Chris Matthews

For those who know me, it is simply too expected to say that the war undesirable. It is an easy position to take, now that the majority of the country is beginning to see the cost of war. Perhaps, though, therein lays the heart of the issue.

When a country wages aggressive war at any cost, except any cost to itself, that country is an aggressor country. When that country begins to have success at these efforts, it becomes an imperialist country. When these efforts begin to finally bore the country, that country finally becomes an empire.

It was first in 2005 when I heard a columnist from a major publication call the United States an empire. Writing in Newsweek, Anna Quindlen wrote, “The most unattractive trait of the American empire is American arrogance, which the president embodies and which this war elevated.”

I’ll admit that finding relevant material for this column is more difficult than I expected. Under the world section of popular news sites, there is mention of seven US and NATO soldiers who died. On the “Top” news sections, however, there is no mention of it. There are, instead, stories on teen-star Miranda Cosgrove and Tiger Woods’ defeat.

All empires throughout history have failed…all of them. While the results of the US economic crisis will require that the US pull out of the Middle East, it is the attitude and the reason behind the inevitable pull out that should be most telling.

Spain pulled out of Mexico because it was no longer lucrative to maintain control. Britain pulled out of the US because keeping a colony was no longer lucrative. France pulled out of Asia for generally the same reasons. They all swam out in a pool of their own blood.

At the time that these empires were forced out of their victims’ countries, they were among the most powerful countries on the planet. It was their greed which led to their downfall. Their citizens cared little about the destruction that their troops caused abroad. They cared little about the fact that their victims were treated and classified as animals. They were simply too busy and well-fed. Perhaps, a little like us.

This country had its roots in aggression. In the beginning, it stole most of what it counted among its assets. It became imperialistic as it took more and more land, and now finally, as its people become too bored to worry about the destruction its troops cause abroad, it is an empire.

This war has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on the other side of the world. These are people who had nothing to do with the events of September 11^{th or the non-existent nuclear weapons in Iraq. Even so, the US refuses to be bothered with counting certain civilian deaths that it causes, such as those caused by remote-controlled planes.}

The eventual reason that this country will pull out of the Middle East is not because people like you and I sympathize with the mothers and fathers halfway around the world. Instead, the US will stop bombing because the rich are growing more and more hesitant of spending tax dollars abroad, while the economy is in such a crisis.

While history teaches us that the United States has had a historic tendency toward imperialism, it is periods like today, when the people begin to awaken. Our souls begin to search for something more basic, something more human. As many of us begin to settle into our new post-crisis life, it is my hope that the human values which we are forming, will begin to project on the policies that govern the country.

It is especially difficult to hold back when the theme of the movie has to do with socio-political reality or history. I barely saw Avatar last night…spoiler alert. Avatar was well received in the progressive community internationally, and Filmmaker James Cameron, become recognized as a champion of indigenous and environmental rights almost overnight.

Perhaps it was this acclaim that allowed me to begin watching Avatar with a generally open mind. I usually expect the worst when Hollywood picks up such a theme, but I thought I would give the movie a chance.

The movie acts as a mirror for today’s corporate-driven imperialist politics. It is an allegory for what is happening today in Afghanistan and what has happened historically at the hands of white imperialism.

In the film, it becomes clear early on, and in no uncertain terms, that the invading, white human army is after a mineral deposit which sits under the tree that the Na’vi, an alien race, inhabit. The tree is miles tall and houses thousands of Na’vi families.

One of the techniques used by the humans to get the Na’vi to leave the tree is to create a Na’vi look-alike with some human DNA. This creation is called an Avatar. This Avatar is controlled by a white human counterpart named Jake Sully.

This was a reference to the racial politics of early Spanish and English colonization, where explicit imperialist strategies were to inter-marry invading men with native female royalty. One northern native elder called this strain of imperialists, “liberal” imperialists. The goal of the liberal was very much to take land, gold and women from the natives. They only disagreed with their conservative counterparts as to the most useful strategy.

This Avatar was to ingratiate himself with the Na’vi and influence them to move elsewhere. It was clear that if the Avatar was unsuccessful, the corporate contractor would then authorize the military to move in and blast the tree and the civilization to Mictlan. The corporate administrator, played by Giovanni Ribisi, says something along the lines of, “Shareholders are greatly bothered by media images of natives being slaughtered, but they are bothered much more by quarterly losses, so hurry up an get them to move.”

Long story short, Jake fails to persuade the Na’vi to move, and he falls in love with an alien native. He never warns the natives that they will be under attack. It is only until the military begins its assault that Jake bothers to protest.

The army does come in and does blast the Tree of Life and the Na’vi to Mictlan. The Na’vi leave and mount a conventional counter-attack on the invading whites. Some Na’vi die, but in the end, Jake is successful in uniting different clans of the alien race, and under his leadership he defeats the white humans. The Na’vi goddess permanently transfers his soul from his human body to his Avatar body, and he becomes a hero of the resistance and a recognized leader of the Na’vi.

Generally, the movie did an adequate job in portraying the imperialist culture as one which has no problems with trading the lives of “savages and their children” for corporate profits. For all of the leftist acclaim, I found it surprising that it was, at essence a white savior film. It took a white alien human to unite the Na’vi and create the new technology (the domestication of a large bird) to defeat the white aliens. I mean, come on, really? For being a darling of the left, Avatar sure played into this tired ass theme. The white savior complex has been done almost everytime there has been a story about uplifting minorities: Wildcats, Dangerous Minds, The Last Samurai, Dances With Wolves, Gran Torino, The Blind Side, Mississippi Burning, but the list is really endless.

I also took issue with the fact that the liberal imperialist ended up as the hero. Jake conspired to have their society destroyed, and he never for one minute before the invasion tipped off the Na’vi that it was coming. He was an agent for liberal white imperialism and ended up as the hero of the film.

The film also fetishizes the response of the Na’vi. In the white mind, the only honorable way for an oppressed, obliterated, colonized society is to pull itself up from it’s bootstraps and engage in a conventional warfare response. Even in this Hollywood version of resistance, the response of native people is held to a higher, double standard. In reality, most colonized people have beaten the colonizer not by engaging in conventional warfare, but by being elusive and using effective, guerrilla tactics, by tiring and exasperating the invaders so much that they lose their will to occupy.

Finally, in the Hollywood version of colonial resistance, the native army simply rounded up the invaders and sent them back home with not so much as a handcuff to inconvenience them. The white psyche only wishes that the resistance would be so forgiving, even though the invaders themselves are guilty of intentionally killing unarmed civilian children. Deep in the white psyche, it is just for them to be strongly reprimanded and sent home. wrong. Think more along the lines of scorched earth.

The film did a good job of characterizing colonialist tendencies, which admittedly I did not cover in depth in this post, but it did a characteristically poor job in characterizing native response to colonialism. In the end, I give the film the score of fifty out of a hundred, which is higher than all other Hollywood films of a similar nature.

Good Americans Are Losing Their Homes, “not minorities…defective…useless…wasteful…” Just watch it.

I mean what else can I say or analyze about this video? I guess what pops into my head is that many minority policy reformers never get off of their point of view, that you have to stroke the white ego to get things done. They are the ones with the power, they say. It is true that when something affects whites, something is done about it. Sometimes, however, in running only toward practical reform, these reformer lose the bigger lessons, or don’t want to invest the time in learning the bigger lessons.

Then there is this from Candidate Rand Paul, according to the Huff Post, “Republican Senatorial candidate Rand Paul wants to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s a rather ho-hum proposition in the larger context of conservative ideas — except that Paul wants that fence to be electric and he wants it built underground.”

On CNN Rick Sanchez mused jokingly about the possibility of having to get all those Mexicans to wear the dog collars that would activate the electricity in said fence.

Don’t these libertarians want less government and less spending.  I suppose when ideals can be pushed aside when their cultural privilege is compromised.

Finally, Diane Feinstein hobbled together an answer to the question at hand. Success, in her eyes, would be the creation of an independent Afghan government that would be able to sustain itself.

Then, Zakaria, the host pulled out the stats. Nine out of ten military recruits could not read the manual for their assault rifles. I don’t remember the other stats exactly, but they went something like this: A quarter of the recruits went AWOL in their first leave, a tenth of the weapons given to recruits got back into the hands of the Taliban, millions are being made from poppy and the drugs that come from them, etc. etc.

It became clear that as bad as the Taliban might have been, they were probably amongst the most skilled and disciplined in the country, being overwhelmingly militant in their commitments and schooled in military tactics. I’m guessing that they were generally more literate than the new recruits.

What else, oh yeah, there was that little matter of a trillion dollars worth of minerals being found in Afghanistan. From the Huff Post

Yes, it is true that these minerals do exist in Afghanistan but it is by no means news. The U.S. Geological survey made the discovery back in 2007. However, the U.S. government is pushing the story now because the coalition here has been rocked by some particularly bad press here the past week (Ironically from the New York Times. This causes me to wonder if the Times is attempting to buy its way back into the good graces of the Embassy in Kabul.)

It kind of like reminds me of that whole 1849 “magic discovery” of gold in California, one year after the US seized the state from Mexico by force…

Pope Benedict XVI looks on during an Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Sunday, April 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Is anyone above the law?  Certainly, the Bill of Rights did not extend the freedom of religion to include illegal activities, especially if said activities do not pertain to the faith of the individuals.  Certainly, there is precedent in this country of prosecuting religious figures of small and large religions and sects.  Joseph Smith of the Mormon Church was served a warrant (don’t remember the outcome), and Elijah Muhammad served time for sedition for instructing his followers to avoide registering in the selective service.

So why should the pope escape prosecution if it is found that he, a foreigner, was involved in the cover up of molestation and sexual abuse by his subordinates.   One of the most damning pieces of evidence is a letter that was recently revealed in which an accused priest begs for the mercy of the Congregation for the Doctrine of The Faith, the oversight office for the Catholic Church, which the now-pope headed at the time this letter was written.

There are now unconscionable abuse cases arising out of Ireland, Germany, Minneapolis, and Wisconsin, where over 200 deaf boys were sexually molested over a span of perhaps 25 years by then-Father Lawrence C. Murphy. The charges are beyond shocking, and the acts they describe are heinous. And these are just the cases made public and over the last few weeks. To be sure, this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

Despite being plagued by years of sexual scandal, the Church remains cavalier in its denial and arrogant defense of itself and of its failed self-policing mechanisms. It acts as if it’s above the law and shrouds itself in secrecy, and its predatory monsters are afforded leniency and forgiveness no other common criminal would receive. For example, Murphy, in a letter to the CDF, begged, “I am seventy-two years of age, your Eminence, and am in poor health. I have just recently suffered another stroke which has left me in a weakened state. I have followed all the directives of both Archbishop Cousins and now Archbishop Weakland. I have repented of any of my past transgressions, and have been living peaceably in northern Wisconsin for twenty-four years. I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood. I ask your kind assistance in this matter.” He died in 1998, still a priest. After his death, Archbishop Weakland appealed to the Vatican to close the case: “This Discastery commends Father Murphy to the mercy of God. And shares with you the hope that the Church will be spared any undue publicity from this matter.”

Undue publicity? What publicity would be undue?

The RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization) Act was enacted to prosecute members of organizations habitually involved in crime, usually the mob. However, it has been used to prosecute corrupt unions, and some have argued that it should be applied to the boy scouts for covering up sex abuse.

Straight from the code: “As used in this chapter–(1) “racketeering activity” means (A) any act or threat involving murder, kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, dealing in obscene matter…(or) section 1503 (relating to obstruction of justice), section 1510 (relating to obstruction of criminal investigations), section 1511 (relating to the obstruction of State or local law enforcement), section 1512 (relating to tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant)…(or) sections 2251, 2251A, 2252, and 2258 (relating to sexual exploitation of children).

I have to admit that I though this would be an original and clever post when I began to write it.  As I started doing some google searches on the matter, an attorney and advocate by the name of Marci Hamilton had already suggested prosecuting the church under RICO in 2003 before the pope seems to have been so close to the subject. At issue with RICO is that the statute seems to target those whose main line of business is commercial criminality, but as she points out in this commentary, unions have been prosecuted under RICO, even though they are not in the principal business of commercial criminality. In a later post in April of 2010 Hamilton seems to concede the point that financial harm must be done, even though she advocates for amending the law to include the church’s cover up activities. She also makes note of a letter by the pope, which I was not aware of:

And, in 2001, in what many are now calling nothing short of an obstruction of justice, he issued a definitive letter requiring that the handling of child sexual abuse issues be under the “pontifical secret.”

The other small issue is the whole head of state immunity thing for the pope. [Kinda like that immunity the church didn't respect for Motecuzoma or Cuahtemoc, but I digress.] It is not that he is a foreign head of state that might be the problem. Pinochet and other dictators from South America have been prosecuted by Spain (of all countries to take the lead on this) under the international legal doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction. The issue is that he is a SITTING head of state.

Even that premise is being questioned in Britain.

Lawyers are divided over the immunity issue. Some argue that the Vatican isn’t a true state, while others note the Vatican has national relations with about 170 countries, including Britain. The Vatican is also the only non-member to have permanent observer status at the U.N.

Then again, no other top religious leaders enjoy the same U.N. privileges or immunity, so why should the pope?

To my Catholic friends, I don’t believe such a civil action would violate your religious teachings. As I understand it, papal infallibility extends only to the pope’s official teachings on the church’s beliefs, not administrative decisions. In this case, it seems that the the pope erred.

I am not an attorney, and much less an international law or RICO expert, but I do think that if foreigners can be prosecuted and other religious figures can be prosecuted, and it does seem that the pope has obstructed justice, why not?

A participant in the counter coup mass mobilizations recounted how he marched against the coup supporters and how the situation quickly turned violent, with opposition sharpshooters opening fire on the Chavez supporters. The marchers painted the face with a red line in order to distingush themselves from the opposition. He remembers how people relatively close to him fell in this encounter. This post will not do justice to the impassioned speech, and I hope to hear from him again.

Nicaragua’s Consul says that due to Chavez’s great work, especially with the implementation of ALBA, he has risen, in his opinion, to the status of historical leader, surpassed only perhaps by Simon Bolivar himself. For this, he has earned the title, “Comandante.”

A brother in the Iran struggle voiced his support and urged all of us to work together for a greater society. The consul treated us to traditional Venezuelan foods, and provided us with three documentaries. If you have not seen “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” get it today.  It is a documentary about this very coup.

In the ten years that Chavez has been president, social spending has increased from 9.5% of GDP to 17.5% of GDP, ostensibly from the redistrubution of petroleum wealth from the wealthy elite to the people. Extreme poverty has fallen from 20.2% to 9.5% as a result.

"We painted our faces with a red line to distinguish ourselves from the opposition."

Let's remember those who died during the coup

Bryan Parras

Freddie Porras, A Teacher and Homie

Me and The Consul.

Nicaragua's Consul General

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Vice Consul

Iranian Supporters

We take a look at the threat of deportation that non-citizen veterans of American wars continue to face despite US military promises of citizenship. We talk to Rohan Coombs, a Jamaican-born US vet who was in the US Marine Corps for six years and served in the Persian Gulf War. He spent eight months in prison for a marijuana-related conviction. The day he was to be released he was told he would be deported. He speaks to us from an immigration jail. We also speak with immigration attorney Craig Shagin. [includes rush transcript]