Stayin’ awake – Michael Shapcott’s blog

Whatever was he thinking?

By all accounts, the newish Pope is bright, he has a sense of the world and he has an understanding of his faith.

So why did he echo the hateful words of a medieval Christian theologian who attacked Islam?

The Pope must know his Bible.

Such as John, Chapter 8, where Jesus defends a woman accused of adultery. “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.”

The Pope’s quote accused followers of Mohammed of practicing violence to advance their religion. Members of the Christian church are no slouches on this score. There is the genocide of first nations people throughout the Americas, the crusades or the inquisition – to name just three. Here in Canada, the residential schools disgrace hangs as a necklace of shame around the Christian churches. The Pope’s Church has been engaged for years in an organized cover-up of sexual predation by its priests.

Jesus was trying to make a simple point. Be careful when you criticize others. Be humble.

It’s surprising that the Pope didn’t remember this important lesson before he blurted out his words.

But then, the Bible is a tricky document. There’s lots in there that many Christians choose to ignore. For instance, the Bible is full of food prohibitions (can’t eat no rabbits, no lobsters, no swans, nor camels, for that matter – not to mention pigs). Nowadays, many Christians adopt the prohibitions against various forms of sexual expression, but don’t follow the prohibitions against food. They pick and choose their Biblical passages.

Or what about the words of Jesus in Mark Chapter 16, when he calls on his followers to “take up serpents” and “drink any deadly thing”. When was the last time you saw Christians handling poisonous snakes during their Sunday morning service (except in the deepest reaches of Appalachia)?

Pope Benedict now says that he is sorry.

But he must have known the impact of his hate speech. Perhaps he didn’t, which makes him terribly negligent. Or perhaps he did, and didn’t care, which makes him equally negligent.

Or perhaps, like U.S. President George Bush, he’s just interested in provoking a group of people that he sees as the enemy. That makes him downright dangerous.

- Michael Shapcott 

Does George Bush really care about all those people who died in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001?

Well, it’s up to the Lord God Almighty to judge what is in the hearts of humans. All that mere mortals can do is look at their actions, and make some judgements.

George Bush, in the name of the victims of 9/11, and in the name of “civilization” has taken some pretty surprising actions:

- he has suspended international law in his campaign overseas, and domestic law in his campaign in the United States,

- he has authorized the use of torture techniques against prisoners,

- he has set up an international network of secret prisons,

- he has authorized the use of “extraordinary rendition” – a state-sanctioned method of kidnapping and illegal imprisonment,

- he has captured and held people in prisons in the United States and abroad, without charge and without the possibility of a fair trial,

- he has illegally invaded a sovereign country, targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure,

- he has illegally spied on electronic communications, including financial records, overseas and at home.

And that’s just the start.

How bad is the Bush administration’s conduct of its domestic and international response to 9/11?

The on-line magazine Salon-com has reported that CIA operatives are madly buying legal insurance coverage to protect themselves against the inevitable flood of lawsuits regarding their conduct in interrogations (already, there are a growing number of legal investigations into the deaths of a number of prisoners in CIA and US custody).

Are these the actions of a compassionate leader, a man determined to protect “civilization”?

- Michael Shapcott

The Bush administration used the fear of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and also the links between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Saddam Hussein as key reasons for its illegal invasion of Iraq (and a civilian body count that is as high as 46,000).

Both of those were lies.

The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a detailed report last week that made a number of definitive conclusions:

“Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Information obtained after the war supports the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s (INR) assessment in the NIE that the Intelligence Community lacked persuasive evidence that Baghdad had launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.”

and

“Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and taht the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.”

There are plenty of additional equally devastating findings from the Senate committee.

In the words of Sen. John Rockefeller, vice-chair of the committee, the Bush administration”exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, leading a large majority of Americans to believe — contrary to the intelligence assessments at the time — that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attacks.”

So, Saddam wasn’t harbouring secret weapons, and he wasn’t coddling bad guys like al-Zaqawi.

Which brings us to bin Laden. Though nothing has been proven in court, the links between Osama bid Laden and the 9/11 attacks in the United States appear pretty solid. So does that mean, on this, the fifth anniversary of the deadly attacks, that the U.S. is stepping up its attempts to track down bin Laden and haul him before a proper court in a fair trial?

Nope.

Last year, the CIA quietly disbanded its bin Laden unit.

The Bush administration went after the wrong guys – at a big and continuing cost – while the person who is most likely to be guilty is not even being pursued by the CIA.

- Michael Shapcott

On September 11, 1973, a U.S.-backed coup forced the overthrow of the democratically-elected Allende government in Chile and led to the death of Salvador Allende. 

Declassified U.S. documents on the American government’s participation in terror in Chile are posted here.  

The U.S. actions ushered in years of state-sanctioned murder – one official count has listed 2,095 deaths and 1,102 “disappearances” (which is more than those killed in that other 9/11 in 2001).

Take a moment today to remember the victims of 9/11 – the people of Chile, and democracy in that country.

- Michael Shapcott