Mahdi Ibn-Ziyad & Friends Speak

Andrews Affair: We Smell A Rat

2008-04-09T20:02:00.000-07:00

WE “SMELL A RAT” IN THE ANDREWS FAMILY AFFAIR

by Dr. Mahdi Ibn-Ziyad, 4/8/2008

In refusing an invitation to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Patrick Henry, one of America’s founding statesmen, was fairly specific and direct about “smelling a rat” in the rough and tumble politics of his moment on the historical stage. Past political lessons can always be turned to in understanding current realities.

A news report (courierpostonline.com 4.8.2008) that Senator Frank Lautenberg’s campaign manager thinks Camille Andrews pitch-hitting role for her husband Rob, in his quest to challenge Lautenberg “doesn’t pass the smell test “ is a case in point. Apparently, the Lautenberg people feel that Rob’s ploy to run his wife as a surrogate is little more than a cover to protect the Andrews’ supreme patron, South Jersey Democratic machine boss, George Norcross III.

Clearly the stench of foul South Jersey “politics as usual” is in the air with the selection of Camille Andrews as a stand-in for her husband. The Lautenberg campaign has sniffed out and detected a nauseating odor that negatively permeates the democratic process and calls into question the serious lack of ethics on the part of Democratic Party stalwarts who seek to subvert democracy for their own narrow ends of maintaining the status quo.

Traditionally, death or physical incapacitation has been the route in which spouses of elected officials were chosen to complete the terms of their loved ones. Now somehow, the South Jersey Democratic machine has consorted with the Andrews’ family to initiate a new and odious tradition that says you can be alive and in good health and pass your elected seat onto a spouse for safe keeping. Or to be kept safe until the Democratic machine, after (sic) “careful deliberation” and a “deliberative process” finds a suitably qualified candidate to support.

If the Democratic machine did not engage in a “deliberative, democratic process” in selecting Andrews’ wife to replace him how can the people of the first congressional district trust it to do so at some later time?

South Jersey voters have a right to know how and on what specific grounds the Andrews and their cronies get to break with tradition when it seems suitable to their interests. The question is this: do we have a democracy based on the nomination and election of officials in their own right or do we have a process based on hereditary rights or family rights wherein political power is passed along via blood relations?.

I know of no new and controlling rule book of ethics that would nudge or force South Jersey Democratic power brokers to act ethically and in a transparent manner on the Andrews’ family arrangement. Only the people of South Jersey themselves have the power to assess and judge this trumped up arrangement and hopefully not allow it to develop to full term.

Some are now asking me whether --- to better assist the people’s assessment --- an independent investigatory body or an impartial journalistic entity or legal inquiry into the Andrews’ family arrangement may be in order?

As a candidate for Andrews’ seat I have an interest in and a duty in seeing that our system is fair and open. As a progressive Democrat I have consistently called for change in the cynical “politics as usual” game that passes for participatory democracy in South Jersey.

The current Andrews’ family affair is nothing if not more of the same in this failed politics of the past.

The people of South Jersey deserve so much better.

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Mahdi Ibn Ziyad for Congress
PO Box 1906 Camden, NJ 08101
856.655.9488; fax 856.964.5661
www.mahdi-ibn-ziyad-for-congress.com
Stepping Forward With New Vision & Renewed Hope
Join My Campaign for New Jersey's 1st District

Ziyad on Andrews Senate Run

2008-04-09T19:50:00.000-07:00

RESPONSE TO INQUIRIES ABOUT ROB ANDREWS RUN FOR THE US SENATE

AND ITS EFFECT ON THE IBN-ZIYAD CAMPAIGN FOR CONGRESS

By Dr. Mahdi Ibn-Ziyad, 4/6/2008

This past week Congressman Rob Andrews announced his desire to run against incumbent NJ Senator Frank Lautenberg. Several people have contacted Dr. Mahdi Ibn-Ziyad about whether the Democratic Party of South Jersey, especially the George Norcross led machine in Camden County will endorse and officially support his candidacy now that Andrews has to leave his congressional post to run for the Senate. Below is Ibn-Ziyad’s response to one such inquiry.

Dear Friend:

In the past few days I have had several people express sentiments similar to yours. The concerns are appreciated and give one pause to reflect and consider whether this is really an opening for official Democratic Party recognition or, on the other hand, a renewed opportunity to deepen and replenish the means of struggle in my progressive campaign.

To see the events of the past few days as opening in the Democratic Party is okay but fraught with problems based on the nature of the party, its philosophical allegiance to the notion of majoritarian democracy and its human organization.

All things considered, I think Democratic Party boss George Norcross and all his cronies would die a miserable death before they would even hint at a wink or nod my way. They along with the Courier-Post are playing the invisible man game with me and my candidacy. They know I am there but to date I remain off the stage of serious merit or comment. I don't think South Jersey Democratic Party realists, money men, power brokers, party stalwarts and other subordinate party leaders who have been in waiting for promotion would countenance anything outside of the general party line and "the way things are normally done in these cases".

Realistically I am almost certain that the party will not do anything to recognize or invite my official presence as an acceptable candidate to replace Rob Andrews in Congress. How could it?

Much of what I am about is anathema to the viability of the party as it is now and how it perceives its self in the world. The party is not so much swayed by progressive ideas of principle and merit as it is the accumulation, function and distribution of political (and economic) rewards and punishments in the form of favors owed, cronyism, A public money contracting, loyalty, positioning in a well-defined pecking order and the old guard, back room type politics.

Moreover, not only am I an outsider, I am a black progressive in a South Jersey Democratic Party political environment that is still ill prepared to deal with black political empowerment on any mass and effective scale. Unlike the run of the mill black political types that are safely installed in their party roles from mayors, a freeholder, a state senator to selected committee men and women, I am not a fawning elitist who hopes to curry favor with the powers that be. I am not seeking favors, a contract, or a new career as somebody's well dressed, articulate and affluent flunky. Further, I am not awed or cowed by big money or big power.

Majoritarian elitist and exclusionary, rather than inclusionary, minoritarian and proportionately decided democracy rules the day in first District politics. The majority of those motivated to exercise the franchise to vote in the 1st District (whether Democrat, Green, independent or Republican), will usually vote along traditional racial and ethnic lines; especially if the political parties subtly (or openly) push an exclusionary agenda that barely ever deals with racial or ethnic issues in any forward looking, out front manner. To not mention or barely mention local area race and ethnic divisions and the need to heal those fissures, by means of agreed upon methods of reconciliation, is the usual way that the politics of avoidance works.

A recent case in point was the 2/5/2008 NJ primary election which Obama lost to Clinton. None of the South Jersey power brokers favored Obama, thus all the party faithful who owed their jobs and livelihood as party hacks to Norcross fell in line. Black politicians who are puppets of Norcross, without the merest of whimpers, also fell in line across the board. That this same crowd, minus Rob Andrews as of yet, are now backing Obama is a sad tale about old guard race, and power politics in the South Jersey Democratic Party.

We'll have to wait and see, but just possibly Obama's big speech on race will provide some conversational space for this all but taboo issue to surface and distinguish itself as separate from economic class and status issues with which there is a subtle tendency for the casual observer to confuse because many racially oppressed people are also among the most prominent of the economically dispossessed.

In sum, I fear conventional Democratic Party thinking would rather to keep my candidacy in the ethereal realm where it's not a problem or obstacle to conventionality. Out of sight, out of mind.

Be that as it may my progressive push, on the other hand, has a renewed opportunity to deepen and replenish the means of struggle in order to get my message of principled change out and acted upon. What I need now is for people wanting a progressive agenda to rush out and get on board my campaign jitney. Let the Democratic Party big wigs worry about who to select for Rob's place. Let the backroom smoke fill them with whatever.

Meanwhile, I need volunteers to hit the streets today if we are to make the best of this new opportunity that the last few days have given.

Forward ever, backward never then ...

Mahdi

Mahdi Ibn Ziyad for Congress
PO Box 1906, Camden, NJ 08101
856.655.9488; fax: 856.964.5661
www.mahdi-ibn-ziyad-for-congress.com

2008-03-16T17:36:00.000-07:00

Friends: march 16, 2008

By now we should all be aware that Iran is set for the next big misuse of US military forces. The war drums have been beating since 2001. Revenge for the 1979 US hostage situation, Iran's nuclear program, its threats to Israel and the antiquated Saudi regime and its Shiite theocratic bearing all are ingredients that Bush and his minions have made public as "reasons" to do Iran with military force.

Yet, oil and energy resource policy in the Persian Gulf region and oil's historic role is never mentioned as a ground from US hostilities towards Iran.

As he was and is on Iraq, in following Bush lockstep, Rob Andrews is also way out front in pushing for the by now "normal behavior" of imperialist aggression against Iran. Even going against other Democrats to support Bush.

Our politically astute Native American friends would probably laugh at this one, given what happened to their land and fortunes beginning in the early 1600's, but at least as far back as 1846 when American imperialists took half of Mexico via unjust military aggression, to the takeover of Hawaii (1897) and 1898 installation of US forces in the former Spanish possessions of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, the 1903 US Navy engineered disconnect of Panama from Colombia, to the various incursions of our Marine Corps troops into sundry Caribbean island nations between 1911 and 1933, to Vietnam, Grenada and Panama again in 1989, --- we see the same old, tired pattern of "normal behavior" in US foreign policy towards weaker nations that cannot defend themselves against American might. The 1953 CIA engineered coup in Iran was just another example of how we as a super-power seem to just do the do on weaker nations at will.

Our movement problem, as always, remains one of convincing enough peace minded people to vote to democratic by beating their swords into plough shares rather than being forever trapped in the fog of phony patriotism and blatant militarism.

While not impossible, ours is necessarily an uphill climb.

"As British power waned, the CIA staged a coup in 1953 to oust Mossadegh and install in power the authoritarian, pro-US shah, Reza Pahlavi. Soon thereafter, US companies took a large share of the oil concession and Washington replaced Britain as the most influential foreign power."

Mahdi Ibn-Ziyad

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US anti-Iran war Commander resigns Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:42:39

Top US commander Adm. William Fallon, whose views on Iran and other issues have been contrary to the Bush administration, has stepped down. "The current embarrassing situation and public perception of differences between my views and administration policy and the distraction this causes from the mission make this the right thing to do,"

Fallon wrote in his letter of resignation Tuesday. Fallon who was the commander of US forces in the Middle East resigned in the wake of an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed him as the only man challenging US president George W. Bush on Iran policy. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced in a news conference in Pentagon that he had accepted Fallon's resignation 'with reluctance and regret'. "Admiral Fallon reached this difficult decision entirely on his own," Gates claimed, adding "I believe it was the right thing to do, even though I do not believe there are in fact significant differences between his views and administration policy."

Fallon had earlier rankled senior officials of the Bush administration with outspoken comments on such issues as dealing with Iran and on setting the pace of troop reductions from Iraq. He told Esquire that a 'constant drumbeat of conflict' from Washington that was directed at Iran and Iraq was 'not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions'. The article then cited well-placed observers as saying, "it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable." Gates, however, described as 'ridiculous' any notion that Fallon's departure signals the United States is planning to go to war with Iran. Admiral Fallon was nominated in January of 2007 to be commander of American military forces across a region where they are engaged in two ground wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and replaced Gen. John Abizaid as the top officer of Central Command. JS/DT

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Oil and Economic Interests in Iran

Source: US Central Intelligence Agency

The British government long ruled Iranian oil through the UK-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company that began operations in 1908. British disregard for Iranian interests and London's staunch refusal to negotiate changes in the oil concession, led to a rising nationalist opposition. When Mohammed Mossadegh, a respected elder statesman, become prime minister in 1951, he finally succeeded in nationalizing Iran's oil industry, but Britain demanded a reversal, cutting off Iran's foreign oil sales. As British power waned, the CIA staged a coup in 1953 to oust Mossadegh and install in power the authoritarian, pro-US shah, Reza Pahlavi. Soon thereafter, US companies took a large share of the oil concession and Washington replaced Britain as the most influential foreign power. For 25 years, Iran served as a key US ally in the Middle East region, buying expensive US military hardware. But a mass-based revolution finally overthrew the Shah in 1979, leading to a new Islamic government. When student militants in Tehran seized hostages at the US Embassy that year, Washington cut off diplomatic and economic relations with Iran, imposing comprehensive sanctions. US oil companies have not been able to return to the country since then, but European and Asian companies have large and growing operations in Iran, especially in the oil and gas sector, leading to new and potentially explosive international rivalries.
Also See GPF's Pages on: Iran

Articles and Documents
2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2001

2007
More Imperialist Excesses? (October 25, 2007)Russia’s President Vladimir Putin met with heads of states from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Iran to discuss the future of the Caspian Sea area – one of the most oil-rich regions in the world. The leaders strongly condemned any outside aggression or interference in the area, signaling to the US not to expect cooperation from these countries, should the Bush administration launch an attack on Iran. (Granma International)
Iran Leads Attack against US Dollar (April 12, 2007)This Global Research article reports that Iran is “waging economic war” against the US by ending all oil sales in US dollars. The shift to the euro and other currencies could encourage large holders of dollars – such as China, which buys more than 10 percent of its crude oil from Iran – to diversify their foreign exchange reserve portfolios. Because these holdings “are vital to financing the continuing US federal budget deficits,” the move to non-dollar currencies seriously threatens US economic stability.
A Predator Becomes More Dangerous When Wounded (March 9, 2007)This Guardian article discusses the tensions between Washington and Tehran and claims that hostilities exist because of Iran’s unwillingness to subordinate itself to the US. The author Noam Chomsky argues that the Bush administration desperately wants to gain effective control of the invaluable energy resources in the Middle East and that access to oil resources alone is not enough.

2006
Next We Take Tehran (July/August 2006)This Mother Jones article gives an overview of US diplomatic and military actions in the Persian Gulf from the 1950s through the 1990s. The author argues that the US aimed to block Russia and China from a Middle Eastern energy supply, thus blocking the two powers’ aspirations for greater international influence. US-Iran tensions have a similar empirical agenda.
The Race for Iran (June 20, 2006)This New York Times editorial proposes that behind the talks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, lies a “broader strategic competition” over Iran’s vast oil and gas reserves. The author argues that China and Russia seek control over Iran’s natural resources in an effort to counter US dominance in the region.
In The Heart of Pipelineistan (March 17, 2006)This Asia Times article puts the tensions between Iran and the US over Iran’s alleged nuclear program in a broader geopolitical context. Iran and the US are not the only players in the region best termed “Pipelineistan.” China, India, Russia and Pakistan try to increase their influence in the region, because of its vast fossil fuel reserves.
Will Fight for Oil (February 24, 2006)This New York Times article argues that keeping oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf has constituted a cornerstone of US foreign policy for more than half a century. The US regards any attempt to gain control of this region as an assault on its vital interests, which Washington will repel by any means necessary, including military force. The securing of oil constituted one of the reasons to invade Iraq.
WWIII or Bust: Implications of a US Attack on Iran (February 18, 2006)This article argues that the US actively seeks confrontation with Iran, using the alleged Iranian nuclear threat as a pretext. The real reasons are economic - the US wants to secure the vast fossil energy reserves. The US also seeks to safeguard the dollar as Iran plans to allow oil trading in euros in March 2006. (Common Dreams)
Iran Sanctions Could Drive Oil Past $100 (January 22, 2006)If the Security Council sanctions Iran over its nuclear program, Tehran may retaliate by curbing its oil exports, possibly causing oil prices to soar past $100 a barrel. Some experts fear that a sharp global economic slowdown could follow. Others, however, argue that Iran’s “economic blackmail” would hurt Tehran more than it would hurt the world economy, as the US and other members of the International Energy Agency could compensate with their own oil reserves as well as with crude from Saudi Arabia and Russia. (Associated Press)

2005
Iran's Oil Gambit - and Potential Affront to the US (August 30, 2005)The Iranian government has announced plans to set up an international oil trading exchange that would trade petroleum products in euros instead of US dollars. This could potentially undermine the standing of the US dollar, but experts doubt that trading business will shift from London and New York to Tehran any time soon. The Iranian government has also struck important oil and gas deals with India and China, winning allies to the East as it faces nuclear criticism from the West. These moves signify Iran’s effort to “stay on the offensive,” the author argues, as pressure from Washington mounts. (Christian Science Monitor)
Oil Puts Iran Out of Reach (August 16, 2005)Iran, OPEC’s second largest oil producer, uses its influence on the world’s economy to forestall the US and EU efforts to bring Tehran’s nuclear program to the Security Council agenda. As eager customers for Iran’s oil and gas, energy hungry powers such as Russia, Japan, China and India have vested interests in not seeing the nuclear issue escalate, via the Security Council, into an oil crisis. This, in turn, makes the prospect of UN sanctions very unlikely. (Baltimore Sun)
The Iraq War Is Over, and the Winner Is... Iran (July 21, 2005)Professor Juan Cole points out that ironically, Iran may have benefited from the Iraq War more than any other state, including the US. His analysis comes in the wake of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s trip to Iran in July. In the meetings, the leaders of Iraq and Iran discussed oil pipelines, trade and financial aid, and they talked about possible military cooperation along their common borders. Warming relations between the two countries could enhance Iran’s geopolitical standing, a prospect which worries the US and Iraqi Sunnis, says Cole. (Salon)
Oil, Geopolitics, and the Coming War with Iran (April 11, 2005)Iran’s vast oil and gas reserves will play a large factor in the “world’s future energy equation” and dictate the Bush administration’s Iran policy, says author Michael Klare. Competitors China, India and Japan have all tapped into Iranian resources, but US firms still do not have access. While the US government may have evidence to support their claims over Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Klare warns that Washington used such an excuse in Iraq. These geopolitical oil concerns, he says, will likely make Iran the next target for the US. (TomDispatch)
A Game As Old As Empire (February 16, 2005)In an AlterNet interview, economist John Perkins declares that Washington’s perpetual desire to control oil resources led the US to intervene in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and also caused the 9/11 attacks. Pointing out that several US corporations beat out countries on the world’s largest economies list, Perkins laments that Washington has gone against the principles of democracy by overtaking foreign oil industries. “Oil is a curse to the world,” he says, yet too few US citizens understand how or why.
The Axis of Oil (January 31, 2005)Access to cheap oil has often dominated and given leverage to US international policy. But as Washington’s attention remains focused on the Middle East and the Iraq insurgency, India and China have crept up on traditional US oil strongholds worldwide. This In These Times article warns of an inevitable “clash” as China and India let their energy needs dictate ties with Russia as well as Iran and other countries with strained US relations.

2004
The Real Reasons Why Iran Is the Next Target: The Emerging Euro-Denominated International Oil Marker (October 27, 2004)According to the Center for Research on Globalization, the US stance towards Iran is as much about economics as it is about nuclear proliferation. Iran is planning a new commodity exchange for Middle Eastern and OPEC oil where trades will take place only in euros. If the exchange is a success, US dollar hegemony could potentially come under pressure, as oil sales have traditionally been conducted in dollars. The article argues that US policy towards Iraq was driven by similar concerns, since Iraq had shifted its oil sales to euro-denomination in 2000. After the US invasion, Washington quickly returned oil sales to dollars, removing Saddam’s threat to the strength of the greenback.

2003
The Oily Americans (May 19, 2003)This Time article “illustrates the dark side of American oil policy” through the history of US covert action and foreign aid in Iran, and the fight against communism in the Middle East. Access to Iranian oil “came with a stiff price,” as the US-supported Shah created “the first American-hating Islamic Republic,” and Ayatollah Khomeini ended US-Iranian oil relations after his rise to power in 1979. These authors believe the US government’s handling of oil issues has caused the US public to rely on “foreign intervention rather than domestic conservation.”

2001
Cheney Panel Seeks Review Of Sanctions (April 19, 2001)The US is revising its sanction regime not only on Iraq, but also on Iran and Libya in order to meet energy needs in the country. (Washington Post)

FinalCall.com News
World NewsRight wing think tanks slyly push war with Iran By Khody Akhavi Updated Mar 11, 2008, 12:15 pm

Drumbeat against Iran sounds awfully familiar (FCN, 05-02-2006)
Text of Iranian President Ahmadinejad's letter to President George W. Bush (FCN, 05-09-2006)
Iran showdown tests power of ‘Israel lobby’ (FCN, 04-26-2006)
Pro-Israel lobby dictates U.S. policy, study charges (FCN, 04-05-2006)
Nuclear hypocrisy in Iran’s treatment (FCN, 03-12-2006)
WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) - A new report published by the American Enterprise Institute purports to show the reach and scope of Iranian influence across the Middle East, but it stops short of drawing conclusions about Tehran’s grand strategy.
Co-written by American Enterprise Institute fellows Fred Kagan and Danielle Pletka, and Mr. Kagan’s wife, Kimberly, who heads the Institute for the Study of War, the report doesn’t offer much in the way of rhetorical grandstanding, it doesn’t discuss Iran’s current nuclear program, and it fails to offer recommendations of how to counter Tehran.
But that’s not the point really, the authors said repeatedly during a panel discussion Feb. 19 in the think tank’s conference room.
“We endeavored to take a look at what Iran is doing, not with a view to figuring out whether the regime in Tehran has particular motivations, not with a view to figuring out even necessarily what the regime’s strategy is, rather just to take a ‘clean’—if you will—look at Iran’s reach,” said Ms. Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
The report, entitled “Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan,” describes the debate about the aims and the nature of power in Tehran’s regime as “charged.” Hence, it says that drawing firm conclusions about a government that is opaque and rife with internal schism is “almost hopeless.”
Yet, it warns that “much as America might desire to avoid war with Iran, continued Iranian interventions ... might ultimately make that option less repulsive than the alternatives.”
The report relies entirely on open-source material, international and domestic media, nongovernmental and government reports, as well as interviews conducted by Fred and Kimberly Kagan, who respectively visited Afghanistan and Iraq.
The American Enterprise Institute has been a home base for a long list of influential figures, including several former George W. Bush administration officials such as John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Having helped lead the effort to push public support for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq—including by creating influential advocacy groups such as the now defunct Project for the New American Century—American Enterprise Institute writers and scholars have turned their attention to Iran.
They have long been advocates for confrontational policy approaches, and until recently, open agitators for military intervention with Tehran. At an event last summer, neoconservative author Michael Ledeen said, “The (Iranian) leadership constantly tells its people, ‘the Iranian people must prepare to rule the world.’ ”
“Everybody has convinced themselves that they can make a deal with Iran. We have been negotiating for 27 years, as if there have been no negotiations ... there is no escape,” he said. “The only question is how best to defeat them.”
In November 2006, American Enterprise Institute fellow Joshua Muravchick began an opinion editorial in the Los Angeles Times with four words: “We must bomb Iran.”
But during the recent discussion, the report’s authors’ ducked questions about the possibility of air strikes against Iran before President George W. Bush leaves office next January.
“What I would say simply is that whatever your view about when or if air strikes will occur, air strikes are not a strategy, and we need to be thinking more broadly than that,” Fred Kagan said.
Mr. Kagan, a member of an influential neoconservative family that includes his father Donald and his brother Robert, is widely known for his advocacy of President Bush’s “surge strategy,” the increase of some 30,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq to provide security and breathing space for a political reconciliation between the country’s political parties.
The American Enterprise Institute may have had the ear of the White House and Pentagon at one time, but since the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which said Iran had decided to stop its nuclear weapons program, the drive toward confrontation with Iran seems to have sputtered. The U.S. military remains overstretched, and in the upcoming presidential election, Republican candidate and “surge” advocate Senator John McCain will face a Democratic candidate eager to remove troops from Iraq and “end the war.”
While President Bush may share the American Enterprise Institute’s view on Iranian malfeasance, his influence is waning. In a February National Public Radio interview, Defense Secretary Bob Gates appeared to contradict his boss’s view that Iran posed a “threat,” instead, saying that Tehran posed “significant challenges.”
“When I think of a threat I think of a direct military threat, and while the jury’s out in terms of whether they have eased up on their support to those opposing us in Iraq, I don’t see the Iranians in the near term as a direct military threat,” he said.
It seems the scholars at the American Enterprise Institute have caught on, as they have attempted to shift the focus of the debate from Iranian motivations and intentions toward an “empirical study” of Iran’s influence. In the final analysis, it reflects a tactical shift away from openly beating the war drums as do scholars such as Mr. Ledeen, whose most recent book entitled, “The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction.” Instead, it reflects a shift toward an attempt to highlight the extent of Iranian influence in the region. The conclusion being put forward is that, even without the nuclear issue at the forefront, Iran continues to exert a negative impact on U.S. interests.
By assembling an empirical study based on open-source information, the intention may be to provide a purportedly unvarnished account of Iran’s ability to compete with the U.S. for hegemony in the region, to challenge the compartmentalized view of the Iran-U.S. conflict, in a debate the authors argue has been “short on facts.”
But perhaps the authors should do some fact-checking of their own. On page three, they incorrectly identify the former president of Syria as “Hafez al-Hassad,” who died in 2006. The former president, Mr. Assad, died in 2000.
FCN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties. Original content supplied by FCN and FinalCall.com News is Copyright © 2008 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com. Content supplied by third parties are the property of their respective owners.

2008-03-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

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This article can be found on the web at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/berman
Smearing Obama
by ARI BERMAN
[from the March 31, 2008 issue]
He's a Muslim. He was sworn into office on the Koran. He doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance. His pastor is an anti-Semite. He's a tool of Louis Farrakhan. He's anti-Israel. His advisers are anti-Israel. He's friends with terrorists. The terrorists want him to win. He's the Antichrist.
By now you've probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama's religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies from Chicago. The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black nationalist. That picture couldn't be further from the truth, but you'd be surprised how many people have fallen for it. The American Jewish community, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party and US politics, has been specifically targeted [see Eric Alterman's column in the March 24 issue, "(Some) Jews Against Obama"]. What started as a largely overlooked fringe attack has been thrust into the mainstream--used as GOP talking points, pushed by the Clinton campaign, echoed by the likes of Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Falsehoods are repeated as fact, and bits of evidence become "elaborate constructions of malicious fantasy," as the Jewish Week, America's largest Jewish newspaper, editorialized.
What floods into one's inbox these days bears little or no relation to Obama's record. "Some of my earliest and most ardent supporters came from the Jewish community in Chicago," he has said. Obama ran for the Senate promising to help reconstitute the black-Jewish civil rights coalition. His first foreign policy speech of the campaign was before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he pledged "clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel." He has occasionally angered pro-Israel hawks by urging direct negotiations with Iran and Syria, but Obama's foreign policy record is well within the Democratic Party mainstream. He's committed to a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, supported Israel's incursion into Lebanon in 2006 and has criticized Hamas. During his campaign for the presidency, Obama has been defended by AIPAC, the neoconservative New York Sun and The New Republic's Marty Peretz, a noted Israel hawk. And yet no defense of Israel by Obama--or of Obama by the pro-Israel establishment--seems to be enough. "When one charge is disproved, another is leveled," says Rabbi Jack Moline, who leads a synagogue in Alexandria, Virginia.
It's nearly impossible to decipher where the smears originated [for a comprehensive account of how such campaigns are generated and spread in the age of the Internet and e-mail, see Christopher Hayes, "The New Right-Wing Smear Machine," November 12, 2007]. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency traced one e-mail back 200 people before it stopped with a filmmaker in Tel Aviv who didn't receive a return address. "No one knows if it's the Clintons, a rogue agent or a Rove agent," says Congressman Steve Cohen, a Jewish Obama backer who represents a largely black district in Memphis. Likely it's a combination of the three.
We may not know who started the smears, but we do know who's amplifying them. The "Obama is a Muslim" rumor began in the fringe conservative blogosphere. "Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim," blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on December 18, 2006. Schlussel had a history of inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations. She said journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents in 2006, "hates America" and "hates Israel"; labeled George Soros a "fake Holocaust survivor"; and speculated that Pakistani terrorists were somehow to blame for last year's shootings at Virginia Tech. Yet her post on Obama gained traction; one month later, the Washington Times's Insight magazine alleged that Obama had attended "a so-called Madrassa" and was a secret Muslim.
The Christian right is also preoccupied with Obama's religious beliefs. "Is Obama a Muslim?" the Rev. Rob Schenck, a reform Jew who converted to Christianity and now calls himself a "missionary to Capitol Hill," asked in a recent videoblog. "He may be an apostate, he may be an infidel, he may be a bad Muslim, a very, very bad Muslim, he may be an unfaithful Muslim." Schenck's videoblog was circulated by the Christian Newswire and Cross Action News, a self-described "Drudge Report for Christians." Schenck later concluded that, although not a Muslim, Obama was also "not a 'Bible Christian'" and did not practice a "confident faith." A separate report posted on the Christian Newswire recently asked if Obama was "Wearing a What-Would-Satan-Do Bracelet." And a top figure in the group Christians United for Israel, Pastor Rod Parsley, a "spiritual guide" to John McCain, repeatedly referred to Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama" before campaigning with McCain in Ohio. (Thirteen percent of registered American voters now incorrectly believe that Obama is a Muslim, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, up from 8 percent in December. Forty-four percent of respondents are unsure of his religion or decline to answer; only 37 percent know that he is a Christian.)
The Muslim rumor was followed by fictions about Obama's actual faith, Christianity. In February 2007, Erik Rush, a columnist for WorldNetDaily, a hub of right-wing yellow journalism, called Obama's Chicago church a "black supremacist" and "separatist" institution. Rush found a sympathetic audience at Fox News, where he was interviewed by Sean Hannity. Soon after, another blast of e-mails went out, calling Obama a racist: "Notice too, what color you will need to be if you should want to join Obama's church...B-L-A-C-K!!!" Like the Muslim claim, it was a lie. But screeds about Obama's faith soon gave way to wide-ranging attacks against his campaign advisers, his positions on the Middle East and his associations in Chicago.
At the fulcrum of this effort is a little-known blogger from Northbrook, Illinois, named Ed Lasky, whose articles on AmericanThinker.com have done more than anything to give the smear campaign an air of respectability. Lasky co-founded AmericanThinker.com in 2003, modeling it after Powerline, a popular conservative blog. Before that, he had frequently written letters to newspapers defending Israel and criticizing the Palestinians. Though his background remains a mystery, Lasky didn't hide his neoconservative leanings. He wrote a blog post in 2004 titled "Why American Jews Must Vote for Bush," made three separate donations to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, contributed $1,000 to Tom DeLay and has given more than $50,000 to GOP candidates and causes since 2000. Lasky sits on the board of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, headed by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, whose close affiliations with Christian-right operatives like Ralph Reed has made Eckstein a controversial figure in the Jewish community.
A lengthy article from January 16, "Barack Obama and Israel," put Lasky on the map. "One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates," Lasky wrote. To reach that conclusion, Lasky laughably warped what it meant to be "pro-Israel," criticizing Obama for, among other things, opposing John Bolton as UN ambassador and hiring veteran foreign policy hands from the Clinton and Carter administrations. By Lasky's criteria, every Democrat in the Senate, and more than a few Republicans, would be considered "anti-Israel." "Lasky's piece is filled with half-truths, omission of 'inconvenient facts,' innuendo, deeply flawed logic, undocumented charges, hearsay, and guilt by distant association," wrote Ira Forman of the National Jewish Democratic Council in the Philadelphia Jewish Voice.
Despite--or perhaps because of--its propagandistic nature, Lasky's column and subsequent follow-ups circulated far and wide. Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post quoted Lasky at length in a January column, printing his false claims as fact, as did a separate column in the same paper by Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith (a onetime top official in the Bush Defense Department) and a top ally of neocon darling and Iraq War proponent Ahmad Chalabi and co-chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel. More surprising, Lasky became a household name in the mainstream Jewish press, the talk of the town at synagogues--even liberal ones--and a useful ally for members of the Clinton campaign, who circulated his articles. Recently he's been interviewed by mainstream outlets like NPR and the New York Times, which have labeled Lasky a "critic" of Obama without explaining his neoconservative sympathies. "I wonder how a tendentiously argued anti-Obama piece is mass-emailed by so many Jews who should know better," blogged Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor of the New Jersey Jewish News.
Another key purveyor of the smear campaign is Aaron Klein, an Orthodox Jew who is Jerusalem correspondent for WorldNetDaily. WND is notoriously disreputable, a sort of National Enquirer for the right (typical headline: "Sleaze Charge: 'I Took Drugs, Had Homo Sex With Obama'"). Klein made a name for himself by getting terrorists to say nice things about Democrats and allying himself with extremist elements of the Israeli right, whom he frequently quotes as sources in his articles--when he bothers to quote anyone at all. Klein originally called Hillary Clinton the "jihadist choice for president," but when Clinton stumbled, he turned his fire to Obama, attempting to expose his so-called "terrorist connections."
Klein penned two stories in late February wildly distorting Obama's links, from his days in Chicago, to pro-Palestinian activists like Rashid Khalidi, a respected professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University who previously taught at the University of Chicago (hardly a bastion of left-wing activism). Klein's story goes something like this: Obama sat on the board of a foundation in Chicago that gave a grant to the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), run by Khalidi's wife, which supposedly rejects Israel's existence; and Khalidi directed the PLO's Beirut press office and is a supporter "for Palestinian terror." (In fact, the AAAN focuses solely on social service work in Chicago and takes no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Khalidi says he was never employed by the PLO; he has been a harsh critic of Palestinian suicide bombings and a longtime supporter of a two-state solution, and he has never been an adviser to Obama. As for Obama's past statements, at least in Chicago, being pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian is not a contradiction in terms.)
Once again, the facts mattered little, and Klein's stories gained an audience beyond the narrow confines of WND. Christian publicist Maria Sliwa sent Klein's articles to prominent reporters, the Tennessee GOP included his claims in a press release titled "Anti-Semites for Obama" and the Jewish Press, an Orthodox Brooklyn paper, reprinted his story about Khalidi. His latest article alleges that "terrorists worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election." As evidence, Klein quotes Ramadan Adassi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank's Askar refugee camp, who says an Obama victory would be an "important success. He won popularity in spite of the Zionists and the conservatives." In previous stories, Klein has quoted Adassi praising Cindy Sheehan, Rosie O'Donnell and Sean Penn. For a suspected terrorist, Adassi follows pop culture and US politics remarkably closely.
Despite Klein's questionable sourcing and scandalous accusations, mainstream reporters now call the Obama campaign to ask about Klein's articles. He also reports for John Batchelor, a right-wing talk-radio host for KFI-AM in Los Angeles who has written a series of outlandish columns about Obama for the conservative magazine Human Events and repeatedly pushed the Obama smears on his radio show. According to an e-mail of Batchelor's obtained by The Nation, Batchelor says that information about Obama and Khalidi came via "oppo research."
Even if the false claims about Obama originally emanated from the neoconservative right, the Clinton campaign has eagerly pushed them. Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal has e-mailed damaging stories about Obama to reporters, including a recent article by Batchelor. Clinton fundraiser Annie Totah circulated a column by Ed Lasky before Super Tuesday, with the inscription "Please vote wisely in the Primaries." Clinton adviser Ann Lewis falsely referred to Zbigniew Brzezinski, a critic of AIPAC, as a chief adviser to Obama on a conference call with Jewish reporters. "I can tell you for a fact people from the Clinton campaign are calling reporters and asking them to pay attention to things involving Obama and Israel," says Shmuel Rosner, Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. The volume of e-mails about Obama in a given state tends to track the election calendar--hardly a coincidence.
Large American Jewish organizations, like AIPAC and the Orthodox Union, have repeatedly defended Obama. Yet they've had little sway over reactionary elements in both the United States and Israel--including Jewish hate groups--who are eager to keep the smear campaign alive. The website Jews Against Obama, for instance, is run by the Jewish Task Force, which funnels money to the radical settler movement in Israel. (Curiously, John McCain's alliance with Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, a leading proponent of "end times" theology, and his recent endorsement by former Secretary of State James Baker have received far less scrutiny from pro-Israel pundits. It was Baker, after all, who reportedly told George H.W. Bush, "Fuck the Jews. They didn't vote for us anyway.")
Respected news outlets have stoked these smears, even as they attempt to debunk them. "Is Barack Obama a Muslim?" asked an editorial in the Forward. "Almost certainly not. Was he ever a Muslim? Almost certainly yes." After Obama criticized "a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel," Rosner of Ha'aretz accused Obama of "meddling in Israel's internal politics." The Washington Post noted Obama's "denials" of his Muslim faith, without ever stating that the rumor was untrue. Post columnist Richard Cohen crassly connected Obama, his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan, a line of guilt-by-association questioning that Tim Russert aggressively repeated in the last Obama-Clinton debate.
Among conservatives, Fox News has endlessly amplified such rumors. Karl Rove, a new hire by the network, recently speculated that Obama would withdraw funding for Israel. Sean Hannity has asked if Obama has a "race problem." Fox News radio host Tom Sullivan compared Obama to Hitler. "Fox News are on to him and all the arguments our 'smear' camping [sic] is making and for the most part it is running with them," right-wing blogger Ted Belman, of Israpundit, wrote in a recent e-mail.
The attacks on Obama reek of racism and Islamophobia but, as John Kerry learned in 2004, any Democrat should expect such treatment. "If Moses was the Democratic nominee, he'd still be the victim of this hate mail," says Doug Bloomfield, a former legislative director for AIPAC. The right-wing smear machine grinds on, with the mainstream media and rival campaigns lending a helping hand.
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Chicago & the African American Religion Scene

2008-03-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

March 16, 2008

Chicago. What a place to learn about the many faith traditions of black people. For those like myself who teach African American religion and philosophy, Chicago is a living laboratory rich with veritable gold mines of human data and the daily worship practices of our people. For those who are not teachers but more ordinary observers, the South Side of Big Nasty remains the place the great black sociologist Dr. St. Clair Drake once described as the Black Metropolis of the 1930's, the proto-typical black urban ghetto that was beginning to rise across America's landscape.

Back in the early 80's when I attended a Lutheran Seminary in the University of Chicago complex and lived in the Hyde Park section on the South side of Big Nasty (Chicago), I discovered that the city was full of black folks belonging to different, but similar religions. On 79th St. and Stoney Island, Minister Louis Farrakhan held forth in a remolded Greek Orthodox Church that is now Mosque Maryam, while Rev. Jesse Jackson's Operation Breadbasket/PUSH/Rainbow PUSH/Excel drew faithful activist crowds on Saturday mornings. Of course, every other church was either Baptist or Holiness with the AME's thrown in for richness. The Holiness and Pentecostal people seemed to be growing the fastest, moving from the multiple store fronts that litter the South Side to big spacious surroundings once inhabited by fleeing white Catholics and mainline Protestants

The Moorish Science Temple Muslims, unlike Farrakhan's Nation of Islam and the more main line Sunni Muslims of Imam Warrith Deen Muhammad's Islamic community, wore the traditional high crown fez as they made their rounds. Bean pies and Muhammad Speaks newspapers were always out in force for passer-by's to purchase. The Muslims called that "fishing" for converts, while Jehovah's Witnesses actually went from door to door with the familiar Watch Towers and Awakes preaching Armageddon's end is near and God's New Heaven and New Earth.

Very few black folks back in Chicago then were into Hinduism or Buddhism. But that's changing now.

Before Rev. Ike's New York empire arose, Chicago used to be full of small store front type metaphysical churches that teach free-your-mind philosophical therapy, meditation exercises, health sciences, self-help psychology and modern forms of magic like spiritual practices. The Divine Mind science folks were way out in front of the New Wave religions on of the West Coast. Seems they fallowed the original roots-work, Voodoo, Hoodoo occult folks up the Mississippi River from New Orleans to make a more, less superstitious modern statement of Divine Science in Chicago.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright's United Church of Christ Church named Trinity was deeply Afrocentric long before Philadelphia's Dr. Molefi Asante actually coined the term. Coupled with Afrocentricty, Trinity was also imbued with a black liberationist theology that opposed conventional notions of capitalism because of the capitalist economic system's practice of supporting racism and opposing the special historical class and race interests of black workers. Trinity's view was that black workers built early white American wealth and were never fairly or otherwise compensated for their labor. This stance made Trinity an early advocate of reparations compensation for black enslavement in America. Last year Wright was a keynote speaker at the Philadelphia National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America confab.

I used to visit his church as part of our seminary field experiences of getting to know the important religious institutions of Chicago. I never met Senator Obama because I was in Chicago prior to his coming. But I can imagine him being in attendance at a Trinity workshop where the subject of the day was Blacks in the Bible. That's what Trinity was teaching almost 30 years ago.

As for the Jews, it as was Chicago's visionary Rabbi Ben Ammi Ben-Israel who in 1967 used an airplane to lead 350 of his African Hebrew Israelites followers to Liberia then later to Israel. In 2004 his people in Israel were finally granted official residency status by the white Ashkenazi or German Jews who control Israel . Black Rabbi Capers C. Funnye Jr. below comes from a long historical line ...

Ah, Big Nasty, the Mistake on the Lake (Michigan) ... Chicago what a town!!

Dr. Ibn-Ziyad

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March 16, 2008

Black Rabbi Reaches Out to Mainstream of His Faith

By NIKO KOPPEL
CHICAGO — Having grown up in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Capers C. Funnye Jr. was encouraged by his pastor to follow in his footsteps. Instead, he became a rabbi.
His congregation on the Far Southwest Side of Chicago is predominantly black, and while services include prayers and biblical passages in Hebrew, the worshipers sometimes break into song, swaying back and forth like a gospel choir.
As the first African-American member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis and of numerous mainstream Jewish organizations, Rabbi Funnye (pronounced fun-AY) is on a mission to bridge racial and religious divisions by encouraging Chicago’s wider Jewish community to embrace his followers — the more than 200 members of Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation.
“I am a Jew,” said Rabbi Funnye, “and that breaks through all color and ethnic barriers.”
As a teenager, Rabbi Funnye said he felt disconnected and dissatisfied with his Methodist faith. He embarked on a spiritual journey, investigating other religions, including Islam, before turning to Judaism. He said he found a sense of intellectual and spiritual liberation in Judaism because it encourages constant examination. “The Jew has always questioned,” he said.
Like their rabbi, a majority of Beth Shalom’s members came to Judaism later in life, after wrestling with contradictions and questions that they found in their own earlier beliefs. Many refer to their religious experience as reversion, rather than conversion, and feel a cultural connection to the lost tribes of Israel. They say that Judaism has renewed their sense of personal identity.
There are no firm national statistics on the number of African-American Jews, said Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. Usually referred to as Israelites or Hebrews, they have historically been seen to stand apart in theology and observance from the nation’s approximately 5.3 million Jews, mainly of Ashkenazi, or European, ancestry, and have largely been ignored by the broader Jewish community. Rabbi Funnye hopes to change that by speaking about his congregation at synagogues throughout Chicago and across the country.
“I believe that people cannot know you unless you make yourself known,” he said. “The only way to do that is to step outside and not fear rejection.”
To spread his message, he also serves on the boards of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and the American Jewish Congress of the Midwest. In addition, he is active in the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, focusing on reaching out to other communities of black Jews around the world, including the Falashas in Ethiopia and the Igbo in Nigeria.
Occupying a former Ashkenazi synagogue, Beth Shalom is in the Marquette Park neighborhood. It is just blocks from where Chicago’s Nazi party used to march and where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was struck by a rock while protesting against segregated housing in 1966.
The congregation was founded in 1918 as the Ethiopian Hebrew Settlement Workers Association by Rabbi Horace Hasan from Bombay. Members include some Hispanics, African-Americans and whites who were born Jews, as well as former Christians and Muslims. In line with traditional Jewish law, Beth Shalom does not seek out converts, and members must study for a year before undergoing a traditional conversion ritual. Men are required to be circumcised, and women undergo a ritual bath in a mikvah.
Many worshipers feel that their devotion to Judaism is misunderstood.
“When the broader community thinks of a Jew,” Dinah Levi said, “we don’t fit the profile.” Ms. Levi, 57, raised as a Baptist, is vice president of Beth Shalom, where she said she feels at home with spiritual elements that incorporate the African-American experience. “Since we are a varied people as written in the Torah,” she said, “I think the religion can be embraced by a multitude of people.”
Beth Shalom’s service is somewhere between Conservative and Modern Orthodox observance with distinctive African-American influences. Men and women sit separately as the liturgy is read in English and Hebrew. Some members kiss their prayer shawls, pointing to the Torah, as is the practice in traditional synagogues. A chorus sings spirituals over the beat of a drum.
Across America, black congregations have been active since the early 20th century. In the past, efforts to reach out to the mainstream Jewish community have been met with suspicion and rejection, said Lewis R. Gordon, the director of the Center of Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University. That is why many groups stay separatist, aligning themselves more with black nationalism than with traditional Jewish groups.
“People ask me, ‘As if you aren’t already in a bad enough situation being black, why would you want to be Jewish?’ ” said Tamar Manasseh, 29, a lifelong member of Beth Shalom.
Ms. Manasseh, wearing a Star of David around her neck, attended Jewish day school and is currently planning her daughter’s bat mitzvah. “I can’t change being Jewish just the same way I can’t change being black,” she said. Close to completing her rabbinic studies, she will be among the first black women to be ordained as a rabbi, according to Rabbi Funnye, her mentor.
After a Saturday service, Rabbi Funnye has a quiet moment in his office. On the wall is a 1930s black-and-white photograph of members of an African-American congregation. The men, all in prayer shawls, look out before an opened Torah. “We’re not going anywhere,” said Rabbi Funnye, smiling confidently, “I’m going to reach out until you reach back.”

McCain's Preacher, Rev. Hagee & Slave Sales for Christ

2008-03-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.counterpunch.org/alberts03152008.html

Weekend EditionMarch 15 / 16, 2008

Time to Resurrect Him
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven

By Rev. WILLIAM ALBERTS

Religion should humanize people. Enable them to live together. To recognize each other's similarities. Respect each other's differences. Affirm each other's rights. Religion should create unity not uniformity. It should embrace people's diversity and connectedness, their individuality and commonality, their uniqueness and oneness. Religion should equalize not marginalize. Harmonize not imperialize. Inspire people to empathize not demonize. Lead them to empower not impose. To love their neighbor as themselves. Yet the very prophet who taught this humanizing commandment is himself entombed in heaven by many of his followers-whose primary mission is not to liberate but to propagate, not to connect but to convert, not to humanize but to evangelize.

Enter Pope Benedict XVI. In February, he authorized a new version of an old Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews. The new prayer deletes obvious offensive references to the Jews' "blindness" and to calls for their deliverance "from their darkness" and the removal of "the veil from their hearts." But the denigrating of Jewish identity and integrity remains the same: "Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord Our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men." ("Pope rewrites prayer for the 'conversion' of the Jews," by Ruth Gledhill,

Religion Correspondent of The Times, Times Online, Feb. 5, 2008; "Conservative Rabbis to Vote on Resolution Criticizing Pope's Revision of Prayer," by Nella Banerjee, The New York Times, Feb. 9, 2008.

It is really not just about "acknowledge[ing] Jesus Christ" as "the savior of all men," but about acknowledging the Roman Catholic Church as the keeper of the keys to Jesus' heavenly entombment. The "new" prayer also calls for the conversion of Protestant and Orthodox and other Christians and pagans. ("Pope's Rewrite of Latin Prayer Draws Criticism From 2 Sides," by Ian Fisher, The New York Times, Feb. 6, 2008). Thus this Good Friday, a small group of Catholic traditionalists are given license to "prey" for the conversion of all non-Catholics-that they too may be "entombed" in heaven with "the savior of all men [italics added]."

Enter, in turn, Rev. John Hagee, prominent Texas evangelical Christian televangelist. He was accused of calling the Catholic Church the "anti-Christ," an "apostate Church," a "false cult system," "The Great Whore." This accusation against Hagee was made by Bill Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League, in reaction to Hagee's recent endorsement of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. ("McCain Backer Called Catholic Church 'Great Whore,'" Drudge Retort, Mar. 1, 2008). Donohue called on McCain to reject Hagee's endorsement-the pastor was reported as standing beside McCain in San Antonio and calling him, "a man of principle." ("McCain Endorsement Angers Catholic League President," by Michael D. Shear, washingtonpost.com, Feb. 28, 2008).

Rather than rejecting Hagee's endorsement and denouncing his recorded anti-Catholicism, Senator McCain's first reported response was, "Well, I think it's important to note that Pastor John Hagee who has supported and endorsed my candidacy supports what I stand for and believe in. When he endorses me," McCain continued, "it does not mean that I embrace everything that he stands for and believes." Mc Cain then added, "And I am very proud of the Pastor John Hagee's spiritual leadership to thousands of people and I am proud of his commitment to the independence and the freedom of the state of Israel." (Drudge Retort, Ibid.). The following week, holding on to Hagee's endorsement with one hand and deflecting criticism of it with the other hand, McCain carefully said for public consumption, " 'I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee's, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics' . . . adding that he had sent two of his children to Catholic school." ("McCain Grows Testy On Question About '04 and Kerry Partnership," By Elizabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, Mar. 8, 2008).

Senator McCain evidently wants to be all things to all voters. "And I am very proud of the Pastor John Hagee's spiritual leadership to thousands of people." Rev. Hagee's "spiritual leadership" obviously does not include gay persons. He is documented as preaching that Hurricane Katrina was an "act of God," to punish New Orleans for allowing a promised, greatly sexualized, Gay Pride parade scheduled for that day. Rev. Hagee's "spiritual leadership" also excludes the people of Iran and all people of Muslim beliefs. He may be projecting his own violent impulses outward and heavenward in believing that "all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews," that "the coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty," and that "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons." (Drudge Retort, Ibid.)

Nor does Rev. Hagee's "spiritual leadership" enable him to transcend his apparent racist and sexist attitudes toward black persons and women. His 16,000 member San Antonio church is reported to have held a "slave sale" to raise money for young people-billed as "Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone [Church] . . . Make plans to come and go home with a slave." And, according to Hagee, "the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS" is that "you can negotiate with a terrorist." (Ibid.)

Rev. Hagee's "spiritual leadership" is evidently inspired by his belief in a safe, diversity-cleansed heavenly entombed Jesus. He preaches "If you live your life and don't confess your sins to God Almighty through the authority of Christ and His blood, I'm going to say this very plainly, you're going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket." ('John Hagee," Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)
"And I am proud of his commitment to the independence and the freedom of the state of Israel." Enter Israel to complete this dehumanizing circle of power and entitlement. One people's independence and freedom should not be at the expense of another people's independence and freedom. Sadly, the Jewish people's occupation of Palestinian land and brutal oppression of the Palestinian people are very similar to the oppression their ancestors suffered when the Roman Empire occupied their land in Jesus' time-and when succeeding generations of Jews endured Christian domination and persecution.

In a recent article in the Arab News, Steve Hutcheson presents the "disturbing parallels" between the Nazis' oppression of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Jews' oppression of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. "The Nazis round[ing] up the Jews of Poland and quarter[ing] them in a small area of Warsaw." Similarly, "the Israelis through conflict and force push[ing] many of the Arab inhabitants out of Israel into a [dense] enclave." Like the Nazis and their Jewish ghetto captives, "the Israeli government stopped the flow of goods to 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza by limiting the convoys of supplies to a mere trickle," restricts the use of water and electricity and access to adequate medical supplies and health care. The "disturbing parallels" also include the random destruction of Gaza's buildings and infrastructure and indiscriminate killing of Palestinian children, young people, women and men. These "disturbing parallels" lead Hutcheson to conclude, "There is a basic conflict of inhumanity occurring to the Palestinian people of Gaza that the world is deliberately ignoring. An inhumanity that was inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is now more than ever closely paralleling that which they are inflicting on the people of Gaza." (Mar. 2, 2008)
It is believed that much of the American world is ignoring the "inhumanity occurring to the Palestinian people of Gaza" because of the way America's mainstream media usually frame the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. It is most often defined as "Palestinian terrorism and Israeli retaliation" and rarely as "Israeli terrorism and Palestinian retaliation." The blurring of cause and effect.

This Good Friday, as America observes the 5th anniversary of the Bush administration's criminal pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, one group of Christians is authorized to pray for the conversion of the Jews," that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men." And in February, another group of Christians officially decided to house at Southern Methodist University the library of a great enemy of humanity, President George W. Bush. Who recently received "a standing ovation" from Christian broadcasters when he once again justified his crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan: "repeatedly invoking his desire to spread freedom and democracy," and saying once again "that freedom was a God-given right and 'every human being bears the image of our maker.'" Words of a pious president whose "faith is well known [italics added]; he credits his acceptance of Jesus with turning his life around. . . ." ("Citing Faith, Bush Defends War Actions," by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "The New York Times, Mar. 12, 2008).

Here is seen the prostitution of religion and politics for purposes of power and entitlement. Ironically, the historical Jesus was a Jewish prophet not a Christian savior. Like other Jewish insurgents of his day, he was crucified for seeking to liberate the Jewish people from the Roman Empire's brutal occupation of their country. He did not die on a Roman cross for "the sins of the world" but to rid the Jewish world of the imperialistic sins of the Roman Empire. (See Alberts, "Jesus, The Theological Prisoner of Christianity," Counterpunch, Aug. 25/26, 2007).

Contrary to the New Testament record, no resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples shortly after his crucifixion and told them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you." (Matthew 28: 16-20). This traditional Christian belief in The Trinity was a theological doctrine that actually took the early Christian Church centuries after Jesus' crucifixion to formulate. It is not really about Jesus but about hierarchical and bibliarchical imperialistic-minded Christians claiming "all authority in heaven and on earth" for themselves "in his name." It is about gaining power over people not empowering them. It is about controlling not enabling people.
I
f it were really about Jesus, his cross would be the oppression from which any individual or group is seeking to liberate himself or herself or itself. His steeple would be the aspirations of all people. His altar the common ground on which everyone walks.

Beyond our theologies, our ideologies, our philosophies, our politics is the human need to love and be loved. Here is seen the common ground of our humanness. Surely the validity of any religion or government is to be judged by the extent to which it leads people to love themselves and to value and love other persons for themselves. Time to resurrect the historical Jesus from the tomb of hierarchical and bibliarchical authority and entitlement. "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Rev. William E. Alberts, Ph.D. is a hospital chaplain, and a diplomate in the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy. Both a Unitarian Universalist and a United Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion. He can be reached at william.alberts@bmc.org.

2007-04-24T13:04:00.000-07:00

Start up date April 24, 2007