Enjoy your 4th of July. This could be your last unless we form an organized American resistance.

A July 4^th Memo To America From a Concerned Citizen

by Pastor Paul J. Bern

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One of the primary purposes of this Web ministry is to stand against social injustice and economic inequality in all its forms, as well as the extreme immorality of waging warfare. I firmly believe that any minister who does not do these things is only doing half his or her job. In that case, all they would be doing is collecting a paycheck every Sunday morning for the sake of profit and materialism, forgetting that Jesus preached against this very thing over and over again. (But don't take my word for it, it's in all four gospels, go and read it for yourself. Anyone who doesn't have a Bible should visit the “Contact Us” page on my website and ask for one. I will personally send you an Adobe/PDF version free of charge. Don't forget to include your email address.) Although Jesus did take His ministry to the religious establishment of his day, which centered around the temple at Jerusalem and the Sanhedrin (or Hebrew ruling elect) of that time, he was rejected and ultimately executed by them just as the Old Testament prophets foretold. This compelled him to reach out to the poor and downtrodden, the outcast and the marginalized who otherwise had no voice at all. He ministered to the sick, the homeless, the addicted and the unemployed and all others who had nothing, with the knowledge that the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ is vastly superior to mere material possessions. I try my best to emulate this mind-set in my ministry and in the people I meet in order that my words and actions may most accurately imitate my Savior and the redeemer of my very soul, Christ Jesus the Lord.

In today's world there is social injustice and what I call 'enforced inequality' everywhere we look. A veritable class war is ongoing here in the USA, throughout the Middle East, in Europe and in Asia that has the wealthy accumulating ridiculous amounts of wealth in a downright obscene orgy of greed, and all at the expense of the middle and working classes who are being economically decimated. This illegal and immoral accumulation of wealth is unparalleled in world history. The signs and indicators of these obscene amounts of wealth that has fallen into the hands of an elite minority are everywhere. Mass unemployment is at every turn and stands at stubbornly high levels. I am well aware that the US Labor Department just released figures last month stating that unemployment is at all-time lows. But if we look at the true levels of unemployment, which by definition must include those who are underemployed (working part time at one or more jobs when full-time employment is both desired and required) or those who have left the job market for good (like men and women in their middle 40's and older such as what I experienced first-hand), the true level of unemployment exceeds 24% in the US alone, not counting the rest of the developed world. Instead of creating more jobs that are the hallmark of any economic recovery, fewer and fewer people are doing more work for less pay. The rest of US and European workers are increasingly finding themselves out in the cold, often literally.

In the meantime, those lucky individuals who still have jobs run the increasing risk of having their jobs out-sourced overseas for pennies on the dollar, or being replaced by workers being imported through H1B work visas to work for wages that are a fraction of their American counterparts. Those who are agile enough to avoid either fate will find themselves being replaced by robots and automation in 10 or 20 years. The government has been concealing this from its constituency for decades, but they can't keep it a secret any longer, thanks in large part to the Internet. One thing is for certain – the centuries-old paradigm of working for money to buy or rent overpriced housing, not to mention overpriced food, clothing and oftentimes poor quality merchandise, is going to have to be replaced. This is simply inevitable. What is also inevitable is that this change will have to come from the bottom up rather than from the top down for obvious reasons. It will also mean the end of the capitalist economic system as we have known it, and the same goes for the current 2-party political system. Until then, the unending occupation of Afghanistan plus the clandestine wars being wage on every continent are costing the US government $6 billion dollars each day, money that could be much better spent here at home to create some badly needed new jobs.

Clearly this is unsustainable and will bankrupt the country if it isn't stopped, if we are not there already. American capitalism and the American empire have run their course, and I maintain that capitalism and the American Empire as we have known them are on the deathbed of history where all empires go when they die. America is in decline while the former “third world” has become the developing world, and where even poor countries continue to develop rapidly. The combined economies of China, Russia, India, South Africa and Brazil will overtake the US economy by 2020 at the latest, with China in the lead. The US could change this trend by creating jobs through large public works programs to give US infrastructure a badly needed overhaul, and by an accelerated and invigorated space program. On the other hand, there must also be a program in place such as a civilian version of the GI Bill to retrain all the workers who are unable to find jobs, or who would like to change careers. What's holding that back, you may ask? Political will power; and the people are just as guilty as those elected to lead. Let me illustrate why America can easily afford to do this. If the combined US military and intelligence communities set aside the financial expenditures equal to a single day's cost of the occupation in Afghanistan and put the money into an interest-bearing account of your choice, there would be sufficient funds for a 4-year college education for every school kid in America, from pre-K to a high school senior inclusive. And that's just from one day's expenditures! So, those who say we can't afford free public education from the cradle to the grave simply don't know what they're talking about.

But what do we have instead? American workers are being discarded like so much human scrap by multinational corporations as being no longer useful or too expensive to keep around, resulting in a wave of homelessness not seen since the 1930's. The majority of today's homeless population are college educated professionals, not stereotypical street bums, and that is a great social injustice, not to mention a colossal loss of human potential. This has been going on for so long now that America has become indifferent to it. I strongly wish to shake you all out of your indifference and complacency! If people don't snap out of it and come to grips with the fact that we will all soon be facing financial oblivion, oblivion is where we will all soon be!!

So it is for all of the above reasons and because of my deep concerns that I say we don't have much to celebrate this Independence Day. 'America the Beautiful' has become America the tarnished, America the bankrupt, America the ruthless drug dealer, America the hustler of oil, and America the unscrupulous arms merchant. I want no part of any of the above. I want to be part of the American resurgence, but also part of the American resistance. My country has been stolen by a cadre of very wealthy psychopaths, and like millions of others I too have come to that realization. Like all those other millions, I too have come to the realization that we will have to retake our country by force, since it will never be returned voluntarily. How that comes about remains to be seen, but we won't have long to wait until we find out. Happy independence day, then, such as it is. Let's all start planning how we can restore that independence which has been taken away. That's when our true independence will begin!

Losing our independence on Independence Day?

Taking a Stand Against Perpetual War

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

Here we are, celebrating yet another July Fourth holiday weekend in America. I find it ironic that we call July 4^th “Independence Day” when the American people are gradually losing their Constitutional freedoms bit by bit. There can be no doubt that this country has been turned into a police state, a process that started back in the 1950's. The fact of the matter is, if you are a Constitutionalist, an evangelical Christian, a 'prepper', a conspiracy theorist, a Bernie Sanders supporter, or if you are opposed to economic inequality, you are classified as a 'domestic terrorist' by the Department of Homeland Security, and you are likely under surveillance. On the flip side of this coin, the US military has somewhere between 700 and 1,000 bases globally, depending on whose figures you believe. As if this were insufficient, President Obama has spoken to the nation in the past about the need to undertake still more wars while dodging the domestic gun violence issue. First there are the frequent drone strikes around the globe, next we have NATO encircling Russia, then again in Syria until overwhelming public opinion against another war forced Obama to change his mind several years ago, and most recently when he informed Congress and the American people that US troops will be in Afghanistan until as late as 2024. I recently streamed a CNN video where the terrible problem of rape in U.S. prisons was exposed. Violence surrounds us. It is ingrained into and embraced by U.S. society. This needs to change if we're sincere about wanting a better country.

More than 50 years ago, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the growth of the military-industrial complex. He cautioned us about the need to guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, "whether sought or unsought," by the military industrial complex. "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist," he said. More than 60 years ago, George Orwell wrote of "perpetual war," a situation in which war operates as a means of controlling the population by constantly rallying them against a common enemy. It matters not whether a Republican or a Democrat is in the White House; wars go on and on and on, perpetually it often seems. World War Two lasted four and a half years for the US and six years for Europe, yet US troops have been in Afghanistan since October of 2001.

Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Qaddafi was the longest-serving ruler in Africa, having taken power in 1969. He was a strange character, noted for many eccentricities. He also has supported horrible terrorist incidents over the decades. The United States wasn't really sure who to side with against Qaddafi. Libya is a complicated stew. As the winds of change blew across the Middle East, many in Libya seized the moment to revolt. At first, it appeared the momentum of their rebellion would carry the day. Sadly, Qaddafi unleashed his military forces against the rebels, and the rest is history. Obama administration officials maintained that United States decided to wage war on Libya because of the threat the horrible Qaddafi was to his own people. Then why not attack Bahrain or Yemen or Somalia? Tyrants in those countries are committing similarly repugnant acts against their citizens, maybe even worse. But they decided to 'bump off' Qaddafi instead.

It's a good thing that America decided not to attack Syria. It could easily have started World War Three. Had America bombed Syria from the air, Syria would have called in reinforcements from its allies Russia and Iran, and it would have been only a matter of time before the nuclear weapons started flying. For this reason and more, I am excited that ordinary people are rising up, first across the Middle East to cast off autocrats, tyrants, kings and dictators, not to mention the secret police who harass the citizenry daily, in America with the formation of the Occupy and “the 99%” Movements, and most recently with the Bernie Sanders presidential primary campaign. The most damning thing about our federal government is the recent disclosure of an out-of-control foreign and domestic spy network, which proves to me that the US presidency has been remade into something tyrannical. People want peace and justice, not war and violence. We're all sick and tired of all the fighting, all we want is some peace and quiet for a change!

In the United States, including right here in Atlanta, many leaders and members of churches constantly, loudly lament about a shortage of money. There is a reason for that – vast sums of the incomes of their members are being drained off for war, death and destruction. These are people who become enraged over an aborted fetus (which I agree is bad enough), but who have no problem going overseas to kill oftentimes innocent strangers. To call this a glaring contradiction would be an understatement. At any rate, and given the near silence of America's pulpits in the face of the violence and war that surrounds us, the exertions of our theologians in justifying war, the devotion of denominational members to the myth of redemptive violence, it is certain that future historians will view organized religion as a slave to the vast war machine that engulfs us. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. prophesied, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." It looks to me like the USA is already there due to the fact that America spends more money locking people up than is spent on educating them. Will we rise up against this madness of violence and backwards priorities, or are we dead already? The outcome of the upcoming Democratic and Republican political conventions will be a key indicator for America's future. It is up to us, the American people, to force things to change for the better.

Independence day? How about independence from war and killing?

America's War Heritage and What It Does To Those Who Served

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

This Independence Day of 2015, I have decided to write about something that I write about every chance I get, and that topic is the immorality of waging war. In this case, it's this anti-war message combined with all the trappings of the 4^th of July that I am blending to make today, July 4^th, 2015 as Independence From War Day. With the population of the planet continuing to rise we are faced with the stark choice of learning to live together in peace and harmony or to face mutual annihilation. The horrors of the modern battlefield are the result of ever more powerful and formidable weapons. The tremendous firepower of modern military weaponry is so deadly and so accurate that the results of these attacks can be etched into the minds and psyches of the war's veterans forever. These brave men and women were oftentimes exposed to chemical weapons that have left them permanently damaged. It's an unfortunate and troubling fact that one out of five returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will come home mentally or physically disabled by their exposure to chemical weapons and depleted uranium ammunition. According to channel4.com, “An estimated 48,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were homeless in 2013, according to figures from the US Department of Veterans Affairs.” I understand last year's number was over 60,000. And all because of lies about WMD's, because what America's military was really after was the oil.

I have found four examples from the last ten years of what can go wrong when these people come home from the battle front. Consider the case of John Allen Muhammad, (formerly John Allen Williams). In her memoir, “Scared Silent”, Mildred Muhammad, the later of his two ex-wives, writes that her husband went to the 1991 Gulf War a "happy," "focused, and "intelligent" man, who returned home "depressed," "totally confused," and "violent," making her fear for her life. In their briefs, Muhammad's appeals lawyers stressed that his "severe mental illness" never came up at trial, where he was allowed to represent himself despite obvious mental incompetence. (Till the end, he maintained his innocence, claiming that at the time of the killing spree he was in Germany for dental work.) In seeking clemency and a stay of execution, Muhammad's lawyers presented psychiatric reports diagnosing Schizophrenia and brain scans documenting profound malformations consistent with psychotic disease. Neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor Virginia Governor Tim Kaine were impressed. According to Governor Kaine, "crimes that are this horrible, you just can't understand…." And one day before Veterans Day, John Allen Muhammad was executed by lethal injection.

Mental disorders from depression to mood swings, thought disorders, violent outbursts, and delusions are not uncommon among Gulf War veterans in addition to physical symptoms such as rashes, vertigo, respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, and neurological diseases like Parkinson's, ALS, and brain tumors. According to Dr. William E. Baumzweiger, a California psychiatrist with expertise in psychiatric ailments of Gulf War veterans, "a small but significant number of Gulf War veterans become homicidal" seemingly "out of nowhere." Indeed as early as 1994, University of Texas epidemiologist Dr. Robert Haley, the preeminent researcher of Gulf War disease, had demonstrated that the brain scans of veterans with Gulf War illness were distinctly abnormal. Without a doubt Gulf War illness, as it's come to be called, is a profound, multi-system physical illness "caused" by brain-damaging chemicals to which troops were exposed by the Department of Defense. The RAC report identified three specific neurotoxins as certain culprits: anti-nerve gas pills that troops were forced to take (or risk court martial), insecticides and repellants that drenched troops' tents, clothing, and gear, and nerve gases including sarin (the killer chemical in the Tokyo subway attack) emitted into the air when U.S. forces dismantled and demolished a vast munitions storage facility in Khamisiyah, Iraq. Muhammad's lawyers pointed to childhood beatings as a cause of his psychiatric disease and brain malformation, claiming that Gulf War syndrome exacerbated these conditions. But they didn't mention that Mohammad had no history of mental illness before the war – and that during the war he was stationed in Khamisiyah.

It probably wouldn't have helped. In 2002, another Gulf War veteran, Louis Jones Jr. was executed for the 1995 rape and murder of a young female soldier, Pvt. Tracie Joy McBride. Like Sergeant Muhammad, Sergeant Jones was an exemplary soldier decorated in the war; but also like Muhammad, he returned from Desert Storm depressed, disoriented, and increasingly anti-social and bizarre. Like Muhammad, his defense was inadequate--but his appeals lawyer displayed MRIs and other scans of his abnormal brain, arguing that it was evidence of the brain damage from toxins he and other veterans with Gulf War disease were exposed to in-country. Supporting the petition for clemency was the written testimony of Dr. Haley that "there is now a compelling involuntary link between Mr. Jones' neurotoxic war injury and his inexplicable crime." Like Muhammad, Jones was stationed in Khamisiyah during the demolition, which poisoned thousands of troops and then thousands more as sarin plumes traveled far and wide, a fact the government hid for close to a decade.

And then there's the case of Timothy McVeigh. We have no scans of his brain, but we have ample reports of his mental state before and after Desert Storm, and evidence that the war changed him profoundly. In their biography, American Terrorist, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck paint a vivid picture of McVeigh's days in the ground war. The enthusiastic young marksman, at first, happily followed orders and shot an Iraqi soldier manning a machine gun over a mile away. When a bloody mist replaced the soldier's head in his viewfinder, McVeigh was disturbed and discharged the rest of his rounds into empty desert sand. Later, after Saddam had agreed to a UN and Soviet brokered ceasefire, McVeigh was further shocked and shaken by orders to kill defeated Iraqi soldiers traveling home on the highway from Kuwait to Iraq (come to be known as the "Highway of Death" for the thousands that U.S. Forces corralled and massacred on the night of Feb 26, 1991). He watched the road in horror as dogs chewed on human limbs, and as human bodies without arms or legs tried to crawl away. In his famous 60 Minutes interview ten years later, McVeigh would tell the late Ed Bradley that the killing changed him. He said he found himself thinking, "I'm in this person`s country. What right did I have to come over to his country and kill him? …How did he ever transgress against me?" He went over thinking, "Not only is Saddam evil, all Iraqis are evil." But quickly it was "an entirely different ballgame… face to face…you realize they`re just people like you." He told Bradley that the government modeled brutal violence. In a 1998 prison essay he objected to the United State's continuing campaign against Iraq: It was the U.S. that had "set the standard" for "stockpiling and use of weapons of mass destruction.

McVeigh's experience in the Gulf War surely altered his thinking. But did it also alter his brain? What toxins might have entered his body on the highway where U.S. forces had just dropped cluster bombs and 500-pound bombs of napalm and depleted uranium, incinerating thousands vehicles and the people inside. He told Ed Bradley that when he came back "something didn`t feel right in me, but..I couldn`t say what it was." Psychological trauma alone, neuroscientists now tell us, affects not only psyches but brains. Sophisticated neuroimaging shows the brains of those who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to be abnormal in areas regulating memory retrieval and inhibition (hippocampus), fearfulness and focus (pre-frontal cortex), and emotionality and lability (amygdala). The hippocampus of Alzheimer's sufferers are also shrunken, and the amygdala of bi-polar sufferers have enhanced activation similar to those with PTSD.

Unlike McVeigh, Muhammad, or Jones, Major Nidal Hasan was not exposed to war's toxins, nor to its traumas first-hand. Day after day, though, soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, or on their way back, relived before him attacks and atrocities they had inflicted, suffered, and/or witnessed, altering his views and his mind. In the beginning of his Army training and service, by all accounts, Nidal Hasan was proud to serve his country. His examination of the internal conflict within Muslim GIs asked to kill other Muslims - prohibited in the Koran-- started out an academic project to enhance the Army's understanding and management of the dilemma. But as Hasan's exposure to mentally disturbed soldiers' memories, fears, and guilt increased, so evidently did his own internal strife and, in all likelihood, the secondary PTSD common to family members, friends, and professionals in close contact with victims, witnesses, and perpetrators of catastrophes. But Major Hasan's religion was only one of several aspects of his being shattered by the stories he was charged with hearing. The troubled GI who opened fire on fellow soldiers at a counseling center in Fort Liberty back in 2011 was not a Muslim, although some right-wing blogs initially suggested he was. In truth, the violence soldiers and veterans inflict against other Americans is not unfathomable at all.

The fire power expended on Iraq in the six-year war was greater than that used in all wars in history combined. The savage murder of civilians, though not on the radar of most producers and consumers of American media, smolders in the minds of many troops and veterans of all backgrounds serving in all three recent wars in the region. Troops that were on U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, like the local citizens, suffered from the fumes from open burn pits the depth of city blocks and the length of small towns. Blast injuries from IEDs continue to damage the interiors of bodies and brains, often with no external breakage or bleeding, causing a new kind of brain injury not seen before in the chronicles of war. Chemical fumes, powders, and liquids from military and industrial facilities bombed in both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom continue to contaminate earth, water, and air. For decades and perhaps centuries, the consequences of US invasions will be for Iraqis and Afghans to suffer disease and deprivation, and invading and occupying troops will carry the war back home, as soldiers always do, but with brains, bodies, and minds shattered as never before. Who will identify and prosecute those who bear the greatest responsibility for these heinous mass murders? Brutal murders by American veterans and troops of fellow soldiers and citizens were surely not the outcomes planned by our leaders, but by now they are forever linked to violent and very unstable behavior that have resulted in mass casualties here at home. America has a moral and social responsibility to clean up the mess they made in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to render any and all medical and financial assistance that America's veterans are entitled to. Whether America's military and civilian leadership decides to do so or not remains to be seen.