Fighting Back Against Those Who Oppress Us

Ways to Fight Back Against an Evil and Dangerous World

By Rev. Paul J. Bern

America's electoral process plows ahead towards what could turn out to be a Constitutional meltdown, although I sure hope not. Meanwhile, ever greater numbers of our senior citizens live into their 100's while mired in poverty. The horrific specter of terrorism rears its ugly head as it spreads globally, threatening everything in its path over, ironically, religious differences. One priest/minister saves lepers and drives out demons, another abuses kids. One Nazi ran the ovens while others hid Jews. There's life and death, positive and negative, good and bad in all kinds of folks, even the 'bad' ones. And when we marvel at those contradictions we have a ready explanation. There's good and bad everywhere, in all races, nations, societies. We have yet to bridge our differences in race or culture or nationality or faith, but at least we can all agree on that simple truth while we continue to work on all the others. 

 

We live in a 21^st century of instant communication, jumbo jets, knowledge and computing power that grow exponentially, and everything on social media all the time. Nations are beginning to blur; races, ethnicities and various nationalities are mixing, our globe has shrunk to an overheated marble, yet the world seems more fractured than ever. So much divides us while so much more scares us half to death, like the ever-present threat of nuclear war, or a sudden and unexpected job layoff. What unites us? Religion? It could, but having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is much better, because it can unite us all when put into practice, as it is written, “Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with Him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” (2^nd Timothy chapter 2, verses 11-13) Meaning that Jesus Christ, as always, is and has the answers we are all searching for. The maximum number of true Gods is only one. Yet we've been waging wars for millennia over what to call him and whether he likes his picture shown or not. But while religions, unfortunately, can't agree on the real nature of God, they're remarkably close on people. There is near universal agreement on what makes a good one.

Be kind to people, treat your neighbors well, be hospitable to strangers, pray for your enemies instead of attacking them, love one another, live honestly, and a dozen other virtues seem to comprise the teachings of Jesus. Its a definition of being as close to 'the perfect human' as we can possibly be. All societies agree on them without exception. It's as plain as daytime in the Bible, starting with the four gospels. Humankind has been speaking these words since the first philosopher carved cuneiform into clay. 

 

We must have an instinctive sense of goodness taught by our parents, teachers, pastors and all others who chip in to get the next generation on the right path in life. Goodness is not born into us. The Bible reprimands us that, “All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory” (Romans 3: 22-23). Rather than saying we are all sinners, which is still ever so true, let me put this in a more modern context. We – every last one of us, all of humanity, myself included – are born with a natural enmity towards our Creator. We are like disobedient children, wild horses that cannot be broken in, or dogs that cannot be trained. Not all of us are particularly grateful for being alive, some simply presume they're supposed to be here.

Moreover, since God made us all with a free will, we are prone to abuse it without considering the consequences first. Many of us have no relationship with God at all, for various reasons that I will decline to judge, at least for now. That's what “sinful nature” means. We also agree on what makes a bad person: The manipulator, the cheater, the bully, the taker, the liar, the murderer and the thief. We know who we are. The vast majority of us try not to hurt people. We try not to cheat, lie and steal and we're ashamed of ourselves when life drives us to those ends, or when things don't go according to plan. We profess peace on earth and goodwill towards men, yet we Americans in particular look the other way while the USDoD continues to stockpile nuclear weapons. And for ten thousand years we've let the bad people push us around and tell us what to do and whom to do it to. We've let them dominate us because they were mean and ruthless enough to force us, and we were too soft or lazy to stop them until they did terrible damage. We should not ever hesitate to stop evil people.

Bad people are very hard to ignore. You can't avoid a bad person if he or she happens to be your boss at work. And that happens a lot, because bad people seem disproportionately to occupy corner offices and seats on the Board of Directors. They know how to play the cynical, cold hearted game of office politics. That can be rough on you if you work with them. But the worst people also know how to play the high-stakes game of real politics, and that's rough on everybody. Bad people hate, and they convince ordinary good people to hate the same things. Oh sure, there are always a few saints who rise above the evil that bad people do, and they usually die for it. We know about them posthumously from the Bible (Christ's crucifixion, the story of Stephen in Acts 6, 7 & 8, etc.), the King and Kennedy assassinations of the 1960's, stories about 9/11, and books about the Holocaust.

But those aren't good people, they're great people, and we can't count on them because they don't come along every day. But there are always plain old good people around, because there's good and bad in all kinds. To borrow a truism, the only reason bad people succeed is because good people stand by and do nothing. And so this is a call to arms for good people everywhere! We have to stop following the bad people immediately! Without us, bad people lose their power, bad governments lose their legitimacy, ditto for these huge corporations that pollute the earth and poison our food and water. Does anyone reading this who believes in a Higher Power seriously believe that God has not seen all this? Is there anyone remaining who does not understand that God is sitting back waiting for just the right time, just the right set of circumstances and for the worst possible moment to unleash the fury he has stored up for those who know only violence, death and cruelty??

Good people everywhere, I'm speaking to every one of you. We need to go on strike against the world! Let's tell the bullies and haters they no longer exist as far as we're concerned. Let's tell the warmongers we refuse to go to foreign lands and fight their wars, because we don't want to have to kill any more people for the benefit of a few. Let's laugh at the conspiracies of their 'intelligence communities', reject the twisted right wing-nut theories of “American exceptional-ism”, and refuse to be provoked by the aggression of small minorities. Let's tell them we won't play their deadly games anymore! Let's tell them it's over! We're not going to buy their stuff any more, either!Let's tell all the capitalists where they can go with all their junky merchandise, and exactly how to get there! Maybe we can give them an island where they can fight it out to their black hearts' content. Greenland comes to mind, so does Antarctica. Maybe they'll all just kill each other off there, on the island of the damned. Maybe then, and only then, the rest of us can finally have some peace and quiet.

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.

America's wars overseas are unnecessary and obscene

The Ongoing Obscenity of Our War on Terrorism

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

The war in Afghanistan lasted more than 11 years as of this year. The original reason for the US military invasion was to hunt down and capture or kill Osama Bin Laden as the chief perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks. The reason it took the US military more than a decade to find him was because they were looking in the wrong country. Oops, sorry Mr. or Mrs. taxpayer, we got the right guy but we had the wrong address. Oh well. At the height of its military operations, the United States was spending $60 billion per month on the twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is not counting all the other bases the US military now has in well over 100 countries around the world, such as Germany, Japan, Okinawa, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, to name a few of the major ones.

This leads to a fundamental question; why are our military forces still there after fighting the longest war the US military ever fought? Osama Bin Laden is long gone and we are still there, seemingly chasing our own tails. But that was before the truth came out about two things. First, Afghanistan is a country with vast untapped natural resources, including enormous copper deposits. Second, all the fuss about Afghanistan's poppy seed crop being a target of the 'drug war' here in the US is just a bunch of bull. Upon closer examination of what has been happening there out of sight of the American public, it becomes apparent that it is none other than the CIA running the show. So when you see teenage gang members selling heroin on any given street corner in America, you can thank the CIA. This is a stark contrast to what I have been teaching about being a people of peace. It brings the US “war on terror” into sharp focus and sheds light on the hypocrisy of the American Empire's military machine and its illegal incursions into third world countries where it does not belong. The truth of the matter is that the U.S. position with respect to the dictators in the Arab world has been one of pure hypocrisy. We have supported these tyrants in the name of "stability" and the "war on terrorism", but it has been a policy that has contributed mightily to the oppression of the people in those countries (which is a betrayal of our own revolutionary past, not to mention our fight against tyranny, as well as exacerbating the Islamic terrorism being used against us).

It has been amazing that the people who are in revolt against the dictators and their regimes haven't linked the U.S. with the tyranny they have been forced to live under. Contrary to what is being reported in the Lame Stream Media, their rebellions have been non sectarian, grass roots and non ideological in every country they have occurred and completely unrelated to Islamic fundamentalist or 'jihadist' terrorism. That last fact would seem to expose and make America's policy in the "war on terrorism" while initiating wars in the Muslim world obsolete and absurd. The irony is there has been little if any mention in the media of our wars and the war on terrorism possibly because they have had nothing to do with these Arab rebellions. Yet it is a topic of urgent need. The closest form of mentioning anything in this regard came from “W's” administration Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who said during Bush 43's second term in office, "Any new secretary of defense who advises a president to engage in land wars with vast armies in foreign lands needs to have his head examined".

The fact is our entire policy of pre-emptive war and occupation and the whole "war on terrorism" is a ruse, an unnecessary and a cruel invention concocted by neo-conservatives and cold war warriors who were itching to replace the defunct Soviet Union with an enemy we must oppose in a fight to the death (as we now see in our endless "war on terrorism"). Not only is the war on terror a reason for the American Empire to exist, it has become the only reason for its existence. It was and is a fantasy perpetrated by them and foisted on the American people. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 became their cause for that endless war and is the real, but unfortunate, legacy of that fateful day. But in light of the unfolding democratic "awakening" in much of the Arab world can there not be serious discussions deep in the bowels of the White House of the absurdity of our continuing to fight wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen as well as Iraq (not to mention the proxy war the CIA has been fighting against the Assad regime in Syria)? Gates' comments allude to the insanity of fighting these wars (even if he put it in the context of new misadventures). From here it seems the U.S. resembles (in its ability to end its wars) a giant ship at sea that takes an excruciatingly long time to reverse course. Like the Viet Nam quagmire we seem stuck, committed to the un-winnable yet unwilling and unable to face reality. War is an ongoing obscenity.