Ed Felien : A Good [Angry White] Man With a Gun

Image from The L Magazine.

Pissed-off patriot:
‘A good man with a gun’

These angry white men are doing their best to bring back an idealized past that never really existed

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / December 12, 2013

“The only thing that stops a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun.” -- Wayne LaPierre, National Rifle Association

Paul Anthony Ciancia believed he was that good man. He believed he was a warrior against the traitors who were taking over our government, bankrupting our currency, and trying to establish a New World Order.

On Friday, November 1, Ciancia walked into the Los Angeles airport and began firing an assault rifle, killing Transportation Service Administration (TSA) officer Gerardo Hernandez and wounding several others, until police officers were able to bring him down with several rounds to his midsection.

Ciancia’s duffel bag contained a handwritten, signed letter stating that he had “made the conscious decision to try to kill” multiple TSA employees and that he wanted to “instill fear in their traitorous minds.” The note said he would be happy if he managed to kill just one TSA agent. “Black, white, yellow, brown, I don’t discriminate.” It also mentioned fiat currency and NWO (the New World Order).

One official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the note referred to how the gunman believed his constitutional rights were being violated by TSA searches and that he was a “pissed-off patriot” upset at former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Austin's Alex Jones, a popular right-wing conspiracy theorist, host of Infowars.com (“because there is a war on for your mind”), had ranted weeks before about how the government had always meant to arm TSA agents as part of the plan for the New World Order’s authoritarian and socialist domination of America.

The Southern Poverty Law Center explains:

The New World Order refers to a longstanding conspiracy theory that today, in its most popular iteration, claims that global elites are plotting to form a socialistic “one-world government” that would crush American freedoms. Often, the root of the alleged conspiracy is traced to the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve and the adoption of fiat currency -- paper money that is not backed by gold, as it once was in the U.S.

So-called Patriots also increasingly see the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which produces intelligence assessments of extremists that are distributed to other law enforcement agencies, as an enemy and even a collaborator in the New World Order conspiracy. Many believe DHS has targeted their movement and is somehow connected to the alleged construction of concentration camps by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The purported camps are thought to be meant for those Americans who resist a coming national seizure of all weapons from U.S. citizens.

The TSA, short for the Transportation Security Administration, is an agency of the DHS charged with ensuring the security of transportation, most notably air transportation. Although it has not been widely singled out by Patriots, it has been subjected to criticism by far-right homophobes, among others, who have alleged that TSA agents engaging in hand searches are really sexually groping travelers.

In his note, Ciancia called former director of DHS Janet Napolitano a “bull dyke.”

In many ways, Ciancia is no different from the other crazed lone gunmen who went berserk: Jared Loughner and the Gabrielle Giffords shooting; Wade Michael Page randomly killing six people in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin; Adam Lanza and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings -- all young white males who couldn’t find their place in the world, couldn’t find work, couldn’t find meaning.

Michael Kimmel, an authority on male violence against women and the author of No Safe Place, says, in an interview with PBS:

The traditional model of masculinity has been around for an awfully long time, basically it posits that men have to be... well the basic rules of manhood, if I were to put them this way are, no sussy stuff, that’s the first rule. You can never do anything that even remotely hints of femininity. The second rule is to be a big wheel. You know, we measure masculinity by the size of your paycheck, wealth, power, status, things like that.

The third rule is to be a sturdy oak. You show that you’re a man by never showing your emotions. And the fourth rule is Give ‘em Hell. Always go forward, exude an aura of daring and aggression in everything that you do. And this model of masculinity has been around for an awfully long time.

I think Kimmel is right in his psychological assessment, and the actions of these men can be seen on the one hand as a grand and deluded burst of masculine assertion. As if by this one act they will redeem their lives.

But it would be wrong to ignore the political content of their actions. Jared Loughner was attempting to assassinate a Democratic Congresswoman. In January 2011, I wrote:

Kelly [Gabrielle Giffords’ opponent in the last election] was supported in his campaign by ALIPAC (Americans for Legal Immigration PAC). John McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said of the group, “It is backed by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites.” He was also supported by Sarah Palin. She appeared with him on Fox News and said, “ I don’t feel worthy to lace his combat boots.” Giffords’ congressional district was one of 20 Democratic districts that McCain carried in 2008 where the incumbent voted for health care reform.

On her website, Palin said, “We’ll aim for these races and many others. This is just the first salvo in a fight to elect people across the nation who will bring common sense to Washington.” Their districts were on a U.S. map located by crosshairs. After the shooting, Palin’s campaign denied the crosshairs were meant to appear as targets, even though she had also said on March 23, “Don’t Retreat, Instead, RELOAD!”

The imagery and the rhetoric is clear, and it’s consistent with Republican rhetoric throughout the 2010 campaign:

• Robert Lowry, Republican candidate in Florida, fired at a target with his opponent’s initials written on it.
• Rep. Allen West’s first choice for chief of staff, Joyce Kaufman, said, “If ballots don’t work, bullets will.”
• Sharron Angle talked about Second Amendment remedies in her race against Harry Reid in Nevada.
• Michele Bachman said she wanted her supporters “armed and dangerous.”

Jesse Kelly held a fundraiser in June where he advertised: “Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”

Minimum donation: $50.

Wade Michael Page could justify randomly killing six people in a Sikh temple because he believed they were a threat to racial purity in America.

Law enforcement officials told CBS that Adam Lanza may have been motivated by a desire to outdo Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian Neo-Nazi who killed 77 people, mostly children, in July 2011.

These acts, then, can be seen as part of a tradition begun by Timothy McVeigh, who detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, that killed 168 people. A militia sympathizer, he hoped to inspire a revolt against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government.

These angry white men are doing their best to bring back an idealized past that never really existed -- where white male authority was unquestioned, where there was order in society and everyone knew their place, where God and the flag were respected.

In many ways the right is imitating the left-wing armed revolutionaries of the ’60s, Che Gueverra and the Weather Underground. What is needed now is not to react to this violence with more violence. What is needed is to help these people chill out.

Liberals and left-wing progressives don’t spend much time listening to right-wing talk radio. Any spare time for the mass media is reserved for The Daily Show or Stephen Colbert or Saturday Night Live. And the reward is a self-satisfied smirk and a feeling of superiority. It must be how the artists and intellectuals in Weimar Germany felt when they laughed at that funny man with the little mustache.

We should not try to fight fire with fire. We need to fight fire with water. We need to listen to right-wing talk radio. We need to call up Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Alex Jones and gently pour water on their incendiary ideas. The alternative is continued violence, continued killings, continued chaos. It is up to us to make sense of it and help our right-wing brothers and sisters to simmer down.

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly where this article was also published. Read more articles by Ed Felien on The Rag Blog.]

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Ed Felien : Komen and Cancer: Cause and Effect?

These women are protesting the Komen Foundation's defunding of Planned Parenthod -- later retracted -- at headquarters in Dallas,  February 7, 2012. But there may be other reasons to say "Shame on Komen!" Photo by Rex C. Curry / AP. Image from PBS.

Komen Foundation:
Is the 'Race for the Cure'
actually a 'Race to Obscure'?

Even more troubling than the revelation of their right-wing anti-choice agenda was the realization among many critics that principal sponsors of the Race for the Cure produce or use products that actually cause cancer.

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / April 18, 2013

MINNEAPOLIS -- Last year the Komen Foundation, the chief sponsor of Race for the Cure, pulled $700,000 in funding from Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening and service grants as part of the right-wing attempts to defund and destroy Planned Parenthood. A storm of protest forced them to retract their move and apologize to Planned Parenthood, but damage to their brand may have already been done.

But, even more troubling than the revelation of their right-wing anti-choice agenda was the realization among many critics that principal sponsors of the Race for the Cure produce or use products that actually cause cancer. A race for the cure might be a way to run away from an honest disclosure of the causes of cancer. A Race for the Cure might just be a Race to Obscure.

The national Komen Foundation Partners include American Airlines, BMW, and Ford Motor Company. In an article, “Relationship Between Genetic Damage from PAH in Breast Tissue and Breast Cancer,” F. Perera and others in Carcinogenesis, July 2000, say Polcyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are widespread environmental contaminants that are generated by gasoline and oil combustion and also are found in cigarette smoke and broiled meat. In lab experiments, PAH cause mammary cancer in animals.

Another Komen Foundation Partner is OxyChem. They manufacture bonding resins, chlorine, polyuerethane chain extenders, and solvents. The American Journal of Industrial Medicine in 1991 noted that breast cancer mortality was 1.64 times higher among pharmaceutical workers and 1.51 times higher among electrical equipment manufacturing workers who are often exposed to high levels of solvents.

Last year one of the local platinum sponsors was C. H. Robinson, a freight forwarder that used mostly diesel powered 16-wheelers to transport 11.5 million shipments. But diesel fumes cause lung cancer, the World Health Organization declared in June of 2012, and experts said they are more carcinogenic than secondhand cigarette smoke. “There is a clear association, a causal role, of diesel engine exhaust, particularly with lung cancer in humans,” according to Dr Kurt Straif.

Over 10 years ago, the Minneapolis Women’s Cancer Resource Center sponsored "The Toxic Industry Tour -- Stop Cancer Where it Starts." Their first stop was the downtown garbage burner because of its dioxin emissions. From their report:

The Hennepin County Incinerator located in downtown Minneapolis emits dioxin, which causes cancer. Dioxin is a by-product of burning chlorine-based products such as #3 polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic in children’s toys, bottles, and paper and wood products. Plastic wraps such as Saran Wrap are particularly toxic.

Dioxin is a known carcinogen as classified by the U. S. EPA. Dioxin is the most harmful substance known to humankind. The U. S. EPA Dioxin Reassessment Report issued after years of study found dioxin to be 10 times more harmful to human health than originally reported.

Municipal incinerators like HERC are the major air polluters emitting dioxin, followed by hospital incinerators. The pulp and paper making industry is another major polluter of the air and rivers and ultimately fish and humans.

The most common form of dioxin is a byproduct of the bleach used to make paper white. When that paper is burned, dioxin is released. Winona LaDuke wrote in The Circle, in August 2001, “With the help of new sophisticated tracking mechanisms, it is found that the residue of our own garbage is what is in the breast milk of Alaskan women.” Of the top 10 sources of dioxin in the breast milk of Inuit women in a remote Canadian village, two came from Minnesota.

In their pamphlet “Dioxin Phase-out -- Why we can’t wait,” the Women’s Cancer Resource Center says,

Most Americans get 280 times the EPA’s "safe" amount of dioxin daily. We’re exposed to 95% of the dioxin through meat and dairy products. That’s because airborne dioxin coming from incinerators or factories can travel 1,000 miles, settling onto plants, soil and water. Grazing animals eat the plants and store the dioxin in their fats and internal organs. As we eat full-fat milk, cheese, or fatty meats or fish, we take in dioxin.

Hennepin County Environmental Services says it does the following with:

• Poison, such as pesticides, insecticides, etc.  ("incinerate them at very high temperatures")
• Corrosive products (acids and bases), such as lime remover, oven cleaner, etc.("these wastes are incinerated")
• Flammable solids, such as adhesives, driveway sealer, roofing tars, etc. ("high temperature incineration")
• Oxidizers, such as bleach, hardeners, etc. ("high temperature incineration")

Incineration doesn’t get rid of the problem, it just puts it into the air.

The Toxic Industry Tour made two other stops.

They stopped at the corporate offices of TruGreen-Chemlawn because the company uses dicamba, a known carcinogen, the organochlorine 2,4-D (the same compound as Agent Orange sold as Trimec). The National Cancer Institute found children are 6.5 times more likely to develop leukemia if their parents used pesticides.

They stopped at Koch Refinery because they emit benzene. Benzene is the same carcinogen in cigarettes. The company has since seen fit to comply with Minnesota Pollution Control Agency regulations and stop their emissions.

Carol Johnson, the environmental program coordinator at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, said in 2006, “In 1940 1 in 20 women had breast cancer; in 1972 it was 1 in 14; today it is 1 in 8. Are we willing to accept 1 in 4? Because that’s where we’re headed.”

Barbara Ehrenreich, speaking about the Komen Foundation and Race for the Cure in a speech at the 2002 Breast Cancer Action Town Meeting, said: “While they want a cure -- we ALL do -- they say almost nothing about the need to find the CAUSE of breast cancer, which is very likely environmental. This omission makes sense: Breast cancer would hardly be the darling of corporate charities if its complexion changed from pink to green.”

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly where this article was also published. Read more articles by Ed Felien on The Rag Blog.]

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ELECTION 2012 / Ed Felien : Forward Over the Fiscal Cliff?

Taking the dive! Image from Photobucket.
The next step:
Forward over the fiscal cliff?

If John Boehner wants to give the car keys to the crazies, and they’re willing to drive over the cliff, then the rest of us should step back and begin to talk to our moderate Republican friends.

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / November 12, 2012

Obama’s victory is a victory for women’s rights, for the rights of immigrants to dignity and a path to citizenship, a victory for African-Americans in their continuing struggle against racism, and a victory for working people.

Romney vowed to defund Planned Parenthood, appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v Wade and, by making abortion illegal, he would have made women’s bodies the property of the state. He would have made immigrants unwelcome in this country. He would have strengthened the hand of racists in this country.

And he would have phased out social security and medicare, eliminated Obamacare (that has guaranteed medical coverage for all Americans), cut health and safety standards for workers, and driven down wages in the public and private sectors.

That didn’t happen. We’re not moving backwards. But there’s no guarantee that we’ll move forward unless the Democrats put some starch in their backbones and get ready for the fight of their lives. The battle for the future has not been won. That battle has just begun.

Democrats just added to their majority in the Senate. They now have 53 Democrats and two Independents who will probably vote with them against 45 Republicans. But one senator can filibuster a bill and stop it, and it takes 60 votes to override that filibuster.

The Republicans have demonstrated that they will do everything to obstruct progress in the Senate. They have used the filibuster 370 times in Harry Reid’s tenure as Majority Leader of the Senate. During an even more contentious period Lyndon Johnson, who served as Majority Leader for the same amount of time as Harry Reid, had to face just one Republican filibuster.

There is nothing sacred about the filibuster. It is not part of the Constitution. It is a relatively modern invention meant to protect the state’s rights of southern racists.

The rules of the Senate are adopted on the first day of the session. The Democrats must adopt rules eliminating the filibuster, and they also must eliminate the rule that allows one senator to put a hold on a presidential appointment. If we are to move forward, then we have to smash through these barriers that Mitch McConnell and his Southern racist pals have set in our way.

The Democrats made some gains in the House but not enough to control it. There are still some races that are too close to call, but it seems the Republicans will have a 40-vote edge. In order to hold his caucus together, John Boehner has had to cater to the crazies.

But the Tea Party Caucus had only 61 members during the last session, and two of the worst of that lot were defeated: Roscoe Bartlett and Joe Walsh (another Republican expert on women’s health, who said abortion isn’t necessary to protect the life of the mother because women never die from childbirth any more. According to Amnesty International: “During 2004 and 2005, more than 68,000 women nearly died in childbirth in the USA. Each year, 1.7 million women suffer a complication that has an adverse effect on their health.”).

All the Democrats need is 21 Republicans to join with them in a Congress of National Reconciliation -- a bi-partisan Congress that will put the good of the country ahead of partisan wrangling. Up to now, the threat against moderate Republicans has been, “If you don’t cooperate with the Tea Party, then we’ll run against you in the Primary and beat you.”

But what has happened when they’ve done that? What happened to Todd Aikin, Richard Mourdock, and Christine O’Donnell when those Tea Party darlings won their party’s primary? They went down to defeat when faced with Democratic moderates. If 21 moderate Republicans would caucus with the Democrats, then the Democrats must offer them the Speaker’s role and the chairs of all the committees.

But more than that, the Democrats should offer them help in their next election: if they stand with the Democrats in trying to move this country forward, then the Democrats must stand with them when the Tea Party reactionaries try to move this country backwards by trying to run over them.

There is a lot at stake. We need to make our tax laws more fair. The rich must pay their fair share. We need to make sure Social Security and Medicare are solvent, but we cannot cut any of the benefits.

And in order to get this country back on the road to prosperity we need to help the people at the bottom of the ladder of opportunity. If we raise the federal minimum wage, that will translate immediately into more goods purchased, more homes built, and more prosperity for everyone.

Right now we are looking over a financial cliff. What would happen if we went over that cliff? If Congress does nothing, then there would be automatic cuts in Defense that would close down unnecessary military bases in Southern states and foreign countries.

The Bush tax cuts would expire. That means working people would have a slight increase in their payroll taxes, but it would also mean rich people would begin to pay their fair share. It should be easy to restore the tax cuts for working people in the next Congress.

So, if John Boehner wants to give the car keys to the crazies, and they’re willing to drive over the cliff, then the rest of us should step back and begin to talk to our moderate Republican friends. This financial cliff could be a driveway where we could work together for a bi-partisan Congress of National Reconciliation.

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly. Read more articles by Ed Felien on The Rag Blog]

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Ed Felien : Batman and the Culture of Violence

Batman image from Batman: The Amimated Series / Wikimedia Commons.
Batman, The Joker, Nazis
and the culture of violence in America

Plato recognized the subversive value of art. He knew that art didn’t just hold a mirror up to society and reflect everything. It holds a lens that selects, frames, and distorts.

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / September 6, 2012

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” -- Oscar Wilde

Should we blame the Batman movies for the tragedy in Aurora? After murdering the people in the movie theater, James Holmes put his guns in his car and calmly told the police, “I’m the Joker.” He had booby-trapped his apartment so that anyone entering it would have set off massive explosions probably killing many more people. This begins to sound like The Dark Knight, where The Joker blew up a hospital because he was frustrated in getting revenge.

What explains the perverse pathology of The Joker? At one point in the movie he says he mutilated himself in sympathy with his wife who had been scarred by a knife, but later he says:

You wanna know how I got these scars? My father was a drinker and a fiend. And one night he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn’t like that. Not. One. Bit. So, me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it. He turns to me and says, "Why so serious?" Comes at me with the knife. "WHY SO SERIOUS?" He sticks the blade in my mouth. "Let’s put a smile on that face." And...

In the comic book original, The Joker is disfigured by falling into a toxic vat while robbing a chemical factory. The story of child abuse and watching his mother be victimized by his father is the invention of Christopher Nolan, the writer and director of the series.

Nolan was praised by critics for making The Joker psychologically believable. Whether the incident of child abuse actually happened to The Joker is irrelevant. The story is so compelling and horrifying that it seems to justify even more horrible acts of revenge on an indifferent world. Anyone who has been victimized and feels that the world has turned away could identify with The Joker’s demand that the world take note of his dimension of pain.

Nolan’s comment on the tragedy in Aurora was self-serving and willfully naïve:

I believe movies are one of the great American art forms, and the shared experience of watching a story unfold on screen is an important and joyful pastime. The movie theater is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me.

The Joker is fascinating in his capacity for violence and destruction, but no one would call him “joyful” or “innocent and hopeful,” and The Joker is more than half the weight of The Dark Knight.

Children learn to speak by imitating their parents. They learn to act by imitating role models. Cultural values are taught by popular culture. What is acceptable is what is popular. Don’t artists have to accept responsibility for the lessons their art teaches?

This is not a new question. The last time it was debated seriously was when The Beatles’ White Album was blamed for inspiring Charlie Manson and his gang to murder Sharon Tate and four others in August of 1969. Certainly, today, we consider The Beatles joyful, innocent and hopeful, but there are songs on the White Album that are very dark.

Consider even the deliberately humorous “Bungalow Bill”:

Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

The children asked him if to kill was not a sin
“Not when he looked so fierce,” his mummy butted in
“If looks could kill it would have been us instead of him”
All the children sing


Or, “Happiness is a Warm Gun”:

Happiness is a warm gun
( bang bang shoot shoot )
Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is
(bang bang shoot shoot)
When I hold you in my arms (oh yes)
When I feel my finger on your trigger (oh yes)
I know nobody can do me no harm
Because
happiness is a warm gun, momma
Happiness is a warm gun
-Yes it is.
Happiness is a warm, yes it is ...
Gun!


Or, “Little Piggies”:

Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in.

In their sties with all their backing
They don’t care what goes on around
In their eyes there’s something lacking
What they need’s a damn good whacking.


Even the comic “Rocky Raccoon” has a dark edge:

Rocky had come equipped with a gun
To shoot off the legs of his rival
His rival it seems had broken his dreams
By stealing the girl of his fancy


Parts of “Yer Blues” are downright depressing:

Black cloud crossed my mind
Blue mist round my soul
Feel so suicidal
Even hate my rock and roll
Wanna die yeah wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Ooh girl you know the reason why.


And Charlie Manson could believe that “Sexy Sadie” was talking directly about Sharon Tate:

Sexy Sadie how did you know
The world was waiting just for you
The world was waiting just for you
Sexy Sadie oooh how did you know

Sexy Sadie you’ll get yours yet
However big you think you are
However big you think you are
Sexy Sadie oooh you’ll get yours yet

We gave her everything we owned just to sit at her table
Just a smile would lighten everything
Sexy Sadie she’s the latest and the greatest of them all
She made a fool of everyone
Sexy Sadie
However big you think you are
Sexy Sadie


But the song that was the biggest hit from the double album, the song with the longest legs, was “Revolution.” When John and Paul sing:

You say you want a revolution
Well you know
we all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know you can count me out,

It’s probably John who ad-libs “in,” so a playful struggle goes on between the two as they go: “out” “in” “out” “in.” So, it’s left as an open question as to whether a revolution will mean destruction.

The Beatles didn’t pick those ideas out of thin air. They were the air that everyone was breathing that listened to popular music and wanted the war in Vietnam to end, and wanted racism to end, and wanted the oppression of women to end. The Black Panther Party was talking about armed self-defense and “Off the pig!”

Panther Bobby Hutton had been killed by the Oakland police after he had surrendered in 1968, and Fred Hampton was killed by federal authorities sleeping in his bed in 1969. The Weather Underground began its violent campaign against the war in Vietnam and draft boards in 1969.

Did The Beatles’ White Album cause the Tate murders? Of course not! Did they reflect the cultural values of the period? Yes! Did they have a responsibility to critically evaluate those ideas in their art? Do all artists have a responsibility to critically analyze the cultural values of their society, or is creating art enough of a responsibility? Was Sam Goldwyn right when he said, “If you’ve got a message, send a telegram”?

But this question goes back 2,500 years before The Beatles’ White Album. In Book III of The Republic, Plato seems to argue in favor of banning both The Beatles and Batman:

If a man, who through clever training can become anything and imitate anything, should arrive in our city, wanting to give a performance of his poems, we should bow down before him as someone holy, wonderful, and pleasing, but we should tell him that there is no one like him in our city and that it isn’t lawful for there to be. We should pour myrrh on his head, crown him with wreaths, and send him away to another city.

Plato recognized the subversive value of art. He knew that art didn’t just hold a mirror up to society and reflect everything. It holds a lens that selects, frames, and distorts. It judges society, and Plato knew it was possible that such judgment might find fault with his philosopher-kings. Plato believed it was best to eliminate the possibility of heresy while it was still outside the gates.

But, of course, Plato must have known that the instinct to create art that could reflect an idealized or distorted culture was an instinct in all of us. All of us have the capacity to create art, and whether the art reaffirms or criticizes society is a reflection of the individual artist’s point of view.

The Beatles’ White Album is a reflection of the popular resistance to the war in Vietnam, and, while it doesn’t articulate a coherent strategy, it seems in some songs to condone and romanticize armed struggle and guerrilla warfare.

The story of the Dark Knight is about Batman trying to save Gotham from a mad bomber. It sounds a lot like George W. Bush trying to save the world from Al Qaeda after the 9/11 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.

At one point the movie asks the question that has troubled philosophers and governments since the beginning of civilization: Is torture ever justified? The question is posed in the way it always is, “What if by torturing someone you could get valuable information that would save lives, you could prevent a bombing that could kill innocent people?”

Batman beats up The Joker to get him to reveal where he is holding two hostages. Christopher Nolan seems to be saying torture is justified in trying to save lives, as we see the Dark Knight inflict pain on The Joker.

There is a direct link between Christopher Nolan’s script for Batman and George W. Bush’s script for his dark knight. Dick Cheney explained the Bush Doctrine on Torture to Tim Russert a few days after 9/11:

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

When they said we will use “any means at our disposal,” Bush and Cheney set themselves up above the law. Because the crime of 9/11 was so horrible, they felt using horrible means of retaliation simply balanced the scales of justice.

“An eye for an eye will leave everyone blind” is attributed to Gandhi.

Bush and Cheney did violence to the rule of law with their public justification of torture. If all crimes are allowed to balance the scales, then there is no law, and justice is simply the foot of the strongest on the neck of the weakest.

Someone who believes they have suffered a horrible injustice is then permitted to use whatever means they like to punish society and balance the scales.

Anders Breivik could justify killing 77 people associated with the Norwegian Labor Party because he believed their philosophy of multiculturalism was threatening the racial purity of Norway. Wade Michael Page could justify randomly killing six people in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, because he believed they were a threat to racial purity in America.

These are examples of racial extermination carried out by Nazi fanatics, and, if there is no rule of law, then their justification of their acts as a defense of racial purity makes as much sense as anything else.

America has lost its moral compass. More innocent women and children have been killed by drone attacks than were killed in Aurora. The President has a Kill List of people to be assassinated without trial or due process. We are supporting atrocities in Syria and claiming it is a popular rebellion.

It is probably true that life does imitate art. The killer in Aurora thought he was imitating The Joker. But, to disagree with Oscar Wilde, it is probably true that art more often imitates life. Batman was imitating Dick Cheney in his use of torture. The collapse of moral values, the end of the rule of law, the random violence are justified by the state and then rationalized by the individual, and they find their expression in art.

Batman is not responsible for the moral corruption of America. The government and the billionaires that own the government are responsible. And we’re responsible for letting them get away with it.

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly. Read more articles by Ed Felien on The Rag Blog]

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Ed Felien : The Consecration of Rick Perry

Warrior for Christ. Image from The Crazy Crusades.
A warrior for Christ:
The consecration of Rick Perry

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / August 30, 2011

Governor Rick Perry concluded his prayer in Houston on Saturday, Aug. 7:

You call us to repent, Lord, and this is our response. We give it all to You. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen and amen.

Why do we need to repent? What is our sin? Earlier, he had said,

As a nation we have forgotten Who made us. Who protects us. Who blesses us, and for that we cry out for Your forgiveness.

Perry has accepted our sin of forgetfulness, and he has assumed our repentance, and he has offered it up to God. It is the sin of the Israelites who lived wantonly and forgot God when they were chastised by the prophets. He has cleansed us in the blood of the sacrificial lamb. He is the minister, the priest, the substitute sacrifice.

How do we know we have offended God? “We see discord at home. We see fear in the marketplace. We see anger in the halls of government.” According to Perry, these signs are proof that we have sinned against God, that our government has angered God and incurred his wrath.

But let us look at this “discord at home,” this “fear in the marketplace” and this “anger in the halls of government.” Who has caused it? The most disruptive faction in American politics today is the Tea Party, Perry’s own group. It was their antics with the debt ceiling legislation that caused fear in the marketplace. It is their anger that has poisoned government.

By offering to quiet this discord, calm this fear, and soothe this anger, Perry’s offer to intercede for us seems a lot like Hitler’s offer to restore order after his Storm Troopers burned the Reichstag.

Father, our heart breaks for America.

He remembers the 30 U.S. soldiers killed the day before in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan:

We pray for our military and the families who love them. Father, especially for those special operators who lost their life yesterday in defending our freedoms.

One of the women whose husband had been killed told CNN that her husband “was a man with a deep Christian faith. A wonderful husband, and fabulous father to two wonderful children. He was a warrior for Christ.” A warrior in the Christian crusade against Islam? Is that why no Muslims were invited to the prayer rally?

Perry quotes extensively in the earlier part of his short speech from Chapter 2 of the Book of Joel from the Old Testament. He ends with verse 17:

Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?

Are we at war with the heathen? Is this a crusade?

Just before, in verses 15 and 16, Perry read:

Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts [he actually cut this last part -- clearly he didn’t want to offend his audience by mentioning a woman’s breast]: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet.

Perry is calling for the congregation to gather and ordain him as their minister, a warrior for Christ on a crusade to smite the heathen.

Perry read only the part from Joel that speaks of the consecration of the warrior. In all fairness, he should have also read Joel’s description of the upcoming battle. Joel begins:

1 Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand;

2 A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.

3 A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.

Joel is speaking of a holocaust, a scorched earth and total annihilation of the enemies of Israel.

Is this the God that Perry offers us -- the Old Testament Jehovah who cheerfully murders women and children?

Is the lesson of Jesus Christ and the New Testament too radical for Rick Perry? The story of Jesus is very simple, very plain. He preached in the countryside and after three years he marched into Jerusalem and with his followers drove the moneychangers out of the Temple. For this he was arrested and crucified as an enemy of Rome.

The four gospels differ on many details of the life of Christ, but they agree unequivocally that Jesus marched into Jerusalem, drove the moneychangers out of the Temple, and was executed by Rome.

Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann wear their Christianity on their shirtsleeves. They are quite public in professing their Christian faith. Do they believe in driving the moneychangers out of the Temple? They are both protectors of the rich, and they both advocate policies that would crush the poor. The rich are bankrolling their campaigns. They would bring down the Temple before they would tax the rich.

Bachmann thinks the best way to create jobs would be to eliminate the minimum wage. Perry has created jobs in Texas by driving down wages. The Texas Independent has said, “the median hourly earnings for all Texas workers was $11.20 per hour in 2010 compared to the national median of $12.50 per hour.” Texas tied with Mississippi for the greatest percentage of minimum wage workers.

Do they believe that Jesus drove the moneychangers from the Temple as a chauffeur in their limo, because that’s clearly what they’re doing?

Jesus didn’t want people to feel sorry for the poor. He didn’t want charity and second hand clothes. He said, “I am the poor,” “I am the hungry,” “ I am the naked,” “I am the prisoner:”

35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

42For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. (Matthew 25)

Why are Perry and Bachmann not the cursed, damned into everlasting fire? Why are they not the antichrist, the whitened sepulcher that hides corruption?

If they are going to trumpet themselves as Christians, then don’t we have the right and the responsibility to hold them accountable?

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly. Read more articles by Ed Felien on The Rag Blog]

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FILM / Ed Felien : Harry Potter Through the Eyes of an Afghan Child

Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows, Part Two.
Harry Potter through the
eyes of an Afghan child

Understanding the lesson of Harry Potter is essential to understanding the cultural values that underpin our need for the vindication of war.

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / August 8, 2011

SPOILER ALERT: Read this only if you already know how Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows, Part Two and the war in Afghanistan end.

A large part of the charm of Harry Potter is nostalgia for the simple naiveté of childhood. We are willing to believe in supernatural powers because up to the age of four or five we believed we were the center of the universe. We believed we had magical powers. If we didn’t like something we would cry, and Mommy and Daddy would change it.

The pull of this nostalgia in the Harry Potter series is intensified by encapsulating the fantasy in the context of a 1930’s English boarding school. Hogwarts could easily pass for the “playing fields of Eton,” a familiar and archetypical educational experience.

Would any of this make sense to an Afghan child?

Perhaps the reference to the English boarding school might seem confusing, but the magical powers of childhood would seem familiar. But, more than that, the life or death struggle between Harry Potter and Voldemort would seem like current events.

Voldemort (literally, from the French, "theft of death") has achieved a kind of immortality by transferring his soul into material objects called horcruxes. If anything happens to his body, then the material objects into which he has poured his soul can reanimate his corpse.

This must be the way the Afghans see the U.S. occupation of their country. If they defeat U.S. troops at one place, the foreign invader springs up even larger somewhere else. Voldemort has set up a stooge to run Hogwarts in the same way the U.S. has set up a CIA stooge, Karzai, to run Afghanistan.

In the final battle Voldemort sends unmanned magic flying discs to bomb and murder the students and faculty in much the same way the U.S. now sends drones against the Afghan, Pakistan, Yemeni, and Somali populations.

The movie begins with Harry, Ron, and Hermione on a quest to destroy the horcruxes. By using disguises and an invisibility cloak they sneak into Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault at the Wizarding Bank and recover Helga Hufflepuff’s cup. Harry destroys it with the Sword of Godric Gryffindor and then learns another horcrux is hidden in Hogwarts. Ron and Hermione find the Diadem of Ravenclaw and destroy it with the sword.

An Afghan child would immediately recognize and identify with the seemingly impossible pursuit of trying to destroy the material objects that embody the soul of their oppressor. When material objects multiply simply by touching them, how would it be possible to destroy them all?

Yet, they persist. Whether with a Sword of Godric Gryffindor in Harry Potter or an I.E.D. in Afghanistan, they blow up the material objects that have been used as an instrument of their oppression. Their only hope is to exhaust their power and drain their treasury.

By the final battle, there is but one horcrux left to Voldemort, his trained killer python, Nagini. But there is one other horcrux protecting Voldemort of which he is unaware. When he murdered Harry Potter’s parents, he tried unsuccessfully to murder Harry as well, but he only scarred his forehead. In his effort to murder Harry he poured part of his soul into him, and, so, Harry Potter is himself a horcrux for Voldemort. Which means, as long as Harry is alive, Voldemort cannot die. Voldemort does not know this and continues trying to kill him.

After an epic battle that has left many dead and wounded and Hogwarts in ruins reminiscent of the Church of St. Luke in Liverpool after the Blitz in World War II, Voldemort calls for a truce and issues an ultimatum. He will spare the remains of Hogwarts if he can have Harry Potter.

Harry has no choice. The suffering of his friends and the destruction of his school are too much for him, and he alone knows that Voldemort will never die as long as he lives. So he sacrifices himself.

Voldemort issues the killing curse: “Avada Kedavra,” which means instant death for Harry. Harry goes to a limbo-like place that looks like the waiting room in a train station. His deceased headmaster, Dumbledore, is there and explains that Voldemort couldn’t kill him. When he drained the blood out of him he became invulnerable to Voldemort’s curse, and when Voldemort attacked him he drained him of the horcrux that protected Voldemort.

Meanwhile, back at Hogwarts, Voldemort is insisting that all the remaining students and faculty swear allegiance to him. Neville Longbottom tries to rally the students to resist. Voldemort places the Sorting Witch’s hat on Neville’s head and causes it to burst into flames. Neville pulls the Sword of Godric Gryffindor out of the burning hat and slays Nagini, the last remaining horcrux protecting Voldemort.

At this point Harry comes back to life and battles once again with Voldemort. This time they are both mortal, and this time Harry wins and peace is restored.

What would an Afghan child think of this?

Wouldn’t he identify with Harry in his quest to try to destroy the material objects that are destroying his country and killing his friends? Wouldn’t he understand Harry’s sacrifice of himself as the only way to stop the destruction? And wouldn’t the afterlife, the final battle between virtue and evil and the ultimate triumph of goodness seem real to an innocent and religious child?

Understanding the lesson of Harry Potter is essential to understanding the cultural values that underpin our need for the vindication of war and for understanding how every culture uses those values to justify murder and suicide bombers.

Come all ye young rebels, and list while I sing,
For the love of one’s country is a terrible thing.
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame,
And it makes us all part of the patriot game.

-- Dominic Behan

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly. Read more articles by Ed Felien on The Rag Blog]

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Ed Felien : Breivik's Norwegian 'Putsch' Has Historical Echoes

Political cartoon by Paolo Lombardi / toonpool.
The parallels are ominous:
Terror in Norway

There are organizations that support the ideas of McVeigh and Breivik, and there is a culture that supports murder and violence as legitimate means to realize those ends.

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / July 28, 2011

On Friday, July 25, Anders Breivik, a right-wing Christian fundamentalist who hated Muslims, set off a bomb in downtown Oslo destroying a building that contained the office of Jens Stoltenberg, the Labor Party prime minister, killing eight people.

He then took a 20 minute ferry to an island where the Labor Party held a summer camp for young people. Wearing a police sweater, he told some of the young people that he wanted to talk to them about the bombing and then opened fire and shot them at point blank range. He killed 68 before the police arrived and he surrendered.

Until recently, Breivik was an active member of the Progress Party. With 41 seats it is the second largest party in Parliament after the Labor Party. The party tripled its support in 1987 when the leader at that time, Carl Hagen, told his supporters, “The asylum seekers are on their way to take over our fatherland,” and read from a letter supposedly from a Muslim, which said, “This country will be Muslim! We give birth to more children than you, and several true-believing Muslims arrive in Norway every year, men in productive age. One day the infidel cross in the flag shall also go away!”

The so-called Mustafa letter was proven in court to be a fraud, but it had its desired effect in galvanizing anti-immigrant sentiment.

The 2009 national election was quite dramatic. It looked for a while that the Labor Party would lose after ruling Norway for over 60 years, but the Progress Party got into arguments with its coalition partners and looked confused, and voters lost confidence in its capacity to govern. In the end the Labor Party was able to put together a coalition of socialists and progressives that formed a government.

This defeat was a heavy blow to Breivik, and in his manifesto he denounced members of this party as "politically correct career politicians" who were not prepared to "take risks and work for idealistic goals.”

The model for Breivik must have been Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. With a gang of about 600 thugs in SA uniforms, Hitler was able to take over a right-wing meeting of about 2,000 people in a beer hall in Munich. Using the threat of violence to hold his audience (he had a machine gun trained on the door) Hitler won over the audience with his extemporaneous speech about how Germany had been betrayed by the liberal Weimar government, by the Treaty of Versailles and by the international Jewish conspiracy.

They marched on the Bavarian Defense Ministry and were stopped by about a hundred state police officers. A gunfight began and four police officers and 16 Nazis were killed.

Hitler was arrested, tried, and sentenced to five years and given a small fine. He served eight months in a comfortable cell where he received visitors and wrote Mein Kampf. Breivik took no chances and wrote his Mein Kampf, the 1516 page manifesto “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” before he acted.

The putsch and trial gave Hitler what he needed -- a platform from which to address the German nation. On Jan. 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Less than a month later the Reichstag was set on fire.

Most scholars now agree that Hitler’s group talked a Dutch communist into setting the fire so Hitler and Goring could use that as an excuse to murder communists and socialists. Almost the first three-quarters of Mein Kampf is about how the communists and socialists had betrayed Germany and how they must be punished severely. Only the last quarter of the book talks about Jews.

From 1933 to 1938 the Nazis rounded up leftists and either murdered them outright or sent them to concentration camps. Only after Kristallnacht on Nov. 9, 1938, did the Nazis begin to round up the Jews.

Breivik writes about the Islamification of Europe, but he targets first the left. He deliberately set out to murder the next generation of leaders of the Labor Party, and what took truckloads of Nazi stormtroopers months to accomplish, Breivik did in 90 minutes.

Can it happen here?

It already did, and it was much worse.

Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, and killed 168 people. He claimed the bombing was in retaliation for the federal government raid on the Waco religious commune that ended in the deaths of 55 adults and 21 children. McVeigh went to gun shows and was certain the government wanted to take away his right to bear arms. His conservative views on morality and taxes would strongly resonate with Breivik and the Norwegian Progress Party.

He wrote a letter to a local newspaper in 1992:

Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight. [...] Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that. But it might.

The book he considered his bible was The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce, the former leader of the white nationalist organization National Alliance. The book calls for a violent revolution by the far right that eventually leads to the extermination of all Jews and non-whites.

Are McVeigh and Breivik madmen acting alone, or are they part of a movement?

Do their basic ideas have currency in mass organizations?

Consider what Alan Keyes says at his Declaration Alliance group:

Realization must come that we are locked in a clash of momentous import, between America's future course being set as socialist big government on the one hand, or restrained smaller government on the other.

Consider the racial hatred embedded in the mass e-mailing from MinutemanHQ.com:

Enough is enough! The line has to be drawn! The invasion of America has to end! Justice has to be done for all the good, honest, Americans who have been killed, raped, kidnapped, stolen from, and abused by criminal illegal immigrants! American sovereign territory must be DEFENDED and HELD SECURE!! THE HOUR IS LATE, MAKE THEM HEAR US -- it is the right thing to do!

Consider a MoveOn picnic disrupted by Tea Party thugs. One woman reported:

So, about 20 little old ladies, like me, gathered in a public park in Oregon to have a picnic and a meeting.

They were then run off by a group of Tea Party activists, led by the local head of Americans for Prosperity. They retreated to a private dwelling, but the teabaggers followed them there, and had to be stopped from trespassing on private property. The police conveniently contacted the group two hours later to find out if the cops were still needed.

And these stupid tea baggers, instead of understanding that you cannot "free America" and "stop socialism" by denying people the right to gather in a public park, proudly posted the video on YouTube like they'd done a great thing.

There are organizations that support the ideas of McVeigh and Breivik, and there is a culture that supports murder and violence as legitimate means to realize those ends. The violence in movies, on television, and in popular song is pervasive and addictive. The adrenalin thrill of video games is simulation training for actual combat.

Breivik wrote in his journal in February 2010 that he "just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game." He says it’s "probably the best military simulator out there. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations."

But more than anything else, the wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia fuel the violence and the xenophobia. We are at war with the Muslim world, no matter how much our government denies it. And this war allows us to hate and fear Muslims and Arabs, and this makes it easier to hate and fear Mexicans because they may want to steal our jobs. We want the government to do something about it, and when they don’t solve the problem right away, they’re weak at best and traitors at worst.

These are the conditions that went before the Beer Hall Putsch, before Mussolini’s March on Rome, before Franco’s march on Madrid. Our wars abroad can easily lead to wars at home:

It seems ironic and hypocritical that an act viciously condemned in Oklahoma City is now a ‘"justified" response to a problem in a foreign land. Then again, the history of United States policy over the last century, when examined fully, tends to exemplify hypocrisy.

When considering the use of weapons of mass destruction against Iraq as a means to an end, it would be wise to reflect on the words of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. His words are as true in the context of Olmstead as they are when they stand alone: "Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example."

-- Timothy McVeigh

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly.]

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Ed Felien : Malalai Joya is a Champion for Afghan Women

Malalai Joya. Image from antiwarcommittee.com.
A champion for Afghan women:
On hearing Malalai Joya

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / April 12, 2011

MINNEAPOLIS -- I met the bravest person in the world Friday night, April 1, at St. Joan of Arc Church in South Minneapolis when I heard Malalai Joya speak.

She’s about five feet tall with a soft voice and a backbone as strong as steel. She was expelled from the Afghan Parliament (after being, at 26, the youngest person ever elected) because she “insulted” both the Afghan opium warlords and the U. S. government for supporting the corrupt leadership of Hamid Karzai.

There have been four assassination attempts on her life. The Taliban hate her because she organizes women’s groups and schools for girls.

Malalai Joya has stood up to them all. She is unafraid. You look into her eyes and fear melts away. You appreciate that all your struggles are child’s play in a sandbox compared to her struggle to improve the lives of young women in Afghanistan.

She believes passionately that women in Afghanistan would be better off if the U. S. left immediately. She considers the Taliban attitudes toward women far less dangerous to their health than drones and airstrikes.

She talked briefly about how the CIA benefits from the opium trade in her country. Although she is no friend of the Taliban, she acknowledges that during their government opium production in Afghanistan was almost 0% of the world supply, and, since the CIA, with the help of the opium warlords, has taken over the government, production is over 93% of the world supply.

The serious question for the American people is who benefits from this opium trade? How far up the chain do the payoffs go? If the CIA gets paid off, does that mean Leon Panetta gets paid off? Does that mean Obama gets paid off? And how is that in our national interest?

Support for the work of Malalai Joya can be directed to the Afghan Women’s Mission at www.afghanwomensmission.org.

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly.]

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Ed Felien : Obama and the Lies About Libya

Political cartoon by Mike Keefe / Denver Post / inToon.com
What's really up in Benghazi?
Obama's lies about Libya

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / April 5, 2011

Barack Obama tried to explain the U. S. war against Libya on Monday, March 28, and he said a number of things that simply are not true.

He said, “Gaddafi has lost the confidence of his people.” Compared to most other Arab countries, Gaddafi seems to enjoy widespread if not universal support. The city of Benghazi is an isolated exception. Thomas C. Mountain has been following events in Libya for 25 years. Here is his assessment:

In 1969 when Col. Gaddafi came to power by overthrowing the Libyan king in a military coup, Libyans were one of the poorest people in the world with an annual per capita income of less than $60.

Today, thanks to the “Arab Socialism” policy of the government as well as bountiful petroleum exports, the Libyan people enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the Arab world. Most Libyan families own their own homes and most Libyan families own an automobile.

The free public health system in Libya is one of the best in the Arab world and Libya’s free education system up to the graduate level is as good if not better than any other in the region.

So the question is, why has a revolt broken out?

The answer, which I have been intensely researching for the past month is not a simple one.

The revolt started in Benghazi in eastern Libya. A very important point not mentioned anywhere in the international media is the fact that due to geographic location, being one of the closest points to Europe from the African continent, Benghazi has over the past 15 years or so become the epicenter of African migration to Europe. At one point over a thousand African migrants a day were pouring into Libya in hopes of arranging transport to Europe.

The human trafficking industry, one of the most evil, inhumane businesses on the planet, grew into a billion dollar a year industry in Benghazi. A large, vicious underworld mafia set down deep roots in Benghazi, employing thousands in various capacities and corrupting Libyan police and government officials. It has only been in the past year or so that the Libyan government, with help from Italy, has finally brought this cancer under control.

With their livelihood destroyed and many of their leaders in prison, the human trafficking mafia have been at the forefront in funding and supporting the Libyan rebellion. Many of the human trafficking gangs and other criminal elements in Benghazi are known for racist pogroms against African guest workers where over the past decade they regularly robbed and murdered Africans in Benghazi and its surrounding neighborhoods.

Since the rebellion in Benghazi broke out several hundred Sudanese, Somali, Ethiopian, and Eritrean guest workers have been robbed and murdered by racist rebel militias, a fact well hidden by the international media.

Benghazi has also long been a well-known center of religious extremism. Libyan fanatics who spent time in Afghanistan are concentrated there and a number of terrorist cells have been carrying out bombings and assassinations of government officials in Benghazi over the past two decades. One cell, calling itself the Fighting Islamic Group, declared itself an Al Queda affiliate back in 2007. These cells were the first to take up arms against the Libyan government.”

Obama said, “Gaddafi chose to escalate his attacks.” From the outset the Libyan revolt was different from the rest of the nonviolent revolts in the Middle East and North Africa: it was a violent revolt led by gangster elements and Islamic fundamentalists. The press has conveniently ignored this distinction.

Obama said, “I authorized military action to stop the killing and enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1973.” The very first statement of the UN resolution says, “1. Demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;” The U.S. has spearheaded an offensive against Libyan forces in direct violation of a ceasefire and an end to violence.

The resolution, “Decides to establish a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians;” The U.S. with its allies has established air superiority, but it is not complying with the ban on all non-humanitarian flights. It is not possible to verify, but it is very likely that the U.S. is sending mercenaries and arms to aid the rebels in direct violation of the UN Resolution establishing an arms embargo.

Obama said he had promised “we would not put ground troops into Libya.” While it is obviously true that no combat troops in uniform have landed on “the shores of Tripoli,” it seems very likely that with hundreds of thousands of paid mercenaries in the immediate area and tons of military hardware, the U.S. is most certainly playing a covert support role to the rebels with boots and guns on the ground.

And the Obama administration has admitted that CIA operatives have been on the ground with the rebels (in violation of the UN resolution) for more than three weeks.

Obama said, “Our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives.” Clearly the mission is to support the rebels, continue advancing to Tripoli and overthrow Gaddafi.

Then Obama tried to articulate the Obama Doctrine to justify intervention,

Some question why America should intervene at all -- even in limited ways -- in this distant land. They argue that there are many places in the world where innocent civilians face brutal violence at the hands of their government, and America should not be expected to police the world, particularly when we have so many pressing concerns here at home.

In Bahrain the King brought in foreign troops from Saudi Arabia to fire on protesters, and the U.S. did nothing. There have been demonstrations against the feudal autocracies in Morocco and Saudi Arabia and the U.S. did nothing. We have been mildly critical of President Saleh, but we continue to supply him with guns and technical support to suppress dissent. We are outspoken against Syria because Syria, like Libya, is a socialist country.

Most people in the world understand that the main reason the U.S. and NATO want to bring down the Libyan government is because they produce millions of gallons of oil, and a more sympathetic government would make it more profitable for American and British oil companies to do business there.

Obama concluded his explanation by saying, “That is why we are going after al Qaeda wherever they seek a foothold.” This was the most bizarre lie of the evening. Gaddafi has been fighting al Qaeda since 1995. Al Qaeda elements were part of the Benghazi uprising. We are allied with al Qaeda. They are a major part of the rebels.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, who fought against the U.S. in Afghanistan, said he has recruited around 25 men to fight against Gaddafi. According to Praveen Swami of the Guardian, “U. S. and British government sources said Mr. Al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.”

Obama knows we are allied with al Qaeda. He knows there has been a civil war in Libya between the secular, feminist, and socialist government of Gaddafi and Islamic fundamentalists for almost 20 years.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. The major theme of American foreign and domestic policy for the last hundred years has been anti-communism. From the intervention against Russia in the 1920’s and the Red Scare in the U.S., through the Cold War and the McCarthy hearings, American foreign and domestic policy has been driven by a defense of capitalism and a hatred of socialism or communism.

That fixation and oil are the reasons we intervened against the Baath Socialist government in Iraq. And those are the reasons we are intervening against the government of Libya.

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly.]

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Ed Felien : Words Have Consequences

Words have consequences:
Political rhetoric and the attempted
assassination of Gabrielle Giffords

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / January 17, 2011

Gabrielle Giffords had just won her reelection in a race so tight it took three days to count the votes. Her opponent, Jesse Kelly, a Republican candidate with Tea Party backing, assailed her on health care and immigration. He attacked her for supporting the stimulus package.

Jim Nintzel in the Tucson Weekly quoted him on Feb 18:

“It must stop now," says Kelly, who promises to not seek any federal earmarks if he defeats Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in November. "This is bribery with taxpayer money, and it's a disgrace."

Kelly dismisses any notion that federal spending helps the economy.

“Government is not a job-creator," Kelly said last week at a debate with his fellow Republican candidates, including state Sen. Jonathan Paton and political newcomers Brian Miller and Andy Goss. "It is a job-crusher."

But for Don Kelly Construction, the firm where Kelly manages pipeline projects, government funding would appear to create quite a few jobs.

Kelly himself estimates that close to 90 percent of the firm's work comes from government contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. And around the country, the firm -- which is owned by Kelly's father, Don Kelly -- frequently bids on public-works projects funded by both stimulus dollars and federal earmarks.

Kelly was supported in his campaign by ALIPAC (Americans for Legal Immigration PAC). John McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said of the group, "It is backed by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites."

He was also supported by Sarah Palin. She appeared with him on Fox News and said, “I don’t feel worthy to lace his combat boots.” Giffords’ Congressional District was one of 20 Democratic districts that McCain carried in 2008 where the incumbent voted for health care reform.

On her website Palin said, "We'll aim for these races and many others. This is just the first salvo in a fight to elect people across the nation who will bring common sense to Washington." Their districts were on a U. S. map located by crosshairs. After the shooting Palin’s campaign denied the crosshairs were meant to appear as targets, even though she had also said on March 23, “Don’t Retreat, Instead, RELOAD!”

The imagery and the rhetoric is clear, and it’s consistent with Republican rhetoric throughout the 2010 campaign:

Robert Lowry, Republican candidate in Florida, fired at a target with his opponent’s initials written on it.

Representative Allen West’s first choice for chief of staff, Joyce Kaufman, said, “If ballots don’t work, bullets will.”

Sharron Angle talked about 2nd Amendment remedies in her race against Harry Reid in Nevada. Michele Bachman said she wanted her supporters “armed and dangerous.”

John Boehner and Eric Cantor referred to health care reform as “Job Killing Obamacare.”

And Jesse Kelly held a fundraiser in June where he advertised: “Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.” Minimum donation: $50.

Just last April, former President Bill Clinton recommended that both the media and politicians be responsible with their rhetoric since it falls on the “serious and the delirious alike.”

Henry David Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” The appeal of war is the promise of glory and meaning in men’s eyes: one desperate act and the world crowns you a hero. How tempting then to run to the head of the mob and storm the barricades. All revolutionary camps are a haven for malcontents.

And the Tea Party pretends it is a revolution with earnest patriots dressed in 18th Century tri-cornered hats, manipulated so cleverly by the Koch brothers, the Bush family, and Dick Armey for the benefit of the rich and powerful. It is a fraud perpetrated on the poor.

And Jesse Kelly is a party to the fraud. He campaigns mightily against the Stimulus and the Government, and his family collects millions in federal contracts. He pretends he is a revolutionary at the barricades. According to the Jan. 11 New York Times: “These people who think they are better than us, they look down on us every single day and tell us what kind of health care to buy,” he said at a rally in October. “And if you dare to stand up to the government they call us a mob. We’re about to show them what a mob looks like.”

Jared Loughner was not a mob. He was one pathetic deranged individual, but, because of the heated rhetoric of Jesse Kelly, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Michele Bachman, and others in the Republican Party, he could delude himself into thinking he was (for one shining moment) the leader of a revolution. There probably is a revolution going on out there, but it seems we’re all on the wrong side.

The grand nineteenth century capitalist, Jay Gould, once said, "I can hire one-half the working class to kill the other half."

How did they succeed in getting us to take up arms against each other and not against them?

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly.]

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Ed Felien : Jon Stewart, Meet George W. Bush

In defense of the Left,
with love to Jon Stewart

In trying to appear a moderate, Stewart criticized the right for its attacks on Obama and the left for accusing Bush of being a war criminal and comparing him to Hitler.

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / October 5, 2010

In a stroke of comedic genius Jon Stewart has called for a "Rally for Sanity" to "Take it down a notch" at the Washington Monument on October 30.

It's part an answer to Glen Beck’s rally to Restore Honor and part Rock the Vote to motivate his younger demographic to get out and vote on November 2. Stewart is portraying the rally and himself as an island of sanity in an insane season when Obama is seen by the Right as a Kenyan Mau-Mau anti-colonialist, socialist, Muslim hell-bent on America’s destruction.

One of the suggested signs for demonstrators at Stewart’s rally would be, "I Disagree With You, But I'm Pretty Sure You're Not Hitler."

In trying to appear a moderate, Stewart criticized the right for its attacks on Obama and the left for accusing Bush of being a war criminal and comparing him to Hitler.

Are there parallels between Hitler and Bush? Is Bush a war criminal?

There are parallels in American history, but the scope and intensity of the repression that Bush initiated and justified by 9/11 went further than any previous President in wartime.

He did not just suspend the right of habeas corpus, the right to a fair trial, and the right to confront your accusers, he kidnapped U. S. citizens and foreign nationals off the streets and locked them up in concentration camps and subjected them to torture. The difference between Bush and Hitler in this is quantitative not qualitative; that is, they both did it but Hitler did a lot more of it.

They both ruled by terror. Bush modeled his government on George Orwell's 1984: War is Peace; the war on terror was really a war OF terror; The Department of Homeland Security (with its permanent orange level of terror alert) created insecurity.

Bush spied on citizens and wiretapped their phones without any legal or ethical justification. He asserted a doctrine of preemptive war that meant he could attack anyone or any country that he felt might become a threat to U. S. vital interests. He declared that his administration was not bound by international law or treaties.

If someone in the government disagreed with him, their careers were destroyed; former Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times that pointed out the lies in the State of the Union Address that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and Bush officials ended his wife's career as a CIA analyst. Dissent is the lifeblood of democracy and Bush crushed it.

The Nazi Party in Germany was a variant of the European fascist movement. Benito Mussolini was the first successful fascist leader. He led his Black Shirts in a march on Rome in 1922 that changed Italian politics. In an act of sincere flattery, Hitler imitated it by staging an unsuccessful beer hall putsch in Munich the following year.

Mussolini said, "Corporato il stati." The corporation is the state. Hitler believed capitalists should be "masters in their own house." Bush has taken fascism a step further. Mussolini and Hitler merely supported big business while they were pursuing other national objectives, but Bush allowed his family business to direct government policy. In his case, the corporation really did become the state.

The Bush family fortune for four generations has been tied to the business of war. Ever since Great Grandfather Sam Bush sat on Wilson's War Industries Board in World War I and made parts for Remington revolvers, the Bush family has benefited from war.

Sam's son Prescott wanted to make serious money when he graduated from Yale, so he and some of his buddies went to work for Brown Brothers Harriman. Peace had broken out in the 1920s, and the only hope for war profiteers was in the re-arming of Germany (in violation of the Versailles Treaty).

He became Manager of the Union Banking Corporation to trade with Nazi financier Fritz Thyssen. They sold bonds to help finance the re-arming of Germany. They bought a steamship line to ship Remington arms to Germany through a dummy corporation in Holland. He also managed a Silesian coal field that used slave labor from the neighboring Auschwitz Concentration Camp. According to Dutch intelligence sources he took direct management of some of the slave labor camps in Poland to aid Nazi armament industries.

Prescott Bush continued working for these interests for almost a year after the U. S. had declared war on Germany. It was not until October of 1942, when the U. S. seized the assets of Union Bank, the steamship line, the Seamless Steel Equipment (suppliers of steel, wire and explosives to the Nazis) and the Silesian-American Company (the coal mining company), that Prescott stopped supplying the Nazi war machine. Of course, at that point he switched sides and started supplying the Allies.

In 1929 Harriman & Company bought Dresser Industries (manufacturers of oil pipeline equipment) and Prescott Bush became a Director. He continued to run Dresser Industries from the board for the rest of his life. His son, George H. W. Bush, went to work there after graduating from Yale. Dresser was quite successful in selling oil pipeline and drilling equipment. It had a virtual worldwide monopoly. The oil drilling equipment in Iraq belonged to Dresser (through their French subsidiary) in violation of U. N. and U. S. sanctions.

Using lies and distortions, George W. Bush used the tragedy of 9/11 to justify invading Iraq. He wanted control of the oil for his family business. Dick Cheney has always been the chief thug and frontman for the Bush family. When H. W. George was President, Cheney was Secretary of Defense. When Bush lost, Cheney became CEO of Halliburton.

While CEO he bought Dresser Industries from the Bush family (the details were worked out on a hunting trip) for $8 billion. No cash changed hands and Halliburton was only worth $8 billion at the time, so the Bush family must own controlling interest in Halliburton.

When George W. Bush became President he made Cheney his vice president, and with old family friend Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, they were able to steer multi-billion-dollar no-bid contracts to Halliburton. With the U. S. and Bush in control of the Iraq government, they were able to steal 25 percent of the world's known oil resources for the family business.

When George W. Bush was President and head of the family business, we had the perfect merger of state and corporation, the final stage of fascism only dreamt of by Mussolini.

Was Bush a fascist? Was he a Nazi?

Certainly grandfather Prescott was an active and effective collaborator with the Nazis. But it wasn't just the money. Prescott and his father-in-law, George Walker (for whom George I and George II are middle-named), sponsored the Third International Congress of Eugenics on Long Island in the early 1930s, and many of the proposals about forced sterilization and elimination of the feebleminded that were discussed at the conference were later implemented by Nazi Germany.

But is it fair that the sins of the grandfather should be visited upon the children? No. Even if he carries the name(s), even if he inherits the family business and fortune, even if he inherits the political base of fascist elements that were driven from Europe at the end of World War II and became the virulent anti-Communist wing of the Republican Party, he still deserves to be judged on his own actions.

Did he repudiate his family's past connections to Nazi Germany? No.

Did he suppress civil liberties? Yes.

Did he rule by terror? Yes.

Did he embark on total war? Yes.

Did he allow his family business interests to direct government policy? Yes.

Finally, the shelling of Fallujah, the brutal murder of defenseless Iraqi civilians, has as its only parallel the Nazi atrocities at Guernica and Lidice.

Was Bush a Nazi?

We can be certain that history will judge Bush to have been corrupt, arrogant, dictatorial, and brutal. Whether the atrocities he committed place him in the same rank as Hitler is a judgment for later generations, but we would be blind not to see that he is in the same group.

He stands indicted as a petty tyrant, a small fascist who ran the biggest superpower the world had ever seen. The damage he did to the rule of law, to the public treasury, to the national character at home and the horror and suffering he inflicted on innocent people abroad are crimes against humanity. To remain silent is to be an accomplice.

Jon Stewart has a powerful and eloquent voice and a genius for a comedic irony. He could benefit from reading history a little more closely.

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly.]

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