Rubble

"I realized I had never understood the true meaning of 'rubble.' Such and such was "reduced to rubble" is a phrase we hear. It is different seeing what demolished buildings actually look like. Buildings in which people were living. Buildings from which hundreds of broken bodies have been removed; so thorough a job have the Palestinians done in removing the dead from squashed dwellings that no scent of death remains. What this task must have been like, both physically and psychologically, staggers the mind.

We pass police stations that were simply flattened, and all the young (most Palestinians are young) officers in them killed, hundreds of them. We pass ministries, bombed into fragments. We pass a hospital, bombed and gutted by fire. If one is not safe in a hospital, when one is already sick and afraid, where is one safe? If children are not safe playing in their schoolyards, where are they safe?" - Alice Walker, "The Best Place One Could be on Earth", July 26, 2009.

"How doofus humans are going to look -- we thought as we marched, sang, accepted our handcuffs -- still firing rockets into apartment buildings full of families, and dropping bombs on school children and their pets, when the ice melts completely in the Arctic and puts an end to our regressive, greed sourced rage forever." - Alice Walker, "The Best Place One Could be on Earth", July 26, 2009.

"Doofus" is not exactly the word I would pick, but it does express the absurdity of our violence and greed in a way that celebrates the wisdom of the earth. It reminds us of the spiritual powers that lie behind all that we see, before whom we are mites crawling on the surface of mystery. Moreover, this mystery has a personality and a love that will one day put an end to our raging greed, and there's not a damn thing we can do about that.

Breaking the Border of Humanity

Until we feel the humanity of other peoples of the world, for instance Afghanis and Pakistanis and Hondurans, with the same intensity that we demand respect for our own, so far will our humanity be degraded and ultimately destroyed.

But a larger vision needs to be invoked. Our denial of our duties to humanity works in both directions. We have refused our duty to help create a world where everyone has adequate nourishment and health care while the rest of the world has desperately pleaded for our help. The fact that for a fraction of the cost of our luxuries this could be accomplished imposes the absolute moral obligation to do so. If our churches actually followed the teachings of Jesus, this would be beyond doubt - and would be the central moral imperative of a genuine Christianity. The tragic flaw of the American personality is complete blindness to our inherent relationship to other peoples and the natural environment, all of which have been transformed into objects to be consumed for profit. This denial of responsibility on a global scale will ultimately destroy us.

The Church of Benedict XVI continues to subsist in a world of Platonic forms untouched by history, untouched by the misery inherent in the capitalist world order that is determined to extract the last dribble of profit until the planet is reduced to a scalding desert. Regarding this system of economic idolatry, the Church is silent even as it proclaims eternal verities to the starving.

In contrast to God's attempt to share our humanity in Jesus' life and death, the Church worships an objectified God, a God who underwrites the ruling economic order, a God who can't be bothered with the massacre of Gazans, as Pope Benedict recently demonstrated in his visit to Israel.

In this regard, the Nonviolent Jesus calls out to the Honduran people to ignore the lies of the U.S. government and joyously to affirm the model of Hugo Chavez' Bolivarian Revolution as the authentic model for liberation from the dictatorship currently being imposed by U.S. corporate interests. How ironic that the U.S. State Department is currently publishing long discredited lies about Venezuela drug trafficking in Columbia. Colombian military cohorts in Honduras now want a share of the profits as well and Washington is doing everything it can to enable them to open new drug trafficking routes through Honduras.

The Honduran president has the opportunity at this moment to go beyond words, as we all do, and to march toward his capital holding the spirit force, the "truth force", the satyagraha of his people, in his heart. It could mean his death, but it would acquire a force that would place a permanent mark on the spirit of American. Or in the words of Eva Gollinger, "Personally, I think he needs to just continue inside Honduras, despite all risks, and fight to reunite with his family and his people, who have been risking their lives now for almost one month, struggling to defeat the coup regime." - Postcards from the Revolution, July 24, 2009.

The Return of the Assassins

Obama’s primary imperial mission is to reinstate U.S. dominance in those areas where it has waned in recent years due to movements of popular resistance. Today this drama is playing out primarily in Latin America and portions of the Middle East. His strategy, likely to be effective, is to subtly manipulate the framing of events so that the result will reinforce corporate domination while appearing to support “democracy” in those countries. The following article is a speculative reading of recent events in Honduras based on the study of previous U.S.-orchestrated coups in Central and South America.

The coup in Honduras may well become a model for the re-imposition of control by the military and their corporate sponsors in Latin America. Rather than openly denouncing the coup, Obama and Clinton have framed the crisis as contending concepts of legality - on one side the legality of the electoral process and on the other side, the contested legality of the call for a constitutional referendum. Ostensibly standing above the warring sides, Obama calls for “negotiations”, an irreproachable moral stance. But, as Eva Gollinger puts it so well, “The question still remains as to why negotiations - imposed by the United States - are even taking place. By giving the coup government equal participation in a ‘dialogue’ to find a solution, their illegal actions are being legitimized. This creates a dangerous and unacceptable precedent for other undemocratic groups seeking to remove their elected leaders from power and then ‘negotiate’ a resolution, gaining ground politically and weakening the democratic system.” – Postcards from the Revolution, July 8, 2009. Note carefully how well Obama has positioned himself politically by this call for negotiations. Notice also how adroitly it sets up his next move, which will likely be the gradual silencing of Zelaya and the legitimizing of the coup-based government. And the coup de grace to Zelaya will be accompanied by passionate protests against violations of democracy.

By framing the two parties as political equals, whereas in fact one party’s only claim to legitimacy is an act of blatantly illegal violence while the other side has all the force of international and national law supporting him, Obama has provided strong, though tacit, support to the coup leaders. Now that the other countries of the region and Zelaya himself have accepted this imposed equality, much will have been accomplished. In addition to confirming their political power, the coup leaders’ violence will have been recognized as a path to political leverage which will be implicitly supported by the Obama administration. This lesson will be carefully absorbed by closely watching military leaders in other Central American countries. Like Reagan, Obama has discovered the secret of keeping his glory bright while promoting U.S. interests through unrelenting violence. As savvy political observers might have expected, nothing came of the much ballyhooed “negotiations” on Thursday, July 9 which were supposed to occur between Zelaya and the coup leaders. In fact, no direct negotiations took place between Zelaya and the coup leaders at all. Zelaya met with Oscar Arias and then Roberto Micheletti met with Arias. The political reality is that such “negotiations”, in which neither side directly bargains with the other, but merely states their non-negotiable positions to a “neutral” third party, is merely a delaying tactic. They lengthen the time that Zelaya is out of power and allow the coup leaders to establish facts on the ground which will strengthen their political leverage.

At this point, everything depends on framing. As Reuters reported it, “The stumbling block is that the de facto government accepts the return of the constitutional government," [Organization of American States chief] Insulza told reporters in Washington. ‘Everything else is negotiable.’” Note the phrase, “de facto government”. This “de facto” government has been placed in the decision-making position regarding the return of Zelaya. Whether it does or does not, “everything else is negotiable”, which, of course, includes all of Zelaya’s reforms, such as providing a livable wage for the poor.

Another purpose of the “negotiations” strategy, is to place Zelaya in the humiliating position of having to debate the lies perpetrated by the coup leaders and enthusiastically repeated by the corporate media that he was trying to extend presidential term limits. The big lie technique has been very successful in this regard. Zelaya in fact proposed a constitutional referendum that made no mention whatever of presidential term limits. The true story is provided by Eva Gollinger, “Major international media are still reporting the reason behind Sunday's coup as an alleged ‘reelection’ attempt by President Zelaya. But in reality, Sunday's scheduled opinion poll was not a reelection bid by Zelaya, it was a non-binding consultation with the people of Honduras, backed by more than 800,000 signatures from Honduran citizens that would merely consider the possibility of adding a 4th issue to the election ballot this coming November, when presidential elections are to be held. The question posed for Sunday's poll was: ‘Do you agree that, during the general elections of November 2009 there should be a fourth ballot to decide whether to hold a Constitutional Assembly that will approve a new political constitution?’” Nothing about term limits was mentioned.

During the face-to-face meetings with the de facto government which will ensue, Zelaya’s return to the presidency will likely be contingent on his willingness to abandon the substance (though maybe not the “style”) of these reforms, along with his renunciation of membership in ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas). If he clings to these positions, he will be castigated in the international press as an “ideologue”, or a tool of Chavez, which will frame him as unworthy of his position as President (a “dictator”) and therefore justifying the action taken by the coup leaders. If, on the other hand, he becomes “reasonable” and abandons his mild reforms, he will be praised for his “statesmanlike” behavior. If sufficiently obedient to the neoliberal agenda, he may then be returned to power, but having abandoned his base, he will be so weakened that when elections take place, the candidate supported by the coup leaders will likely win, thus accomplishing the primary political goal of the coup by the Obama administration. Obama will then praise the triumph of “democracy” in Central America.

The beauty of this strategy is that all Obama and Clinton have to do to accomplish it is to make lots of vague statements condemning the coup and cutting off token amounts of military aid. Simply by neglecting to perform any act that would actually accomplish his return, which they can justify as a non-interventionist policy, they ensure that neoliberal policies will be enforced while keeping their hands clean. If Senor Zelaya finds himself unable to land in his country’s airports because of U.S. funded air power, that’s unfortunate, but the result of an internal struggle that the U.S. has no right to interfere with. The corporate media can be relied on to frame the story as the attempted return of a dangerous leftist to power, one supported by Chavez, Ortega, and Castro. Obama can then continue to claim the moral high ground while letting the situation drift in the coup leaders’ favor. The social forces that now support Zelaya will be worn down with time. Gradually, the Honduran people will get used to dictatorship and the de facto will morph into the constitutional, though not without “controversy”.

Thus the first step in the reversal of recent gains in Latin America for economic justice will have been accomplished.

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!"

McChrystal-Clear

"Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former Special Operations chief who is President Obama's new choice to lead the war in Afghanistan, rose to military prominence because of his single-minded success in a narrow but critical mission: manhunting. As commander of the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly five years starting in 2003, McChrystal masterminded a campaign to perfect the art of tracking down enemies, and then capturing or killing them. He built a sophisticated network of soldiers and intelligence operatives who proceeded to decapitate the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and kill its most notorious leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." - "High-value-target hunter takes on Afghan war" Washington Post

The appointment of McChrystal puts the final nail in the coffin of Obama-branded "hope". Obama's principle foreign policy objective has been decisively revealed as the reinforcement of empire through the projection of massive military power, "A systematic analysis of the Obama regime’s policies reveals the overriding emphasis on projecting military power as the main instrument for sustaining the empire throughout the world." - James Petras, "US-Latin American Relations in a Time of Rising Militarism, Protectionism and Pillage", May 15, 2009

It would appear that we can no longer afford the luxuries of liberal pretense. We must kill and kill again until the Middle East submits unconditionally to our dominance. Only an unobstructed pathway for the massive pipelines through Afghanistan and dozens of permanent military bases to protect them is sufficient for those whose interests Obama was hired to implement. At last the real motivations behind Obama's refusal to release the new Abu Ghraib photos and his unprecedented blanket immunity for torturers becomes clear. We are about to take several new steps into hell.

Obama is also pleased by two other exploits by McChrystal: The prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad's Camp Nama, and his role in the cover-up in the friendly-fire death of ex-NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman.

McChrystal knows how to handle insurgents. "An interrogator at Camp Nama described locking prisoners in shipping containers for 24 hours at a time in extreme heat; exposing them to extreme cold with periodic soaking in cold water; bombardment with bright lights and loud music; sleep deprivation; and severe beatings. When he and other interrogators went to the colonel in charge and expressed concern that this kind of treatment was not legal, and that they might be investigated by the military’s Criminal Investigation Division or the International Committee of the Red Cross, the colonel told them he had 'this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there’s no way that the Red Cross could get in.'" Just as Obama doesn't want the CIA torturers prosecuted for violations of U.S. laws, he doesn't want the Geneva Conventions interfering with "what needs to be done."

Likewise, McChrystal knows how to handle the media. "When NFL player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman died at the hands of US troops in a case of 'friendly fire,' the spin machine at the Pentagon went into overdrive. Rumsfeld and company couldn’t have their most high-profile soldier dying in such an inelegant fashion, especially with the release of those pesky photos from Abu Ghraib hitting the airwaves. So an obscene lie was told to Tillman’s family, his friends and the American public. The chicken-hawks in charge, whose only exposure to war was watching John Wayne movies, claimed that he died charging a hill and was cut down by the radical Islamic enemies of freedom...Now the man who greased the chain of command that orchestrated this great deception is prepared to assume total control of US operations in Afghanistan: Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It was McChrystal who approved Tillman’s posthumous Silver Star, a medal given explicitly for combat, even though he later testified that he “suspected” friendly fire." - Dave Zirin, "Tillman Family is McChrystal-Clear", May 16, 2009.

And the Guantanamo brigade plays on in this article documenting continuing torture at Guantanamo under Obama: "IRF teams in effect operate at Guantánamo as an extrajudicial terror squad that has regularly brutalized prisoners outside of the interrogation room, gang beating them, forcing their heads into toilets, breaking bones, gouging their eyes, squeezing their testicles, urinating on a prisoner's head, banging their heads on concrete floors and hog-tying them -- sometimes leaving prisoners tied in excruciating positions for hours on end."

Indeed, under Obama the torture has intensified, "... one Guantanamo lawyer, Ahmed Ghappour, said that his clients were reporting 'a ramping up in abuse' since Obama was elected, including 'beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-force feeding detainees who are on hunger strike,' according to Reuters." - "Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama", May 15, 2009, Alternet

Hope and change = torture and assassination. Now the coup is complete. Bush established the foundation and Obama will build on that foundation with far more intelligence and dexterity, marshaling the full intellectual resources of the ruling elite. That was the purpose of his election. Promises were made, but none will be fulfilled - no withdrawal from Iraq, no end of Guantanamo, no universal health care, nothing will be given to those whose voice is of no importance. Military commission trials, now reauthorized by Obama, will not be confined to the inhabitants of Guantanamo:

"Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, has said that White House Counsel Greg Craig is considering changes to the tribunal system in conjunction with the establishment of a 'National Security Court' that could authorize indefinite detention for prisoners the executive branch or military declares “dangerous,” but against whom evidence is too scant to try in court. This is the prototype of a permanent 'Star Chamber' instrument in the hands of the executive, which would ultimately be used against its domestic political opponents." - "Obama restarts military commission trials", wsws.org, May 16, 2009.

Twisted

Every week I read Greenwald's columns with pleasure and outrage, but also with a growing sense of amazement. I'm befuddled at how he can pierce through Obama's policies and practices so surely without drawing the obvious conclusion. Look at the succession of "And this" phrases in this article. Do they not aim at an unmistakable target?

How right he is that "...the notion that releasing or concealing these photos would make an appreciable difference in terms of how we're perceived in the Muslim world is laughable on its face." Therefore there must be another reason why this decision was made.

Indeed, "What do you think the impact is when we announce to the world: 'What we did is so heinous that we're going to suppress the evidence?'" Muslim imaginations, already inflamed, will surge with hatred. The ability of the U.S. to torture, imprison and murder its enemies without fear of retaliation will be denounced from mosques everywhere. This outrage will quickly turn to acts of violence against U.S. targets that will compel us, reluctant as we might be, to continue our occupation in the Middle East. What a tremendous burden it is to be the keeper of peace in the world.

The underlying assumption of Greenwald, Maddow, and others (and believe me, I admire their courage and moral persistence more than I can say), is to presume innocence in the pronouncements of this administration. The story line seems to be that Obama is foolishly caving in to the right-wing of his party in the mistaken attempt to be "bi-partisan". I think we need to dig a little deeper.

Why is Obama so determined to maintain and extend the policy of holding "terror suspects" indefinitely without charges in the US itself? What would be the purpose of guaranteeing immunity to those who committed these crimes, then letting the imagination play with the unseen images?

Could it be that torture is integral to imperial policy? That counterinsurgency campaigns depend on the terror spread through images of torture, rape, and murder? That the more ruthless we seem, the more powerful we appear to our "enemies"? Fascist psychology is not hard to penetrate, yet it is infinitely sad to see a non-fascist like Obama twisted into the image of what he has fought against for most of his life.

Obama's Contribution to Peace

Obama's contribution to Middle East peace is etched on the face of the boy in this picture. He continues to etch U.S. imperialist policy on the face of every Afghan and Iraqi just as the Israeli boot has printed its face on Palestinians for 60 years. Utterly devoid of the moral core of the man he most frequently imitates, Dr. Martin Luther King, Obama is incapable of understanding the root of the current crisis.

"For what it's worth, the Democrats are best exposed as agents of empire, inequality, and "corporate-managed democracy" (Alex Carey's useful term) when they hold top offices. That's when their populist and peaceful sounding campaign rhetoric hits the cold pavement of corporate imperial governance." - "Obama's Violin
Populist rage and the uncertain containment of change", Paul Street, May, 2009

Socialism Defined

Who owns the means of production will always be the critical issue. If you own my means of livelihood, my ability to feed my family, then you will control much about how I look at the world. If identifying with your interests is the difference between advancing in my career and losing my income, then your view of the world will pervade my thoughts, whether I like it or not. If, on the other hand, I and my fellow workers own the means of production, then the whole picture changes. Then how I perceive the world and what I need becomes a factor that you have to deal with. Then we have to negotiate with each other, give a little and take a little until we come to a common agreement. From this viewpoint, simply ensuring that "the business does not pick up and move" is insufficient. What is important is that I have a voice, that my contribution and humanity are not merely a means to someone else's profit, be they local or distant, but an essential element of the business.

I agree with you that what we have in the U.S today is predatory economics, but I don't see this as an aberration from a previous non-predatory economics. Fraud and exploitation are essential features of an economy based on capital accumulation, not aberrations practiced by a greedy few. The reason quantity is dominant over quality is not due to the personal preference of the current President, but because the economic system always privileges quantity because it is measurable. Measurable means that it supports capital accumulation which is the goal of every corporation.

A pathology can also be a system, or, rather, a system can express a pathology which is inherent in what the system privileges. As a socialist, I find your description of human change, "Human systems emerge from human interaction, through various forms of communication and communities" exactly apropos. That is precisely what Marx was talking about when he talked about the "self-emancipation of the worker." We change ourselves through our activity. We transform ourselves in the process of production. "In production, the producers change, too, in that they bring out new qualities in themselves, develop themselves in production, transform themselves, develop new powers and ideas... new needs and a new language." - Karl Marx.

According to Marx, socialism is not a static set of dogmatic intellectual principles, but a method of transformation through productive action. It is inherently transformative and refers to our ability to take responsibility for our own humanity.

The Fundamental Question

We need to start with a fundamental question, "Why do the actions of our leaders contradict their words, particularly their words about the seriousness of global warming?" Why do they seem so determined to abandon their children and grandchildren to a world of floods and droughts and escalating climate disasters? Why do they continually sabotage efforts to create sustainable energy sources?

Because they cannot act in the interests of humanity as a whole without calling the entire system into question. They realize that the changes needed to halt climate decay are directly contrary to the needs of capital, so their only choice is to fund illusions - that climate change is not real or could be beneficial or can be addressed with market incentives, in descending order.

Corporate interest has only one imperative: it has to grow. If capital stops growing, the system collapses. As Joel Kovel says, "Capitalism can no more survive limits on growth than a person can live without breathing."

Break the Power of the Wicked

"'Obama,' [Robert Sheer] writes 'seems depressingly reliant on the same-old, same old cast of self-serving house wreckers who act as if government exists for the sole benefit of corporations and executives.'" "As if"? Is there any shadow of a doubt here? The election of Barack Obama was one of the most effective marketing campaigns in recent history and has many lessons for activists. The first is the longing people have to subordinate their personal interests to an extra-personal cause. Trained by decades of subordinating our interests as workers to those of the employing class, we instinctively see their interests as our own. Notice how closely rage tracks the health of the stock market, though most workers benefit very little from such fluctuations.

We see ourselves as means to ends that are determined by experts and owners. Our neglect of our own interests is determined by the conditions of our employment. Those who identify most closely with the interests of their company advance the fastest. Obama and his administration know exactly who their employers are.

How can we arouse effective resistance? Though I believe we are in a pre-revolutionary situation, I see the proliferation of calls to violence as playing directly into the hands of the financial elite. Violence tracks their interests so closely that I suspect their minions behind much of the vitriol.

As always, their purpose is increased profits and faster accumulation of capital. The current Western democracies with their social supports and environmental protections, however anemic, have become inadequate profit vehicles. Bank bailouts have several beneficial effects for the elite. Beside direct access to Treasury funds, they can extend their long-term domination by imposing unsupportable debts on the majority of the U.S. population, using access to credit as an irresistible means of political control.

We may be a long way from violent revolution, but notice how the possibility is constantly hyped in the right-wing press. An excellent example is the coverage of the G20 summit during which the demonstrators were constantly referred to as "anarchists" and a loop of a demonstrator smashing a bank window was played over and over to the practical exclusion of any other demonstration image.

Gandhi showed that one who truly practices nonviolence has the world at his feet. While hatred binds us tightly to our exploiters, nonviolence can break both their bonds and our own. "In its positive form, ahimsa means the largest love, the greatest charity. If I am a follower of ahimsa, I must love my enemy." - Gandhi. This attitude must be coupled with total clarity regarding how opposed our interests are to those of the ruling elite if our tactics are to be effective.

The Absolute Minimum

Let's reduce it basics. Christians cannot approve torture - ever. Our souls are protected by God, not by the CIA. Human harm is the essence of sin because sin is an offense against God, whose image is humanity. Christians who approve of torture have renounced the faith - root and branch. Christ was tortured for their salvation - to approve of torture is to renounce salvation.

Yet Obama and most other Christians approve of torture, On Feb. 9, days after his inauguration, at the height of his popularity, when he had overwhelming public support to end torture, he endorsed the worst extreme of the Bush policy - kidnapping "enemy combatants" and rendering them to foreign prisons to be tortured "The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn't changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret. This is not going to please civil libertarians and human rights activists who had hoped the Obama administration would allow the lawsuit to proceed." - Glenn Greenwald, "Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability -- resoundingly and disgracefully", Feb. 9, 2009

The complete silence or active approval of the vast majority of the Christian communities in the face of this endorsement of torture raises an interesting question, "If Christianity lacks any pragmatic commitment to human rights, then who is the God that it worships?" If years of Bible reading and listening to sermons about sin and salvation do no lead to respect for our fellow human beings, then what is the practical effect of this religion?

The spirit of Christ can be found in this passage, "Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of humanity. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of humanity. Destruction is not the law of humans. Humans live freely by their readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of a brother, never by killing another. Every murder or injury no matter for what cause, committed or inflicted on another, is a crime against humanity." - Mohandas Gandhi.

Understanding Torture

The first job of the American Resistance is to understand the forces arrayed against us. The tendency to personalize political forces is a temptation which the corporate media encourages us to indulge and which dissipates the power of our critique. While people make politics and exercise power, their decisions are usually a response to forces that are not personal and in most cases, have little if any respect for the value of humanity to which the Resistance is committed. President Obama, for instance, is by all evidence a sincere and intelligent man, committed to the moral good as he understands it, but now part of a system that does not respect that moral good. His administration serves at the pleasure of the national security apparatus, as has every President since John F. Kennedy, whose death at the hands of that apparatus is graphic evidence to each successor of the consequences of disobedience.

There is no significant constituency for democracy or the rule of law within the ruling elite. They respect wealth and the pleasures wealth brings to themselves and their cohorts. Many of them sincerely believe that the virtues cultivated in striving for wealth are the highest ideals to which humanity can attain. But, sincere or not, these “virtues” drive the policies of their agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank.

The purpose of torture is to intimidate dissidents and enforce obedience to corporate priorities. The methods used in Guantanamo and the Middle East were developed during the U.S. led coup in Chile which established Pinochet and implemented the first massive neoliberal experiments of the current era. The technique that Obama has employed in releasing selective information about what is done to those who question U.S. dominance follows a classic pattern.

Naomi Klein wrote concerning torture, "But this fear [of torture] has to be finely calibrated. The people being intimidated need to know enough to be afraid but not so much that they demand justice. This helps explain why the Defense Department will release certain kinds of seemingly incriminating information about Guantanamo--pictures of men in cages, for instance--at the same time that it acts to suppress photographs on a par with what escaped from Abu Ghraib. ...This strategic leaking of information, combined with official denials, induces a state of mind that Argentines describe as 'knowing/not knowing,' a vestige of their 'dirty war.'" - Naomi Klein, "Torture's Dirty Secret: It Works"

The purpose of letting people know some gruesome details of torture while holding back others is clear: "...when they use rendition and torture as a threat, it's undeniable that they benefit, in some sense, from the fact that people know that intelligence agents are willing to act unlawfully. They benefit from the fact that people understand the threat and believe it to be credible." - Naomi Klein, "Torture's Dirty Secret: It Works"

In other words, both of Obama's decisions inform potential dissidents that U.S. intelligence practices torture and that the practitioners will not be prosecuted. At last, the pattern emerges: "This is torture's true purpose: to terrorize--not only the people in Guantánamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist--the individual prisoner's will and the collective will." - Naomi Klein, "Torture's Dirty Secret: It Works"

If there are investigations of the Bush torture policy, it is likely that they will be used to further desensitize Americans toward torture, normalizing it into one more instrument of imperial policy. Once the instruments are on the table, dissidents will understand what’s in store for those who contradict the new consensus.

Obama Uncovers the Instruments

"Generally bad people can do good things (even if for ignoble reasons) and generally good people can do bad things. That's why I care little about motives, which I think, in any event, are impossible to know. Regardless of motives, good acts (releasing the torture memos) should be praised, and bad acts (arguing against prosecutions) should be condemned." - Glenn Greenwald, "The Significance of Obama's Decision to Release the Torture Memos"

I agree completely with Greenwald that we should not inappropriately personalize these decisions. Such personalization smudges our perception of the real issues. But these obvious statements are a little too true to be entirely innocent. As we all know, there is a pattern in people's decisions that reveals what they represent as power to themselves. To pretend otherwise, even to support objective analysis, is mystification - pretending that the obvious tendency is the result of mysterious and unknowable motivations.

Let's examine what the probable effect of these two decisions on public attitudes toward torture might be. Withholding the details of the tortures would have mitigated public outrage among some, but would have disappointed those who demand assurance that those who threaten us are treated with sufficient cruelty. Promising not to prosecute such crimes against the human person essentially declares open season on "enemies" or "terrorists" or soon, probably, "environmental terrorists." If even a politician like Obama will not prosecute those who torture, then the message is clear that anything can be done to our enemies.

Naomi Klein wrote concerning torture, "But this fear has to be finely calibrated. The people being intimidated need to know enough to be afraid but not so much that they demand justice. This helps explain why the Defense Department will release certain kinds of seemingly incriminating information about Guantanamo--pictures of men in cages, for instance--at the same time that it acts to suppress photographs on a par with what escaped from Abu Ghraib. ...This strategic leaking of information, combined with official denials, induces a state of mind that Argentines describe as 'knowing/not knowing,' a vestige of their 'dirty war.'" - Naomi Klein, "Torture's Dirty Secret: It Works"

The purpose of letting people know some gruesome details of torture while holding back others is clear: "...when they use rendition and torture as a threat, it's undeniable that they benefit, in some sense, from the fact that people know that intelligence agents are willing to act unlawfully. They benefit from the fact that people understand the threat and believe it to be credible." - Naomi Klein, "Torture's Dirty Secret: It Works"

In other words, both of Obama's decisions inform potential dissidents that U.S. intelligence practices torture and that the practitioners will not be prosecuted even if they act in full knowledge of its unlawful nature.

At last, the pattern emerges: "This is torture's true purpose: to terrorize--not only the people in Guantánamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist--the individual prisoner's will and the collective will." - Naomi Klein, "Torture's Dirty Secret: It Works"

Sanity Defined

Sanity can be defined as follows: "The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself, is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity, without panic and undue fear." - Erich Fromm, The Sane Society.

What Mark Danner describes in "The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means", the ground-breaking report just published in the New York Times Book Review, is an obsession with security that is the psychic opposite of sanity. To be free means to be insecure, just as the thinking man is by necessity uncertain. When the risk of insecurity becomes intolerable then we are willing to torture and maim others to maintain the illusion of security no matter the cost to our humanity. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

"How does peace come about?...Through the big banks, through money? Or through universal peaceful rearmament in order to guarantee peace? Through none of these, for the single reason that in all of them peace is confused with safety. There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means to give oneself altogether to the law of God, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross. Which of us can say he or she knows what it might mean for the world if one nation should meet the aggressor, not with weapons in hand, but praying, defenseless and for that very reason protected by 'a bulwark never failing'." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "The Church and the People of the World"

But clearly this is not the path which the Obama administration has chosen. "The United States has formally adopted the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture; they are not some kind of "foreign devilment" messing with our sacred sovereignty: they are the law of the land. But it is clear that the Obama Administration does not have and never had the slightest intention of obeying the law and instigating the required investigations and prosecutions of the high crime -- the capital crime -- of ordering and committing torture. And the reason for this refusal is also clear: the Obama Administration wants to retain the power to torture, to conduct "paramilitary operations" with secret armies and single assassins, to carry out mass, illegal surveillance of the population with no legal accountability, to do "whatever it takes" to keep the machine of war and domination churning at full strength. That is why they have retained apparatchiks like Kappes and Sulick; that is why they are not only defending the Bush gang's egregious assertions of authoritarian power, but are actually seeking to expand them, as Glenn Greenwald and others have detailed." Chris Floyd, "Hope Abandoned", April 10, 2009.