Mayday Notes Not Kingdom Come It would be myopic and complacent to say that justice and peace reigns on Earth and the West is Kingdom Come, which, in any event, in a globalised world has to be global, embracing the whole of humanity.
If we look first to the Western Superpower, the USA, we see, for example: – the illegal invasion of Iraq which has led to over 1 million deaths; other invasions and wars; – torture in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, authorised at the highest levels of US government (some of these tortures appeared previously in CIA training manuals); – secret ‘rendition’ flights and prisons; – a history of support for brutal dictators to promote US interests abroad, plus support for Israel however violently it behaves (see below); – military personnel (including members of death squads and many dictators) trained in repressive ‘counter-insurgency’ techniques in the USA; – trade policies such as NAFTA that benefit large US corporations at the expense trading ‘partners’ in poorer countries; – a Great Wall along the US-Mexico border to keep out ‘illegals’ ensures free movement of goods but not of people; – the USA does not acknowledge the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and flouts its rulings; – the USA has not adopted the Kyoto Protocol on climate change; – at home, the USA has the widest gap between rich and poor of any advanced Western nation; – death penalty in some states; – no free national health service; – many homeless people, some designated by the insulting term ‘sub prime’; – failure to bring relief to flooded New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Was this because most of the population was black, ‘sub prime’?
It would be easy to go on but let this be the beginnings of a checklist for new President Obama.
Of course, this grim list does not alter the more cheering fact that there are many wonderful things and people in the USA and hope for the future.
We have no reason to be smug about Britain, ‘America’s closest ally’. Britain has supported inhumane US policies – including the illegal invasion of Iraq, using the ‘dodgy dossier’ – and aped its increasing gap between rich and poor and homelessness (45,000 homes were repossessed in the UK in 2008). We have people sleeping rough in bitter cold, asylum seekers imprisoned in camps, suspension of habeas corpus in anti-terror legislation and growing threats to civil liberties; creeping privatisation schemes in the NHS; water services owned by private companies (including all the infrastructure – England is one of only 3 countries in the world to allow this) and many other essential services privately owned...
Carry on Smiting One of the most shocking things in the nightly horror stories on the news of the recent war on Gaza was the response of the Israeli government spokespeople – not only the lack of concern they showed for UN schools bombed, the Red Cross blockaded, children left starving for days beside their dead mothers – but their sense of entitlement. Carry on smiting, I thought, remembering Joshua. ‘Joshua said: “By this you shall know that among you is the living God, who without fail will drive out from before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites”(Josh.3:10). ‘When Israel had finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them, and when all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai and attacked it with the edge of the sword. The total of those who fell that day, both men and women, was twelve thousand – all the people of Ai.’(8:24-5). ‘So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings; he left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded’ (10:40). Jahweh has a lot to answer for. However if Jahweh were arraigned before the International Court at The Hague, doubtless he would say he did not acknowledge its jurisdiction (like Israel itself or its backer the USA). The USA abstained on the January 9th 2009 UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza – thereby giving Israel ‘permission’ to carry on – and quite often seems to think it is Jahweh.
N.B. Of course, not all Jews support Israel’s policy and behaviour towards the Palestinians. At the march for Gaza on January 10th (estimated at 100,000 strong), in Hyde Park I saw substantial contingents of Jews, including the great banner of Jews for Palestine.