted — it has all become normalized." Glenn Greenwald, "Mukasey’s Radical Worldview Is Now the Norm", Jan. 31, 2008. Americans who even take an interest in subjects outside the technical expertise that allows them to maintain the status and wealth of the elite will soon be marginalized.

Indeed, like Roman senators, we have now become suppliants pleading for mercy, for some pretense of human consideration, before the seats of power. And none is given: "They were supplicants pleading for some consideration, almost out of a sense of mercy, and both they and Mukasey knew it...Mukasey can go and casually tell them to their faces that the President has the right to violate their laws and that Congress has no power to do anything about it. And nothing is going to happen. And everyone — the Senators, Bush officials, the country — knows that nothing is going to happen." - Glenn Greenwald, "Mukasey’s Radical Worldview Is Now the Norm", Jan. 31, 2008.

Nothing can happen now because we have accepted our roles as technocratic tools in support of empire. A common tactic of the 60's involved an overarching risk that has now come to fruition - the encouragement of cynicism. The original purpose of this tactic was to encapsulate outrage and make the case that the powers that ruled America were never to be trusted, that they always pursued Machiavellian strategies of total power. The message was close to the truth, but the means - inculcating cynicism about politics into the masses - was self-defeating for a group that intended to challenge injustice through politics. Shortly after this cynicism became the norm in the early 70's, the movement quickly unraveled and evolved into it's opposite. The ultimate emotional impact it made resulted in the condition we see today - no effective resistance to power is possible because genuine hope has been sapped dry by cynicism. The cynical embrace of power and wealth for its own sake has become the norm. Thus the hidden violence of the 60's opposition has come home to roost.

"Virtually every Democratic Senator, after expressing some 'disappointment' in Mukasey’s answers, then proceeded to lavish him with praise, eagerly assuring him that they did not want conflict and were not attempting to be partisan or acrimonious." But resistance is partisan and acrimonious, as was Jeremiah and Ezekiel in similar situations. These are the noises made when submitting to autocratic power - to lavish praise on the emperor's minions and beg for his favors. "Mukasey would nod politely and acknowledge their pleas, assuring them that he wasn’t offended by their questioning, almost embarrassed at times by how obsequious they were." - Glenn Greenwald, "Mukasey’s Radical Worldview Is Now the Norm", Jan. 31, 2008.

Yet what the Senators and the emperor's minion were discussing was the systematic degradation of the human person, now sealed in a protective acronym:"EIT": "They don’t even use the euphemism 'enhanced interrogation techniques' any more. That phrase has been so normalized that they now all know and use an abbreviation for it — 'EIT.' So Senators ask questions about when 'EITs' can be used and the Attorney General outlines the elusive formula he applies to determine its legality and all controversy, all passion, all intensity is completely drained out of the discussion in the U.S. Senate of our torture policies. 'Torture' is now an EIT Unit." - Glenn Greenwald, "Mukasey’s Radical Worldview Is Now the Norm", Jan. 31, 2008. Soon the "nonpartisan" Senators will beg mercy from the emperor lest they themselves be subjected to the EIT Unit.

Another path could have been taken and is still possible now. It is the path laid out in the biblical text, which gave the anti-Nazi resistance of the thirties and forties much of its hope and strength. As with the earlier Resistance, our power of opposition has been systematically neutralized through a Matrix-like technological world-view that is unceasingly ingested by us and instills the sense that the world is far too complex for us to affect - that we are tiny, powerless units whose only choice is to attach ourselves (cynically) to the greatest power that is available and hope for its triumph. Thus our survival depends on obeisance.

We must reclaim our power, but not by pouring our God-given life into the channels which empire has provided to siphon off the energy of justice. "The biblical response - again, an answer which also has empirical authority - is that hope is known only in the midst of coping with death. Any so-called hope is delusory and false without or apart from the confrontation with the power of death, whatever momentary or circumstantial form at may have. It is a person's involvement in that crisis in itself - whatever the apparent outcome - which is the definitively humanizing experience. Engagement in specific and incessant struggle against death's rule renders us human. Resistance to death is the only way to live humanly in the midst of the Fall." - William Stringfellow, "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land."

Crossing the Threshold of Hope

"It looked like the fall of the Berlin wall. And not only did it look like it. For a moment, the Rafah crossing was the Brandenburg Gate.

It is impossible not to feel exhilaration when masses of oppressed and hungry people break down the wall that is shutting them in, their eyes radiant, embracing everybody they meet - to feel so even when it is your own government that erected the wall in the first place.

The Gaza Strip is the largest prison on earth. The breaking of the Rafah wall was an act of liberation. It proves that an inhuman policy is always a stupid policy: no power can stand up against a mass of people that has crossed the border of despair.

That is the lesson of Gaza, January, 2008."

Naturally, the crime at the heart of this liberation has been censored by the U.S. mainstream media: "Months ago, the two Ehuds - Barak and Olmert - imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, and boasted about it. Lately they have tightened the deadly noose even more, so that hardly anything at all could be brought into the Strip. Last week they made the blockade absolute - no food, no medicines. Things reached a climax when they stopped the fuel, too. Large areas of Gaza remained without electricity - incubators for premature babies, dialysis machines, pumps for water and sewage. Hundreds of thousands remained without heating in the severe cold, unable to cook, running out of food."

Since the breakout a few weeks ago, Israel has now decided on open genocide, "By further restricting the supply of food to an already malnourished population, Israel has clearly decided to take its "diet" a step further. If the people of Gaza remain cut off from the food aid on which their survival now depends, they will face starvation.

They are now essentially out of food; the water system is faltering (almost half the population now lacks access to safe water supplies); the sewage system has broken down and is discharging raw waste into streets and the sea; the power supply is intermittent at best; hospitals lack heat and spare parts for diagnostic machines, ventilators, incubators; dozens of lifesaving medicines are no longer available. Slowly but surely, Gaza is dying." - "The Strangulation of Gaza", The Nation, Feb. 18, 2008.

"Israel's methodical actions make it clear that it is systematically grinding down and now actually starving people for whose welfare it is legally accountable simply because it regards Gaza's 1.5 million men, women and children as a surplus population it would, quite simply, like to get rid of one way or the other: a sentiment made quite clear when Israel's chief Ashkenazi rabbi proposed, shortly after the current crisis began, that the entire Palestinian population of Gaza should just be removed and transferred to the Egyptian desert. 'They will have a nice country, and we shall have our country and we shall live in peace,'"- "The Strangulation of Gaza", The Nation, Feb. 18, 2008.

Such a peace was well known to the Roman empire: "They made a desert and called it peace." - Tacitus.

Christians, of course, need not fear that that they will be forced to look at the starving faces which our government's unceasing support for Israel has procured. Nor will their pastors intrude any unwelcome pleas for justice, but we will all continue to enjoy the "Gospel of Prosperity" until the Rapture takes us to eternal Disneyland. How pleased God must be with us.

Resistance is the Only Stance Worthy of a Christian

As the rubble of World War II still smoldered, French philosopher Albert Camus wrote, "What the world expects of Christians is to get out of their abstractions and stand face to face with the bloody mess that is our history today. Christians must speak out and utter their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never a single doubt, can arise in the heart of even the simplest person."

Such is the witness of Fr. John Dear, Jesuit priest and member of Pax Christi, who was arrested for the crime of presenting a petition called the "'Declaration of Peace,' calling upon citizens everywhere, including senators and congressional representatives, to speak out against the U.S. war and occupation on Iraq, to work to stop the war and pursue nonviolent solutions for the people of Iraq and the Middle East." - "My statement before the judge", Fr. John Dear, Jan. 22, 2008.

Predictably in the Christian republic of America, "There was little peace, love and understanding as a federal judge castigated a nationally known activist and Roman Catholic priest for an Iraq war protest that blocked a Santa Fe elevator in 2006.0126 03.

'I’m not interested in making a martyr out of you,' U.S. District Judge Don Svet said Thursday in Albuquerque before sentencing the Rev. John Dear to 40 hours of community service and $510 in fines and fees, to be paid immediately." - "Catholic Priest, Other Protesters, Sentenced in Santa Fe", Jan. 26, 2008.

Martyrdom, like many other gifts of God, is given to us for the restoration and renewal of human life in society, not for our individual edification. These charismatic gifts are available to anyone who wishes to live in Christ as long as we are willing to bear the witness of the cross in our testimony against the powers of this world. The charismatic gifts are the only source of strength against the aggressions of the principalities, such as the courts of the United States. Regarding these, the statement of Steve Baggerly during his trial for an action against Blackwater illustrates their role, "The courts pretend that adherence to the law is what makes for an orderly and peaceable world, while, in fact, US law and courts stand idly by while the US military and private armies like Blackwater have killed, maimed, brutalized, and destroyed the homes and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. In the end US courts trample International Law, as well as God's law of love for all people, by rubber-stamping every US war and military intervention, invasion, incursion, occupation, police action, and special forces operation coming out of the Pentagon—and they are many and constant. Our courts even protect our world's largest stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction despite international treaties and laws that declare them illegal and demand their disarmament. US courts make sure that if our weapons of mass destruction are one day used to destroy the planet and all life on it, to undo all of God's creation, that it will be perfectly legal."

The law they respect is the law of strength - law is enforced on behalf of the most politically powerful player against those who must be bent to his will. So the charismatic gifts have been given to us so as to make a political witness, not merely a personal one. "The exercise of these gifts constitutes the essential tactics of resistance to the power of death." - William Stringfellow, "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.

"To exist, under Nazism, in silence, conformity, fear, acquiescence, obeisance, collaboration - to covet "safety" or "security" on the conditions prescribed by the State - caused moral insanity, meant suicide, was fatally dehumanizing, constituted a form of death. Resistance was the only stance worthy of a human being, as much in responsibility to oneself as to all other humans, as the famous Commandment mentions. And if that posture involved grave and constant peril of persecution, imprisonment, or execution, at least one would have lived humanly while taking these risks. Not to resist, on the other hand, involved the certitude of death - of moral death, of the death to one's humanity, of death to sanity and conscience, of the death which possesses humans profoundly ungrateful for their own lives and for the lives of others." - William Stringfellow, "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.

Let us be filled with gratitude for Fr. John Dear and all that host of martyrs who resistance keeps the rest of us alive.

The New World Order

"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost." — Arthur Ashe

"For the oppressors, what is worthwhile is to have more — always more — even at the cost of the oppressed having less or having nothing. For them, to be is to have and to be the class of the 'haves.'" - Paulo Friere.

In contrast, one of the fountainheads of Christian resistance is what might be called "the Jubilee principle", which means that property rights, far from being absolute as those who own the empire's resources proclaim, must always submit to the demands of economic justice. To put the matter in human terms, "'I don't have a right to more than anybody else', she would say. 'And I believe that if somebody else is under violent repression and extreme poverty, I should be able to accept those conditions too. I have to act in ways that are consistent with that, because if I try to ignore what's happening, I feel a lot of conflict within myself.'" - Barbara MacQuarrie, quoted in "Heroes and the Courage to be There", Philippe Duhamel.

Democratic activity has come to be stigmatized by the ruling elite as a distraction from the proper activity of the masses, which is to fulfill their role as technocratic tools for the power and profit of that elite. Such activity must be neutralized by constant indoctrination with cynicism regarding the possibility of change and distraction in the form of mindless and addictive "entertainment", characterized by indulgence in sex, violence and drugs. Some of us fringe Christians even dare to believe that massive indulgence in sex and drugs is what destroyed the real spiritual movement of the 60's. This indulgence is not liberative, it is enslaving. Yes, renunciation of sexual hypocrisy is liberating, but it liberates us only from hypocrisy, not from the lack of pleasure which the human treatment of sexuality requires. The pleasure attendant upon exploitative sexual relations does not liberate, it enslaves just as any violence does. It also leads to addictive behavior which impedes our ability to live fully human lives. The same applies to drug taking, which is a form a despair in the creative possibilities of human activity. It relieves the pain of inhuman exploitation by desensitizing us, thus dulling the edge of justice. Clearly, the principalities have a strong interest in encouraging these behaviors.

The 60's revolutionaries also had a marked tendency to confuse the effects of fascism with its core values. They criticized effects such as conformist behavior, rigidity, rationalism, nationalism, and managerial efficiency as fascistic, while often ignoring the fundamental thrust of fascism as a strategy of power. This core value structure involves the reduction of humanity to a function of ideology and its effects can just as easily be flagrant self-indulgence as adherence to conventional norms. A careful study of Nazism demonstrates many examples of this. Confusing the effect with the cause in this way led to attacks on many false enemies, including real Christianity, which was much to the pleasure of the principalities.

From the viewpoint of the ruling elite, democratic activity is not desirable for most citizens. Their job is to produce and consume in sufficient qualities to ensure the enrichment of the rulers and their minions, while leaving the coordination of the system to a technocratic management class which has the required expertise to ensure smooth operation. Democracy works counter to the efficient operation of the system and thus should be treated as a nuisance to be tolerated only when absolutely necessary. Likewise, the concentration of power in the executive aids in the effective operation of empire, so ancillary bodies such as Congresses and Parliaments should be deprecated. The system will be designed to meet the needs of its subjects, which are primarily pleasure and entertainment, precisely by removing them from influence on government, either national or corporate, where their interference would only lead to disruption.

Another key element in the neo-fascist strategy is the elimination of non-technical or business-oriented education. Subjects that lead to broad humanist reflection such as history, philosophy, literature, theology or political science should be marginalized and their professors made to feel effete, non-contributing members of the new social order. Education that does not contribute to profit margins has no purpose in this social order. Such knowledge may lead to inconvenient demands for human dignity and rights and even provide leisure for political activity, which would degrade effective business performance. For instance, considerations of human rights might impede the ability to eliminate those unfit or otherwise unable to perform at the optimal level for the planned social order. Such education could easily lead to human "dead weight" that would reduce profit margins.

Humanistic education also often leads to an illegitimate questioning of globalization. Since the only valid type of human being is the business or technical person, an adequate religious ideology such as that supplied by Christian or Muslim fundamentalism is all that is necessary to answer spiritual questionings, which in any case will be reduced to a minimum because of our abundant sources of entertainment and distraction. Elimination of invalid categories of human beings can also be justified on humanitarian grounds since it is likely that they would find life in the new social order unfulfilling. Fortunately, recent studies in cognitive science demonstrate that we may be close to creating conditions in which humanity's spiritual aspirations can be completely eliminated.

Such is the logic of neo-liberalism taken to its ultimate conclusion. Yet we are Christians, which means that "Engagement in specific and incessant struggle against death's rule renders us human. Resistance to death is the only way to live humanly in the midst of the Fall." - William Stringfellow, "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land"

The power against death is what Christ lifts us into: "In raising Lazarus, in other words, Jesus reveals what is implicit, but hidden, in all of the healing episodes, that is, his authority over death, his conclusive power over death, his triumph over death and all that death can do and all that death means. To so surpass death is utterly threatening politically, it shakes and shatters the very foundation of political reality because death is, as has been said, the only moral and practical sanction of the State. Of course the political principalities and their vassals would loathe and fear Jesus - and seek to consign him to death - because he healed, because he raised Lazarus, because he signified the Resurrection from death, because he exemplified life transcending the moral power of death in this world and this world's strongholds and kingdoms." - William Stringfellow, "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land"

Resistance to Violence is the Only Human Way to Live

"The Democratic-controlled Senate moved Thursday to shield telecommunications companies that aided the Bush administration’s illegal domestic spying program from lawsuits. By a vote 60 to 36, the Senate rejected any provision in its upcoming amendment to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would open the companies to prosecution in civil courts." - "US Senate moves to grant immunity to telecoms complicit in illegal wiretapping", Jan. 26, 2008. To understand the depth of the capitulation, read Glenn Greenwald's piece, "Your Harry Reid-led Senate in action" which can be found here: Your Harry Reid-led Senate in action

Habits die hard. If Democrats are this submissive to an incompetent leader while the wind of the majority blows in their favor, what might they do for a popular and accomplished leader? Whenever despair of the Republic starts to gnaw, I remember the Resistance fighters of WWII whose governments collapsed before another empire. What kept their hope alive? The act of resistance itself keeps hope alive and is the only means of retaining sanity and conscience.

Keeping hope alive means keeping the inner spiritual life in us breathing, speaking, and acting. Our enemy is precisely the despair that imperial propaganda blares and disguises in a thousand forms. Just as drug taking is a form of despair in the goodness of our humanity and our prospects for a life of creative endeavor, so reconciling ourselves to life in an empire that is destroying life for billions is submission to the power of death.

What is this ingratitude that seizes us in the face of the miraculous gifts of God? Our lives could be filled with creative deeds, with acts of spiritual power, not scurrying like cockroaches in the consumerist prisons we have allowed to be built around us, ingesting degrading "entertainment" that neutralizes our conscience and drains our power to resist.

We may well be facing the end of the democratic republic in America, as our elected representatives have lost the power of resistance to empire: "... where it counts most, Democratic leaders in Congress have completely abdicated their constitutional oversight role. What they are doing now reprises the worst failures of other self-paralyzed Parliaments in societies that were facing crackdowns on civil liberties and the rule of law, and their voluntary self-emasculation may go down in history as one of those turning points at which leaders cave shamefully to transformative pressure that leaves a country far less than its founded ideal. Through their actions, they are potentially causing irreparable harm to the institution of Congress itself...the White House essentially asserted that Congress has no power over the executive branch and could not question executive branch officials about their activities." - Naomi Wolf, "It’s Time to Hold Democratic House Leaders in Contempt", Jan. 26, 2008.

If we are facing the end of democracy, then it is time for us to start forming cells of resistance, as the Confessing Church did in Germany during the 1930's. The "German Church" in our situation is right-wing fundamentalism that is acting as the ideological engine for the advent of open fascism. Those who doubt this should take a look at Huckabee's recent comments on Iraq's WMD: "I think it's more likely that that weapons of mass destruction that we know that he at one time had, he used weapons against the Kurds, good chance they may have gone to Jordan. We don't know where they are." - Mike Huckabee, Jan. 25, 2008. Clearly, truth has no meaning for this "evangelical" leader.

"To exist, under Nazism, in silence, conformity, fear, acquiescence, obeisance, collaboration - to covet "safety" or "security" on the conditions prescribed by the State - caused moral insanity, meant suicide, was fatally dehumanizing, constituted a form of death. Resistance was the only stance worthy of a human being, as much in responsibility to oneself as to all other humans, as the famous Commandment mentions. And if that posture involved grave and constant peril of persecution, imprisonment, or execution, at least one would have lived humanly while taking these risks. Not to resist, on the other hand, involved the certitude of death - of moral death, of the death to one's humanity, of death to sanity and conscience, of the death which possesses humans profoundly ungrateful for their own lives and for the lives of others." - William Stringfellow, "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.

Precision Bombing

"They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger, they loot even the ocean: they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; neither the wealth of the east nor the west can satisfy them: they are the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal passion to dominate. They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace." - Tacitus

Many peoples shall come and say,
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths."
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

- Isaiah 2:3-4

The way to justify war is to create technological distance: "Regarding precision bombing they quote Marc Garlasco, a Human Rights Watch military analyst: 'My major concern with what's going on in Iraq is massive population density... you have the potential for very high civilian casualties, so you need really granular intelligence on what you're going to hit. But I don't think they're being careless.'

If you buy this logic, as long as, say, Iraqi insurgent forces weren't being careless, it would be OK on human rights grounds for them to bomb the US White House so long as they had sufficiently 'granular intelligence' on where President Bush was sitting, and used one of those 250-pound bombs that 'make blasts safer for civilians.'

Just hope that at that moment a servant wasn't bringing Bush a cup of coffee, or that he wasn't being visited by nieces, or a Cub Scout troop, or even, say, one of those human rights officials who now consult with General Petraeus or legitimize the idea of bombing countries that have been invaded illegally (according to, say, the British Foreign Office's former deputy legal adviser, who resigned because 'an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to a crime of aggression') so long as painted on one side of the bombs is the word 'precision'." "Killing Civilians, Carefully", Allen Nairn, Jan. 18, 2008.

We protect ourselves from the sight of dead innocence through the use of technological symbols such as "precision bombing", which neutralizes our capacity to visualize death. In place of the sight of an armless or legless child who happened to be visiting his grandfather, we see greenish optical displays of a "precision bomb" destroying a house. The truth is simply too ghastly for us to envision, so our empathetic capabilities have to be numbed by verbal anesthetics.

"It is not just that babel incites violence - though it does ... but, more than that, babel is violence ... Essentially, babel targets the facilities of comprehension - sanity and conscience - which distinguish human beings from other creatures." - William Stringfellow "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land"

The key point here is that the Pentagon is not being imprecise about precision bombing. The intent is make the full visualization and comprehension of the murders we commit through "collateral damage" impossible, to obfuscate the powers of moral perception with verbal fog. This hail of technological verbiage is designed to annihilate the perceptive conscience. This technique can be referred to as "overtalk", "in which the media themselves so accentuate volume, speed, and redundancy that communication is incapacitated (even where the data transmitted may not be false or deceptive). The auditor's mind is so insulated, inundated, or transfixed by verbal and visual technology that it is crippled or immobilized." - William Stringfellow "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land".

The result: "...the Post cites the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq as estimating 'that more than 200 civilian deaths resulted from U.S. air strikes in Iraq from the beginning of April to the end of last year, when U.S. forces began to significantly increase the strikes to coordinate with the expansion of ground troops.'". "Killing Civilians, Carefully", Allen Nairn, Jan. 18, 2008.

Only the power of the cross can cut through the babel spewed by the principalities and powers: "In inflicting violence on one another, men know not what they do, for they know not the sacredness of their brothers' and their own humanity, which at its innermost core is one with the humanity of Christ. The violence of men at any place or time in history is the violence of Golgotha. And the victim, yet by his infinite love no longer victim but redeemer, is everywhere and always the same: the man of the cross." - James W. Douglass.

Blessed Franz Jagerstatter, Pray for us!

Deliver Us from the Violence of Apathy

"...the hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in a time of moral crisis maintain neutrality." - Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967.

There are two types of social critics: those who believe that the current situation is the result of incompetence and can be fixed if only we had more intelligence and good will and those that see the current situation as a result of cold calculation. Unfortunately, experience lends greater and greater weight to the latter. Social classes can be most effectively repressed by exploiting their weaknesses. Drugs are a prime example. The ruling elite has no interest in ending the drug trade, because they realize that the drugged mind is complicit in its own degradation, that taking drugs is a form of accepting the waste of human life that the capitalist system engenders deliberately in pursuit of profit.

The fundamental relationship between Church and empire has remained steady for two millenia: "Those human beings and communities of humans who persevere in fidelity to God and to the gift of their humanity, those who resist death and thus live in Jesus Christ - whether that be a public formality or not - do so under the condemnation of the State in own way or another, be it in ridicule and ostracism, in poverty or imprisonment, as sojourners or fugitives, in clandestine existence, as a confession movement, or, otherwise in resistance." - William Stringfellow, "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land"

Jesus Christ led the way in showing how direct action could change hearts. The Christian Peacemaker Team has followed the footsteps of Jesus into the office of one of the primary enablers of the American addiction to blood and wasted humanity: "Eight CPTers, dressed in sackcloth and ashes as a sign of repentance for complicity in the war, entered the Congressman’s office around 4:00 p.m. They presented his staff with a letter expressing their concerns and a pledge for the Congressman to sign, in which he would promise to vote against any further funding for the occupation in Iraq." - "CHICAGO: Five CPTers arrested in M.L. King Day witness against Iraq war".

Even those of us who can't risk arrest can risk prayer and penance during this Lent by participating in "People Breaking the Silence", a time to bring before bishops and archbishops the sight of Christians doing penance for the sin of complicity in torture and the sin of silence in one of the most brutal and unnecessary wars ever to disgrace the human race.

"Upon his release from jail shortly after midnight, Gerber said he had no regrets about his action: 'We can hope and pray for peace but there are times when we are called by the Spirit to take drastic action to live the Gospel of peace and love.'"

One place to begin is with the Litany of Resistance:

"One: For our scorched and blackened earth
All: Forgive us for we know not what we do
One: For the scandal of billions wasted in war
All: Forgive us for we know not what we do
One: For our leaders who wage war in our name
All: Forgive us for we know not what we do
One: For our Caesars and our Herods
All: Forgive us for we know not what we do
One: For our generals and tacticians
All: Forgive us for we know not what we do
One: For the men and women in battle
All: Forgive us for we know not what we do
One: For the men and women training for war
All: Forgive us for we know not what we do
One: For the scientists and researchers
All: Forgive us for we know not what we do
One: For the arms dealers and the merchants of death
All: Forgive us for we know not what we do
One: For our taxes that fund the evil of war
All: Forgive us for we know not what we do
One: Deliver us, O God
All: Guide our feet into the ways of peace
One: In humility, we ask
All: Hear our prayer. Grant us peace."

- Christian Peacemakers Team (Litany of Resistance)

Samuel Provance gave testimony tonight on Democracy Now about Abu Ghraib. What was deeply moving was his complete honesty and openness, obvious to anyone who shares his humanity. No one stood up for justice with him. Not a single soldier. Every single one looked at what happened to him and decided to protect themselves. That is the world the U.S. has created. That is the shame we must live with. That is the world we have said "yes" to. That is the world that those who are silent will die in.

It is not the world of Jesus Christ.

Defilement

"Guantanamo is so striking in its immorality and lack of justice," said Nolan, who participated in a similar protest for last year's rally -- representing the same man, 26-year-old Fazaldad, whose first name is listed as "unknown" on Defense Department lists. "If humans were created in God's image, torture is clearly a defilement of that." - Tim Nolan, on being arrested on Jan. 12, 2008 at the Supreme Court while protesting the illegal incarceration of detainees at Guantanamo.

The main goal of the action was humanization: "About 70 of those arrested withheld their legal name and instead gave the name of a detainee upon arrest. Today in court they gave their legal name but stated that their arrest on behalf of a detainee. Thus one of the main goals for the action was achieved because a number the court dockets as well as individual citations now have one of the detainees' names on them."

Only thus were the names of detainees at last recognized in a court of law.

There was a time in America when the brutalities carried out on these detainees would have roused the indignation, not merely of those who live by the Sermon on the Mount, but of the average subway rider in any major city. There was a time, I say, when those who tortured and degraded their fellow man as we have done in Guantanamo, would have provoked overwhelming shame throughout this country, even in the parishes of the Catholic Church. But that time, that happier time, has passed, perhaps forever, and such deeds are now nothing more than fodder for late night pundits. But there was a time...

When we declare human beings to be less than human, we defile ourselves: "The judges hearing the case ... concluded that the plaintiffs were not 'persons' for purpose of the relevant statute protecting religious freedom. They further concluded that acts of torture and contempt and abuse targeting religious belief were within the legitimate scope of conduct of an American cabinet officer, so that official immunity blocked the suit." - "In Voiding Suit, Appellate Court Says Torture Is To Be Expected", McClatchy Newspapers, Jan. 11, 2008. The judges concluded that the Guantanamo detainees were not human in the eyes of good Americans. Therefore, these units of organic matter should expect torture, for that is their fate under the eyes of a Christian nation.

The Church declares the remedy for this defilement: penance. Fame and success are not necessary, just the willingness to suffer for our brothers and sisters incarcerated in the dungeons of the American Empire: "Juma Din is the name of my prisoner. An Afghan who is one year older than my daughter, he has been in Guantanamo a long time. That’s all I know about him. I wrote his name on both my wrists with a ballpoint pen to be sure I wouldn’t forget it. How terrible if I had forgotten his name!"- Jean Athey, "Speaking for Those in Guantanamo", afterdowningstreet.org, Jan. 18, 2008.

The first step in rehumanizing ourselves is to give our victims their names back. They are not categories such as "enemy combatants" - they are fathers, husbands, sons and daughters who are cared for beyond comprehension by our God.

"In the many years he has been at Guantanamo, and to the shame of my country, no court has heard his name or learned anything about him. Is he a terrorist, a pawn in someone’s tribal vendetta sold to the United States for a bounty, or just unlucky -- in the wrong place at the wrong time? Whatever the answer, I know he has suffered mightily and, I thought, I could 'suffer' just a little on his behalf."- Jean Athey, "Speaking for Those in Guantanamo", afterdowningstreet.org, Jan. 18, 2008.

No court has heard this man's name. What an opportunity for sanctification God has granted to the Christians of our time. To take the names of the nameless and suffer on their behalf in defiance of an empire that smirks at its own inhumanity. What graces might shower down from heaven if only we would accept the burden of this penance!

"On that march, most of us thought about the prisoner whom we each represented. I wondered about the mother of Juma Din. She is probably about my age, since our children are the same age. What kind of hell must she have lived through for six years? By now, she surely knows her son is in Guantanamo; she must suffer daily, waking up each morning to imagine what horror he will endure that day." - Jean Athey, "Speaking for Those in Guantanamo", afterdowningstreet.org, Jan. 18, 2008.

The essence of penance is not the degree of suffering, but the imaginative endurance of the suffering we have caused others and particularly our Savior. In the case of the Guantanamo detainees, it is the horrors which our silence and inaction have created in the lives of innocent men and those who love them. It has long been demonstrated conclusively and admitted by the Pentagon itself that most of our detainees had nothing to do with any terrorist organization, but were picked up due to greed for U.S. monetary rewards and tribal vendettas. The empire needed enemies so they were manufactured by U.S. tax dollars.

"I suffered dry heaves the rest of the day as we waited to see the judge. This was starting to be a bit more miserable than I had anticipated. But, I thought, has Juma been tortured? Has he been ill? Has he had been forced to go hungry or eat something he found disgusting? Probably. And he likely didn’t have the sympathy and loving care I was receiving from my friends in the holding cell." - Jean Athey, "Speaking for Those in Guantanamo", afterdowningstreet.org, Jan. 18, 2008.

Finally, she said what she had come to say: "'My name is Jean Athey and I am here on behalf of Juma Din.' For the first time, Juma had his name before a court of law." - Jean Athey, "Speaking for Those in Guantanamo", afterdowningstreet.org, Jan. 18, 2008.

As Christians, we must shout, 'I am Juma Din! I have a name - I have a face. My humanity has been trampled beneath the feet of a Christian nation and I have been tortured due to the silence of a Christian people."

"The logic of non-violence is the logic of crucifixion and leads the man of non-violence into the heart of the suffering Christ. The purpose of non-violence is to move the oppressors to perceive as human beings those whom they are oppressing. Men commit acts of violence and injustice against other men only to the extent that they do not regard them as fully human. Non-violent resistance seeks to persuade the aggressor to recognize in his victim the humanity they have in common, which when recognized fully make violence impossible." James W. Douglass.