PEOPLE PROPERTY

The rightward swing in America does not stem from an ill-defined ideology which is increasingly seizing dominance over policy by some peculiar coincidence or natural pendulum fluctuation. Unlike the Democratic Party, it has clear objective and, thus, has an attraction for Americans desiring strong, decisive leadership (which constitutes the majority).

The right aims to take us back to the day when white males were exclusive members of the ownership society and all others (women, African-Americans, Latinos, non-Christians, etc.) were but property at their disposal.

The medieval white males-only club views blacks, such as Trayvon Martin, the same as farm animals to be butchered or terminated at the owner’s pleasure. (Already there is rightwing talk that since Trayvon’s parents are on welfare, the killing was justified homicide. Of course, the parents are not on welfare, but why should facts get in the way of good rightwing narrative?)

Not only African-Americans are sub-human in their eyes, but females and all dark-skinned races. There’s a definite connection between events, such as Sanford, voter suppression, and attacks on women’s rights – which are emerging strongly in this election cycle. Social conservatives are on the march. The “club” views women as silent child-bearers and servants to the man. It views the elderly poor and the lower class as less than capable in knowing “how” to vote, consequently they should be taken off the rolls and forbidden from voting. Corporate’s tool to accomplish this is ALEC, which introduced voter-suppression laws in 33 states during 2011 alone.

The aim is to take America back… back to 1850 – “their” good ol’ days. They want to make it impossible for any Democrat to win the White House, especially Barack Obama, and voter suppression is their instrument. Obama could poll a comfortable majority before the election but lose by double digits if ALEC succeeds. Over 10 million Democrats will have been silently thrown off the rolls, Karl Rove’s signature achievement. Voters won’t know what hit them until attempting to cast ballots this fall. (Where is Obama’s Justice Department in all this? Asleep at the wheel, as usual.)

Naturally, the religious right reinforces such political heresy. The beast would not have risen to power had it not been for the corpulent whore, the compromised church, that saw opportunity to take dominion by serving as the adulterous bride of the evil emperor. The end justifies the means; so joining forces with Christ’s enemies is a reasonable trade-off if gaining power over the populace is the reward. Situational ethics is okay just as long as intent is pure, the whore reasons.

This is the picture of the rising Republican America. Their unspoken core doctrine is private ownership of everything – where government is subservient to the will of the select “owners.” Extreme libertarianism leads to the dismantling of the commons, the public sector – where schools, roads, bridges, and the post office are privatized and even the military evolves into nothing but a mercenary force. Nothing could be more destructive to a society.

The only ones making a living wage are the white-male-owners in this future vision where surveillanced castles (gated communities) are surrounded by tin shanties occupied by the impoverished vast majority. Megachurches rise over city landscapes reminiscent of prominent cathedrals of antiquity towering over paupers’ huts. The New Dark Ages has arrived.

Yet, the owners proceed. We, the people, are nothing but property in their hands – commodities to be traded on the “open” market. “Free trade” is not free for the increasingly enslaved.

International trade agreements are observed in many eyes as a feather in the cap of whatever politician came up with the mechanisms that, in truth, further force the U.S. into decline. For, they’re actually instruments of destruction – encouraging companies to outsource whole industries overseas in order to exploit slave labor. The question is: Why would a Democratic President, put in office by labor, concede to such anti-worker treaties – not only signing his name to our death certificate, but celebrating its passage as a trophy to be exhibited for political gamesmanship?

Twenty years ago a teenage boy got caught shoplifting a pack of gum at a convenience store on the southside of town. He was placed in juvenile detention. The same day, another young man in his 20s, the son of a judge, got caught selling drugs to university students. His father, naturally, bailed him out, hired the best attorneys, and (the short of it) – sonny got off-the-hook – his charges expunged. Which crime was more offensive – stealing bubble gum or selling drugs? Which boy received more punishment? (The poor boy was ruined for life while the rich boy got off scott-free.)

This is a true story. But more, it is a picture in contrast of America’s disparity with its obscene double standards, where justice is bought by the “owners” and all others are at their mercy. Not only do they buy elections, they buy justice, tax codes and law-making.

The 20-year old story reminds me of the Trayvon case – where George Zimmerman could possibly get off-the-hook for murder because of who his father is, and the only ones punished will be the demonstrators who react to such crass injustice. The boy carrying a bag of skittles from a convenience store is no match for the bully whose daddy is a retired judge with strong Republican links to the State Attorney General. It’s not just a white-black case, but rich-poor.

People are property in the emerging Republican world. There is no commons, no public sector, no fair tax structure. This vision can only be defeated by a vigilant Democratic leadership. We have yet seen nothing but spineless cowardice.

Proposed New Rule for Presidential Candidates: If You Think God's Telling You to Run, Keep It To Yourself

Why Evangelical Presidential Candidates Make Me Nervous

I’m offended by evangelical actions, but I’m not offended by their opinion. They believe in a sky god who’s going to suck them up into the sky with a vacuum cleaner. What’s there to get offended by? That’s funny! That’s hilarious! Have at it, Hoss, I’d love to see it. Cenk Uygur

I’m with Cenk. If the evangelicals kept their beliefs and actions to themselves, if they let the rest of us alone, what’s there to worry about?

Ah, wouldn’t that be lovely? Alas, it’s not happening. Christian activists have not kept their beliefs and actions to themselves, not since the Reagan years. They want political power. They want policies and laws that support their beliefs and actions. They want to legislate policies and laws that requre the rest of us to conform to their traditions, beliefs and actions. They can’t help themselves – evangelicals think they are called to proselytize. They are convinced that God needs them to spread the word.  They believe they can’t keep their beliefs to themselves – God wants them out there selling. To not do so is to risk missing out on the heavenly lottery and all that eternal exuberance winning it supposedly brings.

A new book details what politicians like Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry mean when they talk about their personal relationship with God. Entitled, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God by T. M. Luhrmann (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), the author describes evangelical Christian communities (known as renewalists) that comprise as much as 26% of the American population. These people believe that they have had a direct revelation from God of one kind or another. Both the Gallup and Pew polling organizations report that renewalists also claim to have heard a voice or had a vision on one or more occasions as a result of prayer. Rick Warren sold 30 million copies of his book, Purpose Driven Life describing how to become best friends with God.  It would appear that God or at least Rick Warren have been friended by 30 million or more evangelicals. Talk about social networking.

If this kind of thinking helps people deal with stress, avoid loneliness and otherwise get on with their lives, I say, bully for them. Or, have at it, Hoss.

But what, exactly, does a Christian renewalist get out of the friendship with God, besides eternal bliss in the next life? According to Mr. Luhrmann, having God as a pal offers a friend, imaginary or real, who can be asked for practical advice (e.g., when getting dressed, whether God prefers the black shirt or the blue one). In an Opinion piece about his book in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Luhrmann wrote: They didn’t treat God as different from the stuff of the material world—tables, chairs, other people. They talked about God saying, telling, prodding, encouraging, as if he were right there at the dinner table. And sometimes they put out a place setting. (See When the Almighty Talks Back, WSJ, April 6, 2012, p.A11.)

To a secular infidel rationalist heretic freethinker like me, this is total batdoodoo. It seems incomprehensible that anyone capable of functioning outside of an institution without supervision could possibly take such beliefs seriously. Yet, as noted, at least a quarter of the population behaves accordingly, assuming Pew, Gallup and author Luhrmann are not having us on. The optimist in me recalls Aristotle for small comfort: There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man and hopes that the rest of the space in there is more or less rational. But then I remember what Leo Rosten had to say on the topic: Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts. 

Once again, I want to emphasize that bizarre religious beliefs and inexplicable actions give no offense when practiced harmlessly. If such were the case, I would not protest or be alarmed. But, when politicians get godly, I get nervous.

And that’s precisely why I do very much worry about Republican presidential candidates who make explicit claims that their candidacy is based on a directive from an imaginary friend. No fewer than four contenders for the GOP (God’s Own Party) claimed that God told them to run for president. The four would be Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry. Good riddance, all. (No, I’m not making this up. For details on each candidates heavenly endorsement, see Dan Amira, Every Candidate Endorsed by God Has Now Lost to Mitt Romney, in the April New York Magazine.)

It should be obvious why a new rule (thanks Bill Maher) is needed here. Presidents have to make important decisions that affect us all, nearly every day. On some days, presidential decisions can affect the fate of the nation. Think of it – do we want a president under extreme pressure to react to say, North Korea or Iran’s immanent use of a nuclear weapon by consulting the National Security Council and dozens of other key advisers, or falling on his knees in prayer, asking God to tell him (via a little voice only he can hear) what to do? Holy crappola – Frankenstein seems warm and cuddly compared with the prospects of an evangelical president.

Like Ingersoll (The Gods, 1872), We are looking for the time when the useful shall be the honorable; and when reason, throned upon the world’s brain, shall be the King of Kings, and God of Gods.

THE END OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1945 – 1965 And the Secrets, Crimes and Lies that accompanied it.

In the days – long since gone – when British history was taught in schools as a chronological story, the Empire was treated as an unalloyed boon to the world, bringing enlightenment and civilization to millions of benighted “natives” who, without our selfless efforts would have continued to vegetate in heathen ignorance. Until the Second World War “Empire Day” was celebrated each year with street parties, bunting, and military parades, to remind the metropolitan populace, particularly the children, how fortunate they were to have been born British and to live in a “land of hope and glory” at the heart of an empire upon which the sun would never set.  With the “end of Empire” in the two decades after 1945 came another myth; colonial independence had been granted magnanimously by Britain to the peoples of the Empire, who were now deemed ready to assume the burdens of civilization. The former empire would be transformed into a “British Commonwealth” of free and equal nations, all willingly embracing the British monarch as their sovereign. Elisabeth II was the first monarch since Victoria not to bear the title “Empress/Emperor” of India”.

Since the 1960s much has been written to expose this self-congratulatory nonsense. African-Caribbean academics, Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy, have been at the forefront of such efforts. An earlier generation of post-colonial leaders such as Nehru, Nkrumah, Cheddi Jagan and others contributed to debunking the myths of a benevolent imperialism. Nevertheless, an only-moderately revised version has survived. Nostalgia for empire permeates historian Niall Ferguson’s attempts to rehabilitate British imperialism. What  minimal criticisms there are recall Churchill’s observation about democracy being the worst form of government, except for all the alternatives; British imperialism, say its apologists, may have been responsible for much that was reprehensible, but what came before and after it were much worse. The most effective response to this is one the apologists are reluctant to face: hard facts.

New evidence has just emerged – or rather been dragged bit by bit from a reluctant Foreign Office – exposing atrocities committed between the 1940s and 1960s in Kenya, Malaya, Aden and Diego Garcia. The archive containing this evidence was concealed for 50 years and has only just come to light. Nothing revealed in it is entirely new, or rather, what has been revealed either adds to what was already known, or confirms what has long been suspected. Also, it has now become clear that large amounts of incriminating evidence have been destroyed. For example, it has long been known that during the Kenya “emergency” (1952 – 1960), the Kikuyu “Mau Mau” uprising against British rule, 11 detainees at the notorious Hola camp were clubbed to death by guards and another 77 were severely beaten, sustaining permanent injuries. What was not known before is that British government ministers were aware of the torture and murder of Mau Mau prisoners, one of whom was roasted alive. During the Mau Mau insurgency the British authorities hanged more than 1000 Kikuyu and detained 150.000. The documents released also show that many of the most sensitive, presumably containing the most incriminating evidence, were destroyed. The destruction of evidence was carried out thoroughly and systematically. Harvard professor Caroline Elkins, Pullitzer-prize- winning author of Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, says that “In the Mau Mau case, two years of countless document requests were met with FCO stonewalling…..In total, officials in Kenya estimated that some 3.5 tons of documents were marked for destruction.”

One of those jailed by the British in 1949 for involvement in the Kikuyu insurgency, was Onyango Obama , grandfather of the U.S. president. According to Onyango’s wife, Sarah, he was beaten and abused by the British, sustaining permanent injuries.

These documents confirm, in case there were in any doubt about it, that the “war on terror” did not begin with 9/11. During the period they cover- roughly the late 1940s to the 1970s – the counter-insurgency operations waged by Britain against colonial independence movements, were regarded as wars against “terrorists.” This was particularly the case in Malaya, where between 1947 and 1961, British forces were engaged in a war to defeat a communist-led guerrilla movement. All anti-colonial insurgents were treated as “communist terrorists”, agents in what the Western cold war propagandists described as a global struggle between the “Free World” and “Sino-Soviet Communism”.  In their struggle to defend the free world, in 1948 the Scots Guards massacred 24 villagers in Batang Kali, in what, although it occurred 20 years earlier, has been described as Britain’s My Lai massacre.  It is likely that the papers relating to this incident will have been among those destroyed. Also likely to have been destroyed is evidence about the overthrow of Cheddi Jagan’s administration in British Guiana in 1953, and that pertaining to a torture centre in Aden operated in the1960s by the army intelligence corps during counter-insurgency operations there.

Operations like these were the last gasps of British imperialism. They belie the official version which treats the transition to independence as a smooth, largely peaceful process. Britain was engaged in colonial wars of various kinds from 1945 to the 1960s. They were often conducted in close association with the United States. The “counter-insurgency expert”, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson, who was Britain’s Permanent Secretary of Defence for Malaya, was sent by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to Washington in 1961 to advise President Kennedy on counter-insurgency in Vietnam. The released documents make clear that in the mid-sixties through to the 1970s, successive U.K. governments secretly colluded with Washington to expel the Chagos islanders from Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, in order to enable the U.S. to build a military base there. The islanders were summarily expelled and have never been allowed to return. The airbase is of great strategic importance for the United States and has been used by long range bombers in attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. Following a long campaign to be allowed to return to their ancestral homeland, both the High Court and the Court of Appeal upheld their right to do so. But in 2010 the government appealed to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords and the Law Lords upheld the government’s appeal, by a vote of 3 to 2, denying the right of the Chagossians to return.

With the collusion of the British government the CIA has used Diego Garcia as a refueling stop in terror suspect rendition flights. It is highly likely that suspects have actually been held at the U.S. base itself, despite the fact that it is British territory. The New Labour Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, denied any knowledge of this in 2010, just as his New Labour predecessor, Jack Straw, now denies signing papers permitting the rendition by the CIA to Libya of Abdel Hakim Belhadj.

A striking feature of the post World War Two history of Britain’s imperial decline, is the role of both Labour and Conservative governments in resistance to anti-colonial and national liberation movements. The Attlee government first prosecuted the war in Malaya in 1947.and its last act before losing the election to the Tories in October 1951 was to send warships to the Gulf to pressurize Iran after Mossadeq’s nationalization of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company. In this respect it is worth recalling that this led to a course of events involving close British-U.S cooperation, resulting in the CIA sponsored coup which overthrew Mossadeq and restored the Shah in 1953. Arguably, had this not occurred, we may have had a democratic, secular Iran today. In 1953 Churchill’s Tory government overthrew the democratically elected Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana and, in 1956, following Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, Eden launched the disastrous attack on Egypt designed to topple him. This Anglo-French action did not meet with the approval of Eisenhower and Dulles as it did not suit U.S. strategic interestsin the area. Instead of toppling Nasser, it strengthened him, encouraged Arab nationalism and led to the resignation of Eden. After this, British Imperialism seemed a spent force. But, through the mid to late 1950s the Tory governments dispatched thousands of troops, many of them national servicemen, to quell the Eoka resistance movement in Cyprus, which finally won independence for the island in 1960. A  British military base remains there. It was a Labour government, led by Harold Wilson that oversaw the final, violent stages of British rule in Aden, finally withdrawing in 1967.

When looking back on the decline of Britain’s imperial power it is worth recalling the stance of one of the Labour party’s leading theoreticians of the period, John Strachey. In the 1930s Strachey had been the one unequivocally Marxist  theoretician in the party. Author of such books as The Coming Struggle for Power and Why You Should be a Socialist, he became a minister in the 1945 government, having moved steadily to the right of the party. In 1959 he wrote a widely acclaimed revisionist work entitled The End of Empire. In it, among much else,  he makes a point of taking issue with the U.S. Marxist economist Paul A. Baran’s book The Political Economy of Growth.

Rather than prolong this column with a detailed account of Strachey’s arguments (interesting though that might be), a few quotes will have to suffice. On the war in Malaya he writes: “I have always taken the view that we were justified in refusing to allow the predominantly Chinese Malayan communist party forcibly to capture the government of Malaya, which it would almost certainly have done if we had not exerted a very considerable degree of force against it.” And on Kenya: “Nor must we dodge the implication that we cannot be sure that we shall be able to avoid the repugnant task of putting down rebellions, such as the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya: rebellions, that is to say, of people who, in our judgment, could not possibly take over the colony and govern it as a going concern.”  

You don’t know diddly-squat

Hey, don’t take it personally, that title is a cheap trick to get your attention . . .

It didn’t just dawn on me, but for a number of reasons I have been more acutely aware of late that I can’t begin to keep up with the daily deluge of information: so much to learn and understand, so little time. Of course it was always impossible to keep up, even in the good old days of print media; but the damnable internet rubs my nose in it, every day.

So the point is I don’t know squat, either; nor does anyone else, at least not in relation to what needs to be known and understood. That’s simply the reality of our situation. But mere reality doesn’t stop arrogant legions of simpleminded ideologues from claiming to have all the answers. These days they are easy to recognize because they are well-organized and crave public exposure. You want examples? Okay, here they are: deluded religious fundamentalists, global-warming deniers, political conservatives, alternative-medicine cranks, the entire anti-vaccine movement, various conspiracy mongers – all fear-driven, suspicious, intellectually lazy people looking for the one, true cause of this, that, and everything. The worst and most dangerous of the lot are the religious and political right, if only because of the outsized power they wield.

Now that I have your attention, however briefly, I promise to be brief. My original title was going to be You don’t know shit, but I chickened out at the last moment (this is, after all, a dignified publication). So with that out of the way, I’ll revert to my preferred, vulgar terminology.

Either way, diddly-squat or shit, my attention-seeking title is nothing more than a shallow overgeneralization. But then so are all cultural adages since time immemorial. How can one possibly sum up all the complexity and nuance of any topic in a sound bite? Of course you know some shit, probably about many things, as do most of us. But we also know little to nothing about vast swaths of important information, regardless of our intelligence, our erudition, or how hard we try to keep up with the deluge of news and analysis.

Ignorance has afflicted humanity in all eras, but – and this is an important point – its nature and causes have changed. Early on, in the infancy and childhood of our species, ignorance was pervasive and inescapable. It was genuine, full-fledged ignorance: our ancestors literally couldn’t know shit, other than what they instinctively had to know to survive in a hostile, natural environment. About the bigger questions that were totally out of their ken – e.g., Where do storms come from? – they just made shit up, mostly out of fear stemming from lack of control. So they invoked powerful, invisible agents, an “explanation” and coping strategy now recognized by enlightened people as the god-of-the-gaps explanation. Only, in those prehistoric times, it was all gaps, all the way down. The result was what we call human nature, with all its tattered and obsolete baggage, including superstition, gods and religion, animal and human(!) sacrifice, soothsayers, shamans, faith healing, tribalism . . . and I could go on.

We have clearly come a long way since those dark times, thanks to a reality-based mindset that overcame formidable odds to give us science and scholarship. No thanks to religion and political ideologies that erected obstacles to progress at every turn. And the obstruction continues: the frightened, the ignorant, and the superstitious are still with us in droves – no longer out of necessity but due to that pesky old human nature that still tends to default to conservative, collective ideology. Only these days the ideologues have to deal with a challenge their primitive ancestors didn’t face: verifiable scientific evidence. In order to maintain their Medieval world views, they now rely on stratagems our ancestors didn’t need – denial and rationalization.

These days you gotta have a filter  

For the vast majority of our species’ time on earth, life has been short and brutish. Don’t you feel, as I do, immensely privileged to be living now rather than, say, at any time prior to 1900? Despite everything, these are, for the time being, the best of times; and under favorable conditions things could continue to improve were there not so many organized, ideologically driven, malevolent groups determined to spoil everything. Sadly, the most dangerous groups are made up of our fellow citizens right here in “the greatest nation on earth.”

So we now suffer from the don’t know shit syndrome for very different reasons than in the past. Ironically, it’s because we live the the information age, aka the internet era, the digital revolution, whatever you choose to call it. The irony, for freethinkers and truth-seekers, is information overload – too much good stuff coming in to keep up with. So when I say we don’t know shit, it’s because no matter how much we know, we just can’t keep up with the flood of new, relevant information.

These days, with information expanding exponentially, it is simply no longer possible for anyone to have comprehensive understanding of many areas, or maybe even one. Specialization is the rule, including sub-specialities within specialized areas. Even narrow specialists are pressured just to keep up with their journals every day. Perhaps this dilemma is best summed up in the adage, “Art is long, life is short.” And note that was first expressed by the Greek physician, Hippocrates, sometime around 400 BCE. I like the entire quotation:

Life is short, and Art long, opportunity fleeting, experience perilous, and decision difficult.

So it’s not only the sheer volume of information coming at us, but also the increasing complexity and technical sophistication of so many specific areas of knowledge. That’s why everyone has to specialize, even within specialties. That’s why all of us must be humble and prepared to modify our positions in the light of new and better evidence. And that’s why Republicans, Tea Baggers, the religious right, etc. are hopelessly naive (in addition to all their other glaring deficiencies and vices). In their false certainty and lust for power, they have lost humility and compassion. They use their filters to block out reality and create a distortion field from whence to disseminate disinformation on a scale not seen since the Nazi ministry of propaganda in the 1930’s.

Not to let liberals off the hook: they can be naive and arrogant, too; and sometime I’ll try to document their foibles. But if we’re talking degrees of difference, which we should be, we’re looking at orders of magnitude. Conservatives, in their ideological arrogance, see things in black and white, good versus evil; whereas doubt is, or should be, a defining characteristic of liberalism, bringing it more into line with the basic tenets of science (e.g., all knowledge is provisional, pending new and better evidence).

So if there’s a take-home message in this rant, it’s this: you gotta have a filter to reduce the flood of information to a useful flow. And it’s got to be well-designed, up-to-date, and commensurate with the information overload of the times. I’m talking  about a high-yield, high signal to noise, broad spectrum filter bundled with a software package that integrates and synthesizes information from across the spectrum. The better and more reality-calibrated your filter, the more effective use you’ll make of the flood of information.

And still you can’t do it alone, which brings us to networks. That’s what I plan to write about next time. 

Syria: A Way Out?

There are two tales about the crisis in Syria.

In one, the vast majority of Syrians have risen up against the brutality of a criminal dictatorship. The government of Bashar al Assad is on the ropes, isolated regionally and internationally, and only holding on because Russia and China vetoed United Nations intervention. U.S. Secretary to State Hillary Clinton describes Assad as “a war criminal,” and President Barak Obama called him a “dead man walking.”

In the other, a sinister alliance of feudal Arab monarchies, the U.S. and its European allies, and al-Qaeda mujahedeen are cynically using the issue of democracy to overthrow a government most Syrians support, turn secular Syria into an Islamic stronghold, and transform Damascus into a loyal ally of Washington and Saudi Arabia against Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Like most stories, there is truth and fiction in both versions, but separating myth from reality is desperately important, because Syria sits at the strategic heart of the Middle East. Getting it wrong could topple dominoes from Cairo to Ankara, from Beirut to Teheran.

There is no question but that last March’s demonstrations were a spontaneous reaction to the Syrian government’s arrest and torture of some school children in Deraa. What is more, that the corruption of the Assad family—they dominate the army, the security forces, and much of the telecommunications, banking and construction industry, coupled with the suffocating and brutal security forces, underlies the anger that fuels the uprising.

But is also true that outside players—specifically the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the U.S., as well as Sunni extremist organizations—all have irons in the fire. Indeed, there is the profound irony that, while the GCC condemns Syria for oppressing its citizens, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are crushing homegrown democratic movements in their own countries. Or that Washington should be on the same page as Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda.

And while there is no denying the brutality of the Assad regime, or that some 7,500 to 8,000 Syrians have died over the past year, Israel’s 2008-09 invasion of Gaza—Operation Cast Lead—killed a greater percentage of Palestinians per capita. When countries in the region tried to stop the Gaza War, it was the U.S. who blocked any UN action. In the Middle East, double standards and hypocrisy are par for the course.

The Syrian crisis is not a simple “good guys vs. bad guys,” democrats vs. a dictator, with the overwhelming majority confronting an entrenched, thuggish elite.

First, while the current uprising represents a substantial number of Syrians, the Assad regime has domestic support. As Jonathan Steele of the Guardian (UK) points out, a recent You Gov Siraj poll on Syria commissioned by The Doha Debates and funded by Qatar found that, while a majority of non-Syrian Arabs wanted Assad to resign, 55 percent of Syrians wanted him to remain.

The poll was hardly a ringing endorsement of Assad—half of that 55 percent wanted free elections—but it reflects the fact that most Syrians fear a civil war. That is hardly a surprise. The U.S. invasion and subsequent civil war in Iraq flooded Syria with millions of refugees and terrible tales of murder, torture, and sectarian bloodshed. And Syrians had a front row seat for Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.

A Syrian dissident, Salim Kheirbek, told the New Yorker “No more than thirty percent of the people are involved in the resistance. The other 70 percent, if not actually with the regime, are silent, because it is not convincing to them, and especially after what happened in Iraq and Libya. These people want reforms, but not at any price.”

While the recent referendum on reforming the Syrian constitution was widely dismissed by the U.S., Europe and the GCC, it appears that close to 60 percent of the voters turned out to overwhelmingly endorse the proposals.

Part of the Assad regime’s support comes from minority communities, in particular Christians and Alawites, who, make up 10 percent and 12 percent respectively, of Syria’s 24 million people. Alawites are a variety of Shiite, and the sect dominates the government. Sunnis make up the majority. Syria also has Kurdish, Druze, Armenian, Bedouin, and Turkomen communities. It is estimated that the country has 47 different religious and ethnic groups.

Alawites and Christians have reason for concern. As a recent New York Times story reported, demonstrators in Hom, one of the centers of the uprising, chanted “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave.” Al-Qaeda routinely describes Shiites as “a bone in Islam’s throat” and targets Shiite communities in Iraq and Pakistan.

Nor is Syria isolated regionally or internationally. While the Arab League has condemned the Assad government, not everyone in the organization is on board. Damascus has support in Lebanon and Iraq, and neutrality from Jordan (Amman also remembers the chaos of the Iraq war).  Algeria—North Africa’s big dog on the block—has been sharply critical of the League.

“The Arab League is no longer a league and it’s far from Arab,” Algerian State Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadam told Agence France Presse, “since it asks the Security Council to intervene against one of the [the League’s] founding members, and calls upon NATO to destroy the resources of Arab countries.”

On Feb. 15, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for Assad to step down, but countries like Brazil and India, while deploring the violence, have made it clear they oppose anything involving military intervention or arming the main opposition force, the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Even Turkey, while calling for Assad’s resignation, has begun hedging its bets, and dropped any talk of creating “safe zones” along its border with Syria.

Most countries fear that a Syrian civil war would spread to Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and maybe into the Gulf states.

While the situation on the ground in Syria is hardly clear, the Syrian Army and security services appear to be sticking with Assad for now. If that continues, the rebels may keep the pot  boiling, but, without outside intervention by NATO, it is unlikely they can overthrow the regime. On the other hand, after a year of fighting, Damascus has not succeeded in ending the rebellion.

It short, it looks like a stalemate, in which case the current campaign to aid the rebels and force Syria’s president out is exactly the wrong strategy and one guaranteed to prolong the bloodshed.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and several U.S. senators have called for arming the FSA, a particularly bad idea because it is not at all clear who they are. There are persistent reports that the organization includes a goodly number of jihadists from Iraq, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. In any case, handing out weapons to people you don’t know, to fight people you don’t like is a formula for repeating the Afghanistan disaster.

Second, the demand for regime change—and threats to charge Assad and those around him with war crimes—makes this a war to the death. Why would the Damascus government compromise if the end game is exile and prison?

The only solution to a stalemate is negotiations. The Russians have offered to host such talks, but so far the fractious Syrian National Council says it won’t talk until Assad resigns. The U.S. and the GCC have similar positions. However, talks will only work if both sides have an incentive to enter them, which means dropping the regime change demand, ending the sanctions, and shelving any talk of aiding the FSA.

Maybe events have gone too far, but at this point that doesn’t appear to be the case. Instead of condemning them, the Russians and the Chinese should be encouraged to negotiate a ceasefire and the opposition should take up the Russian’s offer to host talks with the Assad government. The recent referendum can serve as a jumping off point for re-writing the constitution.

For this to happen, however, the regional players, the U.S., and the European Union will have to stop using Syria as a proxy battleground. As Dan Meridor, Israel’s intelligence Minister, told the New York Times, supporting the Syrian uprising was important because, “If the unholy alliance of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah can be broken, that is very positive.”

For whom? Is this about freedom and democracy, or a calculated move on a regional chessboard?

Read Conn Hallinan at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com 

TRAYVON’S TRAGEDY – ANOTHER TRUE STORY FROM FLORIDA

Parishioners pack the little Pentecostal church in Palatka, Florida. It's Mid-week Bible Study. The usual greetings – hugs, handshakes, backslaps, and laughter mixed with occasional tears welcome members at the door. Never ashamed in embracing brothers and sisters in Christ, Pentecostals are known for emotional expression [unlike their “frigid” mainstream Protestant counterparts].

Rural and small-town Florida Pentecostals are correctly characterized in the movie "THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE." The state’s interior residents stand in stark contrast to their wealthier coastal transplants. The catchy music, expressions, hand-raising praise, liturgy pitched to an emotional high, the strong fundamentalist doctrine, rants against satanic conspiracy, hand-clapping and loud preaching are accurately portrayed in the 1997 flick starring Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino, Charlize Theron, and Judith Ivey (Keanu’s holy-roller mother).

The pastor begins by introducing a newcomer to the congregation, the former Dean of the Manhattan Theological Seminary in NYC. A doctor of theology, Winthrop Braun, along with his lovely wife, Carla, are now retired to Palm Crest, a retirement community on the Atlantic a few miles east of Palatka. The pastor is proud that a brother with such a distinguished career would choose his church.

After a few weeks in attendance, Dr. Braun is announced as the guest teacher for the Bible lesson that evening. Winthrop takes the podium and gives an interesting lecture on the definition of faith. It's a very moving lesson with supporting Bible references. Yet the congregation remains silent, uncharacteristically so. Given the fact this is a flaming Pentecostal congregation known for emotional outbursts, amens and hallelujahs, the silence is deafening. Something is apparently wrong.

Could it be that church members are rejecting the speaker's skin color? "Oh, no, it couldn't be," reasons the pastor. "These people all love Jesus, so race would never be a factor."

Yet, Dr. Winthrop Braun is Jamaican by birth, American by choice, and Pentecostal Christian by conversion. Unaware of reasons for feeling ostracized, his charming family sits beside others in a sanctuary charged with hate. It’s chilly down in Florida. Not one member shakes their hand at the vestibule or greets them in traditional fashion.

At the close, the chairman of the Deacon Board takes the pastor aside to announce an "emergency board meeting."

The pastor asks, "What would this be concerning?"

Chairman of the Board, Brother Springer, begins the meeting without preliminary niceties, “Pastor, we don't want no niggers in our church."

Shocked, the preacher responds, "What? How much did the church donate to missions to Africa last year? $2,000 – if I recall. You mean you can't accept a brother in Christ because his skin happens to be dark?"

Deacon Langley replies, "Well, that's differnt. Saving sinners over there in Africa is differnt than hauling them into our church. We just can't have anything to do with them here. I won't let my kids sit next to niggers in school and riding the bus, and I sure as hell ain't gonna make them sit next to 'em in my own church."

The pastor rebuts "Well, Brother Braun is a doctor of theology and headed up a seminary...."

Deacon Albright interrupts, "That was way up North in Yankeeland, pastor. That's not the way we do down here. He's Yankee besides bein’ a nigger. We just can't have that here."

The pastor reminds the board of Christ's teachings that there is no race in the Kingdom of God – no Jew, no Gentile, nor any other nationality – all are equal in God's eyes. His little sermon falls on deaf ears. It’s futile. The deacons have already made up their minds.

Finally the preacher gives them an ultimatum: Either they accept Brother Braun and his family into the church or he will resign.

Without a moment's hesitation, the Board accepts the pastor's resignation. The preacher packs up his young family and is gone within two weeks. He is one of the few evangelical pastors willing to commit to principle rather than conform to prejudice.

This true story is a picture of the Republican base, the religious faction that dominates the party while threatening America. Most so-called fundamentalists indeed claim to care for Africans in Africa but have definite issues with Africans in America.

How many times have Republicans focused on Barack Obama’s Kenyan ancestry – and lied about his birth? They claim to be devout Christians while justifying hate for others different by color, belief, or affiliation.

The murder of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, a few miles from Palatka, is a snapshot of rightwing prejudice. Furthermore, it is a picture of the religious element at the right, the core of the Republican Party. They claim to love Jesus but defend hate for those outside the realm. While holding a cup of tea and box of Skittles, Trayvon was profiled for his skin and shot dead. Rightwingers called it justifiable homicide or “Stand Your Ground.” And now we must endure hearing the right rant against this defenseless child, dead – so he can’t speak for himself.

For this remarkable centennial – the sinking of the Titanic (April 15, 1912), I was going to write about the threat of shipwreck for the U.S. due to its dangerous divisions of race, religion, and politics. But somehow the Trayvon Martin case captured my imagination, so I felt compelled to write about first-hand Florida experiences related to Trayvon.

There is an obvious fault-line in the nation that could rupture – even in the 21st Century – a party that uses the chasm to energize the faithful. They gleefully drive a wedge deep in the heart of America and approve judges only aligned with a subtle racist agenda while blocking all other Obama appointees.

The nation’s weakness was present before Republican machinations; now, thanks to them, it has developed into a metastasized tumor threatening our survival.

For more information about this true story from Florida, email me at LAdams727@aol.com. (The names of individuals and places were changed to protect the innocent. However, the story is true without embellishment.)