Category: Brian Browne

By Brian Browne

The wisdom of the oppressed is to speak not of what  you know and to know not of what you speak

Writing this piece was not a matter of joy. I did it of a sense of duty that carries a present but faint hope that these words may contribute to a greater cause. Pan-Africanism once animated much of the Black intellectual class and many of our politicians. In past decades, our greatest heroes spoke and wrote of a unity that would connect all of Africa as well as all her children who had been stolen to other continents. Some gave their lives to advance this ideal. Today, pan-Africanism owns little space in our political discourse. The fire is gone; the flame that once was has dwindled to a flicker. Even that weak ember may soon be extinguished by our unfortunate short-sightedness. The idea that gives us the best promise has been shunned so that we may walk the way those who hold no good intention for us want us to walk.

Out of collision of competing ideas, brave and outstanding Black political thinkers were produced in the past century. In Africa, the contest between independence and colonialism produced leaders such as Patrice Lumumba, Sekou Toure, and Kwame Nkrumah. Perhaps the most underappreciated but the most thorough intellect of them all was Amilcar Cabral. In America, we had W.E.B. du Bois, Malcolm X, Chancellor Williams and the Black Panthers. The Caribbean gave us Marcus Garvey, Walter Rodney, Stokely Carmichael and CLR James. Throughout South America, Black scholars and political leaders added their views and voices to this historic movement.

The hope that pan-Africanism would guide us quickly perished under pressures from within but more from without. In this instance, the primary fault was not in the stars nor even with these great but flawed heroes. The true villain in all of this was that those who kept us down did not want to relinquish, what for them was, a profitable and psychologically fulfilling vocation. The West derived economic advantage and a superiority complex from tripping the Black race. When confronted by Black leaders who wanted to end this farce, the West reacted cruelly, violently. They harried and harassed pan-Africanists.

The West did this not to save Africa for Africans but to keep Africa for themselves that they may continue to plunder her. Thus, our greatest heroes were chased and gunned down. Lumumba, Nkrumah and others were hounded from office by coups and uprisings financed from Western boardrooms. Those not assassinated in body were done so in character to the extent that these people who should be heroes are now perceived in most quarters as quasi-villains or specimens of various forms of psychological depravity. In America, Malcolm x was killed in front of his children. The Black Panthers were hunted down and bloodily dismantled, city chapter by city chapter.

None of these people committed any great wrong. In fact, they were more right than wrong. None of them attacked any one. They did not rob another person of his life simply because that person held different beliefs or were of a different color. These heroes were not violent nor did they seek confrontation.  All they wanted was freedom for their people; they sought a freedom that had been denied for so long in so many ways and they sought it with a hunger warranted by their historic circumstance. They simply wanted that which was their right as sentient beings. They asked not for what did not belong to them. They did not even request what was their complete due. They advocated self-defense not offensive assault.

For espousing these most basic, universal concepts of humane society and of self-preservation, these men were hunted as if rabid jackals. Their achievements were maligned; their reputations slandered if not perverted. They were depicted as psychotic and among the worst of men. This gross defamation was not the work of fact. It was the work of the propaganda machines of societies inimical to Black independent thought.

Woeful has been the response of Black people and our subsequent leaders. We sheepishly accepted the physical and psychological attacks against our greatest progressive figures. It is as if our minds have been scrubbed clean of noble principle and high morality. They killed our leaders; yet, we were made to feel more ashamed of these leaders than to feel anger as the killers of these excellent human beings. Their misdeeds have been sanitized by our collective embarrassment. Today, we rarely give public mention to the names of these men and of the ideals for which they suffered. There exists an informal but strong social prohibition against remembering this aspect of our past. Referring to them has become bad manners. Revering them as heroes has become a crime.

No current African leader dare stand before any serious international forum to recite the deeds of our fallen and the misdeeds of those who befell them. To do so, would be a breach of etiquette. It would make one’s Western friends and donors feel ill at ease. A leader risks being seen as an undisciplined militant too strident to be cooperative and too angry to be a pragmatic partner. For speaking the truth, that leader will be depicted as too radical for his own good.  In this manner, we are pressed in a mean way.

We well know the sorted past but have been instructed that we must speak of and act according to a fiction that portrays us as even less than we are. We have been scolded to act and believe as if all things that burden us are due to our own inner fallings. Yes, we have greatly harmed ourselves. Even with that, the harm others have done outstrips our own failings. But we have been forced into a miserable trade; in exchange for our natural resources, we have bought the guilt of the West and accepted their wrongs against us as our own. We have swallowed what we have been told to eat at the expense of acquiring that which we need to sustain and prosper ourselves. No external agent can give us freedom, independence or prosperity. If given these things by someone, we, at best, have them on temporary loan that can be called at any time by the lender. These things can only truly be built with our own hands and ideas.

Yet, instead of a humane pan-Africanism, we embrace a dreadful inferiority complex and self-loathing. We trust what the West tells us about ourselves more than we value the lessons presented by our actual experiences with the West. The Black race has lost its fighting spirit except for when it fights itself. On a racial level, we accept all forms of indignity that we never would tolerant on a personal level. If a man torched your home, kidnapped a few of your children and absconded with your material valuables you would be quite angry. Your anger would bloom more acutely if the wrongdoer alleged that his actions were your fault; your weaknesses or laxity tempted him to wrong you.

If that man had the temerity to return to you in order to instruct you how to conduct yourself and recover from the wrongs you caused him to inflict on you, one would assume the ensuing conversation might take a most unpleasant turn. At the very least, you would demand the return of all that was stolen. You would be well within your rights to attack him with whatever device was at your disposal. This might even be the most appropriate action to take. No reasonable person could blame you.

Yet, on the racial level, we do the very opposite. We dare not chastise the thief.  We allow him to chastise us. With head bowed and hat in hand, we listen intently to the self-righteous lectures they give us on how we might behave better. His accumulated material wealth, some of which he took from you, apparently insulates him from criticism. The pan-Africanism that could free us has been replaced with a bankrupt idea that keeps us enslaved. We have swallowed the silly notion that if we only listen to him intently we will become like him. This idea is the liqueur of the septic tank.

Ask any dutiful slave or servant. Ask him whether listening to his master elevated him to the status of his master or kept him in his servile station. No man oppresses another man so that the latter may become his equal. Likewise, no nation subdues another and subjects it to uneven economic relations with the view that the weaker nation will rise to parity. If a person or a nation wanted the weaker person or nation to be an equal, they never would have established the evil and uneven relationship in the beginning. The only way to break the unfair link is to stop doing what you are told so that you may do what you should.

To achieve growth and economic strength, the Asian nations reject the economic and political brainwashing. They developed their own economic systems that fitted their needs, instead of adhering to the dictates of their former colonists. Too many Blacks do not understand this. Consequently, we get bogged down in the White man’s affairs as if they are our own and we are full partners in the undertaking. In America, numerous Black politicians have taken money from former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to endorse his presidential campaign. This is shameful. Bloomberg is as racist and mean as President Trump. But Bloomberg waved some money and these Blacks were willing to sell themselves into a subtle, modern servitude. For them, the history and low status of their people is of no concern. Had these people retained in their marble hearts even a word from Dr. King, let alone Malcolm X, they could not even imagine helping Bloomberg push American politics toward its more racist inclinations. They were willing to sell out the entire history of our people for a handful of coins.

In Africa, things are not much better. The last of the vocal pan Africanists, Libya’s Qaddafi, was overthrown and killed when the West used its superior air power to protect the mainly terrorist ground force fighting against Qaddafi. The imperialist-terrorist combine won. They turned Libya into an inferno. Once one of Africa’s most prosperous states, Libya now churns in disorder, terror and human trafficking. The EU recently held a peace conference on Libya. This is rich irony in that the EU and America recklessly bombed the nation into its dismal condition. Strange being itself, it was telling that the conference was devoid of any meaningful African participation. The last I noticed, Libya was still on this continent. It is still an African nation. The AU should have the lead role in repairing what the West has wrecked.  Yet this is not to be.

The EU diplomatic excursion was not because they suddenly discovered a love for the people of the ravaged land. No, the Europeans seek to figuratively pluck Libya from Africa first and foremost because of that vast reserve of sweet, light crude oil underground. Second, by making Libya a virtual European protectorate, they hope to stem the northern flow of African migrants across the Mediterranean Sea. If Africa was as it should be, the nations of this continent would rail against this new imperialism.

Moreover, we would unite to end the West’s military expansionism in the region, we would help each other fend off Chinese economic aggrandizement.  We would restructure our economies to create more jobs and less poverty. We would work together so that we have greater leverage in the sale of our strategic commodities. We would industrialize so that we can halt our dependence on expensive imports from both West and east.  We would stop listening to the Trumps, Macrons and Johnsons of this world that we may remember the contributions of Cabral, Nkrumah, Diop, Amin and the rest of those who gave their lives that we might live to our best. Let it not be that we should fail them.

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By Brian Browne

A few weeks ago, I wrote President Trump should lose the coming elections provided the Democrats remain sufficiently united and the establishment group does not alienate the progressive wing of that party.  On February 3, the Democratic Party held, in the state of Iowa, its first vote in the process of nominating its 2020 presidential candidate.  The exercise was either an attempted fraud or a monument to incompetence. Either way, one notion becomes ineluctable.

American democracy, as imperfect as it always has been, is further corroding to the point that soon the full truth of its weaknesses shall be revealed. American democracy is illusory. The powerful oligarchy controlling the national economy will allow the average person the veneer of democracy as long as he wants only that which the elite is willing to give him. Let the average person deviate in any material degree from elite priorities, then all manner of devices, both rude and refined, will be employed to subvert the dreaded deviance. If need be, the powerful will buy, cheat or steal to keep the people from realizing the reach of their sovereign will. With few exceptions, politicians who rise to national prominence are those adept at convincing the people that their interests are the same as those of the rich and powerful. This is an extraordinary function requiring a fair amount of agility and even a heavier portion of dissembling.

The Democratic Party elite can smell victory over Trump this year. But they have hurdles within their own party. Three people not of their ilk have presented themselves for the party nomination. Senator Sanders, Congressperson Gabbard and businessman Yang seek to materially reform the party and its policies. Of these three inconveniencies, Sanders is the most serious threat. Because of this, he is the one they despise even more than Trump albeit for completely different reasons. They want to remove Trump because he has exposed the hypocrisy of the political class by wallowing openly in that hypocrisy in a most shameless manner. Trump has to go so they can return the obscuring veil to where it once was. They fear Sanders because he wants to end the hypocrisy, veil and all. After months of skirmishes between progressives and moderates in debates and in the press, the initial battlefield would become the landlocked, Midwestern state of Iowa.

The Iowa vote has traditionally been conducted by a caucus system. This particular caucus mechanism has some arcane features. The state is divided into roughly 1700 precincts. Voters literally visit a designated site like a school or church in each precinct. There, they gather at a place at that site reserved for supporters of a peculiar candidate. The votes for each candidate are then tallied. If a candidate does not achieve at least 15 percent of the total vote in that precinct, the candidate will not be allowed to retain his votes. His supporters have the option of transferring their votes to another person or going home. Once this winnowing of lower-ranked candidates has taken place, a second vote is taken. Using a special formula, the second round figures will be used to determine the state delegate totals from each precinct for a candidate; state delegates will later attend the state convention which will determine the future organization of the state party. Using a different formula but again based on the popular vote, the results of the second round of voting will also be used to determine the number of national convention delegates a candidate receives. The national delegates are ultimately the ones who select the presidential nominee.

Iowa has 41 national delegates. This is but a fraction of the over 4000 delegates who will attend the national convention. In terms of actual numbers, Iowa is a small prize. In the realm of psychological and symbolic import, it looms large. Usually, the winner of Iowa enjoys a boost in the subsequent public opinion polls. Human nature is such that many heretofore undecided voters gravitate to someone perceived as a winner. This perception may greatly aid a candidate in the primaries that follow. This also may encourage donors to be more forthcoming. Thus, small Iowa has an impact much larger than its due. Against this backdrop, Senator Sanders, with his army of working class donors and by reaching out to minorities, seemed to be rising in the polls taken prior to the caucuses. Former VP Biden and Senator Warren seemed to have plateaued. South Bend Mayor Buttigieg, a darling of the corporate media and wealthy donor class, also seemed to be climbing in the polls.

The caucuses were held as usual. Nothing seemed afoul in the precincts. Then chaos descended.  With approximately 200,000 votes to tally and transmit, the counting should have been finished before the dawn of the next day. However, the results were delayed. It was apparent to all watching that something had gone awry. After a night of uneasy silence and non-explanation, the Iowa chapter of the party attributed the delay to flaws in the mobile phone app that was devised for transmission of results.

Slowly it started to dawn on the progressives that the fix was on and it would be against their favored candidate. The company that provided the phone app is owned by former Clinton staffers and donors. Like their political matriarch, these people thoroughly dislike Sanders. One of the firm’s owners is married to a senior Buttigieg staffer. Even more curiously, the Buttigieg campaign previously donated over 40,000 dollars to this firm.  More ominously, the firm’s name is “Shadow.” The conduct of elections is supposed to be based on openness and transparency. Entrusting a key element of the caucus to a company with such a nebulous, evasive name seems a bit ironic. In this instance, the name was ominously prescient. The name sounds like some nefarious outfit in a “Grade B” spy movie. In reality, it would contribute to a “Grade F” election in real time. Things went from bad to worse.

Not until Wednesday, two days after the caucus, did the party begin to release partial results. This was curious. In a state of this manageable size and small number of voters, the actual tabulation sheets from all precincts could have and should have physically been transferred to a central location within hours.  That two days passed yet this transmission of results was incomplete is more than curious. Instead, the party released approximately 60 percent of the results when they should have been able to release the entirety if they had worked but at a snail’s pace. This partial release revealed that the pace of their effort was so slow that delay had to be an unstated objective. Compounding this imbalance, the partial release was not representative of the vote as a whole.

The party’s initial release tilted to Buttigieg strongholds. They claimed this was coincidence. They claimed not yet to have the information from many of the areas where Sander held the presumptive lead. Most likely, this explanation was false.  The party hierarchy even at the state level is pitted against Sanders. Its impartiality is thus suspect. It likely wanted to create the impression that someone other than Sanders won. Buttigieg was only too happy to play the role and do so magnificently.

Before jumping to the next primary state, Buttigieg in his valedictory speech to his Iowan supporters claimed victory. Joined at the ideological hip with the party hierarchy, the corporate media happily ran with the Buttigieg version of the contest because it fit their bias against the left-leaning Sanders. Attempting to insulate himself from criticism, Buttigieg cynically portrayed this as a historic moment in the nation’s political evolution when an openly gay man first won the presidential primary of a state. In draping himself with the banner of history, Buttigieg was trying to position himself as the gay Obama to the extent Buttigieg even started mimicking the cadence of Obama’s public addresses. Also by doing this, he sought to blunt criticism of his premature victory announcement by making potential critics afraid of being tagged homophobic for berating him. For two days, Buttigieg was being declared the winner by the media although much of the tally remained outstanding.

Then news began seeping out of Iowa that something more than gross incompetence was at play. In some areas, Sanders votes had been assigned to weak candidates such as Tom Steyer and Deval Patrick, the latter who did not even campaign in Iowa. The most blatant of these switches was in Black Hawk County. In that county, Sanders led by garnering over 2100 votes. Buttigieg had roughly 1500.  But when the party headquarters released the county figures, Sanders’ number had been reduced to roughly 1600. An inexplicable drop of 25 percent! This discrepancy was uncovered only because the Black Hawk County party caucus supervisor was honest enough to complain about the vote swaps and to use Twitter to release the county’s proper figures. Subsequently, a similar switch was discovered in Polk County. Discrepancies were also found in other counties throughout the state.

The common thread in all of these purportedly innocent mistakes is that the mishap always injured Sanders. For such a string of mistakes always to line up against one out of several people is odd. The randomness of such a string is akin to the chances of 10 consecutive coin tosses giving the same result each time. In one particular odd instance, a coin was actually tossed to determine who would win a delegate. The person who tossed the coin caught it midair instead of letting the coin hit the ground as such tosses should go. Next the man was seen massaging the surface of the coin and spinning the coin in his hand as if trying to determine which surface was heads or tails so that he might insure a certain outcome. Predictably, Sanders lost the coin flip and delegate to Buttigieg.

At one point, things got so bad that after releasing 85 percent of the results, the information was retracted because of multiple discrepancies in the figures given. Even with these incidents, the more votes they counted, the more it appeared the Buttigieg victory declaration was premature. After the party claimed it had repaired the defects in its release at the 85 percent level, it published what was stated to be 97 percent of the results.  Based on this 97 percent, Sanders held an insurmountable lead over Buttigieg in the popular vote, by over 6000 votes in the first round and 2500 in the second (44.753 for Sanders and 42,235 for Buttigieg). Despite this lead, Buttigieg had a razor thin lead in state delegates (550 to 547). They were tied at 11 each in the number of national delegates.

Despite Sanders popular vote lead, the media has actively hawked the story of a Buttigieg victory. The day after the caucuses, the New York Times predicted a Buttigieg victory was over 90 percent certain. By Thursday, the same paper quietly reversed itself, now stating that Sanders has a better chance at the win. The only metric by which Buttigieg leads is the state delegate count. However, it makes little sense that the media should trumpet the state delegate count as the prime indicator. The state delegate count matters only within the state party organization. The number of national delegates, the ones who will select the presidential nominee, is determined by the popular vote. In makes even less sense for the party to use the state delegate figures as the metric for victory over the popular vote totals. After all, the party was bitterly upset when Clinton won the 2016 popular vote but lost the election due to the peculiarities of the Electoral College.

Given the trends in the popular vote, Sanders still had a better than even chance of overtaking Buttigieg in the state delegate count. However, the Democratic Party national chairman has moved to prevent that from happening. With only 3 percent of the precincts left to count, the national chairman mysteriously called a halt to the count. That the national chairman would do this is not surprising. Previously, he has openly asserted that his party has no place for the European-style democratic socialism that Sanders advocates. Again, in one of those strange coincidences, the remaining precincts are perceived as heavily pro-Sanders. If true, finishing this count might finish Buttigieg’s victory claim. The establishment does not want this. The establishment would rather see Buttigieg, an ally of the intelligence apparatus and a beneficiary of Wall Street Money Power, claim victory no matter how tainted. They want to do everything possible to deny Sanders, who champions the common man, a victory.

One thing beyond dispute in this maelstrom is the weak showing of former VP Biden who was the putative champion of the establishment. Biden’s campaign in Iowa was weak and uninspiring. He is now in trouble among the Democratic elite. The hyper ambitious Buttigieg now thinks he will replace Biden as the man for the elite. He is mistaken; but his vanity prevents him from seeing that if he is their man, it is only for the moment.

Former New York City Mayor Bloomberg now looms over the party like a heavy cloud laden with money, a veritable bank in the sky. Worth 55 billion dollars, Bloomberg is poised to show everyone that America’s democracy is the best that money can buy but only if the purchaser is among the highest of the high rollers. Bloomberg can easily shell out 1-3 billion dollars for the campaign season. This would pay for a presidential campaign as well as a sizeable portion of congressional contests while leaving the national chairman and party executive swimming in money for the foreseeable fortune. He already has given money to key congressional candidates; these people will have to endorse his candidacy as the payments were intended to buy their loyalty. He has already spent several hundreds of millions on television ads.

After Bloomberg paid a paltry 300,000 dollars to the party and gave another 800,000 to an allied political action committee, the party changed its rules to allow him to participate in the next debates. The rules had required that a candidate have a certain minimum number of donors. This was in order to prevent the occurrence of a plutocrat like Bloomberg from building a campaign solely around his own money and with little evidence of popular support. In effect, Bloomberg exudes the promise of enough money to get the part to retract a rule intended to keep a single person from using his own money to finance his campaign and potentially dominate the party. This is akin to saying that if you kill one person you are a criminal but if you kill one million people you attain the status of a national hero.

The truth of the matter is that the party operatives would gladly hand the nomination to Bloomberg today if they could. Secure that he will pay them, they could care less if genuine democracy became a casualty of their pecuniary self-interests. Once sufficiently paid, these operatives could really care less if Bloomberg beats Trump of vice versa. The campaign would be mere theatrics. A fight of the rich against the super-rich for who will inherit the joyful task of deceiving the population that he governs in their interests.

Sanders will carry on. Every step of the way, his path will be strewn with unfair pratfalls. Progressives can tolerate losing if the contest is fair. If Iowa proves to be an accurate barometer, fairness will not be present unless it is forced on the party by a heretofore unknown greater power. If the party continues to maltreat Sanders, many progressives will avoid the party come the November elections no matter who the candidate will be Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Clinton or otherwise. They will do so because they would have rightfully concluded the party wants their vote but not them.  The party would have repeated the mistake made in 2016 but with double the willfulness.

With the Iowa debacle and with his impeachment victory so freshly at hand, Trump has reason to gloat. If he is reelected, the story of his victory would have begun this week. In the meantime, Africa should well take note. Those who view America as the zenith of democratic practice must inhabit a dense fog of myth impenetrable by the actual state of things. Any time America seeks to lecture you on democratic elections in the future, there is no need for wordy, convoluted defense. There is but one word to say: Iowa.

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By Brian Browne

Beautiful and kind, the fecund woman was ravaged by a band of freebooters and thieves extraordinaire; in truth, it was a procession of them against her. This violation was a thing of grave sorrow and loss still felt by those who refuse to allow their memories to be washed empty so that they may be injected with a convenient and tidy history that never happened.  This woman and her children had been living in peace and posed no threat to anyone. They had their troubles and squabbles as does any family. Yet, she had done nothing so terrible that warranted the evil that was to befall save that she failed to respect her defenses against others. Her children were taken and scattered abroad. Tears abounded yet the spilled blood ran more abundant than the tears. Ultimately, the plunderers would sire from her 54 unruly children to whom they taught many inhumane, destructive lessons before departing to engorge themselves of the fruits their degradations had wrought against her.

These hybrid children, born of fertile mother and brigand father, have been psychologically torn most of their lives. We are the children of a besieged Africa and a domineering unsympathetic Europe. Momma clearly loves you but all she can do is give freely to you of the little she has. This she has done but we are not satisfied with her efforts. Our uncaring father has riches and power and has made you thirsty for both. Worst, he has the form of money the world most wants. In our lowly condition which he orchestrated, we crave the paper money of his issue. We will sell momma, family, future, body and soul to acquire the paper that bears his face and images of his secular high places. Instead of protecting Momma Africa at all costs, we rush about seeking approval of a father who never will approve of us.  He disciplines and upbraids us for the crimes he committed against our mother. He is most fond of us when he merely dislikes us. All other times, he despises us; the very concept of us irritates him. He thinks us ugly and uncouth. Our presence and beseeching knock at his door reminds him of a job yet unfinished.  He and many others seek to take hold of Momma Africa again, this time for good. They must maneuver us that we docilely comply. Those of us who do not comply must be swept out of the way.

In the recesses of our mind, we know his intent is no good. Yet, we hide these warning thoughts even from ourselves. We cannot understand why he hates us. We go to silly extremes to appease the unappeasable in him. The superficial among us bleach their skin and in the process destroy that skin. Those who consider themselves serious and thoughtful bleach their minds.

We worry about what he thinks of us but take for granted the mother who loves us. Thus we have allowed her to become a receptacle for the discarded items and industrial dregs of Europe.  Our mother has become the dustbin of the world. We pollute our very own mother with the consequences of our ignorance. We were wiser inside her womb than outside it. Life had not yet robbed us of life. Today, we are clothed but, in the worst way, are naked. Fed but, in the worst way, hungry. Educated but, in the worst way, among the worst of fools. We forever proclaim the advent of progress in Africa but all we see of true progress is its back.

We call ourselves African; but we are not as African as we think. Our perspective has been warped by one of history’s great deceptions. Being born on the continent or of black skin does not qualify one as African any more than being the child of a doctor qualify one to be a surgeon. What designates one as African is more a matter of mindset and perspective. Do you remember what happened, what was done to our mother? Do you have the perspective, whether divinely or ethically inspired, to overcome the evil that befell us; or instead, will you learn of that evil by copying it and turning it into a weapon against those weaker than you? Despite all the hardship, will you remain a creature of fundamental justice and charity such that you refuse to repeat the wickedness? Moreover, will you come to the aid of and give shelter to the distressed and the unfortunate? And will you rise to defend your mother and her other children from the next round of evil capture and servitude being planned against them.  These things which call forth true justice and goodness are the best of the African spirit.

We must realize that Africa must retrieve and better utilize its inherent economic power. We do this not to seek dominion over anyone or anything but our own lives. The first step in this self-rescue mission is to recognize that this is a self-rescue. Those who seek to tutor and lecture us on governance do so not to enlighten us to our finer selves. They do so that we remain servants in need of greater servitude. Thus far, we follow their way not ours. We now listen to arch felons lecture us about the severity of our misdemeanors. Mention the wrongs with which they wronged us, they tell us that one must not raise those unpleasant reminders in polite company. They will stay that we are too stuck in the past. What we are doing is exceedingly rude because they came to educate us to a better life albeit without the things they stole from us to make their life better.  It is only a thief on the prowl who insists that we forget his vocation.

If you persist in reminding them of their trespasses, this group, who says they are trying to teach us civility, will turn downright savage and barbaric. Ask Patrice Lumumba or any number of people who spoke of true African economic independence and liberty. The last person to talk African unity was hunted down like a prize hare. His once stable and prosperous nation has become an open air slave market on one side and a theatre of protracted combat on the other. Yet, we listen to those who caused this mayhem, telling ourselves how much we respect and admire them. We must be mad! Someone killed our richest brother in the street, took all his money and half his estate and released guns among his confused sons that they may kill each other and even you. They do this, yet we consider them the most enlightened of leaders and kindest of men to the point that we worship their words, buy their books and never question their actions. We view them with an induced blindness such that we see beauty in their wickedness and pray to be like them.

No sane person emulates the sociopath; yet this awful practice has become our way of life.  We revere leaders of nations that have our neck underfoot. In such a precarious situation, one must proceed with caution. However, one must be sufficiently wise to distinguish between the fear and respect one gives an armed robber and what one gives to a strong but true friend. They tell you the Libyan leader was mad; that they saved Africa from him. Take a step back and trust your own ability to meter the truth. The Libyan did not threaten Africa. He only threatened their hold on Africa. Their claim does not hold even against gossamer scrutiny. They lied to us and continue to do so. While we cannot prevent another from lying to us, we should, at least, prevent the mishap of us frequenting their ideas in order to lie to ourselves.

The children of Africa who have been separated from her for centuries have even farther to go to return home.  Last year, the African American buzzed with the 1619 project. This marked the 400th anniversary of slaves coming to Virginia, the first recorded instance of African bondsmen in English-speaking North America. Thousands of Black Americans came to the continent to experience some emotional but transient connection with their mother continent. Upon returning to their cunning and mean step-mother, they quickly returned to life as usual. The connection to Africa was re-severed. This connection was to function as a historic artifact; not as something to shape present identity and future action. 2019 is now over; the 400th anniversary has passed. The sentiment to reconnect to Africa has passed with it. As such, this was but a superficial undertaking devoid of the lasting power that true substance gives. A few drums, ornaments and articles of traditional clothing exchanged hands and made it to America. In the end, this project, though well intentioned, was but the sending of a postcard when a prolonged family reunion is in order.

Worst, is how the political machine fooled the Black community with talk of reparations early last year. That talk has died; its premature demise was by design not by accident. The discourse on reparations was engineered to reignite Black hope in the Democratic Party; the party wanted to help its electoral chance by solidifying Black allegiance to the party. Thus, reparations featured prominently in the early stages of the Democratic primary. Now that election season is near full throttle, talk of reparations has been gagged and told to quit squirming so that Democrats may beat Trump. The Democrats calculated that perfunctory discussion of reparations would be enough to sufficiently energize Blacks. Their cynical calculation appears right.  Blacks have lined up behind them without even asking why Black hopes must always pay the costs. If the price for beating Trump is to refuse my just due then I must wonder what is the urgent justice in voting against Trump. Why should I care if he continues? Shorn of all the trickery, it seems the difference between Republicans (Trump) and mainstream Democrats on things important to Black people is the narrow difference between frigid and bitter cold.

This past week, America celebrated Martin Luther King’s (MLK) birthday. There was the risible travesty of the racist duo of Trump and his Vice President placing a wreath at the foot of the memorial for King. Superficially, the gesture would appear a good thing but it was not. It was a form of historic ridicule. If there were justice in this world, King’s ghost would have appeared to chase the two hucksters from the vicinity. The White establishment and its Black servitors believe they have bleached the essence of this revolutionary man so much so that he safely can be incorporated into their pantheon of mostly warrior heroes. America dearly loves warrior heroes because the nation’s formative history is that of unjust wars brutally won. However, they want Black heroes to be less muscular and more passive. Thus, they speak only of his nonviolence and quest for equal political rights. These are the things they want us to see. If they succeed in this, they would have swindled us into turned his humane revolutionary spirit into a tool of their militaristic conservatism. Soon, they will be selling MLK piñatas for children’s birthday parties, MLK costumes for Halloween’s celebration, and MLK beer mugs at football games.

We claim to follow King yet we admire the political and military machine he fought and that fought him. However, both impulses cannot cohabit the same mind. One must triumph over the other. King correctly stated the American government was the most dangerous entity on the planet. What he said then is even more valid now.  But we adore his image yet disregard his truth. We have help his and our enemies sterilize King.  As such, we have helped them lock, bolt and chain the door against us and have done so with such adorning eyes that our oppressors hate us for not even attempting to make a harder fight of their invasion of our consciousness.

All this I have written because hard times and decisions await. During the year, African leaders will be invited to summits outside the continent to discuss the future of the continent. All of these meetings are but the children of the Berlin Conference where the colonial father violated the African mother to produce the hybrid, self-conflicted offspring. Let’s be frank. Almost by definition, an international conference on Africa held outside of Africa has to be suspect.  It cannot be for the good of Africa.  No American government would set in Lagos a major conference on the future of America or of NATO. Such a thing would be unthinkable. Yet our leaders are called to more conferences outside the continent than they hold inside Africa to discuss our common destiny.

We better wake up. We need to utterly transform our economies and do so with great speed. If we do as the colonial fathers say, our growth will be as that of the snail in an age when half the global economy travels near the speed of light.  We cannot follow free market dictates. The colonial fathers want such structures so they will be free to exploit them and Momma Africa will free to suffer. We must develop strategies that boost industrial output and employment. We must restructure ourselves so that we checkmate the ravages of desertification that destroys precious lengths of arable land on a yearly basis. Desertification pushes people from their land, forcing them to seek life elsewhere. Some crowd into already suffering rural communities. Others join the urban jobless. Not only are lives impaired, our social fabric is placed under undue strain. In addition to desertification, there are other woes killing us and our ecology.  Plant and animal life is being decimated.  The plastic bag is an eyesore everywhere and it pollutes land, water and air. Drugs and despair abound. Social morality is eschewed. Grab what you can grab is the dominant ethic.

These issues cannot be solved by the free market; the excesses of the free market helped cause the calamity. The same dose of the same substance cannot be both cause and cure. We have to take care of Momma Africa; she is the only mother we have. You take care of your mother not by listening to the advice of her assailants. You do so by giving her the best you have.

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By Briane Brownie

By assassinating Iranian General Soleimani, President Trump places himself in the claws of tightening dilemma.  Trump holds the mantle as the most buffoonish of prominent American leaders. Less certain is the claim that he is the nation’s most dangerous. Trump mostly feigns at war without truly wanting to fully indulge in it; meanwhile many American leaders genuinely pine for the widespread slaughter and destruction that full war and conquest brings. Trump forever blusters about war while many in government seek to actually wage it. As such, Trump is a retail merchant of death heading an enterprise peopled with many who would rather conduct this incarnadine business on the wholesale. While Trump is a crass manipulator, these people are eager, if amateur, conquerors in waiting.

Seeing himself as the ultimate in being street tough and street smart, Trump basks in the image of war. He seeks to project himself as a warrior president ready to go to battle at the slightest hint. However, inwardly, he recoils from the reality of war. Not that he is a pacifist in sociopath’s clothing. His reticence is founded on baser considerations. War is an untidy undertaking. One can never be certain how it will unfold or the toll it may require. Even a manifestly weaker adversary can inflict more pain than one is accustomed to bearing. Trump has a control fetish. He must sit atop and be firmly in control of all he surveys. This flaw places him in perpetual conflict with both allies and adversaries, with White House aides as well as leaders of other nations.

While this trait surrounds him in enmity, it also keeps him from launching large, uncertain ventures. Sudden tactical strikes he embraces. Massive, long- term engagements are not on his table of favorites. If he thought a war could be clinically served and performed, he would launch one per day. However, he knows a formidable opponent cannot be controlled. Although he should ultimately win any battlefield due to America’s preponderant might, Trump would suffer loss and setback on the way. Moreover, beating an inferior army is the most straightforward part of war. He would be utterly baffled regarding what to do with the conquered land and its angry populace after the battle is over. Additionally, he would be loathed to deal with the irregular and unconventional warfare that would hound his endeavor after the orthodox, set-piece war had ended.

Trump is counterfeit as a statesman. His fakery regularly nears him to the threshold of war. But, left to his own devices, he will not cross over if a major entanglement awaits on the other side. However, given the frailties of his bloated personality and the inadequacies of his geopolitical knowledge, Trump can be cajoled into a misstep that quickly sparks war. When he attacked Syria based on the false charge that the Assad government had used chemical weapons in the city of Douma, his actions were mostly symbolic. There was no chance war would erupt. Trump did not want to tangle with the Russians over Syria. He just wanted to show that he was tougher than Obama.

However, this time the strike against Soleimani was of a different caliber. Danger romanced this decision. Killing Soleimani was a provocative move capable of pushing the Iranians into a reply that could brew active war between two nations that have been glaring at each other for the past 40 years. If war will be avoided this time it is because Trump managed to stumble out of it. The next time Trump feels compelled to fire at an adversary in what he hopes will be but a singular act, the world may not be so lucky. With his space for false maneuvers receding, his next foray into toughness could be a prelude to a general war.

It would be easy to attribute Soleimani’s demise solely to Trump’s quackery; that the deed would not have happened if another had been president. This is a tempting but misleading hypothesis. The assassination reveals the operation of a war machine shorn of self-restraint. As president, Trump is the person most responsible for the wrongful assassination but he is not singularly at fault. The homicide would not have happened had the War Machine not fed him the assassination act as a viable policy option. On his own, Trump could never have devised this step. He is too inadequately versed about the region to have fingered the Iranian general by himself. Without his advisors prompting him, Trump would not have even noticed that such a man existed. Trump’s military and foreign policy aides fed him the general. Trump merely consumed what they laid on the plate before him. Unlike their boss, many of his advisors seek war with Iran on a grand scale. They hoped the New Year had ushered in the moment of their desire.

The protests at the US Embassy in Iraq frightened Trump, a man of grand vanity but exiguous mind. Trump deeply and immediately feared he might suffer the fate of President Carter. Forty years ago, Carter lost reelection and was disgraced from office, in large measure, because Iranian revolutionaries seized the US Embassy in Teheran, holding 52 Americans hostage for over 400 days. Failing to free the hostages, Carter failed to retain office.

Trump was adamant to avoid a Carterian demise with elections but 11 months away. His crafty, amoral advisors understood the depths of Trump’s angst. They knew he would literally kill to stay in office; that he wanted to show the American public and the world that he is the strongest of the world’s strongmen; in no way, does he resemble the effete, bumbling Carter. Thus, Trump leaped when advisors offered him the head of the Iranian general. This would allow him to bury the ghosts of embassy protests/takeovers past before they rose from the dead to bury his reelection.

The killing also had the intended consequence of profiting the War Machine and its close allies in the energy sector. Trump may be the titular Commander in Chief by virtue of the constitution; by virtue of the realities of institutional power he is a vassal of that machine. If he does not bend to its desires, it will break him.

That War Machine, comprises of a complex of military contractors and manufacturing firms, senior government officials and media figures as well as public policy analysts financed by the defense firms, is the most dangerous entity on the planet. It makes its money from the destruction of others. Where death and destruction are good for business then trouble and conflict flourish.  The War Machine has an annual budget of approximately one trillion dollars.  But to insure growing profits, the machine must foment additional tensions.

The most rabid elements of the machine seek conflict everywhere. They want to contain China, control Russia and crush Iran. They believe that America should be a military and economic superpower without peer. Any nation that seems to rival Washington must be taught the error of its ways. That nation must be reduced so that America remains exalted. America remains exalted by maintaining military superiority and through controlling world energy supplies by making sure payments remain dollar based. Any nation that seeks an alternative payment method will taste American ire and perhaps the American fist as well. Most establishment Republicans, including Trump’s staff fit in this category. Nearly half the Democrats are too of this ilk save they would rather more pressure on Russia because they have deluded themselves that Russia has territorial designs on Europe. Democrats are Europhiles if nothing else.

As clownish as he is, Trump is not a member of this most virulent element.  He would seek to check China. His instincts are not to confront Russia militarily. He would rather befriend it if possible. He seeks to pull it away from its budding alliance with China. Trump, however, would punish Iran severely. Primarily, this is all about oil and gas. Secondarily, it is to revenge the stain Iran placed on America’s perception of its near omnipotence by virtue of the 1979 revolution and embassy takeover. For this reason Trump threatened to attack 52 Iranian sites if the Iranians responded to Soleimani’s assassination. The number 52 represents one site for every American hostage taken two score years ago. Like an elephantine pettifogger, America remembers every offense and nurses a grudge from 40 years ago as if the offense committed against its embassy had no antecedents in American active malfeasance in Iranian affairs. America disrupted the Iranian pursuit of electoral democracy. The Shiite Islamic Revolution was the latter fruit of that interference.

Iran is smaller than China and weaker than Russia. It also is home to ample supplies of oil and gas. It has this black mark from 1979. That Iran is in conflict with Israel and Saudi Arabia also counts against it. For these reasons, Trump finds it right to browbeat Teheran.  Trump wants to subdue Iran to ensure American control of Iraqi energy supplies by reducing Iranian influence in that nation. In the longer-term, Trump seeks to influence the flow of Iranian oil. More importantly, Iran has vast natural gas reserves in the Persian Gulf. Iran wants to pipeline the gas to Europe via Iraq and Syria. This would evade American control particularly if American forces leave Iraq. America is working with the Saudis to thwart this plan. This is one of the reasons for the Syrian war. It is also behind America’s reluctance to exit Iraq.

Thus, the claim that Soleimani was killed because he was plotting imminent attacks against Americans is likely bogus. It is probably another lie to justify an otherwise illegal act. Someone as wise as Soleimani would not have literally telegraphed his arrival in Baghdad if he was engaged in such intense planning. Soleimani had exchanged written communication with Iraqi authorities about his visit. Thus he knew America would know of his visit. The Iraqi PM has stated that Soleimani was scheduled to meet him to discuss de-escalation of tensions with the Saudis. In effect, the man was on a peace mission when killed. But the War Machine does not want peace. It profits from conflict.

American leaders from both political parties preface their statements on this matter by stressing that Soleimani was a terrible man, a terrorist with innocent blood on his hands. I shall dispense with this hypocritical nonsense. It is an irrelevant interjection meant to affirm and protect the patriotism of the speaker against criticism. My patriotism is sufficient to take whatever criticism is thrown at it.

American leaders should be quite reticent to claim that death is the just reward for those with innocent blood on their hands. Trump and his immediate predecessors have killed, by a hundred if not a thousand fold, far more innocent people than Soleimani did. If Trump and his cohort were truly concerned with bringing justice to those who kill unarmed people, he would have been more effective by cleaning his own house first. He should have rounded up his predecessors and deposited them and himself into the hands of the nearest constable.

Soleimani was a general of an army that plies its trade in a mean neighborhood. He surely did things forbidden by his faith. Yet, the same can be said about American presidents and generals. This does not render them ripe for assassination. Soleimani did what he thought best for his nation. This made him an enemy but not the devil. Because of his skill and attributes, there was an unprecedented outpouring in Iran after his murder. Several millions of people came out to honor their fallen icon. Ordinary men and women do not normally grieve at the demise of evil. What they see in Soleimani was bravery and patriotism. Whether that patriotism and bravery are misplaced is another question. Yet, if we ignore the point that his countrymen perceive him as lost greatness, then America will gravely misjudge how the Iranian nation thinks it must proceed after burying their fallen hero.

Thus far, Iran has replied with rockets fired at American installations in Iraq. Iran has purposefully avoided causing American casualties. Trump meanwhile has claimed victory and seeks to put this behind him quickly; he fears if he tarries that it all may explode in his face. Reportedly, he went to the extent of using Qatari intermediaries to signal to the Iranians that he would not respond if Teheran struck in ways that did not cost American lives. Thus, a potential war may have been reduced to what is now a theatrical display of missiles in the sky exploding in ways harmless to life and limb.

However, even such face-saving attempts at de-escalation may have unintended consequences. A Ukrainian passenger flight crashed after leaving Teheran’s airport. Over 170 people were killed. Western nations report the plane was hit accidentally by Iranian missiles that were actually fired with the intent of causing no human harm. Iran disputes this claim, asserting the plane went down because of mechanical failure. The plane was a Boeing. Thus, Iran and America should cooperate on the investigation. But, with so much animus in the way, such cooperation will be nearly impossible. Still, we must await the investigation before prejudging the accident’s cause.

Regardless of the cause, this is an unwanted human tragedy that took place in the midst of intentional human cruelty. Perhaps this terrible loss will douse the hatred and revenge that have brought two nations so close to war. Perhaps it will thaw cold hearts and ignite a spark of humanity in those so inclined toward war.  If so, the loss of the passengers of that plane may have a greater meaning. They might have died so that thousands of others might live outside of war. We live in an imperfect world which means that sometimes tragedy must intervene to prevent even greater calamity.

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(Today we will take a brief holiday from the usual press of current events. We will look at why we act as we do instead of as we should. This, I write from the perspective of a Christian seeking a truer understanding than what mainstream religiosity offers or even tolerates. I believe what follows can be weighed in the balance by those who adhere to any faith or who have no faith in faith at all. I invite you to read on….)

The end of the year draws nigh. By itself, this makes special the season. For those who believe in Jesus the season is made even more special. The number of days between now and Christmas strikes ten. Holiday lights and ornaments flash and sparkle in affluent homes and in establishments seeking to entice the pubic to spend more money than it has. If you take an objective look at this practice, it is a rather strange way to commemorate the one who came from Heaven to save our souls. The connection between one’s spiritual well-being and slipping into debt to purchase another computer, toy or bottle of wine escapes me.

Many things escape me these days. The longer I am in this world, the less accustomed I am to it. It is like a familiar location where the furniture and fixtures are constantly moved about for obscure reasons. Attend your average church this time of year. It advertises itself as a place of breakthrough. Visit the church but once; your life will never be the same. Such language attracts the bedraggled and the desperate. Those in the hard grip of Need will hearken to the call. They enter the church moving swiftly to their seats, hoping to be fed from the eternal mean. They will leave not even realizing they had been fleeced by one of the world’s most successful swindles.

After the carols are sung in loud, shrill chorus by cacophonous voices better left unheard, pastors will solemnly mount their pulpits and methodically clear their throats. Anticipation passes through the gathering like an electric current; the hum barely audible to the human ear.

The pastor tells the people to thank God for surviving the year. All nod in agreement. Next, he commands them to rejoice. The coming year will be one of untold bounty. Don’t fret that your heaping helping of gaudy wealth has yet appeared. The longer the wait, the more massive will be the haul. Your tears of sorrow will become tears of joy when that new car drops from the clouds to land at your front door. They will promise these things because this is what they foretold last year, the year before that and the year before that. It was a lie then. It remains a lie now.

The congregation turns febrile with enthusiasm. Shrieks of ecstatic joy rebound off the ceiling to echo throughout agitated space. People rise and fall back into their chairs as if the seats are afire but they cannot escape because they are tethered to the chairs by invisible elastic bands. Those taking solace in the false comfort shed real tears of relief; they cry for an end to the pain that poverty makes them endure. The preacher will hawk this gospel of venal treasure not because God commanded it. In fact, God abhors such things for they lead people away from, not toward Him. Yet pastors traffic this narcotic because they  know it titillates us to the point where we abandon all wisdom and spiritual balance.

The hope of riches has become like strong drink or an opiate. We must have it. In the words of the swindler at the altar “you must key into the vision” or risk seeing your blessing pass you by to nestle in another’s lap. We become so transfixed by fear that we will pay dearly just to maintain our claim on that hope without even having a legitimate claim on the actual things hoped for. Paralyzed by fear that hope will abandon us, we gladly place our last naira in the collection box. The preacher now can key into his special individual vision. The collection will help pay for the new car he desires or for a bigger church building. On our way back to our chairs from our dance to the collection plate, reality sets in. We slip deeply into our seats. Our mind now grapples with the fact we have no way home. We just emptied our pockets of even our taxi fare.

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Dunned by this reality, we scan the rest of the congregation with vulture eyes. We pinpoint someone of affluence to jostle after service to shake some money from him. Once service ends, we dash to accost the person before he even leaves the building. That man knows such a game is on. He has severally been its victim. He also knows his wallet is not as ample as we suppose. His lifestyle is beyond him. He himself has been sitting in church half listening to the service half thinking about borrowing money from his brother. He does his best to rush to his car before any of a dozen people like us extends an empty beggar’s hand in his face. His massive belly penalizes him. He moves not fast at all.  We catch him before he nears his car and his escape.

He reaches into his pocket to thrust a crumpled note into our hand. He pushes past us, resuming his trot to the car before another hand grabs him. Once inside the car, he curses us with words that would make a profane lorry driver seem chaste. We look down at the grimy note given us. The small amount can only get us halfway home. We curse under our breath, murmuring how could such a big man pinch such small bills? Yet we haven’t the time to pelt him with proper malediction; we have to search out another target to give us money to make up the rest of our fare.

The pastor well knows the hugger-mugger unfolding outside. He does nothing to cure it. At some point during the year, he could have made clear to his members that they should not place their last bit of food or fare money in the offering plate. But he ventures no such remedial advice. It would bring to many beggars his way, requiring him to spend too much on the actual welfare of people. Their welfare is not his prime mission. He already is barely satisfied with what he has collected. He is not in the mood to lessen it in any way for some senseless humanitarian gesture. What happens beyond his hold on the money is of no grave concern.

In the end, it is everyman for himself for if God were wise He would run away from us all. Man remains not his brother’s keeper. If you are the run-of-the-mill pastor, you are likely your brother’s deceiver. For all involved, the time spent in church is but a parody of spiritual uplift; and even this counterfeit item lasted but a fleeting minute after leaving the edifice. For us, for the fake rich man, for the pastor and most of the emotion-driven congregation it was never about emulating the spirit of Jesus. It is mostly about the long and strong pull of money.

God commanded pastors to take care of their flocks.  Thinking himself smarter than God, the pastor tends summarily to the flock that he may primarily focus on building a farmhouse and barn. The barn and house stand majestically while the sheep wander about befuddled and underfed. The medicine he gives to the flock is to tell them to feel better by gazing at the barn and to have a sense of pride that they live in such a handsome structure. However, time comes for him to take the flock to market. Putting little into them, he gets little for them because they are unkempt and malnourished. In the end, he will find that the barn was but a self-built jail that profited him nothing at all.

In their worldview, God has been relegated to the status of an investment broker. We give him a bit of money then he is categorically required to provide us a large return. In this universe, the positions of master and servant are reversed. God is no longer sovereign. He serves as errand boy. He is reduced to the very same role ancient pagans gave their gods. In that belief system, when a worshiper give a sufficiently ample sacrifice, the amoral god must fulfill that person’s desire no matter how vile. Feed the god’s appetite; and he does even your most dishonest bidding. The God of the Christian faith is of a different sort. For this reason, He instructed Moses to tell the people “I Am That I Am” (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh) sent Moses unto them.  The divine name means God is Being itself. As the Supreme Being, he is sovereign above all things.

He is unlike the mercurial idols of pagan worship who move for or against a person at the slightest whim. It also means he cannot be bought via sacrifice. He does only that which comports with His nature. Notwithstanding the breadth of a person’s sacrifice, God will not act contrary to His own laws. Any such sacrifice is but waste. We are to bend to His will, not Him to ours. Thus, it is written God prefers obedience more than sacrifice. Somehow, this vital point the preachers of today miss. When they sing “Give Me That Old Time Religion,” they pine not for the times of the early Christians, They actually dream of the days of the ancient pagans, the times when man influenced the gods as much as the gods influenced man.

Thus, they espouse the power of positive confession. They have their flocks duped that if they say a thing long enough that thing shall come to pass. This has been taken to inane extremes. The other day, an early morning call punctured my sleep. The voice on the other end proclaimed that he was “rich.” I congratulated him on his newfound bounty and started to return to my slumber. Before I could drop the phone, the man asked for money.

That woke me. I was curious why a newly enriched man would need to borrow from the likes of me. We talked. I found out his cupboard was bare. However, his religious teacher had taught him to practice positive confession. After inquiring whether he had changed faiths, I told him it was his right to belief as he wished. However, Christianity and the doctrine of positive confession cannot easily coexist; to hold to one you must eventually discard the other. If you believe God is sovereign, then only He can call things into being. Humans have no such power.

Jesus admonished that we cannot add an inch to our height or change anything by obsessing over a matter. To believe that we can bring something into existence is to arrogate the power of God. Anyone who claims Christianity as their faith should avoid that misstep and certainly avoid teaching it to others.

Combined with the belief in positive confession, the exercise known as the Sinners Prayer leads many into a spiritual cul-de-sac.  At most of our church services comes the dramatic moment toward the end of the session. The frocked man in the front persuades the wayward in the back pews to step forth and accept Christ. All we must do is mutter a 30 second prayer. Then, forever saved we are. No additional spiritual growth required; nor do we need to improve our conduct. Since we have already qualified for Heaven, there is no need for change. This facile message enables us to affix our sights on the material things we want. This enables us to cloak our materialism as the workings of the spirit. Greed acquisition masquerades as righteous virtue. Instead of bringing people closer to God, this device works much like the sayings of the Pharisees. It hardens the heart, erecting a barrier between God and man where He continues to see us but we cannot get nearer to Him.

Those who espouse this combination of positive confession and sinner’s prayer mix an injurious mix. They lead their flock to the slaughter. When Jesus referred to wolves in sheep’s clothing, it is of such men he spoke. Read the gospels of Jesus backward and forward 100 times. No inkling of instant salvation by uttering a prayer is to be found. Throughout his teachings, the constant theme is obey and follow Jesus’s commandments. Pick up your cross daily, not drive that new Mercedes. That is the command. However, sitting behind the wheel of a new car is so much more enjoyable.

If you mentioned the sinner’s prayer to Christ’s disciples they would have looked at you with bewilderment. They knew of no such doctrine. None of the great teachers of antiquity or the Middle Ages would have known what you meant. This prayer did not creep into the belief until the 19th century. The advent of revivalism and sensationalist itinerant ministers in America during that period sparked this innovation. It was basically a device used to attract to the revival tent those who otherwise would not attend a church service. If offered eternal salvation in exchange for standing before a crowd and repeating a few words for less than a minute, even the flintiest person will take the offer. This prayer that so many of us take so seriously began as a public relations gimmick by performer-pastors seeking to fill their revival tents with standing room only crowds.

Many will say I am wrong. They will say that Paul wrote about confessing the name of Jesus. Sadly, the English translation for the Greek is again rather poor. “Confess” is used as the translation of the Greek word “homologeo,” meaning of the same mind. The deeper meaning of the term is that of discarding one’s former beliefs to fully embrace those of Jesus. It means to proclaim you will begin to reshape your mind to comport to the teachings of the Nazarene. Merely saying you believe in him is insufficient. You must think like him which means to move from your prior attitudes toward using his to guide your life. The sinner’s prayer is futile to this more intensive transformation.

If Christians are to do better and make for a better society we must erase the confusion and better explain things to our people so they come to fully understand that the requirements of their faith are much more stringent than they had been led to believe.  They must also be told that many things previously given them as articles of the faith were made of fabric woven on a different spindle. A starting point is December 25. We are more likely to find a city of dancing whales in the middle of the desert than Jesus was born on December 25. Again, if you went to the Disciples suggesting they celebrate their teacher’s birthday on December 25, they would hurriedly depart from you as one would from a rapid canine. Unlike you, they would be well aware that, for centuries before them, December 25 was date for celebrating Saturnalia, the sun god (Sol Invictus), and the Winter Solstice. These celebrations were of the raucous libertine sort. Sol Invictus was the official deity of ancient Rome before the advent of the Roman Catholic Church. When the Church became the official religion, a dilemma ensued. The new Church needed to attract sun god worshippers. The solution was to continue the old festivals but in the name of Jesus instead of the sun god.

Because of this history, early protestant groups, upon breaking from the Papacy in the Reformation, refused to celebrate Christmas. The holiday was outlawed in several states in   America until the 19th century.  Due partially to the Industrial Revolution and the resultant commercialization of society, Christmas became popular. Merchants saw it as a profit maker. Its commercial popularity quickly influenced the Protestant church and changed attitudes within decades. By the early 20th century, what had been outlawed was now a core church belief and ritual.

I raise this not to condemn the observation of Christmas. Many people will say the pagan origins of the celebration have been overcome. This is a plausible stance.  However, people should not be kept in the dark regarding the origins of their spiritual beliefs. People who place their trust in the frocked man in the pulpit should be given the fullest picture of what they are being taught. I am a layman whose knowledge of my faith is unsatisfactory low. Yet, I know these core precepts while many purported men of the cloth seem unaware. This says nothing special about me. It reveals the extraordinary ignorance of too many of the pastors who seek to preside over us.

That they know not gives no cause to condemn them; what is wrong is that they seek not the deeper truths available to them. They’d rather fill the gaps in their knowledge with speculation and blind guess. They then cast their lazy conjecture as the word of God. Instead of spiritually helping people, they impair us. Tis’ not the season to be jolly. Tis’ the season to be wary.

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For powerful nations, particularly the United States, modern war is first fought on the mind, for control of the mind. Only then does it move to the ground to destroy the animate beings and inanimate objects that stand in its way before it confiscates the spoils of its successful exertion.

War is everywhere seen as mortal combat of body against opposing body. In reality, war is a contest of mind and spirit. One side tries to mold world opinion and the mind of its people so that they believe the resort to arms is in the cause of justice. Once it has shaped the minds of friends and onlookers, the attacker turns to break the will and mind of the adversary it has chosen. This task is made easier if the targeted nation is riven by political divisions to the extent that a portion of its population will abet the aggressor.

DOUMA, SYRIA

April 2018. The war to oust the Assad government was not going particularly well. The actual number of Syrians fighting against Assad was but a tiny minority and even that was dwindling. They had failed to win to their side any significant domestic support. The media cast the Syrian battle as a civil war; however, the civil war against Assad was but a minor aside. It would have been over in a matter of weeks if contending domestic forces were left to their own devices. The genuine civilians protests might not have descended as they did but for outside assistance.

In its end as in its beginning, the conflict in Syria had a decidedly foreign aspect; it was but a foreign invasion in disguise.

For various reasons that had nothing to do with their own survival, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, England, France, and others decided the Assad government had to die. These stronger nations deployed some of their own soldiers and intelligence operatives into the fray. In the main, these nations tried to subdue Assad by equipping groups they should have bitterly opposed if they actually believed their propaganda about fighting an existential war against terrorism.

With this span of forces aligned against his weak and feeble nation, Assad should have fallen due to attrition if nothing more dramatic. One has to stop and ponder why a gang-up that could execute a world war would bother to descend on a single weak, struggling nation that harbored no extraterritorial ambitions of its own. However, Assad would find he was not alone against the onslaught. In his harsh and foreboding neighborhood, the identity of one’s friends is most often determined by the identity of one’s enemies.

To protect their own geopolitical interests, Russia and Iran bolstered Assad. They would not let him fail for his demise would have diminished their international stock. For Iran, Assad’s survival was more acute. They needed a friendly government in Damascus as part of their strategy to prevent encirclement and strangulation by the U.S. and its allies in the region. Necessity seems to be more than just the mother of invention. It also appears to be the midwife of ad-hoc defensive alliances.

By early 2018, Syria had withstood the worse. Assad was still on his feet. With Russia and Iran giving significant aid and with most of the population behind him, Assad’s troops started regaining territory previously lost to the invading extremists affiliated with al Qaeda and ISISs. The terrorist groups had been relegated to a few enclaves. One was Douma.

Then came reports of a chemical weapons attack on a hospital in Douma in April of last year. The report was generated by the White Helmets. The group was portrayed to the world as an impartial humanitarian organization focus solely on helping the civilian population through the harshness of war. In reality, the White Helmets were anything but impartial. They were founded by a British military officer which makes tem suspect from the onset. Their funding came from western NGOs that were simply channeling funds from their home governments. The White Helmets were not primarily staffed by medical experts or social workers; they were mostly anti-Assad fighters in disguise.

However, to condition the minds of their people and of world opinion, the propagandists in Washington and London went into overdrive. They needed to further paint Assad as a grotesque man of unalloyed villainy whose every moment is spent conjuring new ways to kill innocents. They needed to depict the Helmets as valorous, pristine heroes risking their lives to save the people from the antics of the monster of Damascus. A film would be done that garnered an Emmy as a documentary; it should have competed for an award along with other works of fiction. The White Helmets would also be nominated for a Noble peace prize. Imagine the gross incongruity of the Western war elite funding  a group of terrorists to masquerade as idealistic peacemakers then lobbying for the deception to be given the world’s foremost humanitarian award. Somewhere, somebody is laughing the conman’s laugh because their subterfuge will be recorded as one of the most outrageous grifts of this or any other century.

Thus, when the White Helmets claimed a chemical attack by the Syrian government much of the world rushed to believe them. However, there were a few doubting minds. The attack made no sense. Assad had gained the upper hand. There was no value in a chemical attack against a target of no military value when such an attack might provoke a strong western response. The alleged site bared no significant evidence of such a gruesome attack. There were no discernible victims with the tell-tale signs of contact with illicit chemicals. The doctors who ran the hospital said no chemical attack occurred.

Even with these visible evidentiary gaps, the West adjudged Assad guilty. America would launch missiles against Assad government military sites. Doubters remained vocal. In an attempt to silence the dissenting voices, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was tasked to dispatch a team to conduct a forensic examination of the alleged attack site. Their report would back the White Helmet’s story. This supported the narrative that Assad was the worst of butchers and that the fight against him had to continue in all its facets until he succumbed.

The only complicating factor is the OPCW report was doctored to the point of being a lie. The OPCW is supposed to be an impartial expert body insulated from politics. Instead, it became nothing but an appendage in the Western drive to demonize and oust Assad.  Immense pressure likely was paced on the scientists to alter their findings. Because a former OPCW employee had a tinge of conscience, we now know the lead investigator for the OPCW field analysis concluded no attack occurred as depicted by the White Helmets. Instead of the suspect canisters being dropped from a Syrian aircraft, the items seemed to have been placed by hand by people on the ground. However, Syria had no ground troops around the location. In other words, the purported scene of tragedy had been staged. The alleged chemical attack was a lie, a false flag endeavor to give America the desired pretext to enter the war in a way that would salvage the waning fortunes of the extremists.

That the chemical attack did not occur gives context and rationale to Trump’s rather feeble military response to the alleged incident. He may have understood that something was amiss. If so, his seemingly ineffectual reply would have been one of the most prudent decisions of an otherwise impetuous White House. One shudders to think if Hillary Clinton had been at the helm. In a prior situation, she harangued a reluctant Obama until he finally relented. The destruction of public safety and relative prosperity in Libya was the result of her dunning. She wanted to do the same but worse in Syria in order to teach Russia, Iran and all minor dictators the world over the grievous consequence that awaits those who defy American hegemony.

Clinton would likely have used the false OPCW report to hammer and bomb Assad and Damascus until flesh and mortar became indistinguishable rubble. Many more people would have died and a nation would have been brought to abject ruin based on a lie.  As she did when Gaddafi was executed, she would have chuckled at the trail of blood that poured at her behest, dismissing it as the necessary costs of America liberating the world so that all nations would be free to obey Washington’s dictates in the manner Washington deigns they should.

Because so many people have been mentally conditioned to see Assad as evil incarnate, I am herein obliged to say what I should not have to say in a more objective era in world affairs.  I am obliged to state something strongly negative about Assad less the Western-oriented reader thinks I have come under some undue nefarious influence. Here it goes: I don’t envy Assad and his record. It is stained with deeds that speak ill of his humanity. I don’t know if Assad is a bad man who revels in bad deeds or a once good man turned bad by events and forces larger than he and not of his choosing.

The West condemns him for killing his own people. Yet that makes him no worse than most other dictators. The number of countries that do not unnecessarily kill their own is a lesser sum than those that doo kill their own.  In fact, many other governments not only kill their own but they venture far and wide killing the people of nations that pose them no harm. It is indeed a strange world that sees more danger in a leader who confines his homicides within his own borders than in leaders who, absent the vital cause of self-defense, venture about killing the peoples of other lands. Any unwarranted killing is an act of evil. But it would seem that international peace is placed more in jeopardy by nations whose bloodletting extends beyond their borders.

In the end, it is for the Syrian people to decide if Assad should go or stay. The rest of the world should back away and allow Syria to rebuild and evolve as its people see fit. Anything else would be to continue an improper invasion. The blood of that improper continuance will be on the hands of those who persist in invading the country more so than on the government of the day.

Showing that America was not in this venture for the altruistic reasons of protecting the Syrian people, President Trump announced he was through fighting Assad provided Assad does not try to reclaim Syria’s oil fields. The fields rightfully belong to Syria. Trump has no recognizable claim to them; yet, Trump has deployed American troops to keep the Syrian government from exercising control of Syrian property on Syrian soil. Trump is no warrior but he would risk the lives of American soldiers just to pilfer Syria oil. Trump reveals the true nature of the war against Syria. It never has been about the people. It has all been about establishing an even greater presence in the region in order to dictate the location and control of prospective oil and gas pipelines in the future. Billions of dollars in revenue are at stake. The lives of a hundreds of thousands is a small price for such a bountiful payload.

Stealing the property of another nation is nothing if not a crime. Trump is a modern day buccaneer. That this theft came as he was facing impeachment makes it more blatant. If the American government was truly one of laws, the use of American soldiers to pick another nation’s pocket would feature in the impeachment hearings. However, this gross violation received not a mentioned during the sessions. The American government has ceased being one of law; it is nothing more than a machine of conquest. Those who seek to impeach Trump for some trivial phone call see nothing untoward in him decimating another nation’s economic base. Their true gripe with Trump sizing the oil fields was not that he did it but that there was not more to take.

The famous American wit, Mark Twain once observed, “God invented war so that Americans would learn geography.” Now America commerces in war in an attempt to master geography by bringing all nations under its thumb as if these venerable societies were wayward urchins in need to strict parenting.  America’s leaders now overextend their empire. An overextended empire is one that has both signed and witnessed its own death warrant. Such is the ultimate fate of any nation that for too long rests its actions on the lies of war.

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