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Vern’s Blog 2006 expresses his views; they do not necessarily reflect the views of CRES.
VERN'S BLOG.-- This page presents Vern's personal opinions about the spirit in the environment, in personhood, and in the public realm.
LINKS:
CRES web site
KC Star columns
CAMP columnsEMAIL:
vern@cres.orgI am really worried about those
who put more energy into
propagating or destroying a faith
than in building relationships.© Vern Barnet, Kansas City, MO, 2006
Updated as occasion permits.
BRIEF BIO: Honored by many faith groups, the Reverend Vern Barnet, DMn, is minister emeritus of CRES, a Kansas City community resource for exploring spirituality in all faiths, and now focuses on writing, teaching, and consulting. He is known to many Kansas Citians since 1994 through the "Faiths and Beliefs" column published Wednesdays in The Kansas City Star. His articles, poems, and reviews appear in many journals. He has taught religion courses at area universities and seminaries. He founded The Kansas City Interfaith Council in 1989 and was its convener through 2003. He has been active in many professional and civic organizations.
MY THEOLOGY I believe that when we encounter the Holy, we naturally feel awe; that awe matures into gratitude; and that gratitude is complete only in service to others.
I believe that we are born to love unconditionally, but rewards and punishments place conditions on the Holy and distort us, dividing us within ourselves, from each other and from the world of nature.
I believe such conditioning puts us in a secular trance, deepened by perverted desires for pleasure, status, power and wealth; and that as this fragmented trance obscures the Holy, we are numbed to the suffering of others, to our own inborn natures and to the environment.
I believe that religions, through story, ritual and compassion, can restore us to the embrace of the Infinite, but that often religions have justified the trance with fear, greed and violence.
I believe we may be emerging from this trance as the process of spiritual evolution unfolds in atom, cell, person and society; and that the universe, making many mistakes, may yet come to behold itself though us.
I believe this process includes today's concourse of the world's religions and offers their mutual purification; that this free nation, where most of us are children of immigrants, is the best place for authenticity; and that honoring differences can extinguish the selfish, addictive trance, awaken us to the Holy and call us to service together.
I believe there's a lot of work and play and loving to do.Vern Barnet06.12.31 Benediction
concluding the 21st annual "World Peace Meditation--An Interfaith Gathering"At this turning of the year in this sacred annual tradition
binding us to peoples of all nations and the faiths of the world
there and here at home,We recognize and mourn poverty, hunger, displacement, thist, injustice,
and violence among peoples and against the environment,
circumstances of horror in which we are embedded
and for which we have responsibility for ending.At this turining of the year,
in the company of each other,
we renew our understanding and affection
for peace within our hearts, our community, and the world.
As we dance from this holy place, at this sacred moment,
may we see in each other and in ourselves
the bodhistava work of compassion and peace. Amen.
Gerald Ford may have been a decent man, and historians seem to have decided that his pardon of Nixon was a good thing four the country. Even Ted Kennedy came to praise that act.But I remain doubtful. Yes, Nixon certainly made contributions to the public discourse in later life, but I think the present style of governmental irresponsibility (Heck of a job, Brownie, Best Secretary of Defense ever, etc ad nauseum) would not have developed if more Republicans, like Democrats, were held accountable for their actions.
Since writing this, I came across the LA Times editorial which ends this way:
The pardon was a mistake, inconsistent with the fundamental principle that everyone, including the president, is equal before the law. Nixon tried hard to defy that principle and, coming so soon after his resignation, the pardon did the same. Some of those who once criticized Ford's pardon have softened their views over time, arguing that we needed healing and forgiveness. In 1974, however, after so much Nixonian stonewalling and evasiveness, our system of government would have been better served by letting the legal process take its course, no matter how uncertain.History shows that Ford's top advisors were baffled by his determination to forgive Nixon right away. Ford's intention, some believe, was to prove that he could act as his own man and follow his own conscience. Others suggest he was influenced by the ghost of his own father, an abusive man who was devastated when Ford's mother divorced him and who died before the son had a chance to forgive him. Ford himself wrote in his memoirs that he knew the pardon was the right move and that he did not anticipate the virulence of the reaction against it. He may have been too nice a guy.
06.12.26 Israel Illegal Settlements
Long ago the international community declared Israeli settlements in Occupied Terrotories illegal, and the United States has agreed, though lately the rhetoric from the current administration about has been "obstacles to peace."With these continuing judgments, for ten years, no new settlements have been created, though outposts on Palestinian lands, judged illegal even by Israeli courts, have multiplied. True, Sharon promised to expand existing West Bank settlements to appease some critics when he planned withdrawal from Gaza.
But now, on the heels of welcome gestured by Olmert toward the Palestinians, an entirely new settlement is announced. How will this help Palestinians believe that Israel wants peace and doesn't want to continue expansion until finally all of the territories are part of Israel?
06.12.21 Worshipping within another faith
Sometimes people ask whether one person can worship authentically in other faiths. In response, I offer one of several avenues for thought.Surely this question is to be applauded. Many people are so eager to find agreement as the key to peace that the idea of respecting the integrity, the essential differences, of each tradition does not even occur to them. And some try a mish-mash in an effort to be respectful to everyone, but stealing materials from other faiths is a dangerous deed, though I recognize that faiths influence each other and are constantly changing.
However, there are examples of those who can BE a Christian at Eucharist and a HINDU doing yoga and a BUDDHIST doing meditation and a JEW doing seder. I'm talking authenticity here, not shallow, uninformed sentiment. Huston Smith is an example who has earned the right to speak from within several traditions, even as he maintains and cherished his Methodist membership.
I never would have volunteered to do a Jewish funeral and interment, but the rabbi was not available, so I became Jewish. I am not a Christian, but I become one in the cathedral at mass. I am not a Hindu, but there is no impediment to my participation at puja in the temple. I am not a Muslim, but I can do prostrations and lift my finger and stand shoulder to shoulder with my Muslim brothers in the mosque.
My career as a community minister, founding the Interfaith Council here and leading it for a decade and a half, is different than most people's; I recognize that. One begins as an observer, and if opportunity continues to permit, one may, gradually or through a flash of insight, find oneself within the tradition one has been observing. Just because some theological positions may differ (and they do!) among Christian and Muslim and Buddhist does not mean one person cannot enter into each of them fully, just as one can play golf and tennis and football and chess intently and authentically though the rules and the materials and the contexts differ, and one may have more skill in one or the other.
06.12.20 Neither winning . . . .
Just a few days ago, President Bush said, "absolutrely we're winning" in Iraq. Tuesday he said that
United States is neither winning nor losing. Today he says "I believe that we're going to win, I believe that ... My comments yesterday reflected the fact that we're not succeeding nearly as fast as I had wanted.''Shall we quibble about "victory," "success," "civil war," "mission accomplished"? No, because even when Bush contradicts himself, he knows what the meaning of "is" is, and he is always right. This is what makes him so lovable.
With occupation neoCons Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith looking on, outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "who arrogantly dismissed initial advice to send more troops to secure Iraq" was "praised as 'the finest secretary of defense this nation has ever had' by his pal, the vice president, even as a desperate White House drafted ways to reinvade Iraq by sending more troops in a grasping-at-straws effort to reverse the chaos caused by Rummy’s mistakes. Just imagine the send-off a defense secretary would have gotten who hadn’t sabotaged the Army, Iraq, global security, our chance to get Osama, our moral credibility, the deficit and American military confidence."And the President "never seems as alarmed about the devastation in Iraq as he should be. He told People magazine, 'I must tell you, I’m sleeping a lot better than people would assume,' and he told Brit Hume that his presidency was 'a joyful experience.'"
--Maureen Dowd, NY Times 2006 Dec 16
Before the war, we told Bush it wouldn't work. For years, the experts tried to tell him it was falling apart. We got a Plan for Victory, assurances about the "last throes" of the insurgency, and such, while chaos grew, conditions worsened, more soldiers and Iraqis were killed and maimed.With the tardy Baker-Hamilton report, Bush no longer preaches "stay the course," but his new plan is conveniently delayed, we now learn, until January, while the situation gets worse.
But I guess we should be glad than even at this late date, Bush finally realizes a little something may be amiss and is actually looking into it.
Such dereliction of duty is, in my mind, a failure to uphold the oath he took, and is grounds for impeachment.
I have not favored impeachment of this war criminal because would take a lot of the time of Congress, which has urgent business after the devotion to wedge issues from the last Congress. But if Bush will not perform his duty, what choice is there but to oust Bush and Cheney in a clean, quick saving blow for America.
But ealier this year neoCon Daniel Pipes supported a civil war in Iraq and said that Shia and Sunni fighting each other would reduce the likelihood of attacks on America. "Iraq's plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West," he said. Can you believe these neoCons? They've been wrong about everything so far. Who are they rooting for?
06.12.11 Kofi Annan at Truman Library 06 Dec 11
Kofi Annan’s office released this version of his prepared remarks for delivery this morning at the Truman Library in Independence, Annan’s last major speech as secretary-general of the United Nations:What a pleasure, and a privilege, to be here in Missouri. It’s almost a homecoming for me. Nearly half a century ago, I was a student about 400 miles north of here, in Minnesota. I arrived there straight from Africa, and I can tell you, Minnesota soon taught me the value of a thick overcoat, a warm scarf and even ear-muffs!
When you leave one home for another, there are always lessons to be learned. And I had more to learn when I moved on from Minnesota to the United Nations — the indispensable common house of the entire human family, which has been my main home for the last 44 years. Today, I want to talk particularly about five lessons I have learned in the last 10 years, during which I have had the difficult but exhilarating role of secretary-general.
I think it’s especially fitting that I do that here in the house that honors the legacy of Harry S. Truman. If FDR was the architect of the United Nations, President Truman was the master-builder, and the faithful champion of the organization in its first years, when it had to face quite different problems from the ones FDR had expected. Truman’s name will forever be associated with the memory of farsighted American leadership in a great global endeavor. And you will see that every one of my five lessons brings me to the conclusion that such leadership is no less sorely needed now than it was 60 years ago.
My first lesson is that, in today’s world, the security of every one of us is linked to that of everyone else .
That was already true in Truman’s time. The man who in 1945 gave the order for nuclear weapons to be used — for the first, and let us hope, the only time in history — understood that security for some could never again be achieved at the price of insecurity for others. He was determined, as he had told the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco, to “prevent, if human mind, heart, and hope can prevent it, the repetition of the disaster (meaning the world war) from which the entire world will suffer for years to come.”
He believed strongly that, henceforth, security must be collective and indivisible. That was why, for instance, he insisted, when faced with aggression by North Korea against the South in 1950, on bringing the issue to the United Nations and placing U.S. troops under the U.N. flag, at the head of a multinational force.
But how much more true it is in our open world today: a world where deadly weapons can be obtained not only by rogue states but by extremist groups; a world where SARS, or avian flu, can be carried across oceans, let alone national borders, in a matter of hours; a world where failed states in the heart of Asia or Africa can become havens for terrorists; a world where even the climate is changing in ways that will affect the lives of everyone on the planet.
Against such threats as these, no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others. We all share responsibility for each other’s security, and only by working to make each other secure can we hope to achieve lasting security for ourselves .
And I would add that this responsibility is not simply a matter of states being ready to come to each other’s aid when attacked, important though that is. It also includes our shared responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity — a responsibility solemnly accepted by all nations at last year’s U.N. summit. That means that respect for national sovereignty can no longer be used as a shield by governments intent on massacring their own people, or as an excuse for the rest of us to do nothing when such heinous crimes are committed.
But, as Truman said, “If we should pay merely lip service to inspiring ideals, and later do violence to simple justice, we would draw down upon us the bitter wrath of generations yet unborn.” And when I look at the murder, rape and starvation to which the people of Darfur are being subjected, I fear that we have not got far beyond “lip service.” The lesson he re is that high-sounding doctrines like the “responsibility to protect” will remain pure rhetoric unless and until those with the power to intervene effectively — by exerting political, economic or, in the last resort, military muscle — are prepared to take the lead.
And I believe we have a responsibility not only to our contemporaries but also to future generations — a responsibility to preserve resources that belong to them as well as to us, and without which none of us can survive. That means we must do much more, and urgently, to prevent or slow down climate change. Every day that we do nothing, or too little, imposes higher costs on our children and our children’s children.
My second lesson is that we are not only all responsible for each other’s security. We are also, in some measure, responsible for each other’s welfare. Global solidarity is both necessary and possible.
It is necessary because without a measure of solidarity, no society can be truly stable, and no one’s prosperity truly secure. That applies to national societies — as all the great industrial democracies learned in the 20th century — but it also applies to the increasingly integrated global market economy we live in today. It is not realistic to think that some people can go on deriving great benefits from globalization while billions of their fellow human beings are left in abject poverty, or even thrown into it. We have to give our fellow citizens, not only within each nation but in the global community, at least a chance to share in our prosperity.
That is why, five years ago, the U.N. Millennium Summit adopted a set of goals — the “Millennium Development Goals” — to be reached by 2015: goals such as halving the proportion of people in the world who don’t have clean water to drink; making sure all girls, as well as boys, receive at least primary education; slashing infant and maternal mortality; and stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Much of that can only be done by governments and people in the poor countries themselves. But richer countries, too, have a vital role. Here too, Harry Truman proved himself a pioneer, proposing in his 1949 inaugural address a program of what came to be known as development assistance. And our success in mobilizing donor countries to support the Millennium Development Goals, through debt relief and increased foreign aid, convinces me that global solidarity is not only necessary but possible.
Of course, foreign aid by itself is not enough. Today, we realize that market access, fair terms of trade, and a non-discriminatory financial system are equally vital to the chances of poor countries. Even in the next few weeks and months, you Americans can make a crucial difference to many millions of poor people, if you are prepared to save the Doha Round of trade negotiations. You can do that by putting your broader national interest above that of some powerful sectional lobbies, while challenging Europe and the large developing countries to do the same.
My third lesson is that both security and development ultimately depend on respect for human rights and the rule of law.
Although increasingly interdependent, our world continues to be divided — not only by economic differences, but also by religion and culture. That is not in itself a problem. Throughout history, human life has been enriched by diversity, and different communities have learned from each other. But if our different communities are to live together in peace, we must stress also what unites us: our common humanity, and our shared belief that human dignity and rights should be protected by law.
That is vital for development, too. Both foreign investors and a country’s own citizens are more likely to engage in productive activity when their basic rights are protected and they can be confident of fair treatment under the law. And policies that genuinely favor economic development are much more likely to be adopted if the people most in need of development can make their voice heard.
In short, human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity. As Truman said, “We must, once and for all, prove by our acts conclusively that Right Has Might.” That’s why this country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human-rights movement. But that lead can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism. When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused.
And states need to play by the rules towards each other, as well as towards their own citizens. That can sometimes be inconvenient, but ultimately what matters is not convenience. It is doing the right thing. No state can make its own actions legitimate in the eyes of others. When power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose — for broadly shared aims — in accordance with broadly accepted norms.
No community anywhere suffers from too much rule of law; many do suffer from too little — and the international community is among them. This we must change.
The U.S. has given the world an example of a democracy in which everyone, including the most powerful, is subject to legal restraint. Its current moment of world supremacy gives it a priceless opportunity to entrench the same principles at the global level. As Harry Truman said, “We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please.”
My fourth lesson — closely related to the last one — is that governments must be accountable for their actions in the international arena, as well as in the domestic one.
Today, the actions of one state can often have a decisive effect on the lives of people in other states. So does it not owe some account to those other states and their citizens, as well as to its own? I believe it does.
As things stand, accountability between states is highly skewed. Poor and weak states are easily held to account, because they need foreign assistance. But large and powerful states, whose actions have the greatest impact on others, can be constrained only by their own people, working through their domestic institutions.
That gives the people and institutions of such powerful states a special responsibility to take account of global views and interests, as well as national ones. And today they need to take into account also the views of what, in U.N. jargon, we call “non-state actors.” I mean commercial corporations, charities and pressure groups, labor unions, philanthropic foundations, universities and think tanks — all the myriad forms in which people come together voluntarily to think about, or try to change, the world.
None of these should be allowed to substitute itself for the state, or for the democratic process by which citizens choose their governments and decide policy. But they all have the capacity to influence political processes, on the international as well as the national level. States that try to ignore this are hiding their heads in the sand.
The fact is that states can no longer — if they ever could — confront global challenges alone. Increasingly, we need to enlist the help of these other actors, both in working out global strategies and in putting those strategies into action once agreed. It has been one of my guiding principles as secretary-general to get them to help achieve U.N. aims — for instance, through the Global Compact with international business, which I initiated in 1999, or in the worldwide fight against polio, which I hope is now in its final chapter, thanks to a wonderful partnership between the U.N. family, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and — crucially — Rotary International.
So that is four lessons. Let me briefly remind you of them:
• First, we are all responsible for each other’s security.
• Second, we can and must give everyone the chance to benefit from global prosperity.
• Third, both security and prosperity depend on human rights and the rule of law.
• Fourth, states must be accountable to each other, and to a broad range of non-state actors, in their international conduct.
My fifth and final lesson derives inescapably from those other four. We can only do all these things by working together through a multilateral system, and by making the best possible use of the unique instrument bequeathed to us by Harry Truman and his contemporaries, namely the United Nations.
In fact, it is only through multilateral institutions that states can hold each other to account. And that makes it very important to organize those institutions in a fair and democratic way, giving the poor and the weak some influence over the actions of the rich and the strong.
That applies particularly to the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Developing countries should have a stronger voice in these bodies, whose decisions can have almost a life-or-death impact on their fate. And it also applies to the U.N. Security Council, whose membership still reflects the reality of 1945, not of today’s world.
That’s why I have continued to press for Security Council reform. But reform involves two separate issues. One is that new members should be added, on a permanent or long-term basis, to give greater representation to parts of the world which have limited voice today. The other, perhaps even more important, is that all council members, and especially the major powers who are permanent members, must accept the special responsibility that comes with their privilege. The Security Council is not just another stage on which to act out national interests. It is the management committee, if you will, of our fledgling collective security system.
As President Truman said, “the responsibility of the great states is to serve and not dominate the peoples of the world.” He showed what can be achieved when the U.S. assumes that responsibility. And still today, none of our global institutions can accomplish much when the U.S. remains aloof. But when it is fully engaged, the sky’s the limit.
These five lessons can be summed up as five principles, which I believe are essential for the future conduct of international relations: collective responsibility, global solidarity, the rule of law, mutual accountability, and multilateralism. Let me leave them with you, in solemn trust, as I hand over to a new secretary-general in three weeks’ time.
My friends, we have achieved much since 1945, when the United Nations was established. But much remains to be done to put those five principles into practice.
Standing here, I am reminded of Winston Churchill’s last visit to the White House, just before Truman left office in 1953. Churchill recalled their only previous meeting, at the Potsdam conference in 1945. “I must confess, sir,” he said boldly, “I held you in very low regard then. I loathed your taking the place of Franklin Roosevelt.” Then he paused for a moment, and continued: “I misjudged you badly. Since that time, you more than any other man, have saved Western civilization.”
My friends, our challenge today is not to save Western civilization — or Eastern, for that matter. All civilization is at stake, and we can save it only if all peoples join together in the task.
You Americans did so much, in the last century, to build an effective multilateral system, with the United Nations at its heart. Do you need it less today, and does it need you less, than 60 years ago?
Surely not. More than ever today, Americans, like the rest of humanity, need a functioning global system through which the world’s peoples can face global challenges together. And in order to function, the system still cries out for far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition.
I hope and pray that the American leaders of today, and tomorrow, will provide it.
Thank you very much.
06.12.10 Mel Gibson's Pornography
Is "Apocalypto" Pornography? December 5, 2006
by Traci ArdrenA scholar challenges Mel Gibson's use of the ancient Maya culture as a metaphor for his vision of today's world.
Traci Ardren, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Miami, knows the Maya well. She has studied Classic Maya society for over 20 years while living in the modern Maya villages of Yaxuna, Chunchucmil, and Espita in the Mexican state of Yucatan. Her credentials include contributing to and editing Ancient Maya Women (2002) and The Social Experience of Childhood in Ancient Mesoamerica (2006). Ardren's reaction to the new film "Apocalypto," follows. Scholars are well aware that some aspects of Maya culture were violent, but Ardren finds fault with what she sees as a pervasive colonial attitude in the film.
With great trepidation I went to an advance screening of "Apocalypto" last night in Miami. No one really expects historical dramas to be accurate, so I was not so much concerned with whether or not the film would accurately represent what we know of Classic period Maya history as I was concerned about the message Mel Gibson wanted to convey through the film. After Jared Diamond's best-selling book Collapse, it has become fashionable to use the so-called Maya collapse as a metaphor for Western society's environmental and political excesses. Setting aside the fact that the Maya lived for more than a thousand years in a fragile tropical environment before their cities were abandoned, while here in the U.S, we have polluted our urban environments in less than 200, I anticipated a heavy-handed cautionary tale wrapped up in Native American costume.
What I saw was much worse than this. The thrill of hearing melodic Yucatec Maya spoken by familiar faces (although the five lead actors are not Yucatec Maya but other talented Native American actors) during the first ten minutes of the movie is swiftly and brutally replaced with stomach churning panic at the graphic Maya-on-Maya violence depicted in a village raid scene of nearly 15 minutes. From then on the entire movie never ceases to utilize every possible excuse to depict more violence. It is unrelenting. Our hero, Jaguar Paw, played by the charismatic Cree actor Rudy Youngblood, has one hellavuh bad couple of days. Captured for sacrifice, forced to march to the putrid city nearby, he endures every tropical jungle attack conceivable and that is after he escapes the relentless brutality of the elites. I am told this part of the movie is completely derivative of the 1966 film "The Naked Prey." Pure action flick, with one ridiculous encounter after another, filmed beautifully in the way that only Hollywood blockbusters can afford, this is the part of the movie that will draw in audiences and demonstrates Gibson's skill as a cinematic storyteller.
But I find the visual appeal of the film one of the most disturbing aspects of "Apocalypto." The jungles of Veracruz and Costa Rica have never looked better, the masked priests on the temple jump right off a Classic Maya vase, and the people are gorgeous. The fact that this film was made in Mexico and filmed in the Yucatec Maya language coupled with its visual appeal makes it all the more dangerous. It looks authentic; viewers will be captivated by the crazy, exotic mess of the city and the howler monkeys in the jungle. And who really cares that the Maya were not living in cities when the Spanish arrived? Yes, Gibson includes the arrival of clearly Christian missionaries (these guys are too clean to be conquistadors) in the last five minutes of the story (in the real world the Spanish arrived 300 years after the last Maya city was abandoned). It is one of the few calm moments in an otherwise aggressively paced film. The message? The end is near and the savior has come. Gibson's efforts at authenticity of location and language might, for some viewers, mask his blatantly colonial message that the Maya needed saving because they were rotten at the core. Using the decline of Classic urbanism as his backdrop, Gibson communicates that there was absolutely nothing redeemable about Maya culture, especially elite culture which is depicted as a disgusting feast of blood and excess.
Before anyone thinks I have forgotten my Metamucil this morning, I am not a compulsively politically correct type who sees the Maya as the epitome of goodness and light. I know the Maya practiced brutal violence upon one another, and I have studied child sacrifice during the Classic period. But in "Apocalypto," no mention is made of the achievements in science and art, the profound spirituality and connection to agricultural cycles, or the engineering feats of Maya cities. Instead, Gibson replays, in glorious big-budget technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserve, in fact they needed, rescue. This same idea was used for 500 years to justify the subjugation of Maya people and it has been thoroughly deconstructed and rejected by Maya intellectuals and community leaders throughout the Maya area today. In fact, Maya intellectuals have demonstrated convincingly that such ideas were manipulated by the Guatemalan army to justify the genocidal civil war of the 1970-1990s. To see this same trope about who indigenous people were (and are today?) used as the basis for entertainment (and I use the term loosely) is truly embarrassing. How can we continue to produce such one-sided and clearly exploitative messages about the indigenous people of the New World?
I loved Gibson's film "Braveheart," I really did. But there is something very different about portraying a group of people, who are now recovering from 500 years of colonization, as violent and brutal. These are people who are living with the very real effects of persistent racism that at its heart sees them as less than human. To think that a movie about the 1,000 ways a Maya can kill a Maya--when only 10 years ago Maya people were systematically being exterminated in Guatemala just for being Maya--is in any way okay, entertaining, or helpful is the epitome of a Western fantasy of supremacy that I find sad and ultimately pornographic. It is surely no surprise that "Apolcalypto" has very little to do with Maya culture and instead is Gibson's comment on the excesses he perceives in modern Western society. I just wish he had been honest enough to say this. Instead he has created a beautiful and disturbing portrait that satisfies his need for comment but does violence to one of the most impressive of Native American cultures.
Traci Ardren is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Miami.
© 2006 by the Archaeological Institute of America
www.archaeology.org/online/reviews/apocalypto.html
06.12.08. Honor RollMany of us opposed the Iraq war before it began for religious reasons. I have stated mine repeatedly. Pragmatists were amazed that we would pre-emptively strike a country before the UN inspections were concluded, especially since those inspections were finding no Weapons of Mass Destruction.In today's Times, Krugman lists reasons others gave. Particularly important as an indication of the control of the media is the admission by the Post that it failed to give fair coverage to the House Democratic majority opposing the war.
I do wish Krugman had space to include how the neoCon's War violated every element of the Powell Doctrine.
December 8, 2006Yet neoCon Richard Perle, who urged this disasterous war upon us, has the hutzpah to call the Baker-Hamilton report a "misadventure." These guys are so ideological, they can't see reality. Remember, George W Bush said in late October, "absolutely, we’re winning.”
(c) NY TIMES
They Told You So
By PAUL KRUGMANShortly after U.S. forces marched into Baghdad in 2003, The Weekly Standard published a jeering article titled, “The Cassandra Chronicles: The stupidity of the antiwar doomsayers.” Among those the article mocked was a “war novelist” named James Webb, who is now the senator-elect from Virginia.
The article’s title was more revealing than its authors knew. People forget the nature of Cassandra’s curse: although nobody would believe her, all her prophecies came true.
And so it was with those who warned against invading Iraq. At best, they were ignored. A recent article in The Washington Post ruefully conceded that the paper’s account of the debate in the House of Representatives over the resolution authorizing the Iraq war — a resolution opposed by a majority of the Democrats — gave no coverage at all to those antiwar arguments that now seem prescient.
At worst, those who were skeptical about the case for war had their patriotism and/or their sanity questioned. The New Republic now says that it “deeply regrets its early support for this war.” Does it also deeply regret accusing those who opposed rushing into war of “abject pacifism?”
Now, only a few neocon dead-enders still believe that this war was anything but a vast exercise in folly. And those who braved political pressure and ridicule to oppose what Al Gore has rightly called “the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States” deserve some credit.
Unlike The Weekly Standard, which singled out those it thought had been proved wrong, I’d like to offer some praise to those who got it right. Here’s a partial honor roll:
Former President George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, explaining in 1998 why they didn’t go on to Baghdad in 1991: “Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”
Representative Ike Skelton, September 2002: “I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq’s forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it.”
Al Gore, September 2002: “I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.”
Barack Obama, now a United States senator, September 2002: “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”
Representative John Spratt, October 2002: “The outcome after the conflict is actually going to be the hardest part, and it is far less certain.”
Representative Nancy Pelosi, now the House speaker-elect, October 2002: “When we go in, the occupation, which is now being called the liberation, could be interminable and the amount of money it costs could be unlimited.”
Senator Russ Feingold, October 2002: “I am increasingly troubled by the seemingly shifting justifications for an invasion at this time. ... When the administration moves back and forth from one argument to another, I think it undercuts the credibility of the case and the belief in its urgency. I believe that this practice of shifting justifications has much to do with the troubling phenomenon of many Americans questioning the administration’s motives.”
Howard Dean, then a candidate for president and now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, February 2003: “I firmly believe that the president is focusing our diplomats, our military, our intelligence agencies, and even our people on the wrong war, at the wrong time. ... Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.”
We should honor these people for their wisdom and courage. We should also ask why anyone who didn’t raise questions about the war — or, at any rate, anyone who acted as a cheerleader for this march of folly — should be taken seriously when he or she talks about matters of national security.
No more happy talk. The worst foreign policy mistake of our time, and possibly in the history of the United States, engineered by interests in the defense industries and the neoCons, have been squarely addressed not by our lying president but by a bipartisan commission initiated by the Congress to deal with what everyone can see is an impending catastrophe in the Middle East. The group does not offer a strategy for "victory" (we had "mission accomplished" three years ago, remember?), but for ways the disaster can be managed. James Baker, daddy's man, told W and the world "staying the course" was foolishness. He also criticized W's fundamentalist aversion to talking with our enemies.My question is, Why has it taken three years for the country to see how stupid and immoral W's policy has been? It was obvious from the way the war was rushed into, before the UN inspectors were able to conclude their work. But even the most critical of us did not foresee the absolute incompetence at so many levels in this administration. America needs self-examination and repentance for allowing all this to take place in our name.
It will take decades, with the best of luck and leadership, just to get back to our starting position -- but of course everything will have changed, and meanwhile the ice caps are melting.
Bush is a traitor to America. The neoCons have put their crazy interpretation of foreign interests ahead of America. Even now neoCon William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, who along with people like Paul Wolfowitz, Jonah Goldberg, Norman Podhoretz, Ben Wattenberg, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and Elliot Abrams sought this war, criticized the Group's recommendations as “a disguised surrender.” Those neoCons talked about a beacon of democracy in Iraq, a pretext for colonial control of the region with military bases ready to protect Israel. (If we want to support democracy, why do we snuggle up to the oppressive state of Saudi Arabia? Oh, I forgot. OIL.) Cheney put business interests ahead of America. Bush -- well, nobody knows why, for sure. Maybe for Oedipal reasons. So far, stubborn. Will he learn? Will he admit his errors, at least to himself? Will he put the America before his pride and self-righeousness?
Al Qaeda killed 3,000 Americans. Bush has set 3,000 Americans to their deaths, injured 50,000 Americans, expended at least a trillion dollars in American treasure in actual and accrued costs, practiced corruption, fraud, and abuse here and there, caused the deaths of upwards of a million Iraqis, turned the admiration most nations had for America into hatred and disgust, degraded our military preparedness, blackened our name with torture and other human rights viiolations, and divided Americans from each other for political gain.
Bush has done far more damage to America than Al Qaeda. He should be impeached except we don't have time for that.
We can give thanks for the Baker-Hamilton group for showing us that the lies we've been hearing about victory at hand, last throes of the insurgency, etc etc are just that, and developing a bi-partisan consensus that we can no longer "stay the course."
An excerpt from Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid
TO: Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family AssociationDear Donald E. Wildmon:
You are trying to stop Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, from taking taking his oath of office on the Qur'an rather than the Bible.
Why are you trying to stir up trouble? Are you rallying your base to bring in more donations to support your prejudical organization?
The United States Constitution -- the supreme law of the land -- does not require using a Bible to take an oath. In fact, two presidents didn't even take an oath -- they made an affirmation, as specifically provided for in the Constitution. The Constitution also prohibits any religious test for office. And have you forgottten the previous American tradition of freedom of religion, enshrined in the First Amendment?
The oath or affirmation does not require allegiance to the Bible; it requires allegience to the Constitution. We do not have a theocracy in this country, but rather a Constitutional system which deserves the supreme respect in the governance of society, as your faith may be the supreme governance of your personal life.
Please do not engage in division and religious hatred. Christians have a lot to answer for, with the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Wars of Europe between the sects.
And remember the very first nation to recognize the independence of the United States was a Muslim nation. And remember that the United States Senate, in 1797, in a treaty, which has the force of law second only to the Constitution, stated that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Chirstian Religion." Why are you trying to rewrite history and stir up hatred?
Vern Barnet
FOLLOW-UP
by Omar Sacirbey
Religion News ServiceDecember 5, 2006
When Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat who last month was elected the first Muslim in Congress, announced he would take his oath of office on Islam's holy book, the Quran, he provoked sharp criticism from conservatives and some heated discussion on the blogosphere.
The ensuing discussion has revived the debate about whether America's values and legal system are shaped only by Judeo-Christian heritage or if there is room for Islamic and other traditions.
"America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress," Dennis Prager, a conservative talk radio host in Los Angeles, wrote in a Nov. 28 TownHall.com editorial. Prager, who is Jewish and serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, argued that Ellison should "not be allowed" to take his oath on the Quran.
In a subsequent interview, Prager said his objections were not to Ellison's use of the Quran, but to him not using a Bible.
"This has nothing to do with the Quran. It has to do with the first break of the tradition of having a Bible present at a ceremony of installation of a public official since George Washington inaugurated the tradition," Prager said.
Prager added that he would accept Ellison using a Quran if he also used a Bible. Ellison could not be reached for comment.
But Ellison would not be the first member of Congress to forgo a Bible. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., took her oath in 2005 on a Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, she borrowed from Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., after learning a few hours before that the speaker of the House didn't have any Jewish holy books.
"Each of us has every right to lay our hand on the Bible that we were raised with; that's what America is all about, diversity, understanding and tolerance," said Wasserman Schultz. "It doesn't appear that Dennis Prager has learned anything from his time on the Holocaust commission."
Other politicians have departed from the Bible as well. Hawaii Gov.
Linda Lingle used the Tanakh when she took her oath in 2002, while Madeleine Kunin placed her hand on Jewish prayer books when she was sworn in as the first female governor of Vermont in 1985."The books had belonged to my mother, my grandparents and my great-grandfather. I wanted to place my hand on the weight of Jewish history and connect with the generations of men and women who helped bring me to this moment," she wrote on the Jewish Women's Archive Web site.
In 1825, John Quincy Adams took the presidential oath using a law volume instead of a Bible, and in 1853, Franklin Pierce affirmed the oath rather than swearing it. Herbert Hoover, citing his Quaker beliefs, also affirmed his oath in 1929 but did use a Bible, according to the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. Theodore Roosevelt used no Bible in taking his first oath of office in 1901, but did in 1905.
Neither the House nor the Senate keeps record of what holy books, if any, are used in the unofficial ceremonies. In fact, House members are sworn in together on the House floor in a ceremony without any book, holy or otherwise. But in an unofficial ceremony, individual members re-enact an oath so it can be photographed. The tradition dates to the birth of photography, so congressmen could send photos back to their hometown newspapers.
Still, some conservative Christians have taken Prager's editorial as a clarion call. The American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss., for example, sent out an "action alert" to its 3.4 million members urging them to write their congressmen "to pass a law making the Bible the book used in the swearing-in ceremony of Representatives and Senators."
Swearing in officeholders on Islam's holy book "represents a change in our society, our culture, if we hold up the Quran as equivalent to the Holy Bible," said AFA President Tim Wildmon.
"If calling the Bible superior to the Quran in American tradition and culture is intolerant, then I'm guilty."
The Anti-Defamation League, a leading anti-Semitism watchdog group, issued a statement calling Prager's views "intolerant, misinformed and downright un-American," especially since President Bush appointed him to the Holocaust Memorial Council in August.
Prager said the ADL statement was a result of a personal feud with the group's president, Abe Foxman.
"I am a very big supporter and believer that conservative Christians are the backbone of this society. (Foxman) thinks that the religious right is the greatest enemy of American democracy, and he's very angry at a prominent Jew who defends them."
On Monday (Dec. 4), the Council on American Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., called on the Holocaust Council, which oversees the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, to remove Prager.
"No one who holds such bigoted, intolerant and divisive views should be in a policymaking position at a taxpayer-funded institution that seeks to educate Americans about the destructive impact hatred has had, and continues to have, on every society," the group wrote in a letter to Fred Zeidman, the council chair.
The museum, in a statement Tuesday, said Prager speaks "solely for himself."
In blogs and elsewhere on the Internet, some people fretted that Islam was taking over America. "Mr. Ellison choosing (and being allowed) to take his oath of office on the Koran is that first step toward the Islamification of America," warned one poster on the conservative blog RiehlWorldView.com, while another chimed in that the Bible has "been good enough for Jews, Mormons and others so it's damn well good enough for him."
In Germany, Gerhard Schroeder became the country's first chancellor to pass on the Bible and simply affirmed his oath, while in Iran, religious minorities are allowed to take their oaths on scripture of their choice.
"Affirming" an oath without reference to God or sacred works is an option the founding fathers provided for in the Constitution to protect the rights of atheists and agnostics, argued Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor specializing in free speech and religious issues, on National Review Online, in response to the Prager piece.
"Why would Muslims and others not be equally protected from having to perform a religious ritual that expressly invokes a religion in which they do not believe?"
Many say prohibiting Ellison from taking his oath on the Quran would violate the constitutional provision that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Kevin J. "Seamus" Hasson, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said, "It makes no sense at all to have him violate the Constitution in order to affirm his duty to uphold the Constitution."
Stanley Fish on the free exercise of religion
06.11.25 A Liberal Christian View of the BibleIn our open-minded congregation, we approach the Scriptures with prayer and scholarship. Hopefully and humbly, we pass the Scriptures to our young, affirming: We know the Bible is “true” — and some of it even happened!There are snippets of history buried in the Scriptures — the imprint of a flood, an earthquake, a battle. Sometimes we can draw a line from a person in the Scriptures to an actual historical figure. Sometimes we can’t.
But reading the Bible as history misses its gift and grace, which lies not in its historical or scientific accuracy, but in the profoundly creative way it guides the search for meaning and hope. The search is so deeply rooted in the human spirit that the Bible stories predate an age of literacy. Traveling orally, the sacred words were passed from one generation to another attempting to make sense of the root of the human experience: love, suffering, joy, evil, hope.
When my children ask about the day they were born, it is not the facts so much as the feelings they love to hear. So it is with the Scriptures. They do not say: This is what happened and where. They say: This is how God tirelessly pursues the human heart, and this is how we can respond wildly and boldly, seeking justice, loving our enemies, praying for peace.
--The Rev. Holly McKissick, pastor of St. Andrew Christian Church, Olathe, in The Kansas City Star today
06.11.20 ComityIngram's Magazine asked, "What can each of us do to unite our city, state and country now that the elections are over?" My response:A contrived unity is sentimental and dishonest. What we need is deepening respect for differences. This means none of us should seek to use the government to impose our own theological views on others. Public debate should be cleansed of the dishonesty even church groups have used to influence votes. Genuine unity arises not from uniformity but from modesty about how little we know about ultimate mysteries and the possibility that we could be wrong.
06.11.15 Let there be peace on earth . . .
Popular. Hypnotic. Childishly grandiose. Narcissistic. Sentimental. Dangerous. Yes, I think the song which says, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me" is dangerous. Do you think this song, which fails even to hint of injustice, would have moved Gandhi's or Martin Luther King's followers to the corrective protests that challenged iniquity? Instead of massaging ME the individual, "WE shall overcome" recognized the fact that peace cannot come without justice, and justice involves a plural effort.Then there is this crap about not complaining, as if that were a spiritual value. No, truth and justice are spiritual values. It is a religious obligation and a citizen's duty to complain when injustice exists. That's why Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Jesus, Muhammad -- just to mention names from the Abrahamic tradition -- complained. What if Jefferson, Washington, Thomas Paine had not complained? What if more generals had complained about the NeoCon's deceptions?
06.11.09 Bush admits lying for political purpose
THE PRESIDENT: "[You] and Hunt and Keil came in the Oval Office, and Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was, are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the Vice President? And my answer was, they're going to stay on. And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer." --yesterday's press conferenceThis is, in the scheme of things, a minor admission. Some might even call it a "white lie." But the unapologetic tone (see video) characterizes the President's willingness to use deceit to achieve his purposes these past dreadful and deadly years. Withholding important information -- like the intelligence reservations -- from the public and the Congress while important decisions need to be made is one reason why this President and his vice-president should be removed from office.
I know that won't happen. We only impeach for lying about stains on dresses, not for sending thousands Americans to their deaths, weakening our military capabilities, installing incompentence throughout the government, violating the bill of rights, etc.
Oh, yeah. A couple days ago he was saying that electing Democrats would mean that “the terrorists win and America loses.” Even for election rhetoric, this is out of bounds, like questioning the patriotism of those opposed to the war. But now our flip-flop president (not usuing "stay the course" any more) speaks of bi-partisanship. Is he lying again? Who can trust anything he says? WMD anyone?
06.11.08 Stem Cell win, public loss
Religious freedom in Missouri is protected by the passage of the Stem Cell Initiative (Amendment 2). The narrow vote, however, indicates the depravity of the Roman Catholic bishops in the state who engineered a powerful flow of sewage of lies, misrepresentations, distortions, and deceit. I use the words with care. I know first hand what has been going on. For example, when I challenged an outrageous factual misstatement by a writer in The Catholic Key and requested the citation for the statement, the writer, no doubt sincere, discovered her sources were defective and said a correction needed to be printed. I never saw a correction, and instead the faulty material was recycled. The deliberate use of such material can reasonably be called lying.The Church has a noble position about human life and reasonable arguments can be used to support it. One would have hoped for a faithful articulation and respectful discussion of that honorable position, the tradition for which shoukd command respect even from those who disagree. What a shame the Church instead resorted to the gutter. Its credibility is again eroded. One would think the scandal of the protection of abusive priests would have impressed upon Catholic leaders the need to be scrupulous. The public, which has much to learn from Catholic positions on social justice and even on the dangers in unfettered scientific research, is made poorer by the bishops disgracing themselves and demeaning public discourse.
06.11.01 Crucify the Muslims! says Baptist leader
Can you believe this? Can you understand why our Muslim friends get concerned?
Baptist Convention told: Muslims 'are here to take over our country'
By Tim Townsend
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Wednesday, Nov. 01 2006CAPE GIRARDEAU — The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures are known for their warnings of doom and gloom, but even Jeremiah — arguably the gloomiest Old Testament sage — would have tipped his hat to the Rev. David Clippard at the Missouri Baptist Convention's annual meeting here this week. . . . .
Clippard reserved his strongest words for what he said he considered paramount for all Americans: the threat of Islam. "Today, Islam has a strategic plan to defeat and occupy America," he told the 1,200-strong crowd of delegates (called "messengers"), pastors and lay people, many of whom cheered his words.
Clippard said the Saudi Arabian government and royal family had funded teaching positions and 138 Muslim student centers on university campuses across the United States, three in the University of Missouri system in Columbia, Rolla and St. Louis. "What they are after is your sons and daughters," Clippard said. "They are coming to this country in the guise of students, and the Saudi government is paying their expenses."
Bob Sample, a spokesman for the University of Missouri at St. Louis said that the school did have a Muslim Student Association but that it was one of 150 student associations on campus and one of six considered "faith-based." He said neither the university nor any of its student associations were receiving subsidies from the Saudi government.
Andrew Careaga, a spokesman for the University of Missouri at Rolla, said his school also had a Muslim Student Association, one of 14 religious student associations. He said he was not aware of any complaints from other students that Muslim students had been recruiting them.
Clippard said that Muslims were hoping to take over the United States government one city at a time, and that they were starting with Detroit, where there is already a large Muslim population.
"They are trying to establish a Muslim state inside America, and they are going to take the city of Detroit back to the 15th century and practice Sharia (or Islamic) law there."
In an interview Tuesday, Clippard said he believed the Islamic "strategy for taking over America" was to wait until there was a Muslim majority here and then "eradicate those who don't conform to their religion."
On Monday night, he told the crowd that "your freedom is on the floor with their foot on it, with their sword raised, and if you don't convert, your head comes off."
Usama K. Dakdok, an Egyptian Christian and founder of Straight Way Ministry who calls himself a "Muslim evangelism specialist," said Tuesday that "every word (Clippard) said is true. It's time for us to wake up. They are not here to be in our welfare system, they are here to take over our country."
The Rev. Gerald R. Davidson, pastor emeritus of First Baptist Church in Arnold, classified the discussion of Islam as "external things for us to struggle with," but added, "Islam is more aggressive than we are" when it comes to evangelism.
Ibrahim Hooper, a national spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he was not surprised about the content of Clippard's message, but he said he was worried about its effects.
"This kind of hate-filled, ignorant rhetoric shouldn't be coming from religious leaders in our country who should instead be repudiating this kind of bigotry," he said. "He may be comfortable saying these things behind closed doors, but the real impact is on everyday Muslims who have to live with the consequences of this kind of talk."
Clippard said Tuesday that his message was really about love.
"I don't hate Islamic people," he said. "We need to love these folks, go after them and love them, one at a time. We need to crucify them with Christ."
ttownsend@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8221]
It is unfortunate that religious leaders are pushed to the point of characterizing the positions their opponents take as lies. I am tempted to do this myself as it is hard not to imagine some of the statements as deliberate and willful attempts to mislead. But I cannot know another's soul. It would have been so much better if a pan-religious conference could have been convened so actual persons, religious leaders in our community, could talk together instead of arguing by bumper sticker.
06.10.26 The Stem Cell Amendment
You cannot understand religion if you exclude the valorization of life and passion for healing. Think about * the many hospitals were founded by churches, * the ministry of Jesus with the sick, * the medicine Buddha, * the Navajo medicine man, or * the cure which is the Qur’an itself in Islam. One way or another, the central concern of faith is salvation, and the very term in English is derived from the Latin roots related to “health.”Here are three religious questions in the discussion about the sanctity of life and early stem cell research for therapies and cures.
1. When does life begin?
2. What is the promise of such research for pastoral care?
3. How can Americans can respect every faith’s opinions on this issue?
My thinking about these questions can be found at http://www.cres.org/2 .
06.10.24 No more Mr "Stay the Course"
The President has abandoned his "stay the course" phrase. But he has not stopped accusing thoughtful Americans who question the success of his Iraq policy and the conduct of the war as believers in "cut and run." And Dick Cheney last week comforted us by telling us that the Iraqi government is doing “remarkably well.” "Last throes," anyone? Any takers for "mission accomplished"? Golly, that phrase has been abandoned for more than three years now.
06.10.21 Bush considers timetable
2003 Mar 17: On the eve of the misbegotten Iraq War, Barak Obama condemned it at a Chicago rally. Like many of us whose immersion in the great spiritual traditions of the world and whose assessment of the political and military realities of the time led us to question the Bush administration, known already for incompetence, for its mishandling of the truth, for its Orwellian political practices, Obama questioned the rationale for the War.Now, after outrages far worse than anyone's predictions, this administration, which has branded fresh thinking about strategy as "cut and run," finally is thinking along the lines of a timetable it has previously condemned for political reasons.
Bush is guilty of high treason for placing politics above the security of this nation.
06.10.11 Bush: Stay the course 1/4 right
At today's press conference, President Bush used his "stay the course" in a new way:
"And so for those folks saying make sure there's flexibility, I couldn't agree more with you. And I think the characterization of, you know, Stay the course, is about a quarter right."Stay the course means keep doing what you're doing. My attitude is, don't do what you're doing if it's not working; change.
"Stay the course also means don't leave before the job is done. We're going to get the job done in Iraq. And it's important that we do get the job done in Iraq."
One sign of the incredible stupidity of W was his refusal to apply the Powell Doctrine to Iraq. This is especially ironic since Powell was his Secretary of State and trusted overwhelmingly by Americans -- except Cheney and Rumsfeld and the neo-cons who wanted to restructure the Middle East. Rumsfeld wanted to do Iraq to demonstrate his theory a high tech army with few soldiers. Thus the element of the Powell doctrine which specified overwhelming force was derided. The Powell Doctrine is the fruit of Republican wisdom credited to Casper Weinberger and Powell's own experience with the Vietnam War and the Gulf War under Bush I.For war to be justified:
1. Our national security must be threatened in a significant way.
[Iraq posed no threat to us and was actually useful as a worry for Iran.]
2. The war's objective must be clear and attainable.
[The definition of victory has shifted a number of times.]
3. The costs, risks, and possible consequences of war must be fully considered.
[Incompetence is planning and execution are now clear not most people, and the politicization of intelligence made honest assessment of the situation and consequences irrelevant to The Decider.]
4. All instruments of diplomancy must have been exhausted.
[Containment was working at relatively low cost.]
5. The war must be supported both by the American public and broadly among other nations.
[Public support was weak until administration propaganda and political threat muffled debate, and significant international support was always doubtful.]
6. An exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement must be in place.
[We're still waiting for one to be formulated.]
06.10.09 Muslim Arabs saved Jews in WWII
While many Muslims, like Christians, shamefully cooperated with the Nazis, some Christians and some Muslims saved Jewish lives. Here is an exerpt from Robert Satloff's article in today's Washington Post:
\http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601417.htmlArabs welcomed Jews into their homes, guarded Jews' valuables so Germans could not confiscate them, shared with Jews their meager rations and warned Jewish leaders of coming SS raids. The sultan of Morocco and the bey of Tunis provided moral support and, at times, practical help to Jewish subjects. In Vichy-controlled Algiers, mosque preachers gave Friday sermons forbidding believers from serving as conservators of confiscated Jewish property. In the words of Yaacov Zrivy, from a small town near Sfax, Tunisia, "The Arabs watched over the Jews."I found remarkable stories of rescue, too. In the rolling hills west of Tunis, 60 Jewish internees escaped from an Axis labor camp and banged on the farm door of a man named Si Ali Sakkat, who courageously hid them until liberation by the Allies. In the Tunisian coastal town of Mahdia, a dashing local notable named Khaled Abdelwahhab scooped up several families in the middle of the night and whisked them to his countryside estate to protect one of the women from the predations of a German officer bent on rape.
And there is strong evidence that the most influential Arab in Europe -- Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris -- saved as many as 100 Jews by having the mosque's administrative personnel give them certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could evade arrest and deportation. These men, and others, were true heroes.
According to the Koran: "Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world." This passage echoes the Talmud's injunction, "If you save one life, it is as if you have saved the world."
Arabs need to hear these stories -- both of heroes and of villains. They especially need to hear them from their own teachers, preachers and leaders. If they do, they may respond as did that one Arab prince who visited the Holocaust museum. "What we saw today," he commented after his tour, "must help us change evil into good and hate into love and war into peace."
Robert Satloff, rsatloff@washingtoninstitute.org, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is author of "Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands" (PublicAffairs).
With comments from Sen John Warner, Republican head of the Senate Armed Services Committee (Iraq is Iraq was “drifting sideways”) and family loyalist James Baker ("there are alternatives"), it is clear that the US Iraq policy will not "stay the course" after the election; W's miserable, traitorous failure is clear to almost everyone, certainly to serious Republicans who care about our safety and integrity as a democracy. Baker worries that it is getting too late to salvage much, and partisans and the credulous media as well as the lying President have brought us this catastrophe from which recovery will take decades, if at all.
06.10.07 Rumsfeld allows a pass
Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, along with Vice president Dick Cheney, have, with W's assent, ruined the US Armed Services, especially the Army, with the foolish Iraq adventure. Rumsfeld came into office determined to "transform" the military by making is "smaller and smarter" with high tech instead of boots on the ground.But the wear and destruction of troops and equipment in Afghanistan and Iraq have finally worn out Don's resistance to the Army's true needs and, breaking precedent, is allowing the Army to make its case directly to the White House and Congress without the usual Pentagon discipline.
Of course what is really needed to make America safer is to be rid of Rumsfeld and the entire Ruling Junta.
"The Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights is supposed to keep our government from interfering with religion, guard against the states' use of religion for political purposes, and ensure that the government does not act in a way that prefers one religion over another, so that we may all worship freely.http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/883186708?z00m=1711802&z00m=1711802<l=1160098845"But while the Establishment Clause protects our basic freedoms, it is not self-enforcing. If someone is forced to sue the government to protect their constitutional rights, justice and fairness dictate they be able to recover their legal fees expended to do so.
"The Public Expression of Religion Act would prevent citizens from recovering their litigation costs if they sue to stop state-sponsored religion. This law is brazenly designed to make it next to impossible for private citizens to sue to protect their First Amendment rights because lawsuits are prohibitively expensive.
"In other words, Congress and the Religious Right want to cement the establishment of their own religion as dominant via the force of the government, and the force of law.
"Tell your Senators that religious freedom is more important than the agenda of the religious right!"
“We live in a society, not an economy.” --Rashi FeinFirst, personal liberty and personal responsibility go hand in hand. We won’t have more of one unless we insist on more of the other. Government is not the first nor the most important agent of responsibility, but its example matters. An irresponsible, unaccountable government of any size poses a far graver threat to individual freedom than a responsible, activist one.
Second, markets can be the most effective engine of individual opportunity, but only if they are honest ones, tempered in the public interest.
Third, government must be an engine of individual opportunity as well, or else it will end up imposing a crushing burden of privilege and bureaucracy. --Bruce Reed
06.10.04 Friedman on the election
From today's Thomas Friedman NYTimes column advocating a narrow win by the Democrats:
You know how they say that after a while people start to look like their pets? Well, we’re starting to look like Iraq — a bunch of warring political tribes incapable of acting in common for the greater good.
06.10.03 Conservative Republican using Woodward
While leading the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the summer of 2003, David Kay received a phone call from "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, who wanted a particular place searched: "The vice president wants to know if you've looked at this area. We have indications -- and here are the geocoordinates -- that something's buried there." Kay and his experts located the area on the map. It was in the middle of Lebanon. -- George F Will begining his column on the new Bob Woodward book.
It is hard not to like Condi Rice. She is smart, articulate, a talented pianist, etc. Unfortunately, she also placed loyalty to her boss above loyalty to her country. In response to the Woodward book report that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, asked for an urgent meeting with Condoleezza Rice 2001 July 10 to warn her about immanent Al Qaeda attacks. Her response was that she did not recall the specific meeting on July 10 and that it was “incomprehensible” to suggest she had ignored dire terrorist threats two months before the Sept. 11 attacks.Now the State Department has confirmed that records show the meeting did in fact take place.
What will happen to W when he finally hits the bottom of his years-long inebriation with fantasy? Will he act as if nothing has happened? Will he find a 12-step program to help him reenter the "reality-based community"? Will he do what in some cultures would be the honorable thing -- commit suicide? Will he and Cheney do what it other failed leaders (such as Nixon) have done, resign? Or will he simply go completely insane and order an attack on Iran, or murder Colin Powell, or just get a bottle of whiskey and beat his head against the wall? He has a hard head, but sometimes we've seen even faith-based hard heads crack, and the situation bears watching carefully.
06.10.01a Madam Butterfly as metaphor
I've seen the Puccini copera a number of times over the years, but I could not watch it last night at the Lyric (a great production, fabulous singing, etc!) without being painfully aware of the international shame America should feel. Lieutenant Pinkerton's marriage to a 15-year old Japanese girl is a metaphor for the exploitation named America. At least Pinkerton felt remorse at the death of Butterfly, but our leader can look at the death reports of our soldiers and innocent Iraqis, the growing terrorist threat, and say "Stay the course" while intimating anyone who disagrees is giving aid and comfort to the "enemy." When the orchestra played the strains of the national anthem, I was ashamed.
06.10.01 House leaders protect predator
So senior House leaders -- Representative John A Boehner, the House majority leader, and Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and possibly Speaker J Dennis Hastert -- are against same-sex marriage but will, for a year, protect a predator if it is their co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
Bob Woodward's latest book confirms what other books from those once a part of the Bush administration have been saying: Bush is in denial, and with Karl Rove continues to lie to the American public, our soldiers, and the world. This Red Ink Ruling Junta (others call it Caesarism) is not only incompetent and violates the Constitution; it is immoral, wicked, corrupt, wasteful, shameful, vile, and dangerous to democracy, our security, and the world order.Things smelled pretty rank when Bush would not pemit the UN weapons inspectors to complete their work before launching this dysfunctional counterproductive war with the certainty and swagger of a rvival tent preacher, but I admit even then I could not grasp, could not conceive the depths of depravity now so evident to the world -- including a growing number of Americans.
06.09.23 We are in greater danger -- Bush continues to lie
The Bush administration says we are winning the "war on terror" (itself an inadequate metaphor for what is happening) and that fighting in Iraq is a path to victory. But as long ago as April, the President's own National Intelligence Estimate says that the Iraq war is actually fueling terrorism. And our policy of supporting a government there which includes 30 ministries supported by terrorist Muktada al-Sadr and his militias, contradicts the Bush line of clarity between good and evil. While continuing to paint a black-and-white picture of the world, Bush has plunged is further into the murkiness of complicated and corrupting deals that increase the long-term peril of our nation. To summarize: the intelligence communities under the Bush administration have themselves concluded that instead of enhancing our prospects to win against terror groups threatening world stability and our interests, the war in Iraq has weakened the United States of America.
06.09.21 The Pope fails in interfaith dialogue
Responding to disturbances following his Sep 12 lecture at the University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI said that he intended “an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect.”
(The address may actually have been aimed “in-house,” to warn Asian and African clergy that the Hellenistic elements the Pope considers as essential to Christianity as the life of Jesus cannot be minimized in the attempt to accommodate their non-European cultures.)
But were the remarks of the Pope, previously head of the agency once called the Inquisition, remarks sensitive to the requirements for genuinely respectful interfaith relations? Here are three suggestions corresponding to problems within his speech.
1. Avoid opening and closing your remarks with unfavorable references to the religion with which you seek dialogue. This is a no-brainer. What the Pope did seems needlessly provocative.
Instead of placing Islam on the defensive by starting and ending his remarks with an unexplained accusation against Islam to make the point that dialogue is better than violence, the Pope could have used Christian history — the violence of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the religious wars of Europe, the murder and enslavement of native peoples as Christianity expanded into the Americas, and the economic colonialism Muslims experience in their own lands today — to argue that reason is better than violence. He did not need to use material from Islam in order to make his point.
Such an approach might have encouraged this kind of Muslim response: “Thanks for understanding how the history looks to us. We, too, have violence in our tradition. The first fitnah arose within a generation after the death of the Prophet (Pbuh), and a generation after that, second that continues to divide Islam; internal persecutions stain our tradition; and leaders using the banner of Islam have brought violence to others. And today some of those claiming our faith are in fact terrorists bent on fermenting horrors against innocent people. Let us join together in repentance and seek the purification of our faiths.”
This might have opened up mutual confession and dialogue, not started a fruitless argument.
Instead, the Pope supplies us with a Christian portion of the dialogue and doesn't even have the courtesy to let us know one word of how the Muslim replied.
2. Ask questions about, rather than interpret, the other faith’s scripture.
The Pope quoted Manuel II Paleologus (in about 1391) attributing to Muhammad the command to spread Islam by the sword, a view the Pope fails to correct. To support this, the Pope, relying on secondary sources, incorrectly describes and dismisses Sura 2 of the Qur’an which forbids forced conversion. If you must talk about the Qur'an and it is not your faith's scripture, get your facts straight.
3. Expand dialogue beyond academic issues.
The Pope advocates dialogue based on a Greek conception of God as reason, but, using a third-hand source about Ibn Hazm, says that Islam’s God is so transcendent He is beyond “rationality.” (For the Pope to use Ibn Hazm to characterize Islam is like using David Koresh to characterize Christianity.)
Two problems. First, the Pope ignored major Muslims thinkers like Ibn Sina, known as Avicenna (980-1037CE; 370-428 AH)) and Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes (1126-1198) — to whom St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was indebted. They transmitted and demonstrated the Greek sensibility the Pope praises.
Second, interfaith understanding is achieved more by sharing stories than by rational arguments. Those who more easily experience God as love than as intellect, and have stories of God in their lives, also deserve a seat at the conference.
The Pope's very conception of interfaith conversation is defective, shaped by the peculiar Christian preoccupation with creeds and beliefs. The effect of such an approach is like trying to discuss child-rearing only in terms of what kind of wardrobe the kid should have. The word "love" appears in one sentence (and "lovingly" once) in the entire 4,000-word text. One would have expected the author of Deus Caritas Est to have brought the beautiful theme of his first encyclical into interfaith dialogue.
The Pope's approach is elitist and confines the conversation to those who have the academic credentials to engage in debate. But interfaith exchange is democratic; even simple folks can share their faith journeys with each other and gain from each other as they deepen understanding of theirs and others' lived faiths.POSTSCRIPT. A charge against Islam that the Pope presents but does not answer is that Islam has given nothing new to the world but things that are "'evil and inhuman,'" an astonishing accusation considering the fact that the Renaissance could not have happened without the learning transmitted to the West by Islam. From A to Z -- algebra to zenith -- with words themselves derived from Arabic. Speaking of math, how would you like to do long division using Roman numerals -- from India, through the Arabs, we have Arabic numerals and the notion zero, which did not exist in Roman numerals, and it's kinda hard to do much math without it Yes, we ignore our debt to Islam, even at Starbucks, but it has shaped us profoundly. Our lives would be poorer without the development of romantic love, for which many scholars credit Islam. You remember the troubadours, don't you? I've written elsewhere about this, but one more Kansas City example. One symbol of our town, often on calendars and visitor guide books, is Geralda Tower on the Country Club Plaza. That tower is a small replica of the edifice in Kansas City's first Sister City, Seville, Spain, build by the Moors (and later topped by the Christians) as a minaret for what was then one of the largest mosques in the world. The distinguished architecture of a Muslim religious structure now distinguishes Kansas City. In 1391, Christian Europeans were throwing their garbage in the streets while Muslims had the fountains that now characterize Kansas City and sanitation facilities. Even Martin Luther said he would rather have surgery from a Muslim butcher than a Christian doctor. The Pope, the spiritual leader of hundreds of millions of Christians, should do more than apologize; he should also repent of his slander and learn from his errors.
06.09.20 NY Times editorial: The Pope’s Act of Contrition
September 20, 2006Now that Pope Benedict XVI has expressed regret for offending Muslims in remarks he made last week, we hope Catholics and Muslims alike will put aside the pontiff’s ill-considered comments and move forward in a conciliatory spirit.
Muslim leaders need to condemn the specific acts of violence that followed the pope’s speech. Even more important, they must work against the nurturing of grievance that magnifies and politicizes insults, giving them a destructive dynamic.
There are hopeful examples of such leadership. Muhammad Habash, head of the center for Islamic studies in Damascus, acknowledged Muslims’ shock at the pope’s remarks but said that now “it is our turn to call for calming the situation.” The top Islamic cleric in Turkey, Ali Bardakoglu, who had sharply criticized the pope, accepted the apology. He said Benedict’s “expression of sadness is a sign that he would work for world peace.”
The pope and the Vatican can also do more. For the past two years, Benedict has been a no-show at interfaith gatherings in Assisi, begun 20 years ago by his predecessor, John Paul II. Last year, he issued an edict revoking the autonomy of Assisi’s Franciscan monks, a move that was seen as a reaction against the monks’ interfaith activism. On the occasion of this year’s gathering, he issued a statement about religion and peace that was read by an envoy, but his absence spoke louder than his words.
The pope also recently reassigned the Vatican’s former head of interreligious dialogue, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, an expert on Arab affairs, to a diplomatic post in Egypt. According to a report in The Times by Ian Fisher, the move was interpreted by some church experts as reflecting Benedict’s skepticism of dialogue with Muslims. As his unfortunate comments show, the pope needs high-level experts on Islam to help guide him.
In offering his regrets, the pope said that in its totality, his speech was intended as “an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect.” In living up to that, he and other top Vatican officials will have to accept that genuine communication cannot occur on their terms only.
06.09.19 Dumb energy policy (what policy?)
We tax imported sugar ethanol, which could finance our poor friends, but we don’t tax imported crude oil, which definitely finances our rich enemies. We’d rather power anti-Americans with our energy purchases than promote antipoverty. --Thomas Friedman
06.09.18 An Exercise in Charity
I wish the Ruling Junta to be treated humanely at Guantanamo when they are thrown out of office with the restoration of Constitutional and competent government.
06.09.17a The Pope's Address: On Faith, Reason and the University
A disussion on the PBS News Hour Sep 18: rough closed caption capture -- PBS downloads: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/
Link to the Pope's Address:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.htmlNothing the Pope said justifies any violence.In my opinion, the Pope's speech is a pretty feeble argument, ignorant of contemporary philosophy, and deeply problematic, completely aside from his unhappy choice of selecting the example he did of one half of a 14th Century Christian-Muslim encounter, which does not recognize the major Muslims thinkers like Ibn Sina, known as Avicenna (980-1037) and Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes (1126-1198 ) -- to whom Aquinas was indebted -- who would tend to sympathize with much of what the Pope said about rationality. Since the Pope surely is acquainted with such Muslim thinkers, both deeply influenced by the Greek thought the Pope praises, his choice of Manuel II Paleologus as the bookends of his speech is so perplexing that it has occasioned speculations among some critics that he was deliberately provocative rather than careless, or that his remarks were properly vetted by the Vatican bureaucracy, or that some other unfortunate factor led to poor construction of the lecture. Whatever his intention, employing such an example without appropriate disclaimers is rightly condemned. The quotation unanswered irresponsibly paints Islam as violent and a low form of civilization, where in fact Islamic culture was far in advance of European Christian civilization, and arguably much less violent, and certainly conversant with the Greek thought the Pope finds inherent in Christianity (thus he questions the notion that a Christian can simply follow Jesus). What a shame the Pope should mention Ibn Hazm without acknowledging the gift he made of the West in a new understanding of love. The Pope's vaunted theological expertise is revealed to be a bunch of dirty old rags left over from arrogant colonialism (and defining Christianity in European terms), propped up in poses as sentences and paragraphs. Of course reason is better than violence, but the West, and Christianity in particular, has used reason repeatedly to jusify all sorts of violence: the Crusades, the Inquistition, the religious wars of Europe, and now the war in Iraq. Read the Pope and weep that he seems so ignorant of the folly arising from those who, clothed in reason's rags, think themselves Kings and Popes. This is not the way to respectful dialogue among the faiths. He would have been far more convincing by beginning with a confession of his own tradition's sins before seeking to remove the mote in the eye of the other.The apologies offered so far do not correct the substance of the address regarding Islam. We'll see if the promised "subsequent version" can clean and repair this tattered attire.
UPDATE:
Here is an intriguing comment from Juan Cole http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?entry=4585 which I encountered after my own initial reaction above citing Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd:The address is more complex and subtle than the press on it represents. But let me just signal that what is most troubling of all is that the Pope gets several things about Islam wrong, just as a matter of fact.Here is another comment, from M.J. Akbar, mjakbar@asianage.com:He notes that the text he discusses, a polemic against Islam by a Byzantine emperor, cites Qur’an 2:256: "There is no compulsion in religion." Benedict maintains that this is an early verse, when Muhammad was without power.
His allegation is incorrect. Surah 2 is a Medinan surah revealed when Muhammad was already established as the leader of the city of Yathrib (later known as Medina or "the city" of the Prophet). The pope imagines that a young Muhammad in Mecca before 622 (lacking power) permitted freedom of conscience, but later in life ordered that his religion be spread by the sword. But since Surah 2 is in fact from the Medina period when Muhammad was in power, that theory does not hold water.
In fact, the Qur’an at no point urges that religious faith be imposed on anyone by force. This is what it says about the religions:
’ [2:62] Those who believe (in the Qur’an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians— any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. ’ . . . .
The idea of holy war or jihad (which is about defending the community or at most about establishing rule by Muslims, not about imposing the faith on individuals by force) is also not a Quranic doctrine. The doctrine was elaborated much later, on the Umayyad-Byzantine frontier, long after the Prophet’s death. In fact, in early Islam it was hard to join, and Christians who asked to become Muslim were routinely turned away. The tyrannical governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj, was notorious for this rejection of applicants, because he got higher taxes on non-Muslims. Arab Muslims had conquered Iraq, which was then largely pagan, Zoroastrian, Christian and Jewish. But they weren’t seeking converts and certainly weren’t imposing their religion.
The pope was trying to make the point that coercion of conscience is incompatible with genuine, reasoned faith. He used Islam as a symbol of the coercive demand for unreasoned faith.
But he has been misled by the medieval polemic on which he depended.
In fact, the Quran also urges reasoned faith and also forbids coercion in religion. The only violence urged in the Quran is in self-defense of the Muslim community against the attempts of the pagan Meccans to wipe it out.
The pope says that in Islam, God is so transcendant that he is beyond reason and therefore cannot be expected to act reasonably. He contrasts this conception of God with that of the Gospel of John, where God is the Logos, the Reason inherent in the universe.
But there have been many schools of Islamic theology and philosophy. The Mu’tazilite school maintained exactly what the Pope is saying, that God must act in accordance with reason and the good as humans know them. The Mu’tazilite approach is still popular in Zaidism and in Twelver Shiism of the Iraqi and Iranian sort. The Ash’ari school, in contrast, insisted that God was beyond human reason and therefore could not be judged rationally. (I think the Pope would find that Tertullian and perhaps also John Calvin would be more sympathetic to this view within Christianity than he is).
As for the Quran, it constantly appeals to reason in knowing God, and in refuting idolatry and paganism, and asks, "do you not reason?" "do you not understand?" (a fala ta`qilun?)
Of course, Christianity itself has a long history of imposing coerced faith on people, including on pagans in the late Roman Empire, who were forcibly converted. And then there were the episodes of the Crusades.
Another irony is that reasoned, scholastic Christianity has an important heritage drom Islam itself. In the 10th century, there was little scholasticism in Christian theology. The influence of Muslim thinkers such as Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) reemphasized the use of Aristotle and Plato in Christian theology. Indeed, there was a point where Christian theologians in Paris had divided into partisans of Averroes or of Avicenna, and they conducted vigorous polemics with one another.
Finally, that Byzantine emperor that the Pope quoted, Manuel II? The Byzantines had been weakened by Latin predations during the fourth Crusade, so it was in a way Rome that had sought coercion first. And, he ended his days as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.
The Pope was wrong on the facts. He should apologize to the Muslims and get better advisers on Christian-Muslim relations.
An intriguing part of the conversation between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and “an educated Persian” now made world-famous by Pope Benedict XVI, is that the Persian seems to have no name. There is no mention of it in the speech made by the Holy Father during his “Apostolic Journey” to the University of Regensburg on 9/12.And Sunday's NY Times Editorial: September 16, 2006:The Persian must have been an intellectual of some importance if he was good enough to merit an audience with an “erudite” emperor. Does his name exist in the original text, since it was “presumably the Emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402”?
Was the name mentioned in the version produced by Professor Theodore Khoury, which the pope has read, and which he used in a speech on a critical aspect of a sensitive theme at a time of conflict, on the Islamic doctrine of “holy war”? I ask because names lend greater credibility to text.
There are other uncertainties in the pope’s speech, in which he quotes Manuel’s ignorant, but, given the history of the early and medieval church’s continual diatribe against Islam and its Prophet, predictable view. This discussion on “holy war” appeared in the seventh conversation and was “rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole”. It is interesting that Pope Benedict should select what was “rather marginal” for emphasis and ignore the apparently more substantive issues that were discussed. What is genuinely disconcerting is that the Holy Father should accept Manuel’s taunting, erroneous and provocative depiction of the Prophet’s message without any qualification. Pope Benedict is not at all disturbed by phrases as insulting as “evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”. This is utterly wrong, as even a cursory understanding of Islam would have made apparent.
I have a further question: Why didn’t the pope quote the Persian scholar’s answer to Manuel? Are we to believe that the Persian gave no answer, that he did not challenge such a rant? He could not have been much of a scholar in that case. I am not erudite enough to have read the dialogue in the original Greek, or professor Khoury’s edited version of it. I can only go by the pope’s speech in Germany.
Some uncertainties can be explained by the distance of six centuries, as for instance the sentence that the conversation took place “perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara”. The fact that we are reading Manuel’s record, rather than the Persian’s, also explains why it lays more stress on the emperor’s view of theology.
What is aggravating is that the pope has been free with assumptions, and liberal with its first cousin, innuendo. The peaceful piety of Manuel becomes an indictment of Islam, which is held to be violent in preference and doctrine. The innuendo is cleverly expressed, indicating that some effort has been taken to be clever. The famous verse of the Qur’an, that “There is no compulsion in religion”, is juxtaposed with the proposition that “According to the experts, this is one of the surahs of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under threat”. The implication is that when he was not under threat, he drew out his sword and went on a rampage. This is the kind of propaganda that the church used to put out with abandon in the early days, adding gratuitously comments about believers and “infidels”. This is the line that those who have made it their business to hate Muslims, use till today. But the Vatican had stopped such vilification, and it is unfortunate that Pope Benedict has revived it.
If he had consulted a few experts who understood Islam, he might have been better educated on “holy war”.
It is absolutely correct that no war verse was sent down to the Prophet during his Makkah phase. Despite the severest persecution, to the point where he almost lost his life, he never advocated violence. There are innumerable verses in the Qur’an extolling the merits of peace, and a peaceful solution to life’s problems including a preference for peace over war. The Qur’an treats Christians and Jews as people of the Book, despite the fact that they did not accept the Prophet’s message. It praises Jesus as “Ruh-Allah”, or one touched by the spirit of Allah (this is the best translation I can think of). Mary, mother of Jesus, is accepted as virgin, although the Qur’an is equally clear that Jesus is a man, and not the son of God.The war verses are sent to the Prophet only when he has been in Madinah for some time, and become not only a leader of the community but also head of a multifaith state. War, in other words, is permitted as an exercise in statecraft, and not for personal reasons, including persecution.
Further, it is circumscribed with important conditions. Surely no one, including Pope Benedict, believes that a state cannot ever take recourse to war? Indeed, the history of the Vatican is filled with war. The Qur’an’s view of war, as an answer to injustice, certainly merits more understanding than censure.
Manuel’s view is better understood in the context of his times. He was monarch of a once-glorious but now dying empire. The Ottomans had been slicing off territory for centuries; the first Crusade had been called by Pope Urban II three centuries before to save the Byzantines from Muslim Turks. The heart of the empire, Constantinople, was now under serious threat. If Tamerlane (another Muslim) had not suddenly appeared from the east and decimated the Ottomans, Constantinople might have fallen during that siege which so depressed Manuel. It was hardly a moment when the Byzantine could have the most charitable view of an Islamic holy war. What is less understandable is why Pope Benedict should endorse a fallacy.
The present pope is not a successor to the great and wise John Paul II. He is heir to predecessors like Pope Nicholas V who issued “The Bull Romanus Pontifex” in January 1455. This was the philosophy that created the Inquisition in which Muslims and Jews were killed and driven out of Catholic kingdoms in Spain and Portugal after the Christian reconquests.
A suggestion to those who believe in an “international outcry”. Hyper reactions tend to suggest nervousness. Islam is not a weak doctrine; it is built on rock, not sand. Reason is a more effective weapon than anger.
There is more than enough religious anger in the world. So it is particularly disturbing that Pope Benedict XVI has insulted Muslims, quoting a 14th-century description of Islam as “evil and inhuman.”In the most provocative part of a speech this week on “faith and reason,” the pontiff recounted a conversation between an “erudite” Byzantine Christian emperor and a “learned” Muslim Persian circa 1391. The pope quoted the emperor saying, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
Muslim leaders the world over have demanded apologies and threatened to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican, warning that the pope’s words dangerously reinforce a false and biased view of Islam. For many Muslims, holy war — jihad — is a spiritual struggle, and not a call to violence. And they denounce its perversion by extremists, who use jihad to justify murder and terrorism.
The Vatican issued a statement saying that Benedict meant no offense and in fact desired dialogue. But this is not the first time the pope has fomented discord between Christians and Muslims.
In 2004 when he was still the Vatican’s top theologian, he spoke out against Turkey’s joining the European Union, because Turkey, as a Muslim country was “in permanent contrast to Europe.”
A doctrinal conservative, his greatest fear appears to be the loss of a uniform Catholic identity, not exactly the best jumping-off point for tolerance or interfaith dialogue.
The world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly. He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal.
06.09.17 The Greatest Story Ever SoldHere's an excerpt from a review of Frank Rich's new book:
This is how the war was sold: We were told by Dick Cheney in late 2001 that an official Iraqi connection with the 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta was “pretty well confirmed.” In the summer of 2002, Cheney said that Saddam Hussein “continues to pursue a nuclear weapon” and that there was “no doubt” he had “weapons of mass destruction.” The vice president mentioned aluminum tubes (they had been reported on by Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller in The New York Times), which Hussein would use “to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.” This uranium, we were told, had been procured by the Iraqis from Niger. President Bush, in October 2002, said, “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”We now know that none of these claims, which together constituted the official reason for unleashing a war, were even remotely true. The later excuses about honest beliefs based on faulty intelligence would have been more convincing if a memo had not surfaced from the British government, quoting the head of British intelligence as saying that the Bush administration had made sure that “the intelligence and facts” about the W.M.D.’s “were being fixed around the policy” of going to war. He said this in July 2002, eight months before the invasion of Iraq. Even without the memo, it has long been clear that some of the United States government’s own analysts had cast severe doubts on the reasons for going to war. . . . .
As soon as the fighting began, showbiz kicked in. Already in Afghanistan, the Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer had been given access to the troops to make a television series about American bravery, even as reporters from papers like The Washington Post were kept away from the scene. Then in Iraq, heroic stories, like the brave battle of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, were invented and packaged for the press, and those who pointed out the fakery were denounced as leftist malcontents. President Bush dressed up as Tom Cruise in “Top Gun” and landed on an aircraft carrier for a photo op declaring a great victory. And the press, by and large, took the bait.
How could this have happened? How could some of the best, most fact-checked, most reputable news organizations in the English-speaking world have been so gullible? How can one explain the temporary paralysis of skepticism? This is perhaps the most painful question raised by Rich’s book, since his own newspaper was clearly implicated. . . . .
Read the review in The NYTimes or in my archive.
SENSE . . .
“The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.” --Former Bush (2) Secretary of State and head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell (Republican) Powell adds that the President's proposal "would put our own troops at risk.". . . and NONSENSE
“I wonder of (the Democrats) are more interested in protecting the terrorists than in protecting the American people.” --House Republican Majority Leader John Boehner (Republican, Ohio)
06.09.13 Four Gods in AmericaView of God can predict values, politics
Updated 9/12/2006
By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAYThe United States calls itself one nation under God, but Americans don't all have the same image of the Almighty in mind.
A new survey of religion in the USA finds four very different images of God — from a wrathful deity thundering at sinful humanity to a distant power uninvolved in mankind's affairs.
Forget denominational brands or doctrines or even once-salient terms like "Religious Right." Even the oft-used "Evangelical" appears to be losing ground.
AMERICANS AND FAITH: How we view God
Believers just don't see themselves the way the media and politicians — or even their pastors — do, according to the national survey of 1,721 Americans, by far the most comprehensive national religion survey to date.
Written and analyzed by sociologists from Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion, in Waco, Texas, and conducted by Gallup, the survey asked 77 questions with nearly 400 answer choices that burrowed deeply into beliefs, practices and religious ties and turned up some surprising findings:
•Though 91.8% say they believe in God, a higher power or a cosmic force, they had four distinct views of God's personality and engagement in human affairs. These Four Gods — dubbed by researchers Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical or Distant — tell more about people's social, moral and political views and personal piety than the familiar categories of Protestant/Catholic/Jew or even red state/blue state.
For example: 45.6% of all Americans say the federal government "should advocate Christian values," but 74.5% of believers in an authoritarian God do.
Sociologist Paul Froese says the survey finds the stereotype that conservatives are religious and liberals are secular is "simply not true. Political liberals and conservative are both religious. They just have different religious views."
•About one in nine (10.8%) respondents have no religious ties at all; previous national surveys found 14%. The Baylor survey, unlike others, asked people to write in the names and addresses of where they worship, and many who said "none" or "don't know" when asked about their religious identity named a church they occasionally attend.
•The paranormal — beliefs outside conventional organized religion — is immensely popular. Most people said they believe in prophetic dreams; four in 10 say there were once "ancient advanced civilizations" such as Atlantis.
•"Evangelical" may be losing favor as a way Americans describe themselves. About one in three Americans say they belong to denominations that theologians consider evangelical, but only 14% of all respondents in the survey say this is one way they would describe themselves. Only 2.2% called it the single best term. Top choices overall: "Bible-believing" (20.5%) or "born-again" (18.6%).
"Any politician who really wants to connect with Christians should be looking at those terms, not vague abstractions like evangelical. ... They need to tap into labels that have salience," Baylor sociologist Kevin Dougherty says.
•Most Americans think their nearest and dearest are going to heaven. The pearly gates open widest for family (75.3% say they'll get in) and personal friends (69.3%). The survey did not ask whether people expect to go to heaven themselves.
•Religion-themed movies and books have a vast reach: 44.3% of those polled saw Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. More than one in 10 of all surveyed say they spent $50 or more in the past month on items such as religious books, music and jewelry.
A closer look at what people read finds that 28.5% of Americans say they've read The Da Vinci Code. Baylor also found 19%, including 25% of all U.S. women, have read the Rev. Rick Warren's Christian handbook The Purpose-Driven Life, and 19% overall have read at least one of the novels in the Left Behind apocalyptic fiction series.
These are part of the first wave of results from the random survey of Americans who completed and mailed in a 16-page questionnaire. Conducted in the fall of 2005, the survey is a statistically representative sampling of the USA by age, gender and race.
The Baylor team will spend two years digging through the findings and releasing reports on subtopics such as civic involvement and volunteerism, then repeat the core questions in fall 2007 to track trends. The research is funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, calls the analysis "intriguing. Baylor was able to ask many more probing questions than the usual surveys."
Others agree.
The Four Gods breakdown is helpful "if you are trying to understand religion's impact on society by how people see themselves from the inside, not by observations from outsiders," says John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
God's 'personality'
Baylor researchers determined the Four Gods breakdown by analyzing questions about God's personality and engagement.
The survey asked respondents to agree or disagree with any of 10 descriptions of their "personal understanding of what God is like," including phrases such as "angered by my sins" or "removed from worldly affairs." They could check off 16 adjectives they believe describe God, including words such as "absolute," "wrathful," "forgiving," "friendly" or "distant."
When USA TODAY asked people similar questions, it found views as varied as those of self-described fundamentalist Brian Snider of Madison, Ala., and Marilyn McGuire, who says she sees God in every sunrise and sunset, flower and kitten at her home on Orcas Island near Seattle.
Snider, 46, says God is "i
