Solution for Latin America and beyond

American business and government are bound up with the ruling minorities in Latin America - with the rural and industrial property holders. Our interests are their interests - stability, return on investment - are the same. Meanwhile the masses of the people keep on suffering because they lack even minimal educational facilities, healthcare, housing, and diet. They could have these benefits if national income were not so unevenly distributed.

The only real alternative to injustice in Latin America is socialism [...]

American capitalism, based as it is on exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, simply cannot survive without force - without a secret police force. The argument is with capitalism and it is capitalism that must be opposed, with its CIA, FBI and other security agencies understood as logical, necessary manifestations of a ruling class’s determination to retain power and privilege.

Now, more than ever, indifference to injustice at home and abroad is impossible. Now, more clearly than ever, the extremes of poverty and wealth demonstrate the irreconcilable class conflicts, that only socialist revolution can resolve. Now, more than ever, each of us is forced to make a conscious choice whether to support the system of minority comfort and privilege with all its security apparatus and repression, or whether to struggle for real equality of opportunity and fair distribution of benefits for all of society, in the domestic as well as the international order.

Philip Agee in CIA DIARY, Inside the Company

I had a conversation with my grandmother who grew up in pre-communist Poland in a privileged class family. She talked about appalling poverty, only step above middle ages feudalism, that gripped majority of the population. After WWII, after loosing family properties due to nationalization of industries and land, hating communism all her life, she still found enough objectivity to observe that socialism, or more specifically - communism, as oppressive as it was, eliminated poverty of the masses, equalized the society and, from the perspective of time, "was inevitable, and probably the only solution" to injustice.

The soul that Lucifer ate

The most stunning revelation in a 370-page Justice US Department
Inspector General’s report released this week was that agents
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had formally opened a “War
Crimes” file, documenting torture they had witnessed at the
Guantánamo Bay US prison camp, before being ordered by
the administration to stop writing their reports.

The report makes it absolutely clear that torture was ordered
and planned in detail at the highest levels of the government—including
the White House, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and
the Justice Department. Attempts to stop it on legal or pragmatic
grounds by individuals within the government were systematically
suppressed, and evidence of this criminal activity covered up. SOURCE

As terrible as the actions of this junta are what interests me is what hides in the heads of persons responsible for these atrocities. Do they realize they are committing immoral acts or do they consider them intricately human? Were they Good people who at some point turned Evil? Or were they always Evil (is there even such thing as Evil if the acts they are committing are part of what we the humans are, as history would suggest)?

Philip Zimbardo in The Lucifer Effect: In this book, I summarize more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a "perfect storm" which leads good people to engage in evil actions. This transformation of human character is what I call the "Lucifer Effect," named after God's favorite angel, Lucifer, who fell from grace and ultimately became Satan.

How does a normal kid who grows up in a well to do Western society turn Evil? Is there any difference between growing up in a permanent war zone such as Afghanistan were there exists no living memory of peace, and that of a small town USA? Apparently not. Is Philip Zimbardo right? Good people transform into Lucifers regardless of where they come from or whatever their growing up conditions? I'd like to see how this transformation took place in the case of someone like C Rice, D Rumsfeld, J Bolton etc, step by step. Perhaps some day a new Truman Capote will visit them in jail and take their brains apart for the rest of us to see what's inside, but I wonder if such a vivisection would be complete without a priest or a specialist of the soul? Maybe it's the soul that is the answer - some people simply do not have it.

Why against the war

Dorothy Day:

We are against war because it is contrary to the spirit of Jesus
Christ, and the only important thing is that we abide in His spirit. It
is more important than being American, more important than being
respectable, more important than obedience to the State. [...]

What would we advocate? Wholesale disloyalty to Americanism. Wholesale
refusal to fight. Wholesale withdrawal of labor (a general strike) from
all industries that further the war effort. We would urge a mighty band
of Catholic Conscientious Objectors who will refuse induction, who will
follow Jesus of Nazareth, Prince of Peace, in the way of non-violence,
in love for all mankind!

Soon to become Saint Dorothy?

Free ebook for download

The Spiral of Violence is a classic for liberation theology aficionados. Author, Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, nicknamed "Red Bishop" said:

“When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist.”

“The greatest problem of the Church is not a lack of priests, rather the hunger faced by the people.”

Rejections - bottom line

Are you trying to find a publisher for your novel? Finding too many obstacles? No replies from literary agencies, publishers? Wondering what the heck is going on?

Here's something I've received from the prominent literary agent, H.M.:

The publishing business has been erratic since the latter part of 1995, when most publishers took a big fall in sales. Sales were mixed until 1999, and then got better. However, 2001 was a very bad year in terms of bottom-line profits, because most publishers produced too many units of too many different titles, and therefore were either marginally profitable or actually took a loss for the year. 2002 was also marginal, and sales fell apart in early October through the Christmas selling season. 2003 was better for nonfiction, but fiction sales were still very soft, and 2004 continued the same. Over the last several years, bookstore business seems to fall by one or two percent month by month, but bookstores are showing higher profits. This generally means that they're selling more copies of a limited number of books, usually by established best-selling authors--and very often in the area of nonfiction in its various forms rather than fiction. Happily, bookstore business in 2007 took an upturn by about 4%, but there still seems no indication as to where that business specifically came from, and publishers are still wary. Publishers are still cutting their lists, and editors are still buying extremely carefully. H.M., Hamptons

What makes a writer?

Following my earlier post, Mark asks at a coffee shop: If not education then what makes a writer?

I am not arguing that formal education is useless for one who wants to write, but I find that it is more than the ability to learn that aids one in his/her writing. If I were to pick the single most important trait a prospective writer should posses, it would have to be curiosity.

Writing, much as the quality of knowledge one acquires, is dependent on curiosity, the ability to ask questions. A writer is like a child - always asking. Not far behind is the ability to ask just the right questions. Notice how those who seldom ask are usually those whose knowledge is founded on very shaky ground - these are often people who think they know the answers.

To me - knowing means doubting. Doubting means asking. Writing is posing a question, which explains why I can't stand works of writers who think they have all the answers.

Church - the irrelevant social club

There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators". But they went on with the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven", and had to obey God rather than man. They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.

The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

[...] the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning [...] I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust.

Martin Luther King Jr in: Letter from Birmingham City Jail

***

There are a few good men (and women, no doubt) in the church:

PRIESTS WHO PROTESTED TORTURE POLICY RELEASED FROM PRISON

Franciscan Fr. Louis Vitale and Jesuit Fr. Stephen Kelly were
released today from California jails, after serving five month
sentences as federal prisoners.

The two were sentenced last October in Tucson, following their
November, 2006 arrests at Ft. Huachuca, in Sierra Vista, Arizona,
during a nonviolent protest of military involvement in U.S. torture
policy. After Magistrate Judge Hector Estrada forbid them to use
international law in their defense, the two pled no contest to
charges of trespass and failure to obey an officer on October 17 and
were taken into custody.

Both men plan to return briefly to Arizona, where supporters are
invited to join them in a peaceful vigil against torture from 2-3
p.m. Sunday, March 16, outside the main gate of Ft. Huachuca, at Fry
Boulevard and Buffalo Soldier Trail, Sierra Vista, Arizona.

For more information, including complete background on the case and
legal briefs about torture and international law, visit
tortureontrial.org