Global Famine

Humanity is undergoing in the post-Cold War era an economic and social crisis of unprecedented scale leading to the rapid impoverishment of large sectors of the World population. National economies are collapsing, unemployment is rampant. Local level famines have erupted in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and parts of Latin America. This "globalization of poverty" --which has largely reversed the achievements of post-war decolonization-- was initiated in the Third World coinciding with the debt crisis of the early 1980s and the imposition of the IMF's deadly economic reforms.

The New World Order feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the natural environment. It generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife, undermines the rights of women and often precipitates countries into destructive confrontations between nationalities. Since the 1990s, it has extended its grip to all major regions of the World including North America, Western Europe, the countries of the former Soviet block and the "Newly Industrialized Countries" (NICs) of South East Asia and the Far East.

This Worldwide crisis is more devastating than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has far-reaching geo-political implications; economic dislocation has also been accompanied by the outbreak of regional wars, the fracturing of national societies and in some cases the destruction of entire countries. By far this is the most serious economic crisis in modern history. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty, First Edition, 1997)

Introduction

Famine is the result of a process of "free market" restructuring of the global economy which has its roots in the debt crisis of the early 1980s. It is not a recent phenomenon as suggested by several Western media reports. The latter narrowly focus on short-term supply and demand for agricultural staples, while obfuscating the broader structural causes of global famine.

Poverty and chronic undernourishment is a pre-existing condition. The recent hikes in food prices have contributed to exacerbating and aggravating the food crisis. The price hikes are hitting an impoverished population, which has barely the means to survive.

Food riots have erupted almost simultaneously in all major regions of the World:

"Food prices in Haiti had risen on average by 40 percent in less than a year, with the cost of staples such as rice doubling.... In Bangladesh, [in late April 2008] some 20,000 textile workers took to the streets to denounce soaring food prices and demand higher wages. The price of rice in the country has doubled over the past year, threatening the workers, who earn a monthly salary of just $25, with hunger. In Egypt, protests by workers over food prices rocked the textile center of Mahalla al-Kobra, north of Cairo, for two days last week, with two people shot dead by security forces. Hundreds were arrested, and the government sent plainclothes police into the factories to force workers to work. Food prices in Egypt have risen by 40 percent in the past year... Earlier this month, in the Ivory Coast, thousands marched on the home of President Laurent Gbagbo, chanting “we are hungry” and “life is too expensive, you are going to kill us.

Similar demonstrations, strikes and clashes have taken place in Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Thailand, Yemen, Ethiopia, and throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa." (Bill Van Auken, Amid mounting food crisis, governments fear revolution of the hungry, Global Research, April 2008)

"Eliminating the Poor"

With large sectors of the World population already well below the poverty line, the short-term hike in the prices of food staples is devastating. Millions of people around the World are unable to purchase food for their survival

These hikes are contributing in a very real sense to "eliminating the poor" through "starvation deaths". In the words of Henry Kissinger: "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people."

In this regard, Kissinger had intimated in the context of the 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests". that the recurrence of famines could constitute a de facto instrument of population control.

According to the FAO, the price of grain staples has increased by 88% since March 2007. The price of wheat has increased by 181% over a three year period. The price of rice has increased by 50% over the last three months (See Ian Angus, Food Crisis: "The greatest demonstration of the historical failure of the capitalist model", Global Research, April 2008):

"The most popular grade of Thailand rice sold for $198 a ton, five years ago and $323 a ton a year ago. In April 2008, the price hit $1,000. Increases are even greater on local markets — in Haiti, the market price of a 50 kilo bag of rice doubled in one week at the end of March 2008. These increases are catastrophic for the 2.6 billion people around the world who live on less than US$2 a day and spend 60% to 80% of their incomes on food. Hundreds of millions cannot afford to eat" (Ibid)

Two Interrelated Dimensions

There are two interrelated dimensions to the ongoing global food crisis, which has spearheaded millions of people around the World into starvation and chronic deprivation, a situation in which entire population groups no longer have the means to purchase food.

First, there is a long term historical process of macroeconomic policy reform and global economic restructuring which has contributed to depressing the standard living Worldwide in both the developing and developed countries.

Second, these preexisting historical conditions of mass poverty have been exacerbated and aggravated by the recent surge in grain prices, which have led in some cases to the doubling of the retail price of food staples. These price hikes are in large part the result of speculative trade in food staples.

Speculative Surge in Grain Prices

The media has casually misled public opinion on the causes of these price hikes, focusing almost exclusively on issues of costs of production, climate and other factors which result in reduced supply and which might contribute to boosting the price of food staples. While these factors may come into play, they are of limited relevance in explaining the impressive and dramatic surge in commodity prices.

Spiraling food prices are in large part the result of market manipulation. They are largely attributable to speculative trade on the commodity markets. Grain prices are boosted artificially by large scale speculative operations on the New York and Chicago mercantile exchanges. It is worth noting that in 2007, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), merged with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), forming the largest Worldwide entity dealing in commodity trade including a wide range of speculative instruments (options, options on futures, index funds, etc).

Speculative trade in wheat, rice or corn, can occur without the occurrence of real commodity transactions. The institutions speculating in the grain market are not necessarily involved in the actual selling or delivery of grain.

The transactions may use commodity index funds which are bets on the general upward or downward movement of commodity prices. A "put option" is a bet that the price will go down, a "call option" is a bet that the price will go up. Through concerted manipulation, institutional traders and financial institutions make the price go up and then place their bets on an upward movement in the price of a particular commodity.

Speculation generates market volatility. In turn, the resulting instability encourages further speculative activity.

Profits are made when the price goes up. Conversely, if the speculator is short-selling the market, money will be made when the price collapses.

This recent speculative surge in food prices has been conducive to a Worldwide process of famine formation on an unprecedented scale.

The Absence of Regulatory Measures Triggers Famine

These speculative operations do not purposely trigger famine.

What triggers famine is the absence of regulatory procedures pertaining to speculative trade (options, options on futures, commodity index funds). In the present context, a freeze of speculative trade in food staples, taken as a political decision, would immediately contribute to lower food prices.

Nothing prevents these transactions from being neutralized and defused through a set of carefully devised regulatory measures.

Visibly, this is not what is being proposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The Role of the IMF and the World Bank

The World Bank and the IMF have come forth with an emergency plan, to boost agriculture in response to the "food crisis". The causes of this crisis, however, are not addressed.

The World Bank's president Robert B. Zoellick describes this initiative as a "new deal", an action plan "for a long-term boost to agricultural production.", which consists inter alia in a doubling of agricultural loans to African farmers.

"We have to put our money where our mouth is now so that we can put food into hungry mouths" (Robert Zoellick, World Bank head, quoted by BBC, 2 May 2008)

IMF/World Bank "economic medicine" is not the "solution" but in large part the "cause" of famine in developing countries. More IMF-World Bank lending "to boost agriculture" will serve to increase levels of indebtedness and exacerbate rather alleviate poverty.

World Bank "policy based loans" are granted on condition the countries abide by the neoliberal policy agenda which, since the early 1980s, has been conducive to the collapse of local level food agriculture.

"Macro-economic stabilization" and structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF and the World Bank on developing countries (as a condition for the renegotiation of their external debt) have led to the impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people.

The harsh economic and social realities underlying IMF intervention are soaring food prices, local-level famines, massive lay-offs of urban workers and civil servants and the destruction of social programs. Internal purchasing power has collapsed, health clinics and schools have been closed down, hundreds of millions of children have been denied the right to primary education.

IMF Shock Treatment

Historically, spiraling food prices at the retail level have been triggered by currency devaluations, which have invariably resulted in a hyperinflationary situation. In Peru in August 1990, for instance, on the orders of the IMF, fuel prices increased overnight by 30 times. The price of bread increased twelve times overnight:

"Throughout the Third World, the situation is one of social desperation and hopelessness of a population impoverished by the interplay of market forces. Anti-SAP riots and popular uprisings are brutally repressed: Caracas, 1989. President Carlos Andres Perez after having rhetorically denounced the IMF of practicing "an economic totalitarianism which kills not with bullets but with famine", declares a state of emergency and sends regular units of the infantry and the marines into the slum areas (barrios de ranchos) on the hills overlooking the capital. The Caracas anti-IMF riots had been sparked off as a result of a 200 per cent increase in the price of bread. Men, women and children were fired upon indiscriminately: "The Caracas morgue was reported to have up to 200 bodies of people killed in the first three days ... and warned that it was running out of coffins". Unofficially more than a thousand people were killed. Tunis, January 1984: the bread riots instigated largely by unemployed youth protesting the rise of food prices; Nigeria, 1989: the anti-SAP student riots leading to the closing of six of the country’s universities by the Armed Forces Ruling Council; Morocco, 1990: a general strike and a popular uprising against the government’s IMF-sponsored reforms." (Michel Chossudovsky, op cit.)

The Deregulation of Grain Markets

Since the 1980s, grain markets have been deregulated under the supervision of the World Bank and US/EU grain surpluses are used systematically to destroy the peasantry and destabilize national food agriculture. In this regard, World Bank lending requires the lifting of trade barriers on imported agricultural staples, leading to the dumping of US/EU grain surpluses onto local market. These and other measures have spearheaded local agricultural producers into bankruptcy.

A "free market" in grain --imposed by the IMF and the World Bank-- destroys the peasant economy and undermines "food security". Malawi and Zimbabwe were once prosperous grain surplus countries, Rwanda was virtually self-sufficient in food until 1990 when the IMF ordered the dumping of EU and US grain surpluses on the domestic market precipitating small farmers into bankruptcy. In 1991-92, famine had hit Kenya, East Africa's most successful bread-basket economy. The Nairobi government had been previously placed on a black list for not having obeyed IMF prescriptions. The deregulation of the grain market had been demanded as one of the conditions for the rescheduling of Nairobi's external debt with the Paris Club of official creditors. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, Montreal 2003)

Throughout Africa, as well as in Southeast Asia and Latin America, the pattern of "sectoral adjustment" in agriculture under the custody of the Bretton Woods institutions has been unequivocally towards the destruction of food security. Dependency vis-à-vis the world market has been reinforced leading to a boost in commercial grain imports as well as an increase in the influx of "food aid".

Agricultural producers were encouraged to abandon food farming and switch into "high value" export crops. often to the detriment of food self-sufficiency. The high value products as well as the cash crops for export were supported by World Bank loans.

Famines in the age of globalization are the result of policy. Famine is not the consequence of a scarcity of food but in fact quite the opposite: global food surpluses are used to destabilize agricultural production in developing countries.

Tightly regulated and controlled by international agro-business, this oversupply is ultimately conducive to the stagnation of both production and consumption of essential food staples and the impoverishment of farmers throughout the world. Moreover, in the era of globalization, the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program bears a direct relationship to the process of famine formation because it systematically undermines all categories of economic activity, whether urban or rural, which do not directly serve the interests of the global market system.

The earnings of farmers in rich and poor countries alike are squeezed by a handful of global agro-industrial enterprises which simultaneously control the markets for grain, farm inputs, seeds and processed foods. One giant firm Cargill Inc. with more than 140 affiliates and subsidiaries around the World controls a large share of the international trade in grain. Since the 1950s, Cargill became the main contractor of US "food aid" funded under Public Law 480 (1954).

World agriculture has for the first time in history the capacity to satisfy the food requirements of the entire planet, yet the very nature of the global market system prevents this from occurring. The capacity to produce food is immense yet the levels of food consumption remain exceedingly low because a large share of the World's population lives in conditions of abject poverty and deprivation. Moreover, the process of "modernization" of agriculture has led to the dispossession of the peasantry, increased landlessness and environmental degradation. In other words, the very forces which encourage global food production to expand are also conducive antithetically to a contraction in the standard of living and a decline in the demand for food.

Genetically Modified Seeds

Coinciding with the establishment the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, another important historical change has occurred in the structure of global agriculture.

Under the articles of agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO)), the food giants will have unrestricted freedom to enter the seeds markets of developing countries. The acquisition of exclusive "intellectual property rights" over plant varieties by international agro-industrial interests, also favors the destruction of bio-diversity.

Acting on behalf of a handful of biotech conglomerates, GMO seeds have been imposed on farmers, often in the context of "food aid programs". In Ethiopia, for instance, kits of GMO seeds were handed out to impoverished farmers with a view to rehabilitating agricultural production in the wake of a major drought . The GMO seeds were planted, yielding a harvest. But then the farmer came to realize that the GMO seeds could not be replanted without paying royalties to Monsanto, Arch Daniel Midland et al. Then, the farmers discovered that the seeds would harvest only if they used the farm inputs including the fertilizer, insecticide and herbicide, produced and distributed by the biotech agribusiness companies. Entire peasant economies were locked into the grip of the agribusiness conglomerates.

Breaking The Agricultural Cycle

With the widespread adoption of GMO seeds, a major transition has occurred in the structure and history of settled agriculture since its inception 10,000 years ago.

The reproduction of seeds at the village level in local nurseries has been disrupted by the use of genetically modified seeds. The agricultural cycle, which enables farmers to store their organic seeds and plant them to reap the next harvest has been broken. This destructive pattern – invariably resulting in famine – is replicated in country after country leading to the Worldwide demise of the peasant economy.

Bush's World War Three

" We got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously...." (George W. Bush, 17 October 2007)

Grin and Laugh: "Here's his expression while saying the words "World War Three" (Huffington Post, 17 October 2007)

"I believe that. I believe that [the revolt of passengers on the hijacked flight 93 on September 11, 2001] was the first counter-attack to World War III." (George W. Bush, May 6, 2006)

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous... Having said that, all options are on the table." George W. Bush, February 2005)

We are not living in a sound and rational World, where far-reaching decisions by the US President are based on an understanding of their likely consequences.

A World War III is no longer a hypothetical scenario.

During the Cold War, the concept of "mutual assured destruction" (MAD) was put forth. An understanding of the devastating consequences of nuclear war largely contributed to avoiding the outbreak of war between the US and the Soviet Union.

Today, in the post-Cold war era, no such understanding prevails.

The specter of a nuclear holocaust, which haunted the world for half a century has been relegated to the status of "collateral damage".

US foreign policy under the Neocons is based on a diabolical and criminal agenda. The "war on terrorism" is a lie; Iran does not constitute a threat to global security as confirmed by a recent IAEA report. Iran does not constitute a threat to Israel.

The US president is a liar, who believes his own lies.

While Iran's non existent nukes are said to constitute a lethal and deadly threat, so-called tactical nuclear weapons "Made in America" are described in Pentagon documents as "harmless to the surrounding civilian population".

In a bitter irony, those who decide on the use of nuclear weapons believe their own propaganda. A preemptive nuclear attack on Iran is upheld as a bona fide humanitarian undertaking which contributes to global security.

And now the US Head of State, who has a limited understanding of geopolitics, let alone geography, is hinting that if Iran does not give up its nonexistent nuclear weapons program, we might be reluctantly forced into in a World War III situation. Bush has insinuated that as Commander in Chief, he could decide to launch a war on Iran, which would result in World War III.

"Dr. Strangelove rides again." In an utterly twisted logic, World War III is presented by the US President as a means to preventing collateral damage.

The war would be triggered by Iran, who has refused to abide by the "reasonable demands" of "the international community".

Realities are twisted and turned upside down. Iran is being accused of wanting to start World War III.

Media Blackout

World public opinion has its eyes riveted on the cataclysm of "global warming". World War III on the other hand is not front page news. We are talking about the loss of tens of thousands of lives: the consequences of the US military agenda which includes the preemptive use of nuclear weapons in a very concrete way threatens the future of humanity.

At present US and coalition forces including NATO and Israel are in an advanced state of readiness to launch an attack on Iran. Leaders of the coalition fully understand that such an action will result in a World War III scenario. Escalation scenarios have already been envisaged and analyzed by the Pentagon. US sponsored war games have even foreseen the possible intervention of Russia and China.

World War III has been on the lips of NeoCon architects of US foreign policy from the outset of the Bush regime. It is contained in a document published in September 2000 by the Project of the New American Century (PNAC),

The PNAC's declared objectives imply a "long war", a global war without borders::

"defend the American homeland;

fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;

perform the "constabulary" duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;

transform U.S. forces to exploit the "revolution in military affairs;"

Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had commissioned the PNAC blueprint prior to the 2000 presidential elections. The PNAC outlines a roadmap of conquest.

The pre-emptive nuclear doctrine contained in the Nuclear Posture Review is supported by the Republican Party and Washington’s conservative think-tanks

George W. Bush is an instrument of powerful economic interests. A preemptive war on Iran has widespread support by the US Congress, it is also supported by America's European partners and allies. Leading Republicans have expressed their support for a preemptive World War III scenario. In a 2006 interview at the height of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon (July 16, 2007), former Republican leader of the House Newt Gingrich candidly acknowledged:

"We’re in the early stages of what I would describe as the third World War and, frankly, our bureaucracy’s not responding fast enough and we don’t have the right attitude. And this is the 58th year of the war to destroy Israel and, frankly, the Israelis have every right to insist that every single missile leave south Lebanon, and the United States ought to be helping the Lebanese government have the strength to eliminate Hezbollah as a military force — not as a political force in the parliament — but as a military force in south Lebanon.

The Bush Administration has adopted a first strike "pre-emptive" nuclear policy, which has now received congressional approval. Nuclear weapons are no longer a weapon of last resort as during the Cold War era.

In a classified Pentagon document (Nuclear Posture Review) presented to the US Senate in early 2002, the Bush Administration established so-called "contingency plans" for an offensive "first strike use" of nuclear weapons, not only against the "axis of evil" (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and North Korea), but also against Russia and China.

Annex

Excerpts of President Bush's October 17th White House Press Conference (emphasis added)

Q Mr. President, I'd like to follow on Mr. -- on President Putin's visit to Tehran. It's not about the image of President Putin and President Ahmadinejad, but about the words that Vladimir Putin said there. He issued a stern warning against potential U.S. military action -- U.S. military action against Tehran --

THE PRESIDENT: Did he say U.S.?

Q Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, he did?

Q He said -- well, at least the quote said that -- and he also said, "He sees no evidence to suggest Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb." Were you disappointed with that message? And does that indicate possibly that international pressure is not as great as you once thought against Iran abandoning its nuclear program?

THE PRESIDENT: I -- as I said, I look forward to -- if those are, in fact, his comments, I look forward to having him clarify those, because when I visited with him, he understands that it's in the world's interest to make sure that Iran does not have the capacity to make a nuclear weapon. And that's why, on -- in the first round at the U.N., he joined us, and second round, we joined together to send a message. I mean, if he wasn't concerned about it, Bret, then why did we have such good progress at the United Nations in round one and round two?

And so I will visit with him about it. I have not yet been briefed yet by Condi or Bob Gates about, you know, their visit with Vladimir Putin.

Q But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?

THE PRESIDENT: I think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that they -- that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it's in the world's interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace.

But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously. And we'll continue to work with all nations about the seriousness of this threat. Plus we'll continue working the financial measures that we're in the process of doing. In other words, I think -- the whole strategy is, is that at some point in time, leaders or responsible folks inside of Iran may get tired of isolation and say, this isn't worth it. And to me, it's worth the effort to keep the pressure on this government.

And secondly, it's important for the Iranian people to know we harbor no resentment to them. We're disappointed in the Iranian government's actions, as should they be. Inflation is way too high; isolation is causing economic pain. This is a country that has got a much better future, people have got a much better -- should have better hope inside Iran than this current government is providing them.

So it's -- look, it's a complex issue, no question about it. But my intent is to continue to rally the world to send a focused signal to the Iranian government that we will continue to work to isolate you, in the hopes that at some point in time, somebody else shows up and says it's not worth the isolation.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright: Religious Freedom Versus State Religion, Ethics, Politics and Strategy

Introduction

The sustained vituperative attack and the feeble apologetic defense of Reverend Wright’s brilliant, eloquent and substantive sermon in defense of human dignity speaks to the basic ethical, political and strategic issues of our epoch. For Reverend Wright was not merely ‘commenting’ on an ethical omission of our day but raising fundamental principles about the behavior of states, the role of individual conscience in the face of crimes against humanity and the need to give name and take action in the face of evil. The entire spectrum of politicians, the mass media and, in particular, the political parties and two (and a half) of the presidential candidates raise, by their hostile reaction and the substance of their criticism, vital issues of the relation between the State and Religion.

“They know what they say”, (to paraphrase and re-state Jesus Christ’s comments on his persecutors) applies with a vengeance to the barrage of mindless screeds which were intentionally launched against the Reverend’s brilliant analysis and dissection of the immoral means in pursuit of the great crimes of our epoch. Of course, the verbal assault of Reverend Wright was directed explicitly to discredit and disqualify Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Barak Obama, a long time member of Wright’s United Church of Christ Chicago parish. Many were, and continue to be, vile accusations charging that his sermon was ‘incendiary’, ‘anti-American’, ‘racist’ and ‘politically extremist’. Phrases critical of US empire-building were dubbed the “God Damn America’ sermon. Moral condemnations of ‘war and money’ were decontextualized to accuse Reverend Wright of being ‘a man of hate’, ‘a hate monger’ and a ‘racist extremist’. The insults and verbal assassins came from both liberal and conservative politicians, writers, mass media pundits and commentators.

Barak Obama’s ‘defense’ of Wright was based on separating the benign and respected avuncular ‘person’ (or personality) of the Reverend from his brilliant, substantive, historical analysis, political diagnosis and profoundly ethical moral judgment. By defending the messenger but condemning the profound message, Obama ultimately sided with the political defenders and apologists of a brutal, militaristic, imperial order, thus enabling him to continue his electoral campaign.

Key Theoretical and Analytical Insights

Wright’s speech is informed by four profound theoretical and conceptual insights:

First, Wright’s central idea is that repeated large-scale, long-term offensive imperial wars and military actions lead to military reactions or counter-attacks on US property and lives, military and civilian, outside and inside the United States. Given the authoritarian political environment and the hostile mass media, Wright cites the utterances of a former US Ambassador and long-time member of the State Department Establishment, Edward Peck to corroborate his observation. Contrary to the pro-empire political scientists who predominate in the prestigious Ivy League universities, and ignore the historical framework of critical readings of empire building, Wright’s theoretical argument is grounded in a wealth of historical experiences, which he enumerates to reinforce his central point. His theoretical argument is woven around the 9/11 Muslim-Arab attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He cites the colonial and post-colonial savaging of the Middle East, including the military attacks and economic boycott of Iraq, the bombing of Sudan, the US support of state terrorist regimes and the Israeli destruction of Palestinian and Lebanese lives. Imperial action and anti-imperial re-action – Wright algebraic formulation refutes the Ivy League professors’ propagandistic arguments, which extrapolate the violence of the anti-imperial reaction from its preceding bloody imperial historical framework in order to present the subsequent imperialist action as a defensive response.

Wright’s theoretical-historical correction of the false premises of orthodox academics and mainstream politicians regarding the source of violence in the international system lays the groundwork for a detailed commentary and moral judgment of the principal conflicts of our time.

By bringing to the fore a succinct enumeration of the sequence of US violent military actions from the violent seizure of Indian lands to the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima, to the colonial wars in Africa to the invasion of Panama and the bombing of Grenada, Wright establishes the historical basis for his judgment that the driving force of US foreign policy is ‘militarism and money’. His critics, unable or unwilling to challenge his historical narrative, resort to ad hominum attacks, relying on labeling techniques, attributing to him a ‘strident’ style or ‘incendiary language’.

Secondly, Wright provides a socio-psychological framework for understanding contemporary elite-manipulated and motivated mass violent sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11 and the initial general embrace of a military response.

Wright sets out a three-stage sequence of socio-psychological ‘feelings’: (1) reverence for the sites attacked and sorrow for the victims, (2) revenge against a general ‘other’ (to be designated by the imperial rulers), (3) hatred and war against enemies and unarmed innocents alike. Drawing on historical analogies with the biblical account (Psalm 137, all nine verses) of the Israelite reverence of the Temple (of Jerusalem), its destruction (by Chaldeans) and their subsequent return and revenge (slaughter and eviction of all non-Israelite inhabitants), Wright draws a parallel with the US reverence for ‘money’, symbolized by the World Trade Center, and ‘military’ (the Pentagon); their thirst for ‘revenge’ rooted in the ‘feelings’ of pain, sorrow, anger, outrage, destruction and senseless carnage’ this leads, he reasons, to hatred and demands to attack and punish ‘someone’ (‘pay back’). In our time this means killing armed adversaries and unarmed civilians – Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers and civilians. Wright brilliantly elucidates the emotional and political link between ‘worship’ (over losses) and ‘war’, presumably to restore the ‘revered sites’ of money (financial credibility) and military power (imperial credibility).

Wright’s socio-psychological framework allows us to understand the way in which the Bush Administration blended mass objects of veneration (loss of human lives) with the sacred sites of the elite (Wall Street and the Pentagon) into a powerful engine of war. Interestingly, Wright’s citation of the biblical account of Israeli indiscriminate revenge (‘happy is he who dashes their infants against the rocks’ Psalm 137) parallels the policies and practices pursued by the contemporary American Israelite policy makers in the Pentagon who pursued policies of total destruction and dismemberment of Iraq. Though Wright does not specifically refer to this parallelism, it springs to mind when he refers to the current injustices, and his specific mention of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians as part of the global injustices.

Thirdly, Reverend Wright links his ‘practical’ historical and theoretical analysis to a set of moral judgments and policy prescriptions. The wars of the last 500 years have economic and racial dimensions (‘riches and color’) pitting rich white elites against poor people of color. Imperial violence begets oppressed violence; state terror based on superior arms begets individuals willing to sacrifice their lives in terrorist responses. Confronted with these historical and social conditions, he counsels the American people (not just his black parishioners) to engage in ‘self-reflection’. By emphasizing and giving priority to ‘self’ reflection he wants to undermine the effort of the political elites to focus mass attention on the asserted faults of ‘other people’, the target of military assaults. Wright emphasizes the need to create primary (family) and secondary (community) solidarity and affection (love) as opposed to bonding with the war-making elite. By emphasizing reflection, Wright is openly rejecting blind adhesion to the elite and belief in their lies for war.

From the Socratic logic of critical self-reflection (‘know yourself’) and solidarity, Wright envisions a time for ‘social transformation’. Armed with a social awareness of the historical and present record of elite-driven imperial wars, Wright postulates the need for fundamental structural changes, “…in the way we have been doing things as a society, a country, as an arrogant superpower. We cannot keep messing other countries”. In other words Wright links changes in inner individual spiritual and social consciousness with collective social and political action directed at a fundamental transformation of the social structure and economic and political system, which make us an ‘arrogant superpower’.

In his own words, Wright wants to convince the American people to transform imperial military wars into internal political wars against racist and class injustices. He proposes a fundamental redistribution of wealth through reallocation of the public budget. Citing the “$1.3 trillion dollar tax gift to the rich”, he counters with a policy proposal to fund universal health care and the reconstruction of the educational system to serve the poor.

Reverend Wright, in speaking to the American people, not only condemns human catastrophes inflicted on working people at home and abroad by the ‘arrogant superpower’ empire-builders, but points to the great historical opportunities for changes. His is not a message of other worldly spiritual salvation; it is a call to action here and now. His is not a superficial critique of individual misbehavior or ‘failed policies’ (as his former parishioner, Obama would have it) but a deep structural analysis of systemic failure which demands a ‘social transformation, which goes to the root of the present day policies of imperial wars and state and individual terrorism.

Conclusion

The reason for the repeated vicious personal attacks on Reverend Wright by the mass media and the political leaders and academic apologists for empire building is abundantly clear – to prevent a powerful, reasonable, logical and relevant analysis from influencing the American public or even exercising any influence on the Presidential campaign.

Equally important the political and media attacks on Reverend Wright are meant to destroy freedom of conscience, the separation of Church and State. What the critics want, is a religion and religious figures at the service of the state, which blesses war planners, honors war criminals, arouses mass hatred of state-designated target peoples. The ‘arrogant superpower’ honors the ministers, priests and rabbis who follow state policy spewing hatred against Arabs and Muslims. Nothing more and nothing less, Reverend Wright is standing in word and deed for the freedom and autonomy of individuals and institutions against the voracious spread of totalitarian state power.

Clearly the irrational vituperative, sustained attack on Reverend Wright is more than a reactionary political electoral ploy in a racist electoral campaign; it is a fundamental attack on our democratic freedoms and the autonomy of our religious institutions.