Interrogating the White Race

Trayvon Martin, Reza Aslan and Jesus are linked, not just because they have been in the news lately but because there seems to be, thanks to Fox News, a lot of noise around race, religion, good and evil. Most of it a disconnected framing of beliefs built on prejudice.

Rather than moving away from bigotry, right-wing media seems to want to inflame it. Is this a strategy to keep public fears and prejudices chained to hierarchy and oppression?

Christ with beard (Wikimedia commons)

In an article titled Who Owns Jesus? Tasbeeh Herwees interrogates the interview between Fox News' Lauren Green and Reza Aslan. Tasbeeh says "The insinuation underlying Green's questions was that a Muslim writing about Jesus was not just outlandish, but inconceivable without some kind of hidden agenda."

How dare Aslan write about Jesus when he is not white? That would be the question among many people who are informed only by popular propaganda.

Who knew, without having read Herwees article, that middle eastern people were found to be white in a 1915 court case when Syrian immigrant George Dow fought to overturn a ruling that proclaimed him ineligible for naturalization because he wasn't white. A federal appeals court ruled in his favour because of Jesus!

Aslan remained patient and rational throughout the interview as though he were explaining something to an eight year old.  Perhaps because "Aslan, like many Muslims, faces this kind of suspicion in his everyday life - by policemen, TSA officers and passers-by who find his dark skin and foreign name threatening" says Herwees.

Where did the term "white race" come from?  It entered the "European languages in the late 17th century beginning with the racialization of slavery at the time, in the context of the Atlantic slave trade and enslavement of native peoples in the Spanish Empire", says Wikipedia.

In this context it could be argued that economics required this category so that the "white man" could, with a free conscience colonise America, India and Africa.  But it seems it was not enough.  Scientific studies had to be pursued to support the white man's entitlement to exploit and abuse other people for profit.

Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) created Crania Americana (1839), An Inquiry into the Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America and Crania Aegyptiaca (1844), and concluded that "the ancient Egyptians were not African but white and that Caucasians and Negroes were already distinct three thousand years ago." (Wikipedia)

After centuries of the white man's savage treatment towards aboriginal peoples it seems like some are desperate to hold onto the notions of white supremacy, long after the survey of human mitochondrial DNA (Cann, Stonekind, and Wilson. Nature. 1987), points out that "all mitochondrial DNAs stem from one woman" who lived 200,000 years ago in Africa.

Or more to the point, it seems like capitalism requires a global state of injustice and structural violence in order to maintain its hegemony. But this can only be maintained while we, the majority of people, remain in a state of preferred ignorance and apathy.

Prison Industrial Complex

The murder of a teenage boy by an armed vigilante, George Zimmerman, is only one crime set within a legal and penal system that has criminalized poverty. Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jails and prisons, however, they each can generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to$40,000 a year. This use of the bodies of the poor to make money for corporations fuels the system of neoslavery that defines our prison system.

                                                                                         Chris Hedges

The Economics of Blood

If we look back at the development in the twentieth century, the most devastating cause of human suffering, of deprivation of human dignity, freedom, and peace has been the culture of violence in resolving differences and conflicts. the challenge before us is to make our new century of dialogue and of peaceful co-existence.
- Dalai Lama

Found on the Charter for Compassion email newsletter.

With Zimmerman, the Scandal Is What’s Legal (Andrew Rosenthal - The New York Times Taking Note)

...  because  in Florida you can carry a gun in public, follow an innocent stranger and then stand your ground.

Can this happen in Canada? Is it possible that some time in the future the laws here will be the same as in Florida? What will make it easy for gun laws such as this to be entrenched in law? What can we do to avoid it?

A reply from Bob Lane ...

1. Yes,
2. Possible.
3. Vote conservative.
4. Vote Green. Pay attention. Be diligent.

Elizabeth May: this is what a leader looks like

May taken National Day of Action, Electoral Reform

The leader of the Green Party is an example of what a leader is. She focuses on the issues. She informs Canadians about what she is doing, what needs to be done, and why. Visit her website for well written and easy to read articles.

There is so much trivial noise created from various interests that the really important issues don't get the coverage they deserve.  But if you want to find out more about why things happen, their causes and what we can do about them visit the sites that inform.

A good leader knows that our collective survival is built on social justice not popularity.

Other leaders include, David Suzuki, Council of Canadians, staff at Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives , Karen Armstrong, and Thomas Mulcair.

The New Bourgeoisie

Is the new bourgeoisie a rising middle class who will bring about creative destruction - turning the world away from capitalism toward environmentalism?

The shocking images of rail cars full of petroleum blowing up and burning down the town of Lac-Megantic in Quebec, as tragic, and scary as it is, is only a fraction of how unregulated capitalism has wiped out the common wisdom of social responsibility for the extreme wealth of a few.  

In other words, work safety, living wages, health, social costs, justice, and standard of living, are all irrelevant arguments because life (nature) is irrelevant in the current pursuit of profit.  To care about humanity is naive and sentimental.  The mainstream media daily provides us with an inventory of examples. 

Weather, once the topic of polite society, has become political, with every extreme event being an indicator that we are not in control. Heat waves, cyclones, droughts and floods threaten to end the Anthropocene.  Yet the anthro-hyenas refuse to pay attention.

After centuries of class restrictions, the brave entrepreneurs of nineteenth century America were not going to let tradition get in the way of a new world dream.  The economy and the market place became the opiate of the people, and although the rest of the world applauded its inventions and has benefited from unbridled enthusiasm - now when this nation is the only remaining super-power, the American people are not the recipients of this wealth. (But neither were the British people when Britain "ruled the waves".) 

Chris Hedges has identified "sacrifice zones" where "Americans are trapped in endless cycles of poverty, powerlessness, and despair as a direct result of capitalistic greed".

Humanity is the sacrifice to this current fundamentalist 'religion', because wherever nature is not taken care of, where people are not allowed hope, dignity and worth, life ends in violence. Perhaps suddenly or slowly and painfully. 

Witnessing the destruction of eco systems is a mental health issue.  How can we be reasonable, nurturing and creative people when all the signs point to pollution?

Power-worship is the most devastating, debilitating mental illness of all when it threatens our survival, and prevents us from seeing what is in front of our noses.

Our governments are deluded. Britain's "former energy minister John Hayes described concerns about the rainforests of Malaysia and Indonesia – which, with their tigers, orangutans and thousands of unique species, are being destroyed to grow biofuels – as “bourgeois views” writes George Monbiot.  

This is the Orwellian new-speak we were warned about in 1984 - that something as essential as stewardship of the earth should be trivialized with words that mean the opposite. 

So those of us whose love of the natural world is a source of constant joy and constant despair, who wish to immerse ourselves in nature as others immerse themselves in art, who try to defend the marvels which enthrall us, find ourselves labelled – from the Mail to the Guardian – as romantics, escapists and fascists. That, I suppose, is the price of confronting the power of money. (Monbiot)

So let us be the new bourgeoisie. Let us agonize over how we, as individuals and collectives, can creatively redesign the operating system so that diversity and abundant nature is given the dignity it deserves.  Let capitalism represent our creativity as it did among the shop keepers of old. Let socialism represent the well-being and health of all. Let fundamentalism be the domain of roots so that vegetables, fruit, trees and families can thrive. Let the salons begin.

How to Win the War

Foyle's War is a TV drama written by Anthony Horowitz that takes place during and shortly after WWII.

So far I have only seen up to 1944 but I am impressed with the high quality of this production because of several reasons.  First the characters are not simply foils to the plot - they are written and acted as real people living in difficult conditions. Second the program does not stray from the context of that time. Third what is revealed is the many ways in which war oppresses people, even those who are rational, ethical, well educated, living in highly developed societies.  Each episode reveals the destruction by showing us how the characters deal with the difficult situations.

The most heart breaking episode is "Broken Souls" which tells the story of the mental health of soldiers and civilians.  It focuses on a psychiatrist who is operating at a very compassionate level even though he has lost his home and family.  Coming from Poland to England he works with ex-military men whose lives have been interrupted by mental illness. Like the character of Foyle he is an example of a deep commitment to life and the moral standards that demands.  We watch the souls breaking and being broken by the conversations and conflicts between each character, and each character deserves compassion.

(This compares to blockbuster movies - where the good are magical and the evil mechanical robots who struggle for power with high tech weapons.  Watching a fine production such as Foyle's War really contrasts with the modern propaganda for the arms industry.)

In the "Broken Souls" episode the good doctor discovers that his wife was killed in a death camp, and filled with remorse for surviving his family he attempts to kill himself.  His suicide is interrupted and he is rescued.  But later he discovers through a Pathe News Reel the conditions of the prison camp his family were taken to.  Distraught he leaves the movie theatre and walks by the river where he is knocked down by a young German prisoner of war trying to escape.  It is while he is down in the mud that his reason is overtaken with rage just for a few moments and he picks up a rock, throws it at the German, killing him.

It is the doctor's retelling of this event that is the poetry, the illustration of how a soul is broken.  It is the narrative of every fine soldier, healer and human who survives the break down of the world around them.  It is the door to our understanding how no-one wins the war in the end. There are always broken souls who seek to mend them by causing the next war, and the next, and the next - and so it goes.

The only way to win the war is to value life more than power. This too is not an end to war forever, not a lasting solution, because once we attempt to control the lives of others, we step back into the devil's deal of power and move away from life. This is a principle of our evolution not a strategy or an ideology.